Bitcoin Forum

When you tell people about bitcoin, what is your pitch?

Why? I want to help promote cryptocurrencys to the average joe, the people who can help support the businesses accepting bitcoin by using it in their daily expenditures.  Associates that understand investing, marketing and the technical side of things.... no problem... Merchants have the potential to use awesome services that set them up in minutes with great checkout buttons/options and protect against fluctuations why wouldn't you accept it...  

The main hold up with most of my technically.... incapable friends that would be using Bitcoin in a consumer setting.  The ones who work 9-5's in a non tech setting. The main question that comes up is usually, what about the volatility and all the work involved to spend a comparable amount on goods. If i buy bitcoin today to shop tomorrow, how will i know i can still buy what i want.  My response tends to hover around, as a bitcoin shopper, i would imagine you wouldn't buy 300$ of btc assuming it will be worth less tomorrow, so using bitcoin as a consumer you are acquiring it with confidence in tomorrows value.

Basically, i just want to hear how you guys approach/pitch bitcoin your social circles, and what has been successful in getting your less technical friends involved with bitcoin for daily p2p transfers or typical consumer purchases.

Good question. 

You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink. 

Don't overdo it, people need to follow the learning curve on their own pace.  Introducing the word "fiat" is more imporant than using the B word which I avoid completely. 

Public currencies, digital currencies, and non-counterfeitable currencies, are friendlier terms. 

I tell people to buy bitcoin or they'll be poor forever.

I ask them if they have ever heard of Digital Currency. Generally one comes up saying how illegal it is.

Then I tell them the names... Microsft, Wikipedia, DELL, Expedia...

Then the start scratching their heads and after a few days ping me on FB. I understand they have at least read the Bitcoin article on Wikipedia.

Mission accomplished. Now they are on their own.

Lead by example. Demonstrate how Bitcoin is useful to you and is helpful to you.

Others will use it or not based on whether or not they believe it will also be useful to them.

This is how I try and explain it to people. I first usually start off by trying to tell them about how fiat currency is issued and is essentially unbacked and they can print as much as they want which can have disastrous consequences. I also tell them about the potential investment value of btc but also explain the risks.

I tell them something similar. I say "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him rich." Then I tell them "I won't recommend investing in bitcoin but many wealth managers recommend having 1% bitcoin in their portfolio and that the best and safest way to acquire it is through dollar cost averaging."

I don't pitch it to anyone, in fact I don't talk about Bitcoin in my day to day life at all, just like other people don't talk to me about their fiat currency...

"Don't overdo it" is a good advise. tell them a little piece week by week or month by month. and it must be easy. dont talk about the blockchain, the "public ledger"  :D or Cryptography because nobody will listen to that at first time.

"Bitcoin is money for the internet", "when you hate banks, use friendly Bitcoin", "save money by using BTC"


and whats best: sent them some bits (1 Dollar or so)

The closest that i get is when talking to fellow traders who trade real fiat currencies. Just told it work just like real currency and you can actually make money doing trading.

Not so long ago I managed to convince some of my family members to use Bitcoin as form of transferring money from one play to the other.

I took the time to tell them what Bitcoin is and how it works. Explained them that it is far more than only the "bad illigal currency" that they hear of in the news.

Not sure if they will continue to use it, but it's a first step. Their main struggle is the volatility, which is understandable of course.

I've only successfully taught three friends (out of dozens I've talked to) how to set up the client, wait for it to sync and actually receive / send btc to an address. Of those three only one has used it beyond the training session and I don't think he uses it anymore because he told me he thought it was too much trouble. I was able to "pitch" it to them and have them try it because they were trying to be nice and it cost them nothing. I sent them some coin to play with.

I don't think Bitcoin is one of those things you can promote like a new car or great vacation you went on. It's something people will be interested in and use or completely disregard without wanting to know more. Bitcoin just needs time and a chance to grow organically.

If nobody ever communicated an idea, how would others learn about it?  I see what you're saying, but i personally feel ideas need to be communicated or nobody will know. Everyone knows about USD because it is in your pocket before you know that it is.

Ahh such good comments. Big difference between spamming and telling someone about something briefly.  I actually find that the bitcoin topic starts nas a 5 minute conversation, and will all the questions involved it ends up being 1.5 hours of madness! But they do seem interested i think its good to take queues from those who seem interested and those who want ya to shut up.  Thanks guys.

=) I love this comment, i think it's very realistic. Thanks. Your first paragraph is bang on and it seems like there is still a little maturing for bitcoin before it falls in the pockets of some. Time to innnovate!

This is unfortunately how most people react to Bitcoin, otherwise they don't care.
People in general are too dumb to care and they will not start using it unless it becomes a trendy thing among the celebs or something. If no celebs used twitter no one would use twitter.

Haha oh twitter. Of my 4k~ followers, i believe ~1000 are active people.  It's kinda going down hill, but i still find use for international networking minus all the BS.

Easy.  If they like to save money and earn points, use Bitcoin:

https://purse.io/


http://www.gyft.com/


Shoppers love to save and love to get rewards for shopping.  BOOM GOES THE DYNAMITE!   8)

My pitch is 'decentralised'. I think that there is no authority and nobody able to inflate or change the rules when necessary is a huge strength and I feel it appeals to my friends.

I don't pitch it to anyone. I selfishly, enjoy the technology myself :P
JK. I just tell how it is better than Fiat. And, send them some btc to get them started.

Hooking someone on one single aspect they might actually use first is a good way of getting them started imho. They can be bombarded with all of the other aspects some time later:p

I tend to tell people about the fast & cheap 'transmission' aspects more than the other sides of BTC: if they want to send someone money rather than buying something from a company.

This is one of the uses that is less impacted by the day to day price volatility i think: buying something with BTC from a retailer does imply that a person has to care about the day to day value as theyre more likely to not spend every penny of their BTC at once (eg. shipping costs altering 'round total' amounts or they might want to buy from a couple of places and take some time to shop around etc - eg. if I want to buy stuff I might put in $15 in my BTC wallet and only spend 12.95 in one place then $2 in the next place a few days later).

When people send money to someone they know its usually to send every penny they put into the system - so they just do a single purpose transaction (ie if I want to send my buddy $10 Im not going to buy $15 of BTC or put $15 in my paypal/WUnion etc). So theres less concern about day to day value of BTC.
Once they get used to using it for that purpose, they are more inclined to start using it for purchases and tips/donations and 'topping up' their BTC accounts for increasing number of uses.

Anyway, the way I do it is to figure out which aspect of BTC appeals to the person Im talking to at the time and just mention that side only to them first. One bread crumb at a time to lead them along.

Most of the people I meet are from traveling internationally. Trading between currencies is a real pain in the ass, easy sell.

Want to ditch the banks, use Bitcoin.

I try to convince the open-minded people I know, but it's really not easy at all. As someone said before, lead by example. The thing is, BTC is still growing, apart from all the good qualities you can tell people about BTC, in reality there aren't many benefits to using them, you just gotta believe in it.

A few of my friends thought this was a good idea because of the technology behind it and came to this forum. Most people I talk to about BTC get tired of BTC because the process is "too hard" or it's "too much trouble"  it's understandable. It takes time for people to get convinced and jump into BTC. Most news about BTC are discouraging and make people think it's a bad investment or a bad currency.

Some BTC :o

Can I be your friend?

My pitch is: BUY BITCOINS OR DIE. I then tell them about the impending apocalypse and collapse of the economy and fiat money  :D.

I smell a marketing education =)

=) Lead by example, so true. I find the response is typically positive when I have a computer and everything set up and get them to try the wallet and a transaction. 

I'm just introduce bitcoin to my classmate, and i get 3 friends who interested with bitcoin, especially if i show bitcoin price to them, tell to them how easy to transaction(no need verify) and low fee! :D

Well done, thanks for spreading the awesome word of Bitcoin with your social circle!

ha, i wish. would make my life a lot easier!

 :P

What is your Bitcoin pitch?

Curve ball ..  ;D  ;D  ;D

Triff ..

Control your own bank account and do whatever you want at any time! Bang, bitcoin no banks.

I just say, "Hey, I just bought an Amazon gift card using Bitcoin and you can use it to pay for all kinds of things if you know where to look. Price is down bigtime right now, so if you buy now and hold for a while, it might go back up."

Smooth  :D

Merry Christmas all you animals in here!  Looking forward to a positive 2015 in this community.

Haha, not missing much, 5 years of telling you to think differently, but teaching you to think the same as everyone else in the room.  Happy holidays  :D

Someone pitch bitcoin to the "Shark Tank" if no ones ever heard of that its one of those tv investment shows

Their products are based on consumerism. Bitcoin isn't a consumer product yet.

I never use my Bitcoin to purchase, for I do not take it as a currency, but just an investment. I can accept a truth that the price of Bitcoin increases after I purchases goods, which means I spent more on the goods than its value. However, I hope Bitcoin can be widely used in expenditures, in this way, there would be a new boom for it. Therefore, I will try to use Bitcoin to purchase more and more, the value of Bitcoin can be maintained for many elements.