Agree 100%

Does it occur to you that the freedom many people crave, especially but not only in the developing world, is freedom from poverty?

Only people who are already financially comfortable complain that Bitcoin is about freedom, not wealth.

And in terms of marketing / promoting Bitcoin, yes, people should be told there are no guarantees, so caveat emptor.  But we most certainly should also use the fact that Bitcoin has already made many earlier adopters rich, and could do so again for those who invest now. 

The reason is that people act from self-interest.  SN understood that. It's in everyone's interest for transactions to be processed and the block chain to be secured. But no-one is going to altruistically mine for the common good to their own detriment. So SN implemented transaction fees and block rewards. That way transactions are processed and the block chain is secured, but it happens as a result of miners wanting to become rich(er).

Why do people buy lottery tickets? You've got more chance of being trampled to death by a herd of stampeding wildebeest in the middle of Westminster Abbey than of winning millions on any national/state lottery (well, almost). But people buy those tickets anyway because they want to become rich.

Bitcoin is an investment opportunity that offers a much greater chance (though not a guarantee) of becoming rich if you invest now.

Promoting Bitcoin in a way that appeals to people's self-interest could well encourage wider adoption in my view.

When people recognise that Bitcoin could make them a lot of money when it goes mainstream and they buy some bitcoins as a result, they then have a vested interest in seeing Bitcoin succeed.

When the number of people with a vested interest in seeing Bitcoin go mainstream reaches a critical point, then major businesses will all start lining up to take payment by Bitcoin, because they want the custom of all those bitcoiners.

Bitcoin has already made earlier adopters rich. It could still make others rich if they invest now. People act from self-interest, so if we want Bitcoin to succeed we should appeal to their self-interest. 

Thanks for the feedback.

Version 2 uploaded - less of a 'hard sell' title, no music, some text and clips removed, etc.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOjZz3sJbLU&feature=youtu.be

Assembled various clips and added some extra graphics/sound.

http://youtu.be/mP8vmd8SsGw

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EDIT:

Thanks for the feedback.

Version 2 uploaded - less of a 'hard sell' title, no music, some text and clips removed, etc.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOjZz3sJbLU&feature=youtu.be

I realise there are bitcoin users who are libertarians or crypto-anarchists, and they tend to reject all regulation.  They seem to desire that bitcoin forever remain underground.  Or, if any of them ever think regulation is a good thing, it would only be because they believe any attempted regulation of Bitcoin would ultimately serve to drive Bitcoin further underground, where they want it to stay.  Until of course the global revolution, when it can go mainstream because mainstream will then mean mainstream in a new world order of decentralized everything?

That's one view... but it certainly isn't mine.

Ideologically, I do see dangers in centralised power structures and hierarchical authorities.  But I see benefits there too, provided sufficient checks and balances are in place to help curb abuse of power.  No system will prevent or catch all abuses.  There's no perfect system.

I want Bitcoin to go mainstream, for the benefits it offers people as a free payment system. The Bitcoin decentralized network and the way it's possible to trust it because of how it's set up is  a really clever computer science invention.  But I don't deny a role in society to centralised authority as well.  I don't see the two as mutually exclusive.

But whatever your political ideology, I think we have to face the fact that Bitcoin is not going to go mainstream without going through a process of regulation.  Mainstream Bitcoin means regulated Bitcoin.  That need not break the benefits of Bitcoin if it's done carefully.

Governments have a legitimate interest in curbing money laundering, because of the crime that is facilitated by such money laundering.  Yes, I know the worst culprits in terms of scale are the banks who are too big to fail, and too big to jail.  And yes, it is hypocritical of authorities to go after the small time Bitcoin money launderer, but give a free pass to the major bankster money launderer. But the ideal solution is not to give a free pass to both, it's to go after both with the full force of the law.

If Bitcoin regulation is tuned appropriately, I think regulation could be a very positive development.  I think it's important that Bitcoiners who aren't crypto-anarchists are willing to engage in the process of helping authorities to appropriately regulate Bitcoin.

Maybe some of you want to use Bitcoin to buy drugs or worse, but I don't, and I don't think the majority of people who've currently never heard of Bitcoin and who currently use cards and cash to pay for things are wanting a way to buy heroin or hire a hitman and so on.  Those regular people buying everyday things are people I would like to see using Bitcoin, to pay for all the regular everyday stuff they currently use inconvenient cash and expensive cards for.  Along with all the unbanked people in the developing world who are currently excluded.

I personally was very encouraged to watch the recent NY DFS Bitcoin hearings. I got the impression that the man apparently in the driving seat of that process is really quite enlightened and is genuinely looking to find a way of achieving necessary law-enforcement goals without crushing Bitcoin in the process.  He's trying to find a win-win solution if he can, and (not being a crypto-anarchist) I think such a solution is possible.  That possible outcome is, I think, more likely if Bitcoiners co-operate with authorities over regulation.

It remains to be seen how regulation in NY actually turns out.

But in principle I want to see Bitcoin (appropriately) regulated, it will give it a major boost towards going mainstream, where it will benefit everyone.  Except the currently overpaid chief  banksters of course 

Any comments?

apologies to casascius_throwaway over at reddit r/bitcoin who created the first photoshopped edit

That dialogue reminds me of some things C S Lewis wrote about 'right and wrong as a clue to the meaning of the universe':


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unm57eAspy4&feature=youtu.be&t=16m28s

Exactly my point in my earlier post.

Whatever the motives of the OP (trolling or not) the content of the original post needed to be countered, because otherwise others who read it will be misinformed.

Bitcoin is going mainstream, but not without opposition from those who have most to lose.

Whenever we see negative news reports about Bitcoin and see a fall in the BTC/USD rate as a result, it's important to take the long view:

As we all know, Bitcoin (amongst other things):

* Enables instant and free transfer of funds anywhere in the world
* Offers free accounts to anyone in the world
* Can bypass government attempts to impose currency controls
* Enables merchants to take payments that are irreversible - no more credit card chargeback losses

The brilliance of Bitcoin the invention is that it runs as a decentralized network.

The benefits it offers means that it was always going to be perceived as a very real threat by people at the top of the hierarchical structures that have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.  It is only to be expected that at least some (maybe not all) banks, governments, big corporations etc are going to oppose Bitcoin, they have too much to lose not to.  

So when I hear news reports about Bitcoin encountering opposition from such entities, whilst that will scare some people into selling, and cause a possible price crash, the opposition is only to be expected, and in the long term it doesn't matter, because they can oppose Bitcoin but they cannot win.

No matter how much opposition Bitcoin encounters, it isn't going to go away.  It cannot be un-invented.  Bitcoin cannot be shutdown.

It is also to be expected that there will sometimes be technical problems at exchanges that affect withdrawals of fiat or BTC, and when people panic then the BTC price is adversely affected.

Human nature being what it is I would also not be surprised to hear of losses through fraud, and the negative publicity around that will also drive the price down.

Again, in the long term, it doesn't matter, because Bitcoin the invention is not going to go away.  

It could be safely predicted 5 years ago that if Bitcoin did indeed take the road to mainstream adoption, it was going to be heavily fought against by those hierarchical authorities that have most to lose.  It's a fight they can't win. But it's to be expected they will try to stop Bitcoin.

Price bubbles may form and then burst, but that doesn't matter in the long term. Bitcoin will continue, because of its genuine utility.  That genuine usefulness to people will bring the price back, and cause it to go higher still each time it comes back. I can't see how it won't go mainstream eventually.  I reckon it will be an exciting ride getting there.

I'm Satoshi and so's my wife 

Been trying to reach bitbargain.co.uk for a few hours now, page won't load, server not responding. 

Is the site down?  Anyone else having problems with the site not loading?

Maybe my ISP have blocked it?
 

Thanks for the helpful answers, but I don't agree your above analogy.
The bitcoin-qt client expects users to make backups of the wallet.dat file, it offers a 'backup wallet' option in the menu.  So I would say it expects that this particular data file will be stored on other drives for future restoration.

There's nothing 'advanced' about restoring a backed up wallet file.

But there is no warning in the software that, as you've explained, any backup will only be good as long as it doesn't get older than 100 addresses/transactions behind the live wallet, after which any change the user receives will be going into addresses that the backup knows nothing about and can never access.

That means lost coins, possibly amounting to a huge sum of money, and there's no warning of that in the software. If bitcoin wants mass adoption and wants to be taken seriously for handling large sums, the official wallet client has to either show all the addresses coins are being stored in, so the user knows exactly where their money is, or it should warn (and warn in very big letters) that backups older than 100 transactions will lose some of your coins.

Hi there. Total newbie questions, I've done lots of googling & youtube-ing about bitcoin, but am not clear about the following issues.  Would like to be clear before I start trying to actually move any funds.  Could someone advise please?  Sorry about length of my questions.


I've installed the bitcoin-qt client.  
Say I have 1.5 BTC in my confirmed balance, that all came from one single receipt of 1.5 BTC.  So this is all on one address in my wallet.
Say I want to send 1 BTC to some address.
I enter the details to make the payment, incl. say a 0.0005 transaction fee for the miners, and send.  My remaining balance would be  0.4995 BTC.

I understand that when I send bitcoins to some other address, in the above case the client will send out the 1.5 BTC from my previous transaction balance, sending 1 BTC to the address I am paying, plus the 0.0005 BTC transaction fee, and send the change of 0.4995 BTC back to me, to a 'change address' that is hidden in the client.  

For security, say I am normally storing my wallet.dat in an encrypted folder on external USB sticks, and don't keep it on the hard drive, having created addresses in this wallet previously.  So I let bitcoin-qt client start up, and sync with network to catch up with the blockchain.  The wallet.dat that bitcoin-qt sees at this point is an empty one, the one it creates by default.

Now to make a payment I disconnect from the net, quit bitcoin client, and copy my backed up wallet.dat onto hard drive, overwriting the empty wallet.dat.  Start bitcoin client, bitcoin-qt sees my real wallet and knows my balance, I enter all the payment details, re-connect to the net and hit send.  Disconnect from net.  This means my actual wallet is exposed to an online machine for the minimum time, for security.    

Q1 - is best practice that I should now make a backup of the wallet.dat I just used, rather than just delete it and rely upon my earlier backups?   I'm thinking that the (hidden) change address that bitcoin created to arrange for my 0.4995 to be sent back to me will be one that my earlier backed up wallets will not know about, so would I lose the change if I don't make fresh backups every time I send BTC in this way?

Q2 - if I want to simultaneously send the 1.0005 BTC out, and at the same time clear out all remaining funds in that address by doing another transaction that sends 0.4995 BTC to another address of mine, is that possible right away, or do I have to wait?

I'm thinking here that my first transaction has effectively used up all my 1.5 BTC, and until the change comes back (i.e. until the blocks are created that confirm the transaction), I don't have any more funds to send?  Is that correct?  So I have to wait 10 mins for the first block, and longer for confirmations to be safe, before I can then send the 0.4995 anywhere?

Q3 - I am wondering why the default behaviour of bitcoin-qt client is that change is sent back to a hidden address?  I'm sure there must be some reason which I haven't understood.  Isn't hiding the change address going to result in a lot of ppl not realising it's in a hidden address, and what if they lose access to it through not realising they need to know the private keys of not only the addresses they have openly created, but the private keys of these hidden change addresses that the client has secretly created as well?

Thanks for your help in understanding the above.