Bitcoin Forum

I like talking to Non user about them, I'm just curious what you guys like to say to them.....

kind of emoney...

Emphasize that it's P2P, thus you don't have to trust 3rd parties mediating transactions. That's what a friend did to convince me something's special about Bitcoin. It's not just another e-money.

I say they're a bit like coins, and a bit not...

K.

It's not really as much of an emoney as it is a virtual property. The different being is that when you buy emoney you buy a companies debt to you, here we have no debt since there is no "company". It is also defined as virtual property by most organizations in the world (except Paypal of course because people will define it the way it brings the most profit to them)

still learning myself and the different platforms to trade myself etc

one thing I don't understand is how is bitcoin and litecoin etc hosted?

I don't mean the miners I mean the original script
is it hosted on github and there fore safe from going down or on own servers, the original script, or does it work differently
can't find any answers to this

thanks in advance if anyone knows

I just compare BTC value to FIAT, don't mention mining as that will be a step to far for most people.

yes. this makes sense.

It is a great idea but that mining is too artificial and somewhat crazy really. What a waste of computing resources!
Why not just have some kind of automatic bitcoin printing to inflate the supply, like the Fed does with $$s ?

The original script is basically the blockchain ran on your wallet, so it's everywhere and can't be messed with.

K.

It kinda reminds me of talking about religion......  Its either a strong no or a strong yes, never really in between.

It is a digital-currency that is controlled by the people, for the people...

Easy to obtain, hard to get-rid-of, mostly free to exchange-hands from peer-to-peer, but seems to have a high tax for extraction to a currency... (Or just major complication or sacrafice of value, thus, loss of value.)

Potentially untraceable, mostly anonymous, potentially untaxable (If you earn income, that is legally taxable, if you claim it. EG, not nontaxable.)

Used to purchase a lot of disposable items... Food, digital-media, services...
Used to purchase "questionable" material... Porn, gambling, drugs, weapons...
Used to purchase major things... Furniture, Computers, Clothing...

What makes it unique?
 - No records of transactions. (Thus, also no chargebacks or refunds or legal-proof of purchase.)
 - Peer-assisted-transactions. (Thus, no one central bank to "control it", or "loose it".)
 - Offers online and offline storage. (Like a bank does, using currency. But no e-currancy does.)
 - Natively super secure, on and offline. (As opposed to being an afterthought, and your "dollars" from a bank are not "secured" in your pocket. People can spend those, but not secured bitcoins taken from your computer.)
 - YOU have to FIND trust. (Thus, you do more digging and research before making a purchase, unlike spending e-currency or dollars, where you often "assume" you are protected.)

digital pyramid

Tell them that it is an e currency

thanks a lot, thats a really concise way of putting it
cheers

This, more or less. Money laundering pyramid scheme.

I always like when people ask me "Well, if I can set up a rig to mine them and create them out of thin air, why would I ever buy them on an exchange?"

To that, I usually reply, "Well, you can go mine gold, melt it down, and make your own bars too.  So why do you go and buy those?"

It usually turns out that they don't want to put in the effort..  for either of them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASw32qKppMw

I agree :)

Paper money is a bit like virtual money, as its virtually worthless, except for the trust that you can trade it in at your central bank for gold.

Trust = Value; therefore bitcoins have value.

K.

I surely hope nobody actually trusts that, as by no means can everyone's dollars ever be traded for gold.

Oh, and what makes gold worth anything in the first place? Right: the same kind of properties that Bitcoin also has by nature (and fiat money doesn't).

Most people have never had money explained to them, start there.

I use basic terminology such as internet currency and blazing fast transactions, also I point out the lack of centralization and some of the other more obvious benefits in the simplest way I can. Most people end up with a basic understanding, except my shift leader at - that b**ch is straight from the hood.

That's my point, after Cyprus and other banking fiasco's, people are loosing their trust (rightly so) in fiat currency, and bitcoin is gaining trust, and accepted by more and more vendors more and more frequently.

Long live the bitcoin 8)

K.

Long live Bitcoin! 8)

I find trying to explain mining the most difficult part.

Mining is compiling the recent transactions into a block that can be added to the blockchain, it also works as a means to evenly distribute new wealth.

K.

i just tell my bosses I'm trading currency while i'm at work

I tell them to do some research on their own before judging it.

I'm having this problem too. Had to explain it to someone at work today, she's not even slightly techy. This is what I said:
"I can't explain it in less than 10000 words, so here's the quick version: Imagine if you could send gold through a communications channel to anywhere in the world, instantly, at nearly zero cost. That's basically bitcoin."

I got this after a LOT of reading, it's a paraphrase of one of satoshi's old posts on this forum actually.

Nice find, and if they say - "Fiat currency can also be transferred electronically" you say "it just has to go through your untrusted central bank first", followed by "confiscation of money IS happening (checkout Cyprus), they can not possibly do that with bitcoin.".


K.

Gold for nerds. That caught my scientist wife's attention.

Bitcoin is a crowd-based form of digital cash that only works on the Internet.

It's crowd-based because its security model requires the majority of Bitcoin servers to agree on what transactions take place so money can't be spent twice or counterfeited.  Like cash, it is anonymous, and you can spend it without being traced.

Imagine Bitcoin as a room full of people that want to keep score in their economy.  Each time someone wants to spend bitcoins, all the interested persons in the room vote on the transaction to validate it.  If a majority of them agree that the transaction was a good one, it is recorded in an official transaction log.  Their actions provide security to the system, in return for which they are occasionally paid with Bitcoins.

The most important new feature of Bitcoin is that your currency (the coins) doesn't have to come from a trusted party such as banks or a central bank such as the Fed.  It is issued by and self-regulated by the crowd, that is, by people running the Bitcoin software over the Internet.  Without the Internet, Bitcoin could not exist or be spent.

Bitcoin also differs from other familiar forms of currency, in that:
* It is issued as a debit, or cash value, not as a form of debt that must be repaid with interest.
* It is issued by the people of the Internet, not a national bank, so it is a truly international currency that can be transmitted across national boundaries with no additional costs or rules.
* It has rules that limit the rate of new coin creation to a predictable level, unlike national currencies which can be devalued by supposedly trusted central banks at any time.
* Unlike most digital forms of currency, your transactions are anonymous, so you can do things like buy drugs over the Internet from Silk Road, launder money, etc. that you could not do before.

Bitcoin derives its value as a currency from the fact that it enables certain kinds of business transactions that did not exist before.  As long as those basic uses continue to exist, Bitcoin (or something like it) will exist to service it.

However, Bitcoin has several weaknesses.
* It only has a few places, like Mt. Gox, where you can exchange it for other currencies, which can result in bottlenecks or those exchanges being shut down.
* Any number of other similar currencies can be created out of the same open source Bitcoin software, all competing in the same space for the same type of business, resulting in less value for each currency.
* Bitcoin has very limited acceptance except at a few pioneering online stores.
* Trying to act as your own banker and secure your own coins on your computer may result in the theft of your coins by Internet hackers or their accidental deletion.

Hm, nevermind, why don't they just read the Wikipedia article. ;D

I like that, I will never deny I'm a nerd/geek, They are the people who feel they are not tied to government restraints/abuse policies.

Long live the nerd ;D

K.

And all this time i was talking about encryption and rewards and difficulty and crap. lol.