2013-06-25 Huffington Post- Bitcoin: huge hype belies low awareness

[BitChick]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michel-floyd/bitcoin-huge-hype-belies_b_3499192.html

Very interesting article about how low of awareness there still is about Bitcoin.

This confirms my strong suspicions that we are all VERY early adopters in this.   That is great news. 

[vokain]

Of course  

But progress has been made

[kjlimo]

Agreed, most people are not aware.  And still people who are aware, most are not using.

Many people have heard of it, but don't take the time to understand it.  Perhaps bitcoin is even on some people's to-do list to go look into when they have time.

We'll continue to have rounds of interest as waves of capital move into the digital currencies over the years, while we also find more uses.

The article was fine until they compared bitcoin to Paypal... clearly a bad comparison, but fair.  Bitcoin should hopefully cut into Paypal's marketshare.

[mindragon]

There have been articles popping up here and there but to be honest most folks are watching Jodi / Zimmerman trials or the whole snowden thing. So when they hear "Bitcoin" their usual reaction is What? Followed by "Oh that must be some game currency like WoW Gold".

[solex]

There have been articles popping up here and there but to be honest most folks are watching Jodi / Zimmerman trials or the whole snowden thing. So when they hear "Bitcoin" their usual reaction is What? Followed by "Oh that must be some game currency like WoW Gold".

Exactly. Unless someone has the concept explained in person they will tend to equate it with niche "currency" like air-points, gambling chips, or some internet-based voucher system. Most people do not immediately understand why a cryptocurrency with a high mining hash rate is inherently far superior to Amazon coins or any other centrally issued currency. That is the learning curve and a barrier to mass adoption.

[kiko]

I've been waiting to see some concrete name-recognition numbers. This is very useful.

I'd be interested to see how much that number kicks up if you select out the elderly population respondents. Never free a mind and all that...

The most important number in all of this: 0.6%
That equates to 1.9 million US bitcoin users.

Unfortunately the sample size is too small here as that means that just 6 respondents out of the 1000 polled had used bitcoin. It could be way off the true number.

[Saint!]

The problem is until people can start using Bitcoins to purchase products you will find it hard to convince the average punter that its legitimate.

Catch 22 being that people aren't using bitcoin to purchase products because their aren't enough retailers, and there isn't enough retailers because the market is too small and so on.

It does seem to be crawling towards the tipping point though, we're just not there yet

[101111]

The real headline: 'Bitcoin awareness rising despite no hype.'

[NewLiberty]

I've been waiting to see some concrete name-recognition numbers. This is very useful.

I'd be interested to see how much that number kicks up if you select out the elderly population respondents. Never free a mind and all that...

The most important number in all of this: 0.6%
That equates to 1.9 million US bitcoin users.

Unfortunately the sample size is too small here as that means that just 6 respondents out of the 1000 polled had used bitcoin. It could be way off the true number.

There is a higher percentage of schizophrenia.  The 6 could have hallucinated using it.

[Lethn]

Are news journalists getting more stupid or something? How can you have huge 'hype' and not have people being aware of something? In order to have hype people need to be aware of what they're hyped up about in the first place, or did no one give them a dictionary when writing this?

[Spaceman_Spiff]

Interesting numbers.  Keep in mind that US has probably had more bitcoin exposure than the average country.

[BTCLuke]

Also keep in mind that yougov was even more bearish on Ron Paul polling that the average political poll. (And even the most optimistic polling on Ron Paul in the 2012 election wasn't even close to reality.) 

HuffPo running this story seems funny too. Luckily it looks like the vast hordes of progressives there haven't run across that piece yet.