Bitcoin Forum

I talked to my friend yesterday and he was not interested in investing into Bitcoin because he thought the train is long gone and he would not be an early adopter anyway.

When looking at the normal price chart it always seems as the last bubble was the only bubble and before that the price was ridiculously small. This point of view makes everyone new to Bitcoin feel as if they have just missed the opportunity and thus they will not bother to buy Bitcoins any more. They couldn't be more wrong however because if they saw the logarithmic scale chart they would quickly see that there is plenty of investment opportunities left with Bitcoin.

The victim mentality of an average Joe makes him believe that yet again he has missed the boat and is a loser. Similar is the issue with the price. People think that Bitcoin is not divisible. I offered 0.1 Bitcoins to my other friend (6 months ago) as a gift and he refused because it seemed to him as a joke and argued that he would like to own exactly 1 Bitcoin or none at all.

Therefore, I'd suggest everyone to use the log scale chart as much as possible when illustrating the Bitcoin price as I believe it would provide better marketing for Bitcoin as a speculative investment.

For comparison...
http://s14.postimg.org/syen968e9/normal_chart.png

Obviously this chart makes it much more convincing for an average Joe to buy some Bitcoins:
http://s28.postimg.org/t3gp0fn9p/log_chart.png

Another issue is that since the demise of MtGox, when people do use a log chart, it's usually the Bitstamp chart which only goes back to late 2012, totally missing the previous history, including the Great Bubble of June 2011 and extended period of under-valuation through 2012.

There have been log charts created that use Gox data and switch to Stamp data some time last summer when the price on the two exchanges was at par, but they are few and far between.

It's amazing how many people fail to see that we're still all early adopters.

It would appear that way. But I do try to keep in mind that these sorts of trends can only be relied on for so long. At some point, it will break and we will search for support lower down....

To me, this is the bigger issue. We need to switch to mBTC so people won't feel small getting $5 worth of bitcoin.

Soon we will switch to "Bits" (1 BTC = 1'000'000 bits).

Then, will we switch to micro BTC, since all we seem to care about is pegging the value of BTC to fiat money? Yeah, let's rethink that. BTC is a unit of value, I tell you. Enough of this psychological crap to make newbies feel like earlier adopters...

Supply. Demand. It's not about "seems" but about math. And it is inevitable as long as bitcoin keeps the current advantages over traditional systems.

It's not about dollars or timing of adoption. It's about holding whole units instead of partial units. I only used five bucks as a casual example.

Hmmm, I'm not sure your answer implies that growth in demand will maintain the trend in question. And the latter point -- bitcoin has the "first mover" advantage, but I'm not convinced at this point that it will be the end-all of crypto-currency.

This "bits" thing gets me even worse!! I just feel like these HODLERS want so bad to pump the price, that they want to say, "look! BTC is expensive, but look at how many bits you can get for $100! It's not too late to miss the boat!" BUY BUY BUY!!! ::)

31st of oct. I've heard

Can anyone confirm?

LOL-- confirm what? This is something that would be decided by consensus (and not miner consensus, but that of the community). More likely, if rolled out as a wallet unit, there will be no consensus, lots of confusion, and lots of money sent with the wrong order of magnitude in mind. :)

As much as I agree that log scale charts are the proper way to view Bitcoin price history, using it as a marketing tactic to dupe newcomers into buying up the price ranks up there with mBTC/bits (wherever the hell "bits" came from) and "place bids with sideline funds to create the appearance of support to push the price higher" as my biggest peeves in this community.

Glad there is still some sensible folk around here. Everybody seems so intent on finding ways to pump the price all the time. This whole BITS thing..... :-\ they literally want to dupe newbies into thinking they are getting more than they are.

No, bits (smaller units with a name that can be remembered by any layman) is needed to make prices of goods easier to read and understand, and to overcome the irrational fear of indivisible bitcoin. Has nothing to do with pumping or luring newbies. If all it takes for newbies to invest is to give them few gazillion of new shiny coins, then dogecoin would've been through the roof, but it's not, just jumping up a little ;)

Well, DOGE did shoot through the roof for a while before collapsing back down to reality. ;)

I'm not sure I understand why this is necessary to for laymen to understand/read/use, especially considering BTC has already achieved such acceptance as a unit.

Having a worthless currency is completely different from having a currency that is easier to use  ::) troll harder

::)
Ummm.... ok. Clearly there were two things being talked about. 1) the fact that DOGE at one point was worth more than 5x what it was now, despite its massive supply and for no real fundamental reasons. Refer to ;). 2) The question of bits, and whether it is necessary.

In no way were these things being compared. ::) ::)

Because most people are unbelievably stupid. Perception is 99% of marketing. What it can actually do comes secondary. Those of us here, now, are mostly among the 1%. For the rest, there are cheap tricks and media hype.

GOOD.  i don't want anymore people in it.  if anything i would like the next year to be a total ASS#$%

too bad that wont happen.  i'm in no hurry for mass adoption.

+1


http://blockchained.com/chart_large_log.png
from http://blockchained.com (my site)

bitcoin growth is mainly driven by the network effect, which to me indicates a more exponential style curve.

in general log scale is the thing to use for exponential growth, so i also apply this to btc.

I've been telling the powers that be (Mt. Gox, Bitstamp, Coinbase, Bitpay, Bitcoin Foundation, etc.) this for a long time but nobody listens.

Unfortunately, THIS.

Maybe not stupid, but for sure most humans are mentally lazy, and always select a path that involves minimum amount of mental work aka thinking. So having prices in units that they are used to is an immense help for most people to not reject bitcoin as something too hard for perception. Seeing "0.00176 bitcoins" requires you to count digits after the period and do mental acrobatics to arrive at the actual value you can compare with; if on the other hand you see "1760 bits" you can immediately put it in a "about 2000 bits" category where you will have other things that cost the same to compare to; so the shopping becomes easy, and that's what most people need. less thinking, more shopping :)

Of course, it will be more convinient to nominate houses and yachts in BTC for quite some time; there's nothing wrong with having two units, most currencies do.