Bitcoin Forum

When explaining bitcoins advantages over cash to someone else, there are a few things that come to mind:

1. They cannot be counterfeited
2. Can be sent anywhere in the world with no (or very very low) fees
3. Mining fees dont go to big banks
4. Low transaction fees, coinbase estimated bitcoin could reduce payment processing fees worldwide from $500 billion to $50 billion, so 1/10th of current level

Any other to add to the list?

Your funds are your funds, and no one can take that away from you.

Tangible, 1 btc = 1 btc.

2. Can be instantly sent anywhere in the world with no (or very very low) fees

Maybe include something about being dectralised and deflationary, and the many other advantages they have over banks and money transfer services etc (but I guess you already included the main ones).

1. you know exactly the money inflation rate vs fiat which is unknown, its stats are usually a  lie since there is incentive to understate the fiat creation rate
2. by using fiat you are supporting that particular government's and banker's policies/wars/etc, with bitcoin you are supporting the bitcoin userbase. voting with your dollars literally
this vote has more effect than voting in rigged two party elections who are both financed secretly by bankers and will continue where the previous party left off.

It depends on who you are talking to.

Merchants like the fact that the fees are so low and that the transactions are irreversible (no chargebacks).

Consumers like the fact that they can create backups of their money, and that they can secure their cash with a password.

It's pseudoanonymous, such that you can send and receive funds without people tracking it to your identity. Great for things like pr0n.

FTFY  ;D

Sir, please don't press your flawed vision of how the world should work on the rest of us. The Internet was created for one thing: pr0n. Therefore Bitcoin was created for one thing: pr0n. What is the meaning of life? Political contributions pr0n.

No government required

Yeah I guess no other reason should really be necessary!

Depends upon the target audience but I would mix the security and utility that bitcoin has for the user and than also bring up this film-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrRXP1tp6Kw

You have to be careful because if you push bitcoin too much you may sound like a fanatic or snake oil salesman. For this reason the best way to gain a convert is:

1) Send them a bitcoin gift of 20-50usd by emailing them the funds through a service like coinbase explaining that this is a promising new technology which has already gained a lot in value. They may not care about it now but when they see it grow in value they will instantly fall in love.

2) Take them out to a restaurant that accepts bitcoin and pay the bill in bitcoin with your cell phone. This will subtly show them that bitcoin is secure, widely accepted , easy to use, and cool all within 20 seconds.

Except it's wrong. Somewhere down the line someone has to convert their coins to fiat (to pay for a supplier). This requires fiat, obviously, which is government created.

Correct, at least for the time being.

I also don't think talking about the benefits of Bitcoin in opting out of the government is a good thing to initially discuss with new users. If you start discussing the government you may come across as paranoid.

 Technically, bitcoin can be used by socialists and anarchists the same and have value for both. It just allows for the user to ultimately decide unlike in using Fiat where they are indirectly supporting some behavior which they may disagree with.

The whole anti-government approach is just like the anti-tax one as well. The goal isn't to get around either of them; it's to offer up options. There's a lot of misinterpretation in that area.

It works almost like email but for money with some amazing qualities such as: limited supply, irreversible, non-freezable, non-counterfeitable, pseudononymous and almost free to use.

It's basically the equivalent of digital cash or gold that you can almost instantly send to anyone, anywhere in the world at any time.


These two sentences I'd wager would be the best when dealing with a lay person.

One of the biggies is that the blockchain is a public ledger of all transactions between wallets, showing when coins were minted up to the wallets in which they now reside. Transparency with a tweak of anonymity.

You can also share wallets, much akin to sharing cash with a trusted friends/relative.

You can choose your own level of security that best suits your needs. For instance you can store your precious hoard in cold storage, while in contrast you can have some BTC funds lying around in a wallet you use for day-to-day transactions.

Of course, that's not necessarily a perk of Bitcoin itself, but it's important to educate people (at least in summary) that funds can be stored in a security vs convenience manner.

With something like Trezor you can store them both conveniently AND securely, :).

At a cost, of course :P Convenience and security is where its at.

Humans are usually the weak link in any secure system, but I'm sure that Trezor users are pretty clued up on the basics :P

Tell about the advantages that give BTC intrinsic value, and are unbeatable by the other options:


-you can transfer worldwide with 0.0001 tax, no matter how big or small is your transfer
-historical of valuation year after year
-you can win money by writing messages like this on internet, and much other opportunities to gain money
-the state can't freeze or take your funds.
-in a transaction, you don't need to expose your personal info and credit card number(good for pr0rn sites)
-you won't have to bother about opening 12312 different bank accounts with different taxes to transfer money
-billionaires and MIT putting money on it(among other good news)
-say that blockchain is a protocol, and there are many other interesting applications of the protocol
-bad actions of governments won't destroy bitcoin as it would do with a national currency
-way less taxes to get in the market, compared to other good investments. In general good investments need also good amount of wealth to be profitable despite the taxes.


Think that would be a good introduction. If your friend is not the type interested in economics or for some reason is sympathy with the state, tell him about personal advantages first

And soon we'll be running around with RFID tags that are used to verify payments. And people are going to go cut off fingers so they can steal coins...

I'd like to think that humanity would see the pitfalls of such an implementation before falling foul to the obvious criminal implications. That would be taking convenience and security to polar opposites lol.

But then again, we can be inherently stupid. I'm not comfortable with the whole contactless payments that can be made using cards.

People are already running RFID's for different purposes. Some for unlocking their cars, turning off house alarms, etc. People even RFID tag their pets so they can find them easier. I don't see this as being too far-fetched.

There are even kits you can buy now that let you RFID tag yourself (it's got a needle that injects into the skin).

Far vision but NO bank needed.
you can use your usb as your personal bank account.
and backup it anywhere you want.

You can hold an entire wallet in your head. knowledge = ownership.

How to Market Bitcoin (http://nakamotoinstitute.org/mempool/how-to-market-bitcoin/)

Limited supply, which is very good argument for anarchist/liberal crew. Re-definition of money, actually, the first real money.

I know bitcoin is a new type of money. But why do you say the bolded part?

The issue is that the supply is going down (or at least after it's all mined). People losing their coins and such turns it into a deflationary currency. I'm sure some think this is good. But really, it makes people afraid to spend it.

It's a bit like highlander isn't it? In the end there can be only one (satoshi) :P

Satoshi is reading this right now like "but there IS only one Satoshi!"

No i meant one satoshi as in the currency unit. If bitcoin survives long enough eventually all bitcoins will be lost except for the last satoshi. Then they will have to increase the decimal places or something.

I knew what you meant. I decided if you wanted to play on words, I would as well.

And my final satoshi will never be lost! I'll be the last one standing!

it allows people to be responsible with it, non .gov dependent.  ;D

I think the best thing about bitcoin is microtransactions. They are perfect for small donations.

Yeah.

In the near future, cryptocurrency will make theft impossible and irrelevant. The blockchain will also become a tool that assists humanity's transition from capitalism to post-capitalism, though I'm not sure precisely how.

For me that second point is the holy grail of this direction in technology. It's survival. It's ascension out of the hell of our contemporary neo-feudal existence.

The dark ages of illiteracy and superstition ended a long time ago. But the far longer dark age of deception, exploitation, and self-destruction is only now just beginning to end. Thank fuck for the internet.

Yes

5. Hackers love bitcoins.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwQaW9brDVY

Can you please explain how Bitcoin makes theft impossible when there are multiple companies being charged right NOW with theft of Bitcoins? Trendon Shavers. BFL. Mt. Gox. And there's more.

If anything, theft is *easier* with Bitcoin because there's no trace of who stole it (and they can mix coins to keep them hidden).

Show them the rate of increase over the last three years... No bank will provide this kind of ROI... It's not too late to be an early adopter.

Well I think alot of people already know the reasons why we think its better then cash.
But some people just dont want to change, they only know how to work and earn paper.
For them it's impossible to think it's even possible we dont use paper cash anymore.
For them to change their minds, we need something bigger then just saying its better because all the above reasons.

1. Protection against counterfeiting
2. No need for expensive storage.
3. Protection against inflation
4. Ease of doing transactions
5. Very low transaction fees, especially for bulk transfers.

5. The value of bitcoin will increase(deflate) over time as opposite to cash(inflate).

6. The value of Bitcoin is volatile and although you may go to the store with $100, by the time you get there you might only have $80

Indeed, It's a big problem and that's why people can trust bitcoin when buying something more expensive, But we can see this as an advantage for buying/selling for profit. The unstable price can make huge profit great example last 3 days when bitcoin went up about $80 and that's a huge profit If you have a pile of bitcoins.

While it is great for the profit building (I agree on this), that is a big thing that holds it back from being usable as a currency. If someone wants to break away from the banks/financial system and only use Bitcoin, they will never know how much money they have. If I have $500 sitting here and bread is $1 a loaf, I can go to the store in a week and (assuming prices haven't gone up, which is not likely to happen in a short period) know I can buy 500 loaves of bread. Conversely, if I have a Bitcoin that is worth $500 right now, I can go to the store and within a minute be able to afford only 450 loaves or maybe even 580 loaves. This is a huge problem.

i think the thing that would get people most interested in bitcoin is to tell them "you can make a lot of money." it's not convenient to say, but let's be honest.. we live in a capitalistic society here. money to the individual is more important than bitcoin's cause.. we see it everywhere. so many scammers who screw over newbies who try to get into the ecosystem.

This is the completely wrong approach. I've brought up the money-earning aspect and I get flooded with "how much did you earn? can I have some money? How do you get it? How much will I earn per day, week, month, year? How do I know it's not a scam? How can people give away the money?" And an onslaught of other questions related to getting rich quick. Seriously, avoid yourself the trouble and keep the earning part out of it.

I agree that it is dangerous to sell the idea of Bitcoin to others as a means of trading investment, mostly because some of those people will then go on to buying some bitcoins without the slightest idea on how to store them, how volatile the price can be at times, as well as a whole slew of other considerations.

If you sell the idea of bitcoin on its merits, and then how they can use bitcoins to purchase things then they may be interested on a different level. I think that the best way to get somebody interested is to have them watch you carry out a transaction in a public place i.e. buying a coffee. That should fascinate them as it is unconventional and the transaction alone tells a story about what it is all about.