Bitcoin Forum

just read this article: http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/salaries-paid-in-bitcoin-a-growing-trend-in-canada-1.2752441

then switched over to the comments, let me summarize em here.

The_Voice:
"The solution is simple: Just don't work for any company that wants to use "bitcoin" to escape its financial obligations to pay an employee in real dollars."

Noharass
"When Bitcoin goes bust, I hope the Canadian government does not bail these people out of their financial mess."

booyakasha
"These people will end up broke one day and will be on here crying about the rest of us needing to pay more taxes to support their social welfare programs."

Jordan
"I wouldn;t do anything more than virtual work for such virtual money..."

nexxtep54
"Any savvy techie with the proper software and code can make his own coin and steal yours. No thanks."

Abdul Rahman Hussein
"why take bitcoin? bitcoins are shit, in my opinion.
It is based on the what people believe on it value and it is electronic.
which means that when blackout or hacker can wipe your wallet clean. The chance of that happen is more likely, than hyperinflation or economic collapse. Also Canadian dollar are backed up by gold reserve and protect by the government as a legal tender. Bitcoin has none.Also , big bank spend huge loads on internet security and bitcoin has none."

norain
"Dont go boo hooing to the goverment when you wake up with a empty screen one day. You have to be crazy to accept this rubbish. Like any ponzi scam it will come down. You wait some hacker is working on this as we speak. Your going to be sorry for messing with this junk and thats what you own is junk. what a waste of hard work. It really should be named bite coin because thats what its going to do bite you !"

sachmo
"Bitcoin started by an unknown in 2009 and people are buying into it. I think there is going to be a lot people either very broke or very disappointed in the end. Someone is making money here and it probably isn't the average Joe."

.... sums up how 'Average Joe' thinks... and why Bitcoin never truly went to mainstream acceptance within 5 years and most likely never will if theres no support from dumb people who constitute 98% of society

~CfA~

THAT is hilarious, as if the Canada dollar was real, this Abdul guy must have been dropped as a baby!!!!

http://www.economicreason.com/usdollarcollapse/is-the-canadian-dollar-backed-by-gold/

The Gold Standard for the Canadian Dollar was officially abandoned on April 10th, 1933.

it is FIAT money, created by central bankers that type numbers in a computer and press SEND button

Can$ is a scam like all fiat currencies, some people are dumber than the bacteria in their intestines  :(

And I see these thing getting real these days.Bitcoin is also a part of some big financial game I guess.It has already made some people millionaire and for sure It's gonna make thousands come to street one day.

The quote above is just an example of how this shit is getting real.It's getting up like a HYIP or some such ponzi schemes now.

Just a side note, Come From Above is one of the few individuals fighting to keep scams out of the altcoin community!

He is truly a hero of all crypto currencies!

I think the average joe says "What's Bitcoin?"  That being said, these quotes above while negative show that with some more knowledge,  they're likely to be more receptive .

I remember when some companies refused to have web sites because they didn't want to be associated to porn sites, places that stole credit card number, and web sites with dancing bear gifs.

Well those people don't seem very friendly. I thought Canadians were friendly people that wear Toques and eat tons of little round bacon.

ignorance is people second name, they will learn in future about bitcoin dont worry :)

What? I guess that haven't been in the intrnet from back then but this sounds just weird. People are not willing to take risks, maybe a payment system that offers what bitcoin does sounds too good to be true for them.

I don't think it was many companies that were like this but it was somewhat of an issue in the early 90's when the internet was just starting to be used by the public.

Bitcoin used to be associated with a lot of bad things just like the internet was but is becoming less so.

yeah keep going giving a fuck about the dumb average joe
like this bitcoin is never going anywhere :D

only if u can manage to let average joe use the thing without needing brains will massive large-scale adoption and mainspread use come in
otherwise u can go on forever with the nerdy tards, WALL Street laughing like little hardliners at this measly scene

u know this is how it is dont kid urselves
average joe doesnt give a shit about technical blabla from a podest.

~CfA~

This is actually becoming less common now as people who hold bitcoin are becoming more security aware and have figured out ways to keep their bitcoin secure.

just so u come down to earth
in the real world ppl use passwords like 'jennifer31'
this is NORMAL for average people

~CfA~

The Average Joe uses a smartphone! When the time is right the average Joe will use Bitcoin as well.

The internet is still related to bad things and most likely it will always be. But still billions of people use it daily, not all of them are marked as criminals. If bitcoin manages to get even bigger, I guess that those dark things it's being used for will just be a small portion of daily transactions. Because As long as there's neutrality and both bitcoin and the internet have this in common, there are going to be both great and bad things but it won't matter if it reaches mainstream use.

Average Joe just simply doesn't know enough about bitcoin, he doesn't get the concept, he doesn't understand, the source code is alien, the blockchain is ?huh?...

In short, they don't get it, even when they say they do get it. If the media is usually incorrect about it, what more the average joe?

That is why I do not worry about recruiting just anyone to come use Bitcoin.

The new economy does not need to be run by the old guard and idiots.

Average joe just says what they think about BTC and knows nothing about BTC. But it won't stop the increasing number of people join BTC and spend it. One day they will find many people around then are talking and using BTC. They will definitely use BTC as well.

The average joe will be the late adopters. Their time will come but we do not need them yet at this time.

Some of the points raised by average joe are actually very good.

Those facts actually make me think twice on my bitcoin position.

QFT

https://i.imgur.com/mJcSqYt.png

Of course the fools of the world can't see the forest through the trees! It's way too early for most of those near the median of the IQ bell curve. They'll come around sooner or later, when their nation's fiat is collapsing under the weight of inflation and/or debt-crisis.

This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us."
-- Western Union internal memo, 1876.

"The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?"
-- David Sarnoff's associates in response to his urgings for investment in the radio in the 1920s.

"The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a 'C,' the idea must be feasible."
-- A Yale University management professor in response to Fred Smith's paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service. (Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.)

"Who the h*** wants to hear actors talk?"
-- H.M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927

"I'm just glad it'll be Clark Gable who's falling on his face and not Gary Cooper."
-- Gary Cooper, on his decision to not take the leading role in "Gone With The Wind."

"A cookie store is a bad idea. Besides, the market research reports say America likes crispy cookies, not soft and chewy cookies like you make."
-- Response to Debbi Fields' idea of starting Mrs. Fields' Cookies.

"We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out."
-- Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962.

"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible." -- Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895.

"If I had thought about it, I wouldn't have done the experiment. The literature was full of examples that said you can't do this."
-- Spencer Silver on the work that led to the unique adhesives for 3-M "Post-It" Notepads.

"So we went to Atari and said, 'Hey, we've got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we'll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we'll come work for you.' And they said, 'No.' So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, 'Hey, we don't need you. You haven't got through college yet.'"
-- Apple Computer Inc. founder Steve Jobs on attempts to get Atari and H-P interested in his and Steve Wozniak's personal computer.

"Professor Goddard does not know the relation between action and reaction and the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react. He seems to lack the basic knowledge ladled out daily in high schools."
-- 1921 New York Times editorial about Robert Goddard's revolutionary rocket work.

"You want to have consistent and uniform muscle development across all of your muscles? It can't be done. It's just a fact of life. You just have to accept inconsistent muscle development as an unalterable condition of weight training."
-- Response to Arthur Jones, who solved the "unsolvable" problem by inventing Nautilus.

"Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You're crazy."
-- Drillers whom Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist in his project to drill for oil in 1859.

"Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau."
-- Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929.

"Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value."
-- Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre.

"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
-- Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899.

"Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction".
-- Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872

"The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be shut from the intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon".
-- Sir John Eric Ericksen, British surgeon, appointed Surgeon-Extraordinary to Queen Victoria 1873.

"No flying machine will ever fly from New York to Paris."
-- Orville Wright.

"When others are greedy, be fearful. When others are fearful, be greedy."
-Warren Buffet

You're just cherry picking examples of people who guessed the future right.

There's probably more examples of failed enterprise but it doesn't get documented cause nobody cares about those stories

1. That is a list of quotes from people who guessed the future WRONG.

2. Guessing is for people without strong observation and deduction skills.

This is true. The vast majority of business ideas, even at the most successful companies end up failing. Most inventions end up never being used.

The Average Shmoe doesn't have a clue what is good for them and the is clear.  The depend on the epic fail we call a governments to wipe their bottoms for them and make them a bottle.  How many average Joe's had full faith in the Internet when it was in it's early stages?  Even after it has been proven to be revolutionary how many average Joe's still have very little understanding of the internet?  Point is the average joe's are follower's not leader's and history proves that point again and again.

I think the internet has overcome the association with bad things because it is also associated with many more good things, and has increased the standard of living for so many throughout the world. Pretty much everything is somehow associated with bad things, the question with bitcoin is are there enough good things that it is associated with/is used for to overcome the bad.....

That just means your open minded but don't let the words of people who don't understand what Bitcoin is makeup you mind for you.  Pro tip, these comments have been proven wrong time and time again and the price has gone up and the trend hasn't been broken to my knowledge.  Don't be afraid to listen to different opinions but try and keep in mind how qualified the people giving you advice are when it comes to investing into your future.   ;)

Reading those comments give me a headache -_-

Spot on. There's a saying "if you can't control your own mind, the world will happily do it for you" Considering the average joe has a degree from cable television university and is mostly concerned with
the Kardashians and dancing with the stars, be careful whose opinions you buy into.

In the mid 90s I remember listening to a talk radio show while driving in a car.  The subject was online banking.  The host asked callers to call in and say whether they would feel safe banking online.  Of the dozens of callers that called in, I can only remember one person saying they would be Ok with online banking.  Today there may still be a few online banking luddite holdouts but the vast majority of people bank online without giving it a second thought.  Similarly, whenever I hear about some survey that says the vast majority of people don't like Bitcoin I just think that that means anyone getting in now can still be considered an early adopter.  The average Joe's opinion on something doesn't trump math.

I think that average Joe still didn't hear about Bitcoin.'' If he know something, he probably think that this is just some ''virtual currency'' without value.
Until some ''big merchants'' accept Bitcoin this will be the case, unfortunately.

this

A lot of people that I have spoken to about BTC (who are well educated people), think bitcoin is either a scam or a ponzi scheme of some sort. A few of them thought that BTC was a company that had gotten shut down (they were referring to Gox I am assuming).  TBH, i would say that probably 1 out of every 5 people that I have spoken to would consider using it. We have a ways to go for adoption obviously...

Hmmm to tell you the truth I find it a bit crazy when learning about bitcoin. But working around it, I think bitcoin has a lot of potential and has a lot of space for improvements. It will surely be a thing in the future.

It takes time for bitcoin to penetrate into the wider society.

This sort of gives me hope. I consider myself a boat misser, since I didn't buy back in the day and im not filthy rich now. But maybe im still an early adopter after all, not pioneer tier, but early adopter, and maybe with 10 BTC, i can be rich in 10 years, when the average moron is FORCED to move their assets into alternatives because the FIAT ponzi scheme starts collapsing. I said it before, we need it in eBay and Amazon as the start.

If 1% of new ideas materialised, we would have been in a much better world.

Yeah. In 1993 and 1994 I talked to people about domain names and how they should register a few. Or at least one for their business. Only one guy (who was a tech guy) did out of dozens. 2-4 years later they were kicking themselves. But even then there were some good names left.

Read about bitcoin on its first mention on slashdot, fall of 2010.  Everyone then sounded like these Canadians now and many in people in the years between. At every point people say " it's too late, I'm not an early adopter."

None of those people were right!

Hahahaha! Great! Thanks for the laughs!  :D

People use too much of their brains! All of these were wrong.

Thanks for the giggles.

You can't really persuade such people with online arguments, they are too unreceptive to new ideas.

Though that doesn't mean arguing is pointless; there is always a silent majority lurking and reading comments, and many among them are ready to hear both sides of the argument. I'm sure that's how a lot of us jumped off the fence and got into bitcoin.

They will change their mind when they realize Bitcoin advantages over fiat currencies.

This clearly indicated that people's knowledge about today's fiat money system is almost zero. But some of them will start to realize the slavery nature of it

Everyone who has posted in this thread, you may consider yourself an early adopter, even if you just heard of bitcoin today. Go buy some. The price is right.

I talked about this to my dad and he thinks its crap. Money will be money. Bitcoin are for nerds.

Even if that person is interested in bitcoin doesn't mean s/he will adopt bitcoin .Frankly, bitcoin is worthless to me right now .It solves absolutely no problem for me and the thing that it does really well( money tranfer ) actually cost more than the mainstream  that it's trying to replace.So no, I don't see myself using bitcoin and I consider myself more knowledgeable about bitcoin that the average joe.

What the hell are you doing here then? :D

 ::) The underlined word , read it.::)

Only 2.3 million people have seen this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFDe5kUUyT0
Even if you assume 100% of them are Americans, that's less than 1% of the population

1.6 million people have seen this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGk5ioEXlIM

Fortunately, this one at least has been seen by 15 million and counting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM

Young people today spend more time learning online by pictures and videos than any generation previously.

Not to mention some of those 2.3 and 1.6 million views are the from  repeated viewings  , so the viewcount might not represent the actual number  of people who have seen it.

Short-sightedness at its finest. Bitcoin is not even a static, finished product. It's an ever evolving open software.

old people are always trying to say you cant do this and you cant do that. people for the most part dont like change and dont embrace it.

some people readily like risk and challenges and problems and jump head first into anything that piques there interest. average people dont do this, it will be more years before we get average people to use it.

for now mostly the people using it are not average by any measure. it took paypal awhile to get regular people into using it as it takes awhile to show benefits of something. paypal for awhile wasn't used by normal people but when ebay integrated it in and bought them out now tons of normal ppl use it.

That sucks how average person thinks about bitcoin. I think cryptos should be introduced to school as age of 12..

Let me spell it out for you .Bitcoin is currently useless to me  , thus it is worthless to me, which lead to me not going going to use it.The moment that change I'll reassess my position.

Sounds pretty pragmatic to me.



No shit ,Sherlock!! :o LOL

Perchance you be better of telling this to someone who isn't aware of this.

I think the mindset of people should be changed regarding bitcoins. I have seen many cases when people seem interested in bitcoins but don't like hassle going through all exchanges. They prefer money processors like Paypal.

The comments at the bottom of this article are hilarious.

Many of them seem to echo this sentiment:
"Bitcoin started by an unknown in 2009 and people are buying into it. I think there is going to be a lot people either very broke or very disappointed in the end. Someone is making money here and it probably isn't the average Joe."

Misinformed? Clearly.
Knee-jerk reaction? Definitely.
Should be dismissed? I'm not sure.

I think you are misinformed as to the cost of sending a transaction. You can usually send a TX for free under the right circumstances, or if the TX is over a certain size then it will generally cost you ~$0.05 (.0001 BTC).

It is a misconception by some people in the public that the block subsidies are something that people that send TXs need to pay for. It is something that is known will happen by the public and the price is adjusted accordingly.

Well, when you start making money off of it as a financial investment alone, you stop being an average Joe. The main question is whether the coins are consolidating in fewer hands, and I think the trend is in the opposite direction. The goal is not to eliminate the rich, but to decrease the barriers of entry for everyone. We need enough players with diverse interests to remove the risk of monopolistic behavior, but that's about it.

Who really cares what the Average Joe thinks right now? It doesn't matter what they think of it, today, tomorrow or months from now. What matters is what they think of it in the near future. I'm sure the Avergae Joe wasn't impressed by the internet when they forst heard of it. I'd rather it have a slow growth as well. Gives me more time to get more bitcoins before the public catch on.

well informed and wise people.

Lets see in ten years what the average joe will think about bitcoin.

Average Joe just simply doesn't know enough about bitcoin, he doesn't get the concept, he doesn't understand, the source code is alien, the blockchain is alien too.

I like this because it shows we (people in this forum learning about Bitcoin) will still be considered pioneers. Once people GET IT, the price will be fucking ridiculous and we are lucky to be here already.

What they are saying is that they think bitcoin is either going to be very successful or a failure. When they say people are going to be broke they are saying it might be a failure, when they say people are going to be disappointed they are saying it is going to be very successful (people will be disappointed they did not buy into it earlier).

Satoshi even agrees with this idea. I believe he said something along the lines that in 30 years there will either be a huge number of bitcoin transactions or barely any at all.

As it stands, the cost of obtaining the coin itself and converting it back to fiat basically killed any savings( and add more cost) it would give if I use it as money remittance tool, and that is before I factored in the TX fee.

The TX fee also is a problem if you want to use it for very small transaction here.Say I want to buy  one canned non alcoholic beverage(doest matter if it's carbonated or not) ,I would be paying 10%( after converting to local currency) more due to the TX alone! Not that any vendors here accept cryptos in the first place.

The cost to buy on most exchanges is .2% as a lower bound. The cost to buy bitcoin on consumer/newbie friendly coinbase is 1%. If you had to pay a $0.05 TX fee on a $0.99 purchase then you would pay ~5% on the TX fee, plus 1% on the purchase of bitcoin for a total of 6%.

Now if you were to do the same transaction with a credit card then the merchant would likely pay $0.29 as a flat fee for processing the credit card transaction plus 3% based on the dollar amount. This would add up to roughly 33%. Granted, you do not pay for this, the merchant does, however this is ultimately reflected on the merchant's prices. Even worse, there are some merchants that would choose to decline your business if you are paying with a credit card for a $0.99 transaction, so you would end up paying nothing for the transaction, but would be thirsty.

That'll would be on top of the cost of transferring money out of my country in the first place to buy those bitcoin.


Why would I used a credit card for a such transaction ? I might as well used cash (like a usually did) and incur no additional fees at all.

BTW, the price canned drink is around here is about 0.40 USD(give or take a few cent), so it really is 10% more expensive(not counting the cost of obtaining the bitcoin). To put into perspective , the price of  a single Bitcoin at its lowest this year was still higher than the minimum wage(which is around 300USD).

It's easy to underestimate just how much time people need to get their head around new paradigms. Even technically-minded people find it hard to get their head around Bitcoin. Imagine how hard it is for Average Joe. This negative reaction in the comments above is natural and unsurprising. It will only evaporate after many, many repeated exposures to the technology.

As usual these are opinions based on pure ignorance, it's like watching people fight over politics, they clearly have no fucking clue what they're on about other than what propaganda feeds them and haven't actually got their own opinions, either that or they've deliberately chosen not to have any.

I don't think it's all hopeless though because I'm having some much more refreshing conversations with friends and family and such about Bitcoin because they're recognising the usual bullshit news organisations say about the currency and they're actually going and looking beyond it because the 'documentaries' and news items are just completely made up in some most cases and they're picking up on it.

Average joe needs more education about btc

great in all says

The average joe will adopt bitcoin when we give .01 coins to joe(s). right?

Yeah the public sentiment about Bitcoin is a rather bad one. That's also the main reason why I'm sometimes uncertain if it will ever really get accepted by the mainstream. Still, I remain confident, since it isn't backed by a single entity, but by many that work together and in competition at the same time!

I think the tipping point for "the average Joe" as OP puts it will be once either Amazon, Paypal, or Apple  (or a company of that magnitude), implements BTC into their payment systems.   Although that logic doesn't make sense, the general public is often not very logical. 

Once a company of this size implements BTC, BTC will really be front page news and the average Joes will have to realize that BTC is not a Ponzi Scheme, nor is it a company that was shut down. 

These are the people who will look so sad when bitcoin gets global awareness and recognition.

Most people are just simply misinformed by mainstream media and intimidated by the nerdyness. I tell my friends the internet never shrinks, the intetent of everything is real. Even money....

The media completely controls most people's way of thinking depending on how they feel like filtering and conveying news and developments.  It really is a shame that the general public cannot get unbiased news...  I believe Al Jazeeer (spelling?) was trying to do "real" news, but I don't know whatever happened to that...

Wow, these people obviously don't like bitcoin by the seems of things. Some of them definitely seem to have their minds set on their opinions  that is for sure.

I would say that positive coverage of bitcoin in the media has greatly increased over the past 1 year.

ROFL! Funny shit.

Oh Jesus Christ I'm getting a headache just by reading these comments

I am an average joe, and up until May of 2014 I didnt know about bitcoin and my initial reaction is "This might be joke"

3 / 10

"...But Ready says betting on bitcoin now is a lot like betting on mobile commerce three or four years ago. People shopping on their phones back then was a very small part of the online shopping market. But that percentage has grown, and Braintree was able to ride that wave to its current success. Coinbase has only 1.6 million users compared to PayPal’s 150 million, according to figures from both companies."

http://www.wired.com/2014/09/paypals-support-is-the-best-thing-that-could-happen-to-bitcoin/

Always... some people could not believe that there something like this happening in the cyberworld.

Pretty sure most Averages Joes have quickly forgotten about bitcoin.  It used to get a mention in the finance report on ABC TV here in Australia when the price approached, exceeded, then fell below USD$1000, but now it never gets mentioned.

Maybe if the price rises again it will feature for another fifteen minutes in the popular imagination?

 ::)

If average joes in the US, UK, Canada doesnt know about bitcoin how much more the average joes of Malaysia, HongKong etc

I went to buy a motorcycle... private deal.. asked the guy if he by chance accepted Bitcoin. He immediately thought I was trying to scam him and got mad and said CASH ONLY. I said a LOT of people use bitcoin and i was only asking. He wasn't impressed. haha

Hope in a year also, you can pay BTC in a private deal.

I tried to explain to some "average Joe" friends the bitcoins and they think I'm only gambling :s