I am the founder of AppleByte, the digital currency supporting the arts, based in NYC.
The user community we focus on is artists and art lovers. When we first started explaining AppleByte as a digitals currency, we often said, "It's like bitcoin, have you heard of bitcoin?"
80% of the people we talked too said no, and 90% of the ones that said yes, had a negative opinion based on what they had heard in the media.
Now we simply explain how a digital currency works. Once they are AppleByte users, we teach the history of digital currencies and the place of bitcoin, as the standard.
Here is a blog post of how we explain digital currencies, if you are interested.
How digital currencies work