Bitcoin Forum

Bitcoin has had quite a bit of main stream coverage of late. One thing that has surprised me is the amount of negativity towards it. If we want bitcoin to be successful then some though into why the natural reaction of so many people is so bad.
I think a large part of this is the thought that early adopters are arrogant, who are they to just think they can magic up this money? It's also suspicion, why should they trust people with such an obvious self interest. No doubt jealousy plays it’s part too.
Then there is lack of understanding. The concepts around how bitcoin works are not intuitive, the problems they solve are not obvious. People fear of looking stupid and resent having spending time understanding something they are suspect to be a scam.
Finally people lack vision and expect too much too soon from this young project. Right now using a clunky (sorry) desktop client to pay someone who only accepts bitcoin for fun or publicity does not seem that revolutionary. Observers may not realise there are still aspects of bitcoin being ironed out, such as tiered services and thinner clients. Anyone taking a quick look and just seeing a snapshot of what bitcoin is now misses the point and wonders what ll the fuss is about. As there is zero barrier to entry things could change extremely quickly. Anyone with a use case, from international shipping to my corner shop could start using bitcoin overnight. I think when those who have dismissed bitcoin look again they will then realise the pace of change and direction this thing is heading.

I say this from some personal experience, I didn’t get bitcoin the first time I heard about it for many of the reasons above. Open-transactions seemed much more solid (the potential for interoperability was lost on me) I actually made a point of not reading bicoin articles as I was convinced it was tosh. I did feel stupid when the penny coin finally dropped.

I would say the majority is not understanding of Bitcoin in general and is what causes the negativity.

Enjoy it, it will keep the markets fun.

anything different must be stopped. 
The system we have now is working, has worked for over 200 years, why change it.

change is bad. change is evil.  change must be stopped.




The above views ARE not my own, but simply a representation of popular views that seemed appropriate to express in this thread

I would say people don't like non-traditional things, completely digital things, and deregulated things. Also BitCoins are complicated (I'm still learning all the details) thus people criticize what they can't understand.

a hater is nothing more than an outspoken skeptic, and new technologies/ideas will always have their fair share of skeptics, and even more so when that new thing operates outside of the familiar realm (such as Bitcoin, an unregulated, decentralized commodity acting as a currency)

ppl fear what they dont understand.

hate to early adopters, sheep behaviour, fear for change, not having a life

They have same reason as poor people who hate any reach... Old good story..

I think this is the #1 factor on Slashdot these days... If you hate Bitcoin, other Slashdotters will think you're cool.

Because "virtual money? Ahahah, didn't you see all the news about anon and lulzsec hacking everything? Virtual money is madness, they will just hack it!"

Why all the haters? 

• The "early adopters" and promoters already have most of the Bitcoins.
• The "exchanges" and "exchangers" are all on the flaky side.
• The volatility is so high that nobody can afford to take Bitcoins for real merchandise.
• The entire Bitcoin market does less volume than one supermarket.
• The "mining" thing is silly.

It could be worse, though. We could have a virtual currency run by Zynga.

+1

Like Nagie, most of reactions are:

- The early adopters will be really rich if it works, which is unfair
- I've let my computer generate coins for two days without result. It cannot work that way.
- You cannot buy anything interesting with bitcoins
- You are not sure if your bitcoin will keep its value in the future (yes, it contradicts number 1 but that's it).

the haters are terrified of bitcoins huge potential to change the world, for the better and forever

I honestly don't think they are scared of BTC, or its potential.  The skeptics aren't jealous; they are just skeptical.  BTC has some very apparent flaws, so in most cases, their hesitancy is somewhat logical.

The key issue is that the early adopters have nearly all of the cards.

And BTC has grown so fast that a more safe and legitimate exchange market around the currency has yet to fully mature and be completely safe to use.

I'm worried that the natural aversion to something that seems unfair will mean bitcoin does not achieve it's potential. the problem is exacerbated by the fact that people fear that it is not only unfair but could directly affect should an early adopter unload. Fortunately I don't think that will happen (in way that affect ordinary folk) and in time when prices are more stable the resentment will fade. Traditional finance is full of injustice and imbalance but people ignore this, the same will be true of bitcoin in future.

When just signing up for the service itself quadruples the number of possible points of intrusion into my financial ecosystem, why?

And my single CPU is competing against server farms, how is this not just a psychology test to see how greed can overcome self-integrity?

I can prove to myself that Bitcoin will increase in value, but purchasing them requires me to surrender whatever good financial practices I already have in place. Gamble-me Gamble-you.

My point is that there sure are a lot of hurdles to overcome, and that anyone choosing to believe dark promises, or promote uncertain gains, must be familiar with such a landscape.

Beware ye all who enter here- type stuff.

I think all the Hater-Arguments have been said already.

I for myself would like to add some praise to all this hate: The whole bitcoin concept is not really hard to grasp (if you invest a few hours), would almost say simple, but am reluctant to do so because it's genius and i would feel like a heretic :D

- OpenSource
- P2P --> can't be shut down by government or something/-one else
- instant wiring of money from A to B
- anonymous
- No transaction fees if you want it that way --> based on donations
- complete transaction-history can be viewed
- almost certainly immune to double spending
- limited amount of Coins available to counteract inflation
- 8 decimal places ensure usability even when the exchange rates goes up to 1000 $ or more

Maybe there's more but that are the first things I can think of.

How can one possibly not welcome our new currency overlord? 8)

That's part of the problem, actually - there's no contradiction between the early adopters getting rich and bitcoin failing to keep its value in the future. All that's required for them to get rich is for the price to go high enough for long enough and with enough BTC-USD trading volume. Once that's been managed, the whole thing can fail spectacularly and they'll still have a small fortune if they've played their cards right. In fact, it's possible the process of them cashing out will be partly what triggers the whole thing to fail spectacularly.

Exactly. That's the way most pump and dump schemes go. There's a good chance it's already gone.

Everyone speculating on Bitcoins needs to read Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/24518). Especially the part on Tulipomania (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/24518/24518-h/dvi.html#tulipomania). This book was published in 1852, and reports all the classic make-money-fast schemes in their Version 1 form. 

It's unproven. It's actually very reasonable and intelligent to be distrustful of Bitcoin, as long as you don't read into it much. I completely understand why so many people are hating on Bitcoin, you really do have to learn a lot about it to realize why it isn't a definite scam or guaranteed to fail.

Since I am skeptical towards bitcoin, I guess that makes me a hater?

I am not afraid of bitcoins. I understand how they work. I have quite a good grasp on economy, mathematics, markets and trading. That is why I am skeptical towards bitcoin. The thing is, bitcoin does have quite a few legitimate skeptical questions surrounding it, and after reading these forums for quite some time before registering, I've seen that the biggest enemy for bitcoin in the "battle" towards becoming a full on currency alternative are the evangelists.

Any skeptical question is immediately shot down with "troll", "you don't know how it works", "get out of here" and other replies in the same tone. Sure, there are a fair share of utter retards posting nonsense here trying to look cool or whatever in bashing bitcoins, but not all of us are being skeptical just to be skeptical.

If I have a question about a problem with bitcoins, and ask it in a normal polite manner, I would expect a normal and polite answer. If I'm wrong and my problems are only perceived problems, then by all means show me what I'm not getting. I would welcome it, since it would give me a chance to learn. But the "oldtimers" very often seem to be in instant attack mode for any skeptics, and don't even bother answer questions properly. That's why, after all my time reading, I'm still skeptical. I don't see anyone actually tackling the problems that bitcoin is having.

What exactly are some of those problems?

1. User friendliness. (which is a *very* large topic, ranging from the banking system to the security built-in in the client). Just one random example: when you are on a website, how do you guarantee that the bitcoin address is valid and redirecting well to your seller? Answer, you don't know.

Nobody seems to work on it.

2. Real market.

Nobody seems to work on it. Every single bitcoin webshop looks like it was designed in 1997 and tested on Netscape 3. Not to mention the fact that there's very few things to buy and that the process is really complicated, you have to understand a lot of things (including escrow) but this goes back to point 1. Well, let be honnes

3. Professionnal look

Between a "Bitcoin show" where you can see people trying to launch skype for 48 minutes or interviewer saying ah… hum… ah… with a non-fonctionnal microphone to anarchists who advertize well that they use drugs and are proud of it, it is difficult to make something look less serious than that. ( http://thebitcoinsun.com/post/2011/05/28/Welcome-To-The-Bitcoin-Community ;-) )

The weusecoins.com was a very good try to tackle that problem.


So, basically, people are very enthusiast because bitcoin *might* be the foundation of something very big. A lot of early bitcoiners are euphoric because of the quick money they did.

But most of us are just uneducated, unexperienced new rich. The MtGox story is just one more example.

We forgot that foundations are not enough. If you don't have the wall, the roof, the window and a shiny layer of paint, nobody want your house.

We are now at one of the many turning point. Either nobody really invest in Bitcoin and it will die, either someone decide that it worths investing 1 million of $ in this and hire professionnals. He build a complete banking protocol on top of bitcoin, built a network of market maker to stabilize the price and build trust with the traditionnal online merchant, offering for example an API which allow them to accept bitcoin but converting them instantly, at a known rate, to dollars or euros.

If I had 1 million of dollars,  I would do that. This is much needed. Just to give you an idea: I'm a professionnal web hosting maintainer. And I decided to not host any bitcoin related service long ago because, as a professionnal, I knew I was not good enough in security for such critical services. It looks like I was right but that nobody else was. I'm also an usability engineer and I can say that bitcoin is doing *everything* as wrong as it can be in that aspect.

If you have 1 million of dollars to invest in a bitcoin startup that would foster definitely bitcoin, contact me. If not, like me, wait for someone to tackle the problem.

We need walls, we need roof, we need shiny paint.

bitcoin is confusing as fuck

Agreed! Most of the negativity is coming from people who (incorrectly) believe they have no place in the digital currency market because all of their assets are tangible (cash, house, etc). What they don't understand is that if they have savings in the bank...its digitally stored. What they get from an ATM is just a printout (cash in paper bills) of their account.

They're jelly because they need the hardware to play.

nah, those guys hate everything ;)

people are afraid mainly because of uncertainty of the market. and there is also the fact that bitcoins are used for illegal trading which deters some people from becoming involved

Very good explanation.
I also think that there are big Problems to solve.
Bitcoin was Designed as anonymous "money", but is now more like an Prepaid Creditcard,
easy to steal with the security number inculsive ;-)

I think it could be changed if the community
spends some Tenthousand Dollars (like an Kickstarter project)
To improve, Security,and usability and maybe to Start Selling things and so on.
every Bitcoin user would spend because this would make BC more worth....

The user friendliness example doesn't seem to be that big of a deal to me. If you are using Bitcoins at a restaurant by the time you grab a drink the cashier checks his wallet and sees that you have successful paid the restaurant. I guess for web based stuff, to automate the process, email confirmations can be sent out when a bitcoin is successfully added to their wallet.

There isn't a real large competing market, and I guess it's not as professional as some say, but then again I'd say that's more of a cosmetic issue.

I think people need to have a general grasp at the security of things. Take for example a debit card, the bank mails you this card, anyone can easily steal the card from your mailbox. Similarly anyone can steal a debit card, the same way anyone can steal bitcoins. If people just treated bitcoins like debit cards and put their wallet on a USB drive they would be fine.

Or if they encrypted their data and made backups to make sure everything was secure, I think the bitcoin client should have an auto encrypt feature for protection. I guess bitcoins are not as easy as getting a debit card mailed to your house, but similarly enough there is something called bitbills which serves as the same function.

You are a geek. You simply cannot understand. I know, I'm fighting this every single day since the last 10 years.

Do you know the difference between the Ipod and all the other MP3 players that were on the market 2 years before the Ipod? The Ipod is more expansive. And is user friendly.

Same goes for the Iphone and everything else.

1% of the geek population care about effectiveness, security and stuffs like that. (they are using Linux for example). 99% want something easy. Or very cool. Paying will never be cool. As long as bitcoin is not usable by brain dead morons, no chance to seeing taking of.

(And as I said somewhere else, I have the complete plan written to make Bitcoin user friendly. But I believe that developing everything I describe in that document will cost something like 20 or 30 man/months. I cannot afford that, unfortunately)

In my personal opinion many people think they missed the boat on something potentially big so they slam it because they weren't aware. I also think the security reasons are another big factor, but we'll see what happens with Bitcoin soon.

There are lots of uninteresting reasons why people might hate Bitcoin, ranging from pure jealousy to healthy skepticism.

Forums..make me nervous..

So I'll just apologize now..in advance for the irritation I may cause to..anyone.

Sorry if I'm "Doing It Wrong".

Truly.

Anyway.."An Answer" to:

"Why All The Super Enraged Propaganda And Madness Against Bitcoin"? (Paraphrased obviously)

As a "Progressive"..and "Country Boy" (aka "Obedience? What's That?")..I gotta say:

1) "These Are people Who..'Instinctively'..loathe and despise: 'AUTONOMY'!"

Autonomy is not merely a "Threat" to..well..frankly a terrifyingly large number of "Humans"..but is viewed..as a straight up "Personal Attack Against Them..um..Personally". I'm absolutely serious here people. This is real "Psychology" we're dealing with. Especially in current ra "America" a veritable "Culture" of Confrontation and Control.

Primary Threat: The "Threat" of an Autonomous Financial "Instrument" is VERY Real. I have Already Read and Heard..I repeat.."Already"..the words "Terrorism" used Dozens of times over the course of the last 6 months while referring to "BTC".

2) As stated above.."Confusion".

Yeah..good old: "Feeling Frustrated At Not Understanding The Concept, And It Not Being 'Plug n' Play'." Has MANY Folks "Angry" as in straight-up.."Road Rage" Angry.Genuine..Real..Anger. Y'know..Angry. Fer Reals.

Again.."Psychology" is very..nay..scratch that..Tragically...real in this instance.

Its "New"..and Is..Frankly..Complicated and.."Free".

And 'Aye There's The Rub". Free in all the "Worst Ways" to the Lock Step Minds of People whom..have a umm..how shall I say.."Low Tolerance for Independence". The Kind Of People Who Go On A Talk Show And Say "Autonomy is Not A Right!" Etc..

This is "Free Will Monetized" and guess what? THAT..ain't spose'd to be happening. Again..this is simply Reality. Its a Threat.

I have been somewhat surprised to notice the..Lack..of interest in "Suddenness" of the Attacks against BTC. "Day's" after FBI is given Green Light for "Expanded Operational Guidelines"..Shazam! Many "True Privacy" Person to Person (Face to Face) Sites G-o-n-e! (bitcoin-trade?)And Mt Gox "Attacked". Coincidence? Or "Free Reign, Go Get Em Boy's And Make An Example Of Em!" (?)

Also..lastly..there has been a slew..rash.. of "Can Anyone 'Lend Me' Their User Name and Password Because I Cannot Get Into (site xyz)..whine..whimper..blink-blink (all innocent intentions and 'Keen Kid' Big Crying Eye's).."

What We're All Involved In Here? It's Under Attack Because Its Autonomous And lacks Centralized Authoritarian Control Mechanisms. The Hierarchical Top-Down Power Structure has Spent Decades  making absolutely certain "This Sort Of Thing"..Doesn't Happen. Oops!

Anyway..that's my PerSop.

I understand what you mean now. Yes it is pretty user unfriendly then. Gives me food for thought..


People shouldn't slam it that hard yet..I mean it's only just claimed its fame. People are just pissed they didn't cash out at the penny prices per BTC. But I believe there is still money to be made.

I hope so. Because the price is still $17. If the "dump" is over, then great. That means we can get on with it.

Everybody always loves the status quo, you know...

It takes far too much reading to understand bitcoin. Like anything that you didn't grow up with it is hard to integrate it into a world view. There is always resistance to change and given the complexity of bitcoin it is going to be ridiculed until it has laid down a solid track record and shown itself resistant to continuous and real attack.

There are problems with it so smart people have reason to be wary. Given the potential for freeing the world from centralized economic control it is bound to be attacked with the full force of the current world order once they fully understand how to best do that.

It's pretty simple: the unfairness of early adopters and the fact that it resembles ponzi in that respect.

Clearly, mainstream support is not what is going to ensure the success of this currency.


The real acid test for this currency is whether it succeeds despite the hate. If it continues to go from strength to strength regardless, mainstream will notice and pile in and the rest will be history. If it stutters and fails to take hold, that will be the end of bitcoin.

Sign up for what service exactly?

Why not share said plan with the community?

I'm willing to do it but:

1) I need to polish everything to make it publishable. Currently, those are only note, most of them hand written. This is a somewhat important work.

2) The plan itself has no real value. Only an implementation would. (I'm anti patent and I'm not seeking to protect ideas). What is the point of discussing that kind of plan? All we need is someone willing to invest (money or time) to make such plan happen. And I don't think I could do that alone.


But, to be honnest, the main reason is 1) and my lazyness ;-)

That sounds a lot like the "my code is messy so I won't publish the source" argument... you can either make your notes publishable yourself, or just drop them somewhere, and wait for someone to come along who is interested enough in it to have a go at it. Something doesn't have to be - and will never be - 100% perfect in order for it to be published.

Scan the notes, upload them and publish them in the forum, in an own thread.

I would definitely skim through them and get typing (if they're not utterly nonsense :P ).

Bitcoin is a great concept. But in reality today it seems quite chaotic with all the scamming, hacking etc..

i'd say they are idiots, they don't get it, they can't do it, and they hate you for being paid more than their hard earned money  :P ::) ;D

That is not something exclusive to Bitcoin. Ever counted the amount of Nigerian prince emails and phishing mails in your spam box?

The whole "the early adopters have a huge advantage thats not 'fair' " people make me sick.

Every early adopter has an advantage, going all the way back in every currency. Its the foundations on which every economic development if created.

Early adopters take bigger risks than later ones do, hence the greater reward

Thats why stocks have low ipo's or "initial public offerings" (usually)

The bitcoin could have gone no where. All the work coding and everything else put towards nothing.

The early adpoters worked it up, they deserve all they got.

All this "waa waa its not FAIR!" stomping the ground like a child crap does you no good in life, or in bitcoins.

It is even useful to have unfairness, IMHO:
http://thebitcoinsun.com/post/2011/06/06/Unfairness-And-A-Pizza-The-Key-Of-Bitcoin-s-Success

Reality of today is not the reality of a couple of months ago, and won't be the reality of a few months later. You can't base anything on "reality" in the sense you use. Life is normative. We are here to make things happen.

Its not unfair though. Thats what I'm trying to say, and the reality of it.

In fact, you could say its unfair to them to NOT have an advantage, since people jumping in right now are jumping on on the backs of all the hard work they put in to support and prop up something from literally nothing

Its an entitlement mentality, and its destroying the world with its demanding for equality and "fairness" in all things, when equality isn't about bringing the lowest parties up, but more about bringing the best and brightest down. Then everyone can be "equal" right? *gag*

Dont lie, you wish the early adopters would "share some of the wealth". Am i right "comrade"?

  I mostly agree, its a great thing, but currently unpolished. It is complicated, and it's new.
  The vast majority of people feel comfortable with the way things are, even though most don't understand economics. Hopefully when bitcoin has been around a while, that'll be the case here too. I think its safe to say that a lot of people here actually thirst for the knowledge of how the system is working, both technically and economically, its fun/interesting - but this isn't the view of everyone in the world - or even the majority.
  The "you're an idiot" responses to skepticism benefit nobody. There are problems, we all know. I'm sure more will come to light, but the beauty of open source is together we can work on and solve at least most of them.
  The anonymity of the network is fantastic, and as a buyer, and user of the currency, I love the feature. I dont feel like being tracked. But it requires a lot more trust in sellers who wish to maintain their own anonymity - it can be ideal for scammers. My current hesitation is giving bank details to the exchanges - hard to build trust while it is unregulated.
  Anyway, been reading for a few months, just started mining, and put a little of my earnings into the GLBSE. I want this to work out as a currency whether it makes me money or not. When I set up a new bank account, I can monitor more closely and will probably put some money into the exchanges.
  And yes it pisses me off that others have made so much more money, but they took so much more risk. I was hesitant to buy the mining gear 6 or so months ago, I'm kicking myself, and blaming them for my not being braver. Human nature! (now i have, and its barely profitable - hopefully can make it back soon).
  Hope to be more involved in this community. Looking forward to the inevitable flames.

I took the time to do it: http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=24256

Hi, I had a discussion about this a few days ago with a work colleague. I was quite positive, whereas he was quite sceptical, so here is the gist of his argument:

1) Because of deflation, the value of bitcoins will keep going up, which will compel people to hoard them and thus get richer and richer instead of trading them as a currency.

2) The early adopters will become a powerful elite who live off the "interest" (equivalent).

3) Meanwhile, everyone else will be poor and the economy will be slow due to low liquidity or some kind of deflationary spiral in the market. In other words, people would rather store the few bitcoins (or bitcents) they have due to their ever-increasing value, instead of propping up a vibrant capitalist economy.

It was a lunch break so there wasn't enough time to fully respond to his arguments, but I think maybe these things could be communicated better:

1) Future deflation is not a certainty, it's just a guesstimate of people's future behaviour. Deflationary expectations could be an issue because there's a fairly obvious positive feedback loop (hoarding reduces the number of coins in circulation, which drives up their perceived value... etc.). Nevertheless, gold is a good counter-example suggesting that there are negative feedback mechanisms also in play. For instance, fear of a bubble collapse will limit trust in a commodity-currency like Bitcoin, thus stabilizing its value.

2) How can it be worse than the developed world's present situation, where it is basically held to ransom by patronage networks of bankers, Wall St, bureaucrats, etc! They practice usury on a grand scale by manipulating fiat currencies, promoting cycles of inflation and indebtedness, followed by asset collection. The criminals probably couldn't believe their luck when the mortgage-backed securities scam was so successful, but that is a discussion for another day. Actually... reducing the elites to a group of miserly Scrooges doesn't sound so bad! Even then, the "elite" part of prediction #2 relies on the unproven assumption of sustained strong deflation.

3) It implies that people would rather starve because of the promise of future "earnings" from a gold-like currency, instead of being sensible. Hunger will make even the most foolish person realise that real earnings require work in order to live well and sustainably. I also suspect that so-called deflationary spirals have never been properly tested in the real world without meddling.

Deflation is a certainty if MORE people start using bitcoin and thus convert $ in bitcoins

Deflation is a reduction in the money supply. That can only happen through coin loss, or people hiding them away. What you are talking about is supply+demand forcing the price up, as in the case of any commodity being traded. There is a built in controlled inflation with Bitcoins since they are being constantly created. If that isn't enough to offset new demand for coins then the price will go up.

Depends on what definition you use. As there are multiple mechanisms in play simultaneously, I just used the definition that deflation occurs when: there's an increase in "real" purchasing power per bitcoin spent. There's probably a more accurate description/word for it, but it's beyond me right now.

They have (had?) 1/3 of the money. 2/3 are still up for grab by anyone. (counting anyone who joined before now to be an early adopter)

Probably 1/3 of the 6 million that belonged to miners initially were sold to speculators and "normal" people wanting some bitcoins.

People in general spend to much of their time responding at haters and trollers..
Just ignore it.

Hello yous,

I live in an environment where anything related to the internet is automatically suspect, and whenever I try to introduce an idea (say, to a family member) they immediately take a standpoint of opposition. It really doesn't matter what it is. Wikipedia, for example. I only managed reluctant acceptance that it isn't a bad thing, entirely.

While my experience isn't wide, it's what I've come to feel represents an expression of what "normal" people think when they are confronted with anything that isn't part of their normal world. They view the internet with suspicion because they see bad things happen in their own world and they believe it must be much worse on the internet, given the relative anonymity afforded here (The mainstream media certainly helps reinforce that view). However I believe they have a skewed idea that normal means static.

So, this is the attitude I believe we generally face when attempting to explain Bitcoins to anyone out there, and due to its complexity and the complexity of markets it's hard to find a few choice words that will get their 'buy in' to listen and absorb more. Particularly if they already have a hectic life with family and work etc and not a lot of extra head room for radically new technical concepts.

Given all that, it's my aim to mention Bitcoins as a value-transfer mechanism, not a long term value storage mechanism or investment. For a short time span, say the amount of time you might want to hang onto cash in your wallet, or on your laundry card, or on your subway card, the value needs to be pretty stable. And I believe that's the best way to get the word out on Bitcoins, as a value transfer mechanism that can compliment our current uses of cash in day-to-day life. A debit card is tied to an identity, but Bitcoins don't have to be so rooted. I'm thinking of the future wherein one might pay for groceries or shoes with what amounts to a universal gift card, anonymous and re-loadable.

I answer the "Bitcoins have no intrinsic value" question by suggesting the person cut up their credit card and debit card and then tell me those two pieces of plastic have no value. It's a facilitator of trade, and that has value. I separate this from the concept of market value.

I am fully on board with sensible evangelizing, but to get the initial hook for a conversation about it, maybe a good strategy is to begin with short-term cash-type value transactions, and leave the investment concept for those who are curious enough to ask about it.

TL;DR: I'm a noob, so is everyone I know but they're instinctively skeptical of everything, and since Bitcoins is complex I'd rather focus on short-term cash transactions as a vehicle for initiating conversation.

Thanks fer readin' :)

Change is scary for most people.  Bitcoin is something new and different they dont understand.

You guys tell me how much people you know and understand how the current system works.
They barely  understand how the current system works, so why would a average Joe use another system?
They will only use this new system if they are forced to do so.


 

There are two basic problems with bitcoins.

1) The bulk of the coins are in the hands of a few early adopters. This isn't a rich vs poor issue, it is a cash flow issue. If 10 people have 100,000 bitcoins each they can buy ten things. If 1 million people have 1 bitcoin each they can buy 1 million things.

The current level of difficulty has set the bar so high that amateur miners aren't getting a sufficient reward for their effort. The alternative is to spend cash for bitcoins and buy something that could have been purchased (probably cheaper) for cash. All you professional miners should think about the impact your massive mining rigs are having on the system as a whole. You might end up with all the bitcoins, but what would you do with them then?

2) Since very few people have bitcoins to spend, there isn't any market pressure on retailers to accept bitcoins. Thus, you cannot buy anything interesting with bitcoins.

I don't see anyway out of this problem.

People hate anything that challenges the status quo. The American Revolution was extremely unpopular... until the revolutionaries won! :-)

Mack

People enjoy voting for politicians who will steal money from their neighbors for them.

People like seeing all the pretty prices and paychecks rise, not realizing they're getting poorer through inflation.

In short, people are stupid, lazy, thieving cannibals.

There was a lot of positive coverage when things were taking off in late May-early June, then this Quora post (http://www.quora.com/Bitcoin/Is-the-cryptocurrency-Bitcoin-a-good-idea?q=bitcoin) got a lot of play on reddit, Hacker News, and the like.  I don't agree with his harsh all-or-nothing rhetoric and labeling it a "scam", but he does make a few good points about security and the like.

Anything that isn't the status quo will be attacked by those who are invested (emotionally, intellectually, or financially) in that status quo.

Most people's life philosophy consists of knee-jerk opposition to any conclusion that doesn't fit the conclusions they have been taught.

The only thing one can do is use and improve the product that isn't the status quo and hope the market does not stay irrational until after they die.