Bitcoin Forum

People think the general public will use bitcoin. Most people cant even understand copy an paste or saving to the network file server and somehow they will understand backing up wallets and recovering transactions. These are the same people who hit print 20 times because their document didn't print.

STOP and look at BTC as a basic computer user would and its overwhelming. One mistake and all you BTC are lost and unrecoverable, it is enough for most to avoid it. The PC as a wallet/bank is also a joke. So many people don't even know their AV has expired YEARS ago and don't install updates because they are to dumb to read the messages about the update on the screen in front of them.

The other choice is to use the system in place now that allows Fraud protections, the recovery of cash through charge backs and FDIC and Europes Deposit Insurance Funds etc.....   

The BTC community is full of techies, crypto folks, programmers and the like. This is why it thrives.
The average joe/jane doesn't get it and doesn't care to becasue he/she is too busy trying to keep his/her house and feed his/her kids..

How many of you would continue if your country made it illegal to create and use BTC and would sieze your assets if you were caught? I bet almost none of you would risk it. I certainly wont.

Not sure what's surprising about that. This is something that people in various part of the community are working on.

this _will_ get easier. but:

just because groups like apple say that the future of computing is "don't worry, we control everything and it's all super easy", doesn't mean that it is.

people who grew up working with technology can work with technology in more complex ways than you realize. for example, programming skills are probably the new form of literacy.

older people will always struggle with new things, for lack of willingness/time to sit down and learn.

Those who don't want wallets, apps and so forth can just use bitcoin debit cards and such.

It's as complicated or as simple as people want to make it.

Exactly.  Bitcoin is a platform.  GernMiester obviously never played with creative toys as a kid.  It is like saying nobody will ever use the internet.  Do you know how hard it is to manually create TCP/IP packets. 

Yes, exactly. "Average Joe" folks will use bitcoin banks. Millions of people use online banking. This will be no different. They will probably not even be aware that they can download an open-source client and post transactions to the blockchain, or even what the blockchain is for that matter. They won't need to. All they'll know and need to know is that they can transact with their account balances. It's up to the "techies, crypto folks, programmers and the like" to fully understand the system, build services, and make sure the integrity of the network is maintained.

lol...nice.

I am sure that many who had the idea of credit cards early on were facing the same question.

Why put so much effort into getting people to put away cash and carry some card with a bunch of numbers on it only to be required to find certain diners clubs that accept that card?

Then you have to sign something saying you agree to the payment. Then you have to later get a bill for the amount you spent that month and then you need to write a check out to that company in order to pay off your "balance".

Far too complicated for the average joe who would much rather just cash his check and pay for things with money.

bet accepted (because prohibitionism works... not)

http://cannabischat.com/wp-content/plugins/rss-poster/cache/88e51_pot_civil_rights.jpg

It comes down to whether you can take the risk of it failing.

I can, but I personally doubt it will.

That's all, either you accept the underlying premise and protocol or you don't. If you don't, more for me. If you do, good for the network.

All the security in the world, all the insurance in the world, all the protection in the world can be built around Bitcoin. People will need to pay for that, just like now. The difference to now is that with Bitcoin you can choose to not have any of that and take care of your money and your money transfers yourself, and save a lot of money. You can also do this anonymously and without fear of funds getting frozen.

Win.

This ^^. Bitcoin is a protocol people. Yes, there is a lot of work to be done to build up 'easy to use' services around that protocol, but it is currently being done.

I believe most of what you are saying. All it takes is around 15 to 20 percent adoption and it takes off. Link ↓

http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action.html


The technical problems are solved by having a "one click" solution. Its really not more complicated than that.

Prohibition is an excellent example. Perhaps even more excellent would be copyright infringement. It's illegal to download and share movies,music,computer programs, video games, etc....

By most metrics most people know it's illegal and do it anyway. And these are normal people. So I would say, yes- people would still use it and in great numbers.

You are right, but i simply have to comment on this. Creating TCP/IP packets from scratch including IP fragmentation headers is very complex. This is how I by accident discovered that I could make win95 computers reboot, AKA teardrop attack. Pure luck or let's say bad coding ;-)

Yep and those people are going to be dead soon. As a computing teacher I have seen how the kids that are introduced to computers earlier (the ones with a bit of a brain) are grasping the concepts much faster than I did. The kids of those kids... and so on.

The guy who said making TCP/IP packets is hard was right, who was using the internet in the first 3 years of its conception?

I remember when the Internet was for nerds and typing to people randomly around the world was exciting.

I personally am in no hurry to see the general public use Bitcoin.  In my opinion it would be bad for both the public and for Bitcoin at this point in the existence of both, and there is no particular need on the part of the general public as long as the current monetary solutions are reasonably functional.  I note that in spite of the supposed technical savvy of the current Bitcoin user-base, the magnitude weighted rate of the victimization in our community is notably higher than under more mainstream systems.

If Bitcoin can provide a demonstrably usable alternative to more traditional systems (e.g., fiat or PM's) that is to me one of the bigger wins, and it is on track to do this to a reasonable degree.  So, everything is chipping along just fine at this point as far as I am concerned.

This sums up the problem entirely.

The one difference, a rather large one, is that for bitcoin, "packets" are worth a lot of money, and people will always be deceiving others into giving them up.

That's the same thing they said about the Internet and e-mail, which were a hell of a lot more complicated to use than Bitcoin. Used to be you had to install a modem inside your computer, configure correct AT calls to initialize it, figure out the phone number to dial to connect to a local BBS or university system, then use text-based commands to navigate their system to a text-based web browser. That's why the Internet was just a passing fad, and was going to die out, because no average joe/jane would ever be able to figure it out.

Teenagers love the new hotness and my bet is btc is one youth-aimed marketing campaign away from what we're all excited about

My response to this is quite simple: if bitcoin is too much for you to handle, then don't bother.  Continue to use whatever makes you feel comfortable.

Many important things in science were discovered by accident. :)

This exact argument could have been made in favor of AOL, Minitel and a host of other services over the Internet 20 years ago. Now where are these services vs the Internet today?

I like to compare Bitcoin to smart phones. My mother (a grandmother) doesn't have one, doesn't understand them, doesn't want one and never will. This attitude isn't uncommon within her demographic yet smart phones still seem to be doing pretty well.

Yup, OP's premise is silly. Do you know what email looked like back in 1994? Do you know the hoops you had to jump through then just to send or receive an email? Of course Bitcoin, as it exists today, won't have mass appeal. But even compared with a year ago, a flash in the pan really, it is riders of magnitude more secure and user-friendly now.

Another six or seven years, and it could easily see widespread adoption.

We need institutional development funds to make Bitcoin useful. Bitcoin can do more to stimulate the global economy, but it needs to be easily accessible and useful to business. It would be nice if someone in government as forward thinking as Al Gore (http://web.archive.org/web/20000125065813/http://www.mids.org/mn/904/vcerf.html) was (in terms of appreciating developing technologies) would spend a few million bucks developing Bitcoin technology.

I think that bitcoin will become easier to use, but we have to remember there's a difference between knowing how to use bitcoin and knowing how to use it securely.  Many people consider malware to be a simple fact of life and do very little to protect their computers.  They'll be vulnerable to keyloggers, phishing, and whatnot and have to regulatory agency to turn to when their coins are stolen.  More than a few will wipe their hard drives without realizing the need to back up their wallet.dat.

I think that e-wallets/hybrid wallets are the future for "normal" people.  That way, they won't need to worry about backups, and the service can require additional verification for large spends.

Theres an implied premise here that would completely changenyour view of this question, and that is, what kind of time frame are you looking at?

Are you wondering if the general public will use bitcoin tomorrow? Of course not

Will it be next year? Probably not

Will it be in 10 years? Maybe

How about 100?

I'm not sure about that.  It is true that teenagers are more fluent at using computers passively. It is true that a technically-minded subset of teenagers is growing up programming from a young age.  But the majority of teenagers doesn't know how to write even the most basic program, neither are they interested in learning.  

In fact, the general purpose computer is on the decline, so don't expect programming to rise in popularity.  Just because everyone knows how to drive a car doesn't mean everyone needs to be a mechanic and tinkerer.

Anyhow, for larger amounts of money, the bitcoin client can be moved to dedicated, highly secure hardware.  For small amounts, you can use online wallets. Both aren't harder to use than Facebook.

  

What's the modern day equal of a C64?
As in, what would you buy a kid these days to get the same effect a C64 had on a generation

Even though I wasn't around at the time, even I have seen the pre/early internet. You think when there were a bunch of geeks playing text games on a BBS, they were thinking the internet would have gotten this far, or even have anything close to the idea that 70 year olds would be playing flash games on Facebook. FTP, Gopher, how many other protocols were there that weren't user friendly. Even html by itself would not have gotten the internet to the masses. We needed the AOL's, the Compuserve's, the Yahoo's to make the internet get really popular. We needed something to "baby step" them through the internet if you will. So maybe that is the solution to bitcoin a gateway of sorts, whether it is a visa loaded with bitcoin or something similar

I do another huge reason the internet became popular when it did was instant messaging. There must be some more social aspect of bitcoin we could utilize

That would be one more reason for me to use BTC if it's illegal.

And don't forget: We needed porn to prove that e-commerce is viable.

Despite tainting the reputation of Bitcoin, that is pretty much what Silk Road is doing for Bitcoin right now.

This really shows your ignorance. Do you realize that making something illegal does not suddenly make the masses stop doing it? People did not stop smoking pot because it was illegal, they can't even keep drugs out of prisons.

Prohibition does not work, it never has. Not even once.

How difficult is bitcoin to use really ?

Say I want to set up a friend to use MultiBit on a Windows machine, send them some BTC and get them to spend it online.

Let's start with a piping hot cup of coffee that is still too hot for us to drink.

Setup
1) They download an installer from multibit.org's main page (http://multibit.org/index.html), double click it and then it is click-click-click and accept the licence. Done in a couple of minutes.
2) They double click the MultiBit icon. There is a wallet all made for them. Fast catchup ensures they are synced to the network in less than a minute.
3) The first time MultiBit is opened they get a friendly welcome screen (http://multibit.org/postImages/welcome.png).

Get some bitcoin
1) To request some BTC, click on the Request tab. Let's press the Zoom button so that their onscreen QR code fills the screen. This makes it easier for me to zap it with my smartphone.
2) I zap the QR code and then send them some BTC from my phone's bitcoin app.
3) They receive it in a few seconds. I will then explain to them about confirmations and show them the Transactions help (http://multibit.org/help_transactions.html) with the confirmation icons.

Our coffee has now cooled down enough for us to enjoy at a perfect temperature whilst we wait for the first confirmation.

Spending
1) Say they want to give multibit.org a donation.
2) Go to multibit.org (http://multibit.org/index.html). Click on the donate link or QR code (bottom right).
3) In MultiBit: accept the payment request. Press Send. Confirm the Send.


When encrypted wallets come in, they will have to do 'File | Add Password' and follow a short screen (http://multibit.org/postImages/addPassword.png) of instructions to encrypt their wallet(s). Then on a Send they must enter the wallet's password.

It is no more difficult to use than online banking.

Your point was proven a few posts ago..↓

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=101380.msg1109993#msg1109993

Here is what I think:

https://i.imgur.com/o7sw7.jpg

I'll let someone else answer the "usability" hysteria, which is mostly true, and not very relevant:

"I predict that Bitcoin will reach usability sometime around 2019. I base that prediction on earlier disruption technologies, where blogging started appearing in 1994 and reached mainstream adoption in 2004; file sharing started in 1989 over the net and Napster hit in 1999. You had streaming video 1995, mainly porn sites streaming animated gifs, what was then tip of the spear technology; Youtube was founded 2005 and just swept the floor with everyone else just because they were usable. This is not something bad; it is just an observation that it takes ten years to get a disruptive technology from inception to becoming so easy to use that it reaches mainline adoption." - Rick Falkvinge

Yeah, I honestly can't decide if I think the bitcoin is currently equivalent to the "internet" in 1980 or 1990. The core theoretical developments, proof-of-concept software dev, and initial building of services on top of the core platform is all done. There's a fervent community of supporters, many of whom are very bright and dedicated. That's 1980 internet. Are we beyond that? I don't know... There are bunch of add-on services, but total number of users is still thin (in 1990, millions of kids (eg, ~10yr olds) were using the internet....that is not true of bitcoin right now).

Regardless, the development cycle is probably shorter these days.

I think that you are describing computing as it exists today.  I think that you are also describing Bitcoin as of today as well, which admittedly lacks most of the innovations in security you refer to of the past several hundred years.  EG it really is like carrying a round gold coins on your hard drive.

Then again EVERYTHING you mentioned as a drawback has largely already been solved by modern banking/financial services.  Its just that no mainline companies have brought these innovations to Bitcoin.  You just have to have A LITTLE imagination.  

There was a time when people mostly used gold and silver coins in everyday commerce.  The rise of industry and large organizations brought about the need for better payment systems (more secure, both in terms of not having to carry large sums of coins to settle accounts etc.)   So checks and bank notes were introduced years ago.  In fact the Chinese are believed to be the first to use bank notes in the 9th century.  In fact, when Marco Polo found his way to China he brought them back to europe with him because he thought no one would believe him.

You will in the future be able to place your bitcoins on deposit with a financial institution.  You can spend them with the equivalent of a visa or mastercard.  Visa and Mastercard  will charge moderate fees for transactions (probably lower once Bitcoin breaks the monopoly on PMT services).  They will have zero liability policies with respect to fraud.

Today MOST of the money in circulation relies on similar types of trust.  In fact there's something like only $1500 of actual paper cash per american, with about half of that oversees in the hands foreigners.  We already have a mostly cashless society.

You have to use your imagination.  You fail to see how the whole system has already solved all the problems you bring up.

False. Basic computer user will use sites like CoinBase.com and for them Bitcoin is instantly as easy as Paypal.  Log in, send money, receive money.

Don't let the fact that Bitcoin enables an array of other, more complicated, uses deter you from realizing how darn easy it is to simply send and receive BTC from an ewallet. Don't let the complexities of the mechanics inside an combustion engine deter you from realizing the ease of using a car.

In 1990 internet was Gopher, Compuserve and BBS. First web browser - 1993. Millions of kids - 1997.

and 2400 baud IIRC

And NNTP was the biggest time waster instead of todays forums.

Ya, bitcoin has really come a long way. It was just a year and a half ago where there was still an unclaimed bounty to figure out how to spend when all you have is a private key, for instance:

 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3638.msg51986#msg51986

But Bicoin has a lot further way to go to catch up to the ease of use and security of its competitors.

Being an open source project with no organization pursuing a vision and a budget to execute on it, it is then absolutely amazing what has been built for Bitcoin already.  But bitcoin isn't the only payment system to end up here, late 2012, without having all the problems solved.  The retail payments industry has attracted positively enormous amounts of funding and there really isn't any one model that is gaining traction.  Because Bitcoin can basically copy whatever methods work for others, not being the first isn't necessarily a huge problem.

For the non-technical end-user security issue, the resolution to that will probably be something along the lines of what Square is offering with their "pay with your name" retail payments service.     This service uses the concept of geo-fencing.  Meaning that a mobile app's function varies based on location.  With "pay with your name", the backend host knows where the customer is (location based service on the user's mobile) so simply being present (within the geofence for that merchant) gives authorization allowing a merchant to perform a charge up to some level (e.g., purchases up to $20 at a Starbucks).  

Sure this is a centralized system but so are hosted (shared) EWallets (Coinbase, Paytunia, Easywallet) and there aren't many complaints by those users.

The great thing about this is that nobody is forced to follow "the officlal method".  There are methods of holding and using bitcoins that works for me that you wouldn't want to use because your tradeoff between convenience and security might be different.    The financial service whose threat model mandates they use M of N signing for their cold wallet uses the exact same Bitcoin network as does the teenage patron at a coffee shop who pays using a mobile phone.

i really have a problem with threads like these where Bitcoin skeptics put up a provocative negative title but don't bother to respond to multiple counterarguments which clearly challenge their original supposition like any responsible libelist would do.  it's clear, to me at least, that the author means to only catch attention from newbies not knowing any better while also knowing that he doesn't have clear arguments to back up his claims.  in situations like these, the thread should be moved immediately to the Off-Topic forum.  i see this happening more and more as the price rises although not nearly as bad yet as last summer.

97% of all usd that people use is digital already.  If bitcoin could penetrate even 10% of that it would be disruption.

If local banks can get on board, local shops, and a btc credit card can be used...it'll increase in popularity.

As it stands right now, yes there are "ease of use" hurdles.  That can be overcome with the proper entrepreneurship of new companies.

There are already glimpses of how bitcoin may function in the future.

Anyone who's played satoshi dice directly from within blockchain wallet can see immediately how easy using bitcoin could be. There's no copying or pasting, no opening multiple tabs, no addresses to double check. It all happens seamlessly from within the wallet.

I think people running wallet services have more to offer than just banking, and have big opportunities for making money out of their 'free' services.
I suspect these services may eventually become the yahoos, aols and googles of the future - that's why people were willing to invest in Coinbase, becasue once they control a substantial part of the bitcoin universe they can integrate services directly into the wallet.

i have many good memories being a kid (7-8) dialing into BBSes that you found the numbers on from the free Computer User newspapers.  2400 baud was the shit.  then trying to download a bmp of some girl in a swimsuit would take like 30 minutes.  or more, but i wasn't complaining.  then my parents got Prodigy...it sucked. 

bitcoin still seems to me at that fun renegade 2400 baud stage and thats why i like it

Bitcoin is a protocol. We just need a Steve Jobs to make it accessable for our moms  :P

Give it time. It always does.

BBS's and the internet were not the same, though naturally BBS operators were some of the first to provide something of a gateway to the Internet.  One of the providers (perhaps Comupserve?) was reluctant to allow users out of their domain so I quit them and went with a shell provider.  http had only recently come on the scene and was no 'big' like gopher.  Some company (Tymenet or some such) allowed free phone access after hours for some reason so upgraded my 300 baud modem to a 2400 baud (C64 computer) and I was never happier.

Please don't disparage the good old aunt Compuserve. She was always very liberal with the access. Too bad this was never marketed and stayed a Pulcinella's secret to the very end. May she rest in peace.

http://www.yolinux.com/TUTORIALS/LinuxTutorialPPP-compuserve.html