I was thinking just the other day about how great it would be to do some sort of crowdfunded operation where you make hundreds of thousands of USB keys with Liberte Linux or some similar setup, then covertly distribute them in places like north korea.

George Carlin knows what's up.

Debt:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PkWf9M3rUw

Voting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efKguI0NFek

Yeah I noticed that... it seems bizarre

This is a really great article. Love it.

" The calls of the end of dollar hegemony have been coming from all quarters for many a year. The increasing loss of faith in the dollar will eventually find itself under unconquerable pressure to reverse its current deficit, thus unraveling the entire operation. Though that does not mean that there is not an absence of faith, just that the currency that enabled it (that many an American will feel an emotional, even nationalist, attachment to) is no longer a realistic project. Unfortunately, it is the American population that will feel the greatest shock when the neoliberal class project topples like a house of cards. Faith needs to be placed elsewhere. Bitcoin has the ability to avoid the dire consequences that an unreasoned, unmeasured and, indeed, immature response to the self-evident truth of a collapsing hegemon will have on the lives of people and the planet we inhabit. The people can now find monetary empowerment to positively affect change.
Buying Bitcoin is tantamount to a real ‘vote with your dollar’ scenario, not merely a neoliberal proverb that was never meant to seriously intrude on its preacher’s power. A single dollar used to purchase BTC is one less dollar in the fractional reserve banking hegemony. Bitcoin syphons value out of the monetary system, and into its virtual coffers. Moving one’s money into the emerging monetary paradigm is a ‘vote of no confidence’ in our archaic medium of exchange, and the hegemonic class that profit. It is also the acceptance of the end of American hegemony, at least through the seignorage of the dollar. In addition, the money transferred to Bitcoin is also a show of trust in the cryptographic method—namely that it can keep your money safer and your transactions easier and more secure than the powers that have normalized their position as the trusted third party in our society. A monetary vote of trust is the only language the hegemonic class understands. In recognition of this, we can begin to move toward a universal social construction that does not irresponsibly trust people with power, for power’s sake."

I want to sell one Bitcoin for $100 (a bargain!). Must meet in person in Cornwall, Middlebury, or possibly as far as Burlington. Anywhere in Addison County is best. Must sell by noon tomorrow need cash for gasoline ASAP.

[EDIT]Tried to delete this topic, was informed that you cannot delete topics on this board.[/EDIT]

The author of this article is so confused and ill-informed it's almost sad to read it.

Looks a little shady to me... I really like the concept and I will be watching closely to see how this pans out but thus far I don't feel convinced yet.

Amen to this.

I would be using your service regularly if you offered deposits at credit unions. I don't think I'm the only bitcoin enthusiast who prefers to do my banking at a credit union. They are generally more bitcoin-friendly and they are generally less evil than banks.

The only time I step foot in a bank is if my boss asks me to make a deposit for him. I use bitcoin primarily to boycott the banking system.

Don't have a bank account, don't want a bank account, and don't want to step foot in a bank. I don't feel that way about credit unions because they are owned by the depositors, as all banks should be.

I can speak from personal experience; I live in NYC, and about a year ago I had to send money to my father (who has an accound at Vermont Federal Credit Union) and my brother-in-law (who has an account at Capital One).

Rather than using wire transfers with outrageous fees, I simply deposited money into their accounts--same process for the credit union as for the Capital One account. Just walk in, tell them the account number, hand over cash, get receipt. The money hit my Dad's account same day.

Depositing money into my father's credit union account was just as easy as depositing money into my brother-in-law's account at capital one. I would argue there are other advantages--for example, there are places where you can't find a capital one branch, but pretty much anywhere you go there is a credit union nearby.

This is interesting but has some flaws. I will re-write it when I get home to my computer (I'm typing on my phone now) because I think it has some useful ideas but is confusing in certain ways.

This is incorrect and misleading, not just an oversimplification. Bitcoin is a digital gold, perhaps, or a bunch of safes floating in the cloud and a bunch of digital gold you can move between those safes, or many other things, but it is not "just like a virtual dollar" at all and saying so is missing the whole point. Paypal is just like a virtual dollar.

This is top-notch. Exactly the kind of response I was hoping for when I posted this thread to begin with. Thanks, Vladimir.

I plan to write a clear, easy-to-comprehend explanation of why fiat money is a ripoff sometime soon as well, which will help those folks who don't immediately get how much better gold is than USD.

Yeah, you guys should look into this, I believe you can deposit cash into any Federal Credit Union account from any other Federal Credit Union, regardless of the name of the individual branch.

This ^ hits the nail on the head. Banks are not secure, they are very vulnerable to a number of different sorts of attack, and also to government seizure. Whether web wallets are "as secure as a bank" or not, they are very insecure and a bad place to keep your money. I for one would prefer a web wallet (which I despise) over a bank (which I truly hate) but honestly I use neither and would not recommend either. I haven't had a bank account in years.

The owners of banks are "above the law" in many ways; the operators of web wallets are also hard to prosecute for entirely different reasons. In either case you are trusting somebody to hold your money for you and you have relinquished control of it. When your money is in the bank, it's not the same as when your money is in a safe in your closet.

Of course, if you're holding government issued currency in your safe at home, your wealth is much less secure than if you're holding bitcoins in your safe at home, since the issuing government can overprint and inflate the currency rendering your money useless and your wealth gone.

When your money is in a safe in the cloud and in the form of bitcoins and you have one key and a trusted third party has a cryptographically scrambled copy of that key, you're in a whole new ballpark and your money is protected from all the worst threats that make a safe in your closet or an account at the bank both excessively risky (i.e. your house burning down/being burglarized or the government seizing your funds, or the key to your safe being stolen, or the bank operators making risky bets with your money and losing your fortune).

The hybrid wallet filled with bitcoins is in my opinion the safest, most secure, best all-around bet for holding wealth at this moment in history.

Go ahead, call me crazy.

I've re-written the entire metaphor to be a bit more ready-to-use/publish. I would love it if somebody would come forward and help with some graphics. I will be writing more like this one; we can consider this just specifically an analogy to help folks pick the best wallet for their purposes.

If somebody takes the initiative to sketch up some graphics, perhaps following the ideas I've put in brackets below, or just using your own creativity, I will begin a blog and try to write a new analogy depicting a different aspect of bitcoin every week or two. This analogy really only gets across one side of bitcoin, and really only provides info about how to do certain things. I have many other ideas.



This analogy is to help you understand how to keep your coins safe and how to choose a wallet.

Imagine there are a bunch of safes, each with a number printed on them, lined up in a public place. The safes are very secure, bolted to the ground, and no known technology can cut them open.

[graphic depicting a bunch of safes with numbers stamped on them, lined up, in a cloud, hinting at the idea that this public space is actually “on the web” or “in the cloud” in some sense]

Each safe has a slot in the top, allowing money to be dropped in. To get the money out, you need the key that opens the safe. The keys are also very secure, and nobody can pick the lock or open it without a perfect copy of the key.

[graphic depicting a closeup of one of the safes number 253, with a slot in the top and a coin being dropped in it, little cartoon style lines to show that the coin is in motion being dropped in the slot]

Each safe is made of bulletproof glass, so anybody can see how much money is in each safe; but the safes don't have names on them, only numbers, so unless somebody tells you “safe number 253 is mine!” or you see him opening that safe, you don't know which safe belongs to which person.

[graphic depicting safe number 253, with transparent walls, now with a small stack of coins inside of it]

If you want to send Bob some money, you just ask him which safe is his, and he'll tell you, “mine is safe number 253” and you can go drop some money in the slot on the top. Now, maybe Bob doesn't want you (or anybody else) to know how much money he has. But the safe is see-through, made of bulletproof glass, so when you go to drop money in, you can see what he's got, right?

The trick is, anybody can have as many safes as they want. So Bob gets another safe, number 481. When he wants people to send him money, he says “put it in safe number 253,” but then periodically, he goes and takes his money out of safe number 253 and drops it in the slot in the top of safe number 481. Since anybody can drop money into any of the safes, even if you see him dropping money into safe number 481, you don't know that he owns that safe—you would only know he owns it if you see him opening the safe to take money out. So if he ever needs to get some money out of safe number 481, he might expose his secret, and everybody could see how much money he has! But Bob is smart; when he needs to get money out of his secret safe, he always wears a mask, and so nobody can ever tell he owns safe number 481.

[graphic depicting a character in a guy fawkes mask dropping money in safe number 481, which has lots of coins in it]


So nobody can tell how many safes Bob owns, or how much money he has; but if he wants somebody to send him money, he can tell them the number of one of his safes.

Now, for Bob's frequent-use safe, number 253, he has to access it pretty often. When he wants to buy something, that's where he grabs the money from; and when somebody sends him a big chunk of money, he needs to open the safe to pull that money out and stick it in one of his secret safes. Bob is afraid that somebody might steal his key. Somebody could look and see that his safe has a big stack of bills in it, and if they know it's his safe, they might go sneak in his house and search for his key. Bob thinks about hiding the key in a super-secure place; maybe burying it in the woods behind his house where nobody will ever find it. But he has to use it so often! He can't dig it up and bury it again every time.

[graphic picturing Bob with worried expression on face, with thought bubble of digging beneath a tree to bury a coin]

Then Bob hears about Mr. Web Wallet. Mr. Web Wallet and his buddy Mr. Online Exchange offer some services. Mr. Online Exchange (or Mr. OE for short) offers some other services as well, but both Mr. Web Wallet (Mr. WW for short) and Mr. OE offer a key-holding service. Mr. WW or Mr. OE will take your key, and let you choose a username and password. Whenever you want to take some money from your safe, you just tell them your username and password, and they'll go open the safe for you and hand you the money, or just drop it into whichever other safe you tell them to.

[graphic picturing two fat fellows like the banker from the Monopoly game, one with “Mr. WW” on his hat and one with “Mr. OE” on his hat, each looking a bit like a slimy car salesman, that cocky “we're gonna getcha” grin on their faces, perhaps each one with a big key-ring full of keys and another with a clipboard on which there are many usernames and passwords and at the bottom there is a blank line with an X next to it, waiting for Bob to sign up. Perhaps Bob can be pictured in this graphic as well, looking a little skeptical or hesitant, maybe scratching his head]

For a minute, Bob thinks this is great; he doesn't have to worry about somebody stealing his key, because he knows Mr. OE and Mr. WW have good security guards; they have lots and lots of keys from all their customers, and they charge various small fees for their services, so they can afford to spend a lot of money on security. But Bob is still worried. What if somebody robs Mr. OE or Mr. WW and gets all the keys? Or worse yet, what if Mr. OE or Mr. WW decides that they'd rather steal all the money out of all the safes they have keys for and just take off, instead of trying to earn money from their small fees? Bob has also heard that the Government doesn't like Mr. OE and Mr. WW and might tell them not to open safes for anybody without asking them for ID first. Bob doesn't like that, he doesn't want to have to give ID to get to his money and he doesn't want to be vulnerable to theft or fraud.

Bob is about to despair. Suddenly, he hears about Mr. Hybrid Wallet (or Mr. HW). Mr. HW offers a similar service, but with a much better system. Mr. HW asks you to choose a username and password. Mr. HW takes your key and makes a copy of it. He gives you one of the copies, then he takes his, and writes your password on it. Then he chops it into a bunch of pieces so that there is only one letter on each piece. He holds onto the chopped up pieces of your key, and puts them in a little box marked with your username. When you want to get money out of your safe, you go to Mr. HW and tell him your username and password. He goes to your little box of key pieces, and puts all the pieces back together, using your password to guide him. Then he opens your safe for you, and either gives you the money or drops it into whichever safe you ask him to. When he's done, he takes the key back apart into all the pieces, and puts it back in the little box with your username.

[graphic showing a key with a long password (12 characters or more) written on it, then showing that same key chopped into one piece for each character, then showing those pieces dumped into a box with “BobSmith239” written on it and perhaps even that box put onto a shelf full of other boxes with usernames on them]

So Bob goes with Mr. HW, the Hybrid Wallet. He takes his copy of the key, and he buries it under his favorite sycamore tree in the woods behind his house where nobody can ever find it. He rests easy at night, knowing that nobody can steal his key. He knows that if anybody breaks into Mr. HW's secure facility, and steals all the keys, they won't be able to open his safe, since his key is cut into little tiny pieces. Mr. HW doesn't keep Bob's password written down anywhere, and without the password, nobody can figure out how the key goes back together. Bob is no fool; he didn't pick “CAT” for a password, since he knows that would make it too easy for a thief to put the three pieces of his key back together; by choosing a password that's at least 12 characters long he knows that it will be mathematically unfeasible for the thief to figure out which way the 12 pieces go.

[graphic showing Bob sleeping soundly, with a thought bubble showing his key buried under a tree and his coins stacked in his safe and a puzzled thief trying to put together the chopped-up pieces of his other key]

If Mr. HW ever loses the pieces of the key, or gets shut down by the Government, or gets robbed by a thief, Bob can just go out back and dig his key up from under the sycamore tree, go open his safe, and take out his money. Bob is safe and secure.

Choose for yourself based upon your circumstances how you want to store your coins; but remember, if you hold the key yourself, you are responsible for making sure it can't be lost or stolen, and if you let an online exchange or web wallet hold your key for you, you are trusting them to keep your key safe and secure and to grant you access to your safe whenever you want. The hybrid wallet has the best of both worlds and limits the risk on both ends.

If you use a software wallet such as Bitcoin-QT or Electrum or any other wallet which you download and run as a program on your computer, you are holding your own key and must keep it secure yourself. If you use Mt. Gox or any other exchange site, or any "web-wallet," you are letting Mr. WW or Mr. OE hold your key for you. If you use Blockchain.info's Hybrid Wallet, or any other Hybrid Wallet, you are using Mr. HW.

[graphic showing Bob with his key visible in his pocket, an "=" symbol, and then the Bitcoin-QT logo and the Electrum logo; then showing Mr. WW and Mr. OE, an "=" symbol, and then the Mt. Gox logo and the Instawallet logo; then showing Mr. HW (who should look very trustworthy), an "=" symbol, and then the blockchain.info logo]

That hits the nail on the head.

Using metaphor and analogy to help people who don't understand what bitcoin is

I spend a lot of time trying to explain to people what bitcoin is, how it works, why it works, and why they should care. Sometimes I try to explain it to children; sometimes I try to explain it to very old folks, sometimes I try to explain it to simple-minded people, sometimes I try to explain it to somebody who doesn't speak English very well.

Often it's very difficult, frustrating, and fruitless. It's so easy to get bogged down answering questions, since so many of the questions have complex answers.


The analogy I lay out below will only be addressing certain aspects of Bitcoin; but used together with other metaphors and also with more direct, non-metaphorical explanation,  it has helped me to get the idea across.

This one was partially prompted by a question "How do you check your balance?" which led me to use this analogy to explain that anybody can check the balance of any account, provided that they have the account number, using a block explorer such as the one on blockchain.info.

"Imagine there are a bunch of safes lined up in a giant room somewhere. Each safe has a number on it identifying it, and each safe has a slot that allows people to drop money into it. The safes are all made of bulletproof glass, so anybody can see how much is in any given safe, and anybody can put money in any safe. When you open a bitcoin account, you are given an empty safe and the key to that safe. You take note of which number is on your safe, and when somebody wants to send you money, you tell them which safe is yours, and they can go drop money in the slot."

The "safe" analogy can also be used to explain other aspects.

"If you open another account, and get the keys to another safe, but you never tell anybody the identifying number on that safe and you're very careful to not let anybody see you putting money in it or taking money out, everybody can see that safe and see how much money is in it but nobody knows who owns it. That way, if you want everybody to know which safe is yours so they can send you money, but you don't want anybody to know how much money you have, you can secretly move the money to your second safe and never tell anybody which number is on that one." [I realize that all transactions are public and this doesn't really explain that aspect but it seems like the easiest way to express how you can have some privacy even though all the safes are see-through.]

"If you don't trust yourself to keep track of your key, or you're afraid somebody will steal it from you, you can have Mr. Gox or Mr. Web-wallet or some other fellow hold your key for you. He'll let you pick a secret pasword, and he'll open your safe for you if you tell him the password. Make sure if you're letting some fellow hold your key that you trust him; you have to trust him both to keep your key safe, and to let you use it whenever you want, not let some government tell him that he can't give you back your key until you fax him copies of your passport and social security card."

This bit I'm not sure about but it represents my understanding of the hybrid wallet offered by blockchain.info. If I'm misunderstanding the concept, please help me learn [I realize that this example completely oversimplifies the concept of encryption, but I'm not trying to explain to people the mechanics of how it works, rather just the end result on their experience].

"If you don't want to trust Mr. Gox or Mr. Web-wallet or any of those other fellows, and you want to hold onto your own key, but you're holding a lot of money in your safe, you might hide your key really really well to make sure nobody can steal it. But if it's hidden so well, it might be really inconvenient to go get it (maybe you buried it in the woods somewhere!) every time you want to take money out of your safe. So Mr. Hybrid-wallet gives you another option. You can take your key and make a copy of it, hide one securely buried off in the woods or wherever you like, and then take the other one and cut it into two pieces. You keep one piece and give the other one to Mr. Hybrid-wallet. He gives you a secret password, too. Then when you want to take some money out of your account, instead of digging in the woods for your key, you can just go to Mr. Hybrid-wallet and give him your piece of the key, and tell him your secret password, and he'll put the key back together and open your safe for you. When you've taken out the money you want, you lock it back up and give him his piece of the key. That way if anybody ever steals your piece of the key, they still can't get in the safe because they don't have the password; and if anybody steals Mr. Hybrid-wallet's piece of the key, he still can't get in the safe because he doesn't have the whole key. This is much better than Mr. Gox or Mr. Web-wallet because if the government decides Mr. Hybrid-wallet is breaking the law by providing this key-service and tells him he can't let anybody into their safes anymore, you can go dig up your other copy of the key and get your money out of your safe. With Mr. Gox or Mr. Web-wallet, they have the only copy of your key, so if the government tells them they're not allowed to open the safes anymore, or somebody steals all their keys, there's no way to get in the safes anymore. That's why using a hybrid wallet like the one on Blockchain.info is the best."

I have other analogies I use sometimes as well but it's late and I'm tired.

The purpose of this thread is to encourage people to share simplifications, analogies, metaphors, perhaps even comic strips or little cartoon drawings, that may be helpful in explaining bitcoin.

I'd specifically love to see things that are aimed at helping people get the idea of how to use it, and what it is, without getting too technical about how it works. If it would help an 8 year old to understand bitcoin, post it here. If it would help me explain bitcoin to somebody who barely speaks english and has no background in cryptography, math, or computers, post it here. If it would help me explain bitcoin to my 80-something year old grandfather, post it here.

The goal for me is to be able to relatively quickly explain what bitcoin is, why you should use it, how to get some, how to safely store them once you have them, how to accept them as payment at your business, how to use them as currency. Optimally in language that a child or technologically illiterate fool could understand.

Thanks for any contributions.

smscotten;

I do not feel the need to refute any of your statements as they do not seem to be in direct contradiction with my views.

I do feel that our understanding is similar, and I appreciate the validity of your so-called "semantic quibble." I think it has too much meaning to deserve that label.

Your point regarding the convenience of using the term disease is also valid. I do not object to such casual use except in that I feel it can be misleading and result in confusion about the fundamental nature of addiction.

Regarding the god thing, I made a conscious decision to not make a paragraph about the constant references to god and religious overtones of the whole assembly; I chose to leave that bit out because I feel that the "inundated with religion" problem is not specific to AA but is more of a general cultural problem that deserves a whole thread by itself. My criticisms of AA could easily be drowned out if I were to begin attacking religion and that was not the purpose of this thread.

Thanks to all the folks who participated in this discussion; but especially thanks to you for your insightful responses. I always enjoy hearing other opinions and perspectives.

Big surprise. [/sarcasm]

Yes. I do not acknowledge the validity of mental disease excepting those with a physical component, such as Alzheimer's. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Szasz
No, diabetes appears to be a legitimate disease, though it is usually caused by a poor diet and often can be resolved without medication by modifying the diet.
That's the problem right there. Again, see  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Szasz, I vehemently agree with him.

You seem to share most of my understanding of the nature of addiction and choice, even if you phrase it differently. I will also acknowledge that I have not read Alcoholics Anonymous and that the only literature associated with the group that I have read is "Living Sober," which was helpful to me on my quest for sobriety, though I found I had to "cherry-pick" my way through it and I feel that if did not take that approach it may have been very harmful to my development.

I am not saying that AA can't help anybody or doesn't help anybody, I am saying that they are fundamentally wrong about the nature of addiction and it shows in their rhetoric, which may stint the development of those who subscribe to it.

You also made mention of a higher power, briefly. I should note that I do not believe in a higher power by most popular definitions, but I contemplate that just maybe, perhaps...

 The "higher power" might be consciousness itself (as in The Self Aware Universe by Amit Goswami), or that possibly all existence consists of various representations of some core essence, in a self-similar manner (i.e. each atom contains the entire universe, as you zoom in it is repeated infinitely, as you zoom out it is repeated infinitely, but perhaps with no individual "scale layer" being exactly the same as the other, rather being equivalent mathematically but represented differently at each scale). In this model I see every element of the universe being representative of all the others and the whole shebang, so that theoretically with enough knowledge about any given atom one could understand the entire universe. Likewise, in this model it does not matter what you study as all knowledge is equivalent, the more you understand about any one thing (say Mahler's Ninth Symphony for example) the more you understand about the universe at large; all understanding is "portable" or "universal" and a complete understanding of anything, whatever it may be, equates to enlightenment.

But anyway. I digress.

smscotten, I wrote this bit while you were writing your bit. I will post this now and then proceed to respond to your bit in a separate post.


The drunk cyclist bit will lead to an entirely different discussion, the value system discussion, I'll leave that alone for the moment.

The part where you state "if A is valued more than B, then C" and "ordinary people often don't seem to consciously assess value. They just do things, like the Joker" is of more interest to me.

Ordinary people don't often consciously assess value, but I argue that subconsciously, every decision the make is based upon their assessments of value. Even people who appear to act irrationally, like the Joker, are making choices based upon values. In the case of the Joker, one might speculate that perhaps he values "chaos" more than he values, say, his own life.

If person "X" chooses "A" over "B", person "X" values "A" more than "B". "A" can be abstinence and "B" can be intoxication, or vice-versa.

These beliefs spur from my fundamental world-view. I hold a lot of other beliefs some might like to argue with, i.e. "There is no such thing a selfless action," "Existence precedes essence," "Logic is inherent in the structure of the universe," "mental events are reducible to neurological occurrences," and back on topic here, "one can not only do what he wills, but can will what he wills," in direct disagreement with Schopenhauer.

To phrase it yet another and even simpler way, "If an individual wants to do A more than B, then they will do A rather than B."

See also
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Szasz
I pretty much agree with everything he says, at least everything I've read so far.

I'm getting a bit bored of this subject as I've been discussing it at length in person with various people lately, but I will respond to this one critically important line:


Wrong. When you get up in the morning, and run, that is proof that you want to go for a run more than you don't want to go for a run.

That is the core of my idea. Your actions expose your values. Perhaps the "I don't want to run" bit is more prominent at the level of conscious thought in the morning, but ultimately, you want to run. If you didn't, you wouldn't.

You don't "go for a run even though you don't want to," you don't "accept that about yourself and run anyway," no. You choose to run, that choice reveals that you want to run more than you want to stay home in bed and relax, or do anything else with that portion of your day.

Similarly, those who say "I want to quit" but continue to use, clearly want to use more than they want to quit. Your actions reveal your values. If you truly want to quit more than you want to use, you will quit, at the very moment that your desire to quit surpasses your desire to use. If you are still using, that is proof that you want to use more than you want to quit.

I propose that the only way to quit is to change what you want. Some people who go to meetings successfully achieve that, others don't. Some people who never go to meetings successfully achieve that, others don't. I argue that meetings generally encourage using terminology and viewing addiction from a particular perspective that is not helpful for those who are trying to change from wanting to use more than they want to quit to wanting to quit more than they want to use.