Would you mind releasing the direct quote? Makes a huge difference whether we can refer to a quote from you vs a quote from the Treasury Dept.

This touches on a more general point: With the first video we strictly avoided talking about anything that is likely to change in the near future. That will still be true to a lesser degree for the next video.

Note that the second video is still a while out (late summer/fall 2011), I expect Bitcoin to mature some more in the meantime. I think it's very possible that the very points you mentioned will be a reality by then.

I'd also like to point out that it is not a good goal to pack into the video anything that we wish to communicate. The video should only contain the stuff that is hard to communicate in other ways. There are many options for getting informed about Bitcoin: podcast(s), websites, the wiki, etc. The video should cover the stuff that is hardest to convey via these means. And to me that's the core technical stuff, block chain etc. If we explain in the video how a double spend can happen, it's easy enough to write on a website that there is now a new cool way to detect it even before a confirmation in a block.

Let me know if you guys think we're on the right track with this view.

Whoever we can convince to spend the time. Suggestions and introductions are welcome.


I think things like proof-of-work are something that even "non-technical people" have to understand. We can list Bitcoin's supposed advantages with a lot of colorful marketing language, but Bitcoin's main selling point is its core architecture. Without understanding how Bitcoin works you can't understand why it matters.


Wow. I really like that explanation and with your permission we'll heavily borrow from it.


I agree, plus there is the obvious problem with a neutral entity such as WeUseCoins promoting any particular service. They are certainly free to use our material to create their own video, but we probably won't do any video promoting a specific commercial product. The website is a different story, here we will try to list any service that we think is solid and trustworthy.

First on the subject of target audience. There are already a lot of really good wiki pages which will always beat a video in some ways. Namely they'll always be more detailed, more up-to-date and easier to work through at your own pace.

However, it can be tough to know where to start. That's where we think the video can come in. I'm picturing something like this: It touches on the core concepts with a total length of about 10 minutes. It's simple enough for an average person with average technical knowledge to understand. Its metaphors and explanations are accurate enough though to give the viewer a basic functional knowledge of Bitcoin's properties and foundation. From there, the viewer can go on to read written materials for more in-depth information.

These are the most important points we want to address:

- Proof-of-work. How it works and how it makes the impossible, possible.
- Block chain. Common state in a decentralized system.
- Transactions. Signatures, verification, relaying and "smart" transactions (scripts). (Thanks, TheKid)
- Value. Why are Bitcoins worth something? Will they keep their value? Conversely, will deflation be a problem?

Note that we mixed technical and economic issues. For the economic stuff we'll try to get our script corrected by an actual economist.

I also want the segments above to be available as separate videos, which could be embedded into the corresponding wiki pages for example.

Ok, so what else should we include? What should we leave out? Do you agree with the target audience and basic format?

Indeed it is:

03:49 <justmoon> I think I'm gonna donate 33.16 to the fund to make it a round 9000
...
03:51 <justmoon> ok, 33.16 are on the way
...
03:57 <justmoon> aww, some asshole donated 1 btc, now we have 9001 *where are my OCD pills*
03:57 <Kiba> rofl
03:57 <ArtForz> it's over 9000!
03:57 <justmoon> ROFL

Good times. 

Anyway. The WeUseCoins marketing fund is now officially in operation with a budget of 9001 BTC.

First order of business is to pay off the costs for the existing video. It's 5:34am so I'll go to bed and do that when I'm less tired.

Second order of business is to get your input on what needs to be in the second video. You can get started already, I'll jump in tomorrow: http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5400.0

If you have questions regarding the bounty and how it'll be used, most of that will be already answered in the original bounty thread: http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=697.msg70001#msg70001

Still, feel free to post here or PM me with any questions, suggestions or feedback.

MASSIVE THANKS to the organizers, Kiba, noagendamarket, bytemaster, everybody who voted and everybody who helped since the first time we announced that we were working on this. We won't let you down!

I want to start brainstorming ideas what needs to go into the next video.

Keep your suggestions short and to the point and please let's keep this thread on topic. If you want to talk about anything else related to WeUseCoins, the marketing fund or whatever, start another thread.

I'll jump in with our own ideas soon enough, but it's pretty late, so I'll give you guys a chance to make the first couple of suggestions.

The first and most important question is: Who is our target audience for this video?

The second question is: What information do we want to include?

Yes, Adobe After Effects CS4 I believe.

In other news we've just submitted the video to http://www.webcuts.org/2011/ . It was free to submit so why not.

If any of you come across any contests, awards or film festivals with an animation/motion graphics category, let us know and we'll try and get it in. I don't know how high the chances are since the video is kind of a commercial, but hey Bitcoin is open-source and this is all indie stuff plus we've got nothing to lose in submitting it.

Thanks, I've added it!

I totally agree, illustrating that Bitcoins are real money was actually a top priority for this video. Explaining why they are valuable is more complex, but it is definitely high on our todo list. I don't want to promise putting it into the technical video (it's an economic more than a technical issue), but I agree about this issue's importance and we will definitely find some solution for communicating it better. "But Bitcoins have no backing!!" is a top five frequently asked question, no doubt about that.

Yes, a Spanish version is already available!!!

We won't accept the money unless we win the vote fair and square.

As much as I like the name "payto:" I think "bitcoin:" makes more sense. Plus it's pretty much standardized at this point, see URI Scheme on the wiki.

I put up a simple page with materials to do with the video - Nothing that hasn't been posted, just collecting everything in one spot.

Still waiting to hear from kiba, noagendamarket or bytemaster regarding this proposal:


Edit: Poll has been set up (see link below). Thanks!! 

Hey, du hast die ersten zwei Meetups in der Schweiz schon verpasst!

http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2716.0
http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3216.0

Das Nächste wird voraussichtlich sein in Zürich oder Bern - einfach ein Auge auf das Project Development Forum haben, dort werden die Meetups in der Regel organisiert. (Die meisten Schweizer Bitcoiner sprechen kein Deutsch.)

Yes, but this applies to every certification, including the thousands of certifications we have today for all sorts of products. Generally the quality of the label will depend on the consumer demand for it. The more it's worth the more money the certification authority will have for auditing and detective work and the more miners who secretly violate it would have to lose.



None. The protocol would be unaffected.

You would need:
1. Someone to start a certification authority, do the auditing and write the software necessary for handling the payouts.
2. An extension to the Bitcoin client that allows miners to treat outputs to certain addresses as if they were fees.
3. An option in the Bitcoin client GUI that allows users to specify an output address for an "addressed fee" instead of a standard "open fee".

(4. Transactions with an "addressed fee" would get relayed with the same low priority as transactions with no fee.. Perhaps users who have the same addressed fee set in their options could relay them with priority. Definitely some thought is needed on this issue, but I don't think it's insurmountable by any means.)



If Bitcoin transaction fees were a million dollar business, I would be the first to help start a certification authority for carbon neutral miners. As of right now, Bitcoin is tiny and obscure and we have much more basic and immediate problems to solve than how to fairly allocate 15$/month in fees.



Well, the reason I said that was because certification authorities would be kind of centralized whereas Bitcoin is all about decentralization. However thinking about it more, there would be nothing to stop new authorities entering the market to compete with existing ones, so perhaps this not much of a problem after all.

usebitcoins.com might make sense to forward to weusecoins.com - but obviously we won't promote a domain we have no control over, so it'd just be something you can do to park the domain while you're not using it.

Here are my thoughts. As long as both miners and users are concerned enough about this issue, it would actually be possible to do this without changing the protocol. Disclaimer: This runs a bit contrary to the philosophy of Bitcoin, I don't want to promote it, I just want to solve the OP's problem.

So let's say you only want to support miners who run a "green" data center or miners from Spain or whatever. There would have to be a certification authority who confirms the miner actually fulfills whatever the criterion is.

As a user you would have a Bitcoin client that supports adding a certification authority in the options.

When you actually send money to somebody, the client would create a transaction with no fee and instead add the fee as a normal transaction output to the certification authority's Bitcoin address.

Assuming most miners require fees the transaction would most likely be included by a miner who is a member of the certification authority. Those miners would treat the output to the certification authority the same as they would a fee. The authority would forward the fee to whatever miner solved the block that contained it. (The authority may keep a percentage for its own costs. Since the payouts would be micro-transactions, perhaps the miners who are members of that certification authority would agree to include them for free.)

If the block gets included by a miner who is not certified by the authority, he will not get anything for it. The fees would still go to the certification authority's address. It could then use some rule to spread those extra fees fairly among its members.

Miners could be members of as many certification authorities as they want as long as they meet the criteria. Users could pick whatever certification authority best represents their interests.

Note that as a user you would put yourself at a disadvantage if you discriminate in this way. Your transactions would take longer to get confirmed. But your money would go only to miners you approve of - that's the trade-off.

Audio tracks:

Master (Everything): http://www.weusecoins.com/materials/wib_video/What_is_Bitcoin_Master.wav
Voice: http://www.weusecoins.com/materials/wib_video/What_is_Bitcoin_Voice.wav
Music: http://www.weusecoins.com/materials/wib_video/What_is_Bitcoin_Music.wav
Sound Effects: http://www.weusecoins.com/materials/wib_video/What_is_Bitcoin_Sounddesign.wav

IMPORTANT NOTICE:
The "Music" and "Sound Effects" tracks are for use with the video "What is Bitcoin?" or parts of it ONLY.
These individual tracks are NOT under a Creative Commons license, because we ourselves do not have the rights to release them as such. However you are allowed them to combine them with parts of our video and release the result under Creative Commons. If you need free sound effects for your own videos, check out the Free Sound Project or just invest some money into hiring a professional sound designer.

The "Voice" track is released under a Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution license.

How to create a new voice over
The basic process is:
1. Record voice in sync with the video.
2. Mix your voice with the "Music" and "Sound Effects" tracks.
(Having step 2 done by a sound engineer is 100% worth it in our opinion, it will sound a million times better.)

We are also planning to create a "Materials/Press Kit" section on weusecoins.com where we collect the vector graphics source files from the video, the video in various formats, the above audio tracks, the subtitles in English, Spanish, French, Italian, Russian, Catalan, Hebrew, Polish and (hopefully soon) Chinese, the Bitcoin logo and acceptance logos and anything else that we can find.

------------------------

Now, as for the bounty: Satoshi still has not responded after one week so at this point I would request we go with Gavin's approval instead, which he has already given:


As per the rules, we suggest waiting one week from today for more submissions and holding a vote if there are any. Kiba, noagendamarket, bytemaster, can one of you please confirm whether you agree with this procedure?

As for the amount, we were hoping for the full amount, but 5000 BTC plus the 434.88 BTC we received from other donors are enough to pay the costs for this video (2000 BTC) and have a budget for the next one. The technical explanation video will be a very different beast - it'll be much, much longer (15-20 minutes or even more), less visually dense and the script will be developed in public with community involvement. Also I'd love to include some real-life footage with developer interviews from one of the next meetups. I might also use the chance to record some user interviews/testimonials for weusecoins.com.

In order not to raise false expectations: The technical explanation will take a while to do. "What is Bitcoin?" was about two and a half months of work 10 hours a week for me and about three weeks 25 hours a week for our designer. I earned nothing and he earned far less than with a normal project. Taking all that into consideration, I would realistically aim for a late summer release. Having a budget up front is what makes it possible to do it as a professional video at all. To give us a chance at the rest of the bounty would require the bounty organizers working with us to define exactly the content the video should have and setting the bar fairly high, so somebody else can't come in and snatch the bounty with a slapdash video while we are in production. Another way of doing this would be to set a due date for the bounty, upon which users will vote on the best candidate.

This is on the way (someone on YouTube already requested it). There were some details to clear up, because the final mix is a lot more complex than just some tracks on top of one another. Volume levels of individual elements adapt to the speakers voice. Change the speaker and the sound effects and music sound like somebody is playing with the volume knobs. We've decided to create a flat mix out of the sound effects and music alone. That's the best raw material for another sound engineer to go and mix a new voice into. If somebody does a translation without professional mixing, well, it won't sound perfect, but there is nothing we can do about that anyway.

I'd feel more comfortable if there were competitors to your offering, but I've added it for now.


The reason that happens is precisely because there is no good resource that explains to newbies what mining entails.

You guys have made me rethink this though, I guess my approach was wrong. It shouldn't be a tutorial to mine as much as an explanation of mining from the perspective from a non-miner.


Well, the video already let that cat out of the bag. 

But it's fairly easy to explain that the network makes mining barely profitable thereby ensuring that cheap Bitcoins don't flood the market. And that's exactly why we need a mining page - people have to go through that mental process:
"Ok, so if I was mining would I be making huge profits? - Ah, no I won't because X and Y. - Ok, I get why the market isn't flooded with coins."