Bitcoin Forum

I have been reading this forum for a while and I believe that BTC is a great system. However, it requires a lot of trust and this trust is sometimes abused. This is big marketing no-no, because it causes negative association in client's mind. Also forum is full of reports and accusations of scaming. Sometimes acusations which in other ciqumstances would end up in court as defamation siuts.

The question I seek answer to is: how a community can prosper with so much negative publicity and additionaly self-made negative publicity?

When an average person walks into a store, she/he does not think: will they cheat me here? The expectation is that merchants will play fair. When you want to make a payment in BTC you start to read about system and you quickly end up reading this forum. Even outside this forum, the first thing you will learn is that mayor exchange was hacked, mayor web wallet was hacked, etc.

If you search for bank in Google than you get more info on how to use them efectively, not info which makes you run to the bank and withdraw all your funds.

So the second question is: how to generate positive publicity?

Two very good questions! I think to tackle your first question,

The community must come up with more positive news than negative news. In effect, flood the bad news with good news.

For the second question, there are so many ways to generate positive publicity, right now, Bitcoin is still such a young project that just advertising information about Bitcoin is positive, and probably the best move right now.

To answer your first question;

Through a combination of spontaneous market forces in the upward direction fueled by the collapsing trust in traditional institutions combined with a robust community-self-imposed rating system such as in use on e-bay.

For your second question:
There need to be an expansion of reputable businesses and creative market innovations that could not be done with traditional means.

Trust is always required, and it will always be abused by scammers, regardless of whether you shop with bitcoins, cash, or credit. Either you have to trust that the seller will give you the goods (caveat emptor), or the seller has to trust that you won't reverse the transaction after receiving the goods (caveat vendor). Bitcoin follows the former model, credit cards follow the latter model. You can't have it both ways.

As for major financial institutions being hacked, it's not just specific to Bitcoin: regular banks and payment processors get hacked, companies storing customer's credit card details get hacked, etc. It happens all the time. You almost can't even turn on the news without hearing about something like that happening. So I don't think Bitcoin's negative publicity is any worse than any other financial system.

How to generate positive publicity for Bitcoin is a tricky question. I don't think it's mature enough at this stage to go mainstream. Definitely we should wait until the first block reward halving, since that's the big question on everyone's mind right now (and is related to the all-too-common question of what happens when block rewards cease completely) and nobody really knows what effect it will have on the market. Assuming halving the block reward doesn't cause any major disruption, there'll be a lot less uncertainty about the future of Bitcoin, and that will put it in a much stronger position for widespread adoption. Then we can start thinking about publicity.

Was just going to mention helpcoin lol

the facts are, bitcoin is non-reversible and can be used anonymously.  that attracts scammers and criminals as well.

wouldn't you feel guilty if a stranger were to cut themselves stepping on broken glass after you simply covered it over with a tissue hoping to hide that it exists?

skepticism is necessary at this juncture because the general public is so used to being protected they don't know that basic in protecting themselves.

Nobody's trying to hide anything. Scammers and criminals are attracted to anything with money involved, everybody knows that, and Bitcoin is no exception. I think the general public does (or at least, should) understand the importance of protecting themselves, given the number of scams involving fiat currency.

In my experience, people (especially people unfamiliar with e-commerce) are worried about two things when buying things online: "What if they steal my money?" and "What if they steal my identity?" With Bitcoin, the second question disappears completely, which I think is one of it's major selling points. The first question is (at least partly) answered by dealing only with reputable merchants and escrow services, which is what most people try to do anyway when using credit cards online, if only because having to reverse credit card transactions is a pain.