Bitcoin Forum

I've fortunate in that I'm rather charismatic when I want to be, and I have talents in sales, marketing and speaking.

Over the past couple months I've become a true believer in Bitcoins and have been voraciously reading all I can on them in forums, following the development of new businesses, etc.. I'd like to help get bitcoins to gain wider-spread acceptance.

I've tried plugging bitcoins on unrelated forums and was left with a lot of questions from what we'll call the "layman." What is needed is a series of videos that doesn't get into technical speak whatsoever. The words "peer to peer" will be mentioned maybe twice in the whole series.

For my first video I want it to answer the question: What uses does bitcoin have right now that are superior to credit cards and Paypal? I want people to see an immediate utility to adopting BTC and give brief examples. Here's my working list:

Seals with Clubs/Gambling
Webcam site like cam4btc
International pharmacy that can't take Mastercard due to MC's ToS
Donations to Wikileaks
Silk Road

Note that we have a porn site, a gambling site, a recreational drug marketplace and a way to donate to a controversial political cause. I'd like to have a better list that isn't so heavy into the "vice" markets.

Yes, I know you can buy all sorts of computer parts with BTC, but who really cares (remember, this is targeted to the layman) when you can use your Visa or Mastercard at New Egg or at Best Buy or whatever? Bitcoins really offer no advantages there. So I'm looking for ideas of specific sites where Bitcoins would make your transactions easier or possible.

The more white-bread your examples are, the better. The closest thing to a "legit" use on that list is the international pharmacy. I will spin it in the video that "Bitcoin enables grandma to purchase medication from overseas that she otherwise can't afford."

Once again, I'd like ideas for any other practical uses. If we can't think of any then I'll have to conclude that BTC are only attractive right now to geeks, drug users and degenerates of all stripes.  :D

Thanks for any help.

http://www.youtube.com/user/bitcoincurve/videos

You are welcome.  ;) ;D

The big selling point is overseas transfers. Western Union fees are massive compared to using bitcoin.

For people remitting their relatives or paying people oversees bitcoin cant be beat.

Another one is asset protection. I see BTC as much safer than (n)euros, and maybe US$ too in the medium term. And no state goon can extort you BTCs.

Sometimes it isn't what you can buy with bitcoins that makes the difference but how you buy.

With every use of a credit card you need to provide name, address, zip, etc   To buy a song on iTunes with bitcoin would make the process much more convenient compared to using a credit card.  CoinDL shows how this is done.

When I buy a place ticket, there is a "high risk merchant fee" that gets subtracted out from my payment before the travel agency gets the funds.  With bitcoin, there's no risk as far as a chargeback so the travel agent could gain market share by offering a lower price, yet still earn more profit than competitors because of the lower payment network costs.

Once your income starts coming in the form of bitcoins (which will probably occur with freelance workers, such as oDesk / TaskRabbit / Zaarly type of work) then it is a hassle to cash out to your bank.   So the advantage is to simply buy using bitcoins then.

As more and more point of sale purchases move over to Square, Dwolla and other low cost cash transfer systems (eventually bitcoin as well), signature-based credit card transactions will be subjected to a higher rate of fraud   So VISA/MC/AMEX lose their most profitable transactions (bigger ticket items) to competing systems, but keeps 100% of the fraud occurring with signature-based card authorizatoin methods.  As a result the fee amount VISA/MC/AMEX must charge to absore this fraud will go up, hastening the move by consumers to the less expensive cash-based payment services.

And there is the potential for the exchange rate to work in your favor.  A $100 in Dwolla will buy $100 worth of merchandise at the point of sale.  It's possible that your 20 BTC will today buy $100 of merchandise, but next week buy $110-worth.

And finally, there is exclusivity.  Nestor created a new board game and is only selling it when bitcoins are the payment method.  Nestor is doing this to help promote bitcoin, but the concept is likely to repeat itself.   If the merchant wants bitcoins for the lower transaction fees, no chargebacks, and immediate settlement (after funds confirm in about an hour) and refuses to take any other payment method, then that's what the consumer will be nudged into owning a bitcoin wallet.
 - http://nestorgames.com/#unitydeluxe_detail

I have already seen those and I enjoyed them. They will not excite my intended audience though. My videos will be shorter and more practical. A niche market, if you will.

Edit: To clarify, I spawned this idea while reading the threads started by the bitcams.com guy on some other forums popular among cam girls and strippers. He singlehandedly started threads that reached hundreds of messages and many thousands of views  and the end result was a PR disaster. Over and over the same questions kept popping up. I had many similar questions when I have posted about them in other forums. The questions I will answer are:

* how do I get a wallet?
* how do I turn them into "real" money?
* how do I know that my bitcoins won't crash and lose purchasing power tomorrow?

Etc..

Note - no one is asking about math theory, or cryptography, or wanting to use BTC just to give the finger to Ben Bernanke or asking technical questions about the software architechture.

At any rate, I'll look into international Western Union transfers tomorrow and get some hard numbers on the juice they charge (thanks CryptoCoinMedia).

Stephen - I will save your idea until it's time to plan out my video aimed at merchants, which is part of the series.

Keep the ideas coming!

This is only true if you already own bitcoins, and the person you send them to will keep bitcoins. If you need to first buy bitcoins and then the person that receives them immediately exchanges them back, it's actually about the same if not a bit more expensive.

here's a thread about it: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=76395.0

Donating, without some corporate entity interfering in the process.

e.g. wikileaks, etc

Maybe you should point out that it's not only for buying things.

If you have something to sell, products or services, then it's ideal.

1) Simple to setup.
2) No third party terms or regulations.
3) Trade with your customers on a one to one basis.
4) Be among the first in your market to accept them.

And, probable more, but I cant think of them.

When you buy something with creditcard, this information is stored, forver and sold/shared.

If you buy medication, this can affect your health insurance, making it more expensive.
If you buy alkohol on credit, you get a flag, since you cant afford to buy without credit.
This gives you a higher interest rate when you one year later apply for a loan.

Not long before I heard about bitcoins, I was participating much more actively in another online forum and consider many of the active members there friends even though we haven't met in person. At one point, one forum member fell on some hard times and the rest of us decided to donate what we could to help him and his family. Much like this one, our little online community was spread all around the globe, so funds were sent to my PayPal account and I purchased the item our friend so desperately needed, including PayPal's fees as part of my contribution.

Now imagine if we had used bitcoins instead. Not only would it have been quicker and easier to collect donations from around the world, we wouldn't have had to send a significant portion of the donations to PayPal for the privilege of doing so!

If you buy porn it wont show up on  your credit card and cause a divorce.

well, you can use Bitcoin to purchase subscription investing services.  that's a very practical and common service in the USD world.  there are 3 listed in the Spec Forum:

1.  S3052's service-been around the longest and uses Elliott Wave analysis.
2.  waveaddict's service-2nd longest and also uses Elliott Wave analysis.
3.  my service and the newest, Financial Risk Analytics, which uses Cycle Theory analysis.

I don't think immediate usability is why people get into Bitcoin. It is not yet better than established payment processors in just paying an invoice. Even if it were so, that is not the main reason why people are so excited about it. If you want to get people into Bitcoin, explain to them what it is really about!

Bitcoin is the first truly fair and international currency. It does not prefer one location, government, or institution. No "superior" can stop you from using your coins on the other side of the planet, no "minister of finance" can just inflate their value into oblivion, no "officer" can just declare that they are no longer yours. To a Bitcoin, every trading entity is equal.

For a newcomer, it is important to understand that he is dealing with the most real currency the world has ever seen, one compared to which the Dollar and Euro look like a dull fake. That's when an enthusiast is born, not with "this works better than PayPal".

As for immediate uses: a store of value that may be useful if the local currency blows up and Bitcoin doesn't. It doesn't hurt to hold a few coins just in case.

Vandroiy, I'm sorry to nitpick but I wouldn't label Bitcoin fair. It's actually highly unfair to those who do not have cheap electricity, or who don't have a high end mining hardware, or to those who don't know how to secure the use of the Satoshi client being forced to use and pay fees of ewallets, or to those who were late to hear about it and were forced to pay higher exchange rates for a lower amount, ect.

I think the word that's better suited for what I assume you meant to convey is honest. Bitcoin is truly honest in the sense that it's piratically impossible to counterfeit or doublespend or chargeback or break any of the other rules governing it no matter who you are.

It's fair in that it treats everyone by the same rules. The fact that people bring different resources could be interpreted as an unfairness in the world, but not Bitcoin.

that's very well put.

FreeMoney I suggest you read this: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/beware-proud-greeks-and-ultimatums if you want to learn why I try to avoid and discourage other to use the word fair.

 ::)


+1

http://thesaurus.com/browse/fair


I think equitable, unbiased and impartial are a lot better adjectives to describe Bitcoin rather than the highly subjective fair.

thanks for making me reread that article.  i remember blowing past thru it not really thinking about the implications.

i don't think the Ultimatum Game applies to Bitcoin.  the scenarios put forth by all the researchers involve a spontaneous, out of the blue, monetary offer btwn 2 individuals for fiat USD's.  putting myself in the shoes of the one receiving the offer, i could very well see myself turning down $1 out of $100.  after all, the one doing the offering and I are mired in the same shithole USD fiat system and we both know those fiat USD's might be worthless down the line so i wouldn't give a hoot to turn down the offer just to spite the guy making the offer.

otoh, if i were offered 1 BTC out of 100 BTC, i might very well accept knowing full well that if i don't, we both won't get anything.  why?  b/c if i took the time to evaluate the future prospects for 1 BTC, i might come to the conclusion that its a revolutionary and great idea.  why, that 1 BTC could turn into $100,000!  i wouldn't care less about the fact that miners might get coins with subsidized electricity costs or that early adopters have more coins than me b/c they were around sooner.  i would come to the conclusion that the system is inherently fair and unbiased which is much better than the system i am stuck in now and that while some may view those attributes as unfair, i would know that the majority wouldn't.

edit:  as an example, i cannot believe what ppl are willing to do around here to get there hands on 1 BTC.  i've had major work done on my website for instance for 1 BTC that would've cost me hundreds of USD's equivalent.  ppl can see that the inherent fairness in the Bitcoin system may have long term ramifications for the global monetary system.

while i can understand that the strict definition of the word "fair" might not play well with you, i also think it is not an unfair term to describe Bitcoin much like the term "democratic" that we disagreed upon previously.

Much like with the word democratic my problem with the word fair is that it's definition of what it means in a certain circumstance is all too subjective and while I agree with your definition it leaves the room for someone else to interpret it in a different much more hostile and violent way that ultimately leads to problems of some people claiming some sort of entitlement.

I don't see a single reason to leave that door open even by a hair, if we have oh so many other more precise objective words to describe the same properties. Do you understand what I'm getting at?

http://thesaurus.com/browse/nitpicker

or is "carper" or "quibbler" better?   

yes i do.  and it is always good to be as precise as one can be so i can understand where you're coming from.  

to me, words are just words, and can have multiple definitions which is why i don't necessarily get hung up on them especially when it comes to something as hard to define or describe as Bitcoin.

but Freemoney, i think, said it very well; the Bitcoin system itself is fair based on its mathematics, what can be unfair is ppl's relative positions in the world.

but here's the thing.  a very poor person in the Ukraine could have been an early adopter and either mined 10,000 BTC early on or bought $100 worth @ $0.01.  all he needed was the vision.  i am far from being that poor Ukrainian but i didn't have the vision at that time and i did read about Bitcoin back then.  how can that be described as unfair to the Ukrainian?  maybe i ought to be the one complaining about unfairness?

Euro fears boost virtual currency Bitcoin
http://business.financialpost.com/2012/06/08/euro-fears-boost-virtual-currency-bitcoin/ (http://business.financialpost.com/2012/06/08/euro-fears-boost-virtual-currency-bitcoin/)

absolutely.  i've been drawing a correlation btwn real world economics and their effects on Bitcoin ever since i started posting on the forum despite many skeptical calls on that outlook.

But people who can't produce or secure bitcoins for themselves can buy them and pay for their storage for a fair price from those who can. Is it highly unfair that I have to buy my shoes from someone else because I don't have the tools or experience to make my own? Is it highly unfair that I charge people money to fix their computers when they don't know how to do it themselves? People producing things that other people can't and needing things they can't produce on their own is the very reason trade exists, and money is the thing that makes fair trade possible. And Bitcoin is the fairest form of money in this sense.

It is also not unfair that late adopters pay a higher exchange rate, since early adopters are taking a much greater risk with their money, because nobody really knows for sure whether Bitcoin will succeed. Late adopters pay extra for the assurance that their money isn't likely to just vanish if Bitcoin suddenly fails for some unforeseen reason, and there's nothing unfair about that. This is how all investments work.

Paying people in other countries without processing fees or currency conversion fees? Man I hate paypal for them ;)

I don't care much for the word 'fair' either. But if you were to place all the various systems in order from fair to unfair, Bitcoin is pretty much the fairest. It always makes the same offer to everyone and the way that offer might change is made as explicitly clear as anything in the world. I mean the 'interpretation' and enforcement of the rules is done by computers.

I should highlight my favorite benefit of Bitcoin: protection from identity theft.   This is the number one reason I use it (and it was mentioned by someone else, but I don't feel they stressed it enough). 

Not only are your transactions pseudo-anonymous, but you get to send the money to the merchant, not give the merchant your credit card info and unnecessary personal info so that they can store it insecurely and/or sell it to others who will abuse it. 

I don't have to worry about shady business practices signing me up for "monthly" subscriptions to services I didn't realize I was agreeing to in some long-winded EULA and have to sit on hold for hours trying to cancel it and get a refund.  I don't have to worry that the company might accidentally compromise my information, leading to identity theft and damage to my credit that can take forever to get sorted out.

A merchant requests payment and then I pay them.  I don't send them all this potentially-compromising information and let credit card companies profile my every move so they can send me targeted promotional materials or adjust my credit rating unnecessarily.

With control comes extra responsibilities.  But in today's world, people are starting to value individual control/security/privacy more than convenience. 

The biggest strength of Bitcoin is payments under 1000 BTC over the Internet. Above this amount wire transfers of fiat start to become competitive. For an online merchant accepting Bitcoin is actually a no brainer especially with services such as Bit-Pay.

The big advantages are:
No risk of chargebacks this is especially important for international transactions, "at risk" merchants, high value low margin transactions and escrow services.
No need to qualify for a merchant account.
No need for the purchaser / sender to have good credit. This by the way is a big market.
No risk of identity theft. Credit cards were never designed for transactions over the Internet and their use over the Internet is inherently insecure. They were designed in the 1950's and 1960's for in person / card present transactions. All the industry has managed to do is lessen the risk. Furthermore services such as PayPal are hamstrung by using credit cards as a funding source.
Very low or minimal transaction costs.

Here is my favorite: Bitcoin is the only electronic payment method that can be used to give alms to the poor directly. How many homeless persons have merchant accounts? But all a homeless person needs to beg for Bitcoin is card with a QR code!

Interestingly, you could be describing Dwolla there with each of those as well.

No. Because Dwolla is not available here in Canada or for that matter in Spain or Uganda. M-PESA for example has the same problem. It is not available in the United States or Austria for example. Also Dwolla has already being sued over chargebacks.