Bitcoin Forum

 
Bill Gates struggling to explain Internet to David Letterman in 1995.
Everyone's laughing at his face.
Don't you feel the same when trying to explain Bitcoin ?

Late Show with David Letterman - Bill Gates 1995  (https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=lz6IQX7uDk4#t=155)

I don't feel like Bill Gates yet.
But, I really have hope that bitcoin will progress in the same was as Microsoft and very soon become mainstream.
I think that very promising time is ahead of us :)

good to own a little part of the financial internet of the future.  ;)
its like owning domains in 1995.

Watching the video gives me the hope and inspiration that one day when we look back what we have done, it's all actually worthwhile. I can understand how hard it is to get the message across because i encounter the same situation like him as well. Don't worry guys.. the day will come when bitcoin will finally reach mainstream.

A year ago the responses I got were "its for criminals and drug dealers".

So much headway has been made in the past year, but over the weekend heard the same thing "drug dealers/criminals"...sigh
:(

Fuck me people are stupid and yes, I feel exactly the same, some people I get along with well already trust me and obviously went and looked up what I was talking about it but others were like that ignorant tosser. What amazes me is people seem to think because they're in a mob they're automatically correct about something with that journalist acting in such away and getting cheers from an even more stupid crowd.

If there is one thing that science and mathematics has as a mortal enemy I would have to say it's willful stupidity, there are people out there who are actually proud to be morons, it happened with the earth being round and revolving around the sun and it's happening now with the internet and Bitcoin.

Hahaha that is amazing. It fully reflects how i feel when speaking to most people about Bitcoins. I am shocked and confused as to how there are so many people with so many different responses on what Bitcoin is and what it can do. I would say thus far 1 out of every 20 people - that even know anything about bitcoins - really know whats going on, if that!

I am sure this will change in time and i guess it does not matter so much that they understand how it all works - as most non technical people have no idea how the internet or Tor works for example - but more being open to it and giving it a go.

I don't really feel like Gates because nobody laughs at my face when I tell them about BTC, that's because I only talk to mature people about this. The majority of people I know can't understand what BTC is and you can't really blame them. When you try to research about BTC there's a ton of articles and news about how bad BTC is.

It's all about opinions though, you can't force a person to believe in BTC and you can't be sure it's gonna succeed either. I've yet to see people criticizing BTC without knowing anything about it, even morons do a bit of research before they start btching about something. Some people just don't wanna know anything about BTC, and that's ok, being ignorant doesn't make them morons or anything.

:))

yeh right...

You remember the article "what your grandma says about bitcoin" ?

It should be named "what 95 % of people say about bitcoin" :)

If we all become bill gates then the world will be a better place for everyone!

I currently don't feel like Bill Gates but I might in the future if it hits 10k a coin. I hope that day comes so I can say 'told you so' to all my friends and family. I hope it doesn't come at the cost of complete financial collapse, though.

"the complete financial collapse" would pose a huge trouble for BTC too...

i guess Bill feels much better today than back in 1995  :D

It is hard to explain bitcoin to not so techhy people but unfortunately i don't feel like Bill Gates

It is hard to explain the mining and technical aspect of bitcoin to anyone. I concentrate on the uses  and the advantages of bitcoin over fiat and credit card.

Internet is a a modern and powerful advertising space, like tv was.
Bitcoin is a modern payment system, fast, low cost, secure to make consumers buy more.
 ;D

I'm actually surprised at the reactions to making fun of computers in 1995.  I was a pretty heavy internet user back in 1991.  By 1995, I was already using it for a majority of my entertainment and communicating with friends.

I guess one day I look forward to saying that I was surprised by people's reactions to Bitcoin in 2015.  I was a heavy Bitcoin user back in 2011.  By 2015, I was already using it for a majority of my purchases.

No.

There are tons of video games with virtual currency in them and a lot of people completely understand the concept.
There have been online banking payment systems for years and years.
There are a ton of mobile payment solutions that charge 0% fees that are currently superior to Bitcoin(in terms of no fees only of course).

Apple Pay and Google Wallet are going to dominate everything and a lot of people are blindly ignoring it. BTC is fine for the people who know technology.

Not really.  My mom doesn't get Bitcoin.  She understood Windows with ease. UI makes a huge difference.

There are system with no direct fee from customer side.

But they have operational costs, and the seller or someone else pay them

When they were laughing at him saying "why would I need that I have a tape recorder and a radio" he should've said, "in the internet you have all the tapes, magazines and radios in the world, why would you want to buy anything else" :D

Also drug dealers, child porn producers, assassins, cheaters etc. used internet in the past and they're still using it. Forget about that comments, they will fade out soon, I hope...  :-\

This guy in the video is really a idiot.His mind is very limited. Now when I think about it, I do feel like him (based on this TV show).

very interesting.

I would have to say yes I agree it feels the same.

Bitcoin is easier to explain. Thanks to the internet. I have to agree that, if I live in 1995, I wont understand what Bill Gates is talking about. Watched the video.. and found it funny. Hmm.. Bitcoin is easier to explain because most people have internet access and they do understand what is 'internet' currency meaning. Just tell them, a internet currency, and they will understand.

In 1995, fax machines were everywhere, and email was very inconvenient. Now some 20 years later, who uses fax machines? So I guess bitcoin is very similar in this respect. Credit cards and payment systems are everywhere, and bitcoin is very inconvenient for most. In another 20 years, bitcoin could revolutionise our payment habits.

In 1995 Microsoft had a 4 billion dollar market cap, same as Bitcoins market cap now and its only going to get bigger

Ah the pain of adoption
Well looking at it this way it will take us 10 years to get a nice ROI
20 Years to own a microsoft haha

in 1995 many people used net.  So i think was much easier to explain it to them then now about bitcoin.

The rate of technological progress is exponential. It should take less that 10 years.


I can't believe our society still use debit/credit cards...


Those virtual currencies are extremely centralized, cannot be used anywhere else than the video game and cannot be exchanged for FIAT currency.


Most people still don't use it. I sell things online and most buyers don't know how to do a bank transfer.


No.
All of these solutions have high fees that are paid by the seller/merchant. The customer do not see it because it is included in the product price.
It is exceptional to see someone using Bitcoin but I never ever heard about someone using Google Wallet. I just seen that there was many security flaws, the blockchain doesn't have any.
Apple Pay ? lol, 800 USD for the paying device that is obsolete in 1 year ?

Thanks for the find. Upon watching THE BILLIONAIRE LIFE OF BILL GATES - Finance Money Biography (full documentary) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0Uok39wXC8), I learnt that Bill (he let's me call him Bill  ::)) and I have one thing in common: We both scored a perfect 800 on the math section of the SAT (I got a 720 in the English section). I din't have a high IQ, it being only a 132 at the time, and I'm sure I've dusted away a few brain cells since my youth, mostly via cigarettes and masturbation. Feel free to PM me if you curious as to the ratio.  :o

I feel like Bill Gates in 1995.

Usually when I talk about bitcoin people can see a light in my eyes. /emotions;

But seriously, yes, its really hard for others to understand the complexity but at the same time all the benefits that bitcoin brings us as a payment method for everything (decentralized, mathematics instead of trust, a coin made by the people for the people (GNU philosophy)) and so on... on side note im preparing some presentations to let my university groups know about bitcoin and fully explain to them how to use, why and the advantages/disadvantages that it provides to the current system.

Please, next time don't try and sit there and respond to a bunch of sentences that you don't know much about. I get it that you probably think you know what you are saying when you responded, but once I started reading what you posted I couldn't let it go by without explaining everything you said is factually incorrect.

Not sure who wrote this, it's getting out of topic but I have some spare time to answer the red angry stuff.

WRONG, dunno what games you claim to have played, SWTOR/SWG/GW1/GW2/KnightOnline/Warhammer/WoW/Runescape/anything else you can think of are NOT centralized. Rather it is calculated in a similar fashion to bitcoin, sometimes a bitcoin block is found in 1 minute, sometimes 40 minutes. Sometimes you get an awesome drop from killing a monster the first minute, sometimes 40 minutes. It is all allocated based on an averaged random chance. Also there are MMO games and other games out there that DO let you convert into fiat, SecondLife comes to mind as the easiest example so you have no clue what you are talking about.

Every game you listed is hosted on a central server. If the server is down, you cannot play.
The game devs can change any rules regarding the virtual currency anytime without notice.
All data are stored on a central database.

I've been doing some research and I cannot find any equivalent of Second Life that allows you to convert the virtual currency to FIAT money legally.
If you have so much clue of what we are talking about, I am waiting for your example and explanations...

 WRONG. Younger people and middle age people primarily use online banking, it is free. Go to a bank and stand around for 10  hours, I would make a safe bet most of the people going in there are of an older generation/poor.

Source ?

Here is one for my claim :  49% of US adults still do not use online banking (http://www.pewinternet.org/2013/08/07/51-of-u-s-adults-bank-online/). In many countries there are very little or no online banking at all.

You are using the word obsolete wrongly here. You are meaning to say outdated. Obsolete =/ outdated. For example, my graphics card is a HD6870 and is like 3 to 4 years old? It still runs most games at max graphics, it is outdated but not obsolete. If it was obsolete it couldn't still perform it's function as efficiently as a newer card does. However next year it will start becoming obsoleted because graphics get better, eventually it won't be able to run things in low graphics settings, which hence makes it obsolete.

Obsolete is the right word here.
You can still use your graphic card with new games but it can be slow = outdated.
You cannot install any new application or update the OS of your old iPhone = obsolete.

Sellers and merchants pay fees and they are used to it. They use what they know, and if they start to know bitcoin more and more then they will use it. So because you never heard of someone using something I must be wrong huh? I used Google Wallet and so do some of my friends and using a credit card with Amex saves me 6% on groceries, which is like paying no tax since the tax is 6%. So I don't know wtf you're on about. People are going to use rewards credit cards and credit cards offer more benefits. Bitcoin doesn't offer cash advance, and credit rating boosts to get cheaper loans on a house and all the other stuff. You need to calm down and not be some kind of extremist on the forums. No one cares here, we all know wtf bitcoin is, stop trying to tell us it is something it is not. Christ.

A lot of countries do not have access to bankcard or credit. Most counties in Africa for example.
Some countries that have debit cards refuse to use credit cards.
In France for example, there are almost only debit cards because credit cards are considered a scam by consumers.

I am so calm you cannot imagine, almost like sleeping, my hands are typing by themselves while I doing something else.
I don't even use 1% of my brain replying to you. No problem at all.

The AI comment was interesting.

not just bitcoin, but the whole of crypto and all the tech being developed.