Japanese getting into Bitcoin?

[teknomunk]

I'm glad to hear about interest growing in Japan.  Keep up the good work!

Top man, Roger... that's great. Used to live in Japan myself and I write and speak Japanese, just in case you need a hand.

If your Japanese is good enough,  please help translate various Bitcoin things into Japanese.

Here is a good place to start:
translate.multibit.org

I did a few translations, but I don't trust my Japanese enough to be sure any of them are correct.  I'm afraid it's the result of learning Japanese almost exclusively from anime and Japanese music... 

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[cbeast]

I thought the Japanese *invented* Bitcoin. 

[dancupid]

These photos are great - so many women and older people.
Completely different to the usual bitcoin crowd.

[runeks]

Perhaps this is the reason? https://mtgox.com/press_release_20120815.html

According to MtGox, a few banks automatically convert the wires they send to Japan to JPY, even though the wire was not denominated in JPY.

This is not related. The JPY conversion is a stupid fuckup on the part of the intermediate bank, because they convert USD --> JPY and then JPY --> USD instead of going USD --> USD.

The advantage to this is that the transfer doesn't have to go through a US-based bank, when sending in JPY. When sending USD, all transfers must cross a US bank (who generally charge a large fee - $30 in my case)

[MemoryDealers]

 Any chance you'd make the lecture materials generic and release a "Birtcoin Evangelism Kit" to be leveraged by enthusiasts worldwide?

This is a great idea.
I will put something on www.coindl.com shortly.

[JMAHH]

Maybe it's just because this video conference?  
twitter ‏@rogerkver
I just presented Bitcoin to over 150 business people in Japan via skype for over an hour.

If that's the reason then it really shows how powerful these simple meetups and proselytizing can be.
The same thing happened in China a few weeks ago and it seems to have made a big difference.
50% (arbitrary guess) of people who hear about bitcoin will understand the potential straight away.

I wanted to point to this post discussing Roger Ver; he has now claimed on Twitter that he is the direct source of the recent volume in mtgoxJPY and that the Japanese have over the past months bought 250K USD in Bitcoins (how he gets to that number is unclear).
http://bitinvest.wordpress.com/2012/08/25/roger-ver-japenese-bought-250k-usd-in-bitcoin/

[giszmo]

Maybe it's just because this video conference?  
twitter ‏@rogerkver
I just presented Bitcoin to over 150 business people in Japan via skype for over an hour.

If that's the reason then it really shows how powerful these simple meetups and proselytizing can be.
The same thing happened in China a few weeks ago and it seems to have made a big difference.
50% (arbitrary guess) of people who hear about bitcoin will understand the potential straight away.

I wanted to point to this post discussing Roger Ver; he has now claimed on Twitter that he is the direct source of the recent volume in mtgoxJPY and that the Japanese have over the past months bought 250K USD in Bitcoins (how he gets to that number is unclear).
http://bitinvest.wordpress.com/2012/08/25/roger-ver-japenese-bought-250k-usd-in-bitcoin/

I don't have time to measure and I have no idea how he can be sure the increase is only due to his advertisement but if you take MtGox-USD as an approximation of the global trend and compare it to the respective MtGox-JPY you could come to the conclusion that something happened recently in Japan looking at the volume bars. The USD median at 2 million spiking at four times that value last week. The JPY median at 0.5k spiking at 12, 28 and 16 times that value last 3 weeks.

[MemoryDealers]

I just spent my evening presenting Bitcoin to about 50 more Japanese business people in Sapporo. (A city in the northern most island)
I also installed the Blockchain and Bitcoinspinner apps on all their smart phones and gave each of them their first 0.05 bitcoin.
I'm sure the majority of them will be buying their own bitcoin soon.
I am also sure that because of the efforts I am involved with in Japan, the Japanese have bought more than 25,000,000 JPY (~$317,000 USD) worth of bitcoins in the last few weeks and that it is just the beginning.
Unfortunately I currently can't provide the exact details as to how I know the exact amount, but I am sure this is just a small fraction of what is to come.

[giszmo]

I am also sure that because of the efforts I am involved with in Japan, the Japanese have bought more than 25,000,000 JPY (~$317,000 USD) worth of bitcoins in the last few weeks and that it is just the beginning.

Doing a quick sum up of the excess turnover in the last 3 weeks, I also see 25 million JPY traded extra. I do not know which fraction of them was traded more than once but I would say 25M is not a save number to take credit for based on these charts. Yet there are other ways of buying bitcoins so I would just trust you with this.

[JMAHH]

I just spent my evening presenting Bitcoin to about 50 more Japanese business people in Sapporo. (A city in the northern most island)
I also installed the Blockchain and Bitcoinspinner apps on all their smart phones and gave each of them their first 0.05 bitcoin.
I'm sure the majority of them will be buying their own bitcoin soon.
I am also sure that because of the efforts I am involved with in Japan, the Japanese have bought more than 25,000,000 JPY (~$317,000 USD) worth of bitcoins in the last few weeks and that it is just the beginning.
Unfortunately I currently can't provide the exact details as to how I know the exact amount, but I am sure this is just a small fraction of what is to come.

For a limited amount of time and businesspeople, 300,000 USD is a sizable amount to invest. Might speculation be one of their interests?

[cypherdoc]

Thanks for your efforts Roger 

[cypherdoc]

Roger, talk to us about how you advertised the meetings and how you attracted so many interested investors.

[MemoryDealers]

For a limited amount of time and businesspeople, 300,000 USD is a sizable amount to invest. Might speculation be one of their interests?

Their interest is three fold.
1. Speculation
2. The ease of sending value anywhere in the world instantly with no counter party risk is apparent to them.
3. They all seem to think that the Bitinstant Bitcoin Mastercard is the coolest thing in the universe and all want it ASAP.

At the meeting tonight,  there were typical Bitcoin techie types in their 20's, lots of middle aged business people, and even one woman who was at least in her 60s and possibly in her 70s.
It was amazing to see such a wide variety of people interested in Bitcoin.

Unfortunately one young mother in attendance managed to lose her first 0.01BTC forever.
I had everyone, including her, install the Blockchain iphone app.
She never registered her email address (I didn't have time to walk her through it) and after receiving her 0.01 BTC she logged out, without ever having saved her wallet identifier in any way.

[cbeast]

I like this idea and it could be duplicated on every corner of the Earth. Do you need any special licensing to conduct this type of seminar?

[MemoryDealers]

Roger, talk to us about how you advertised the meetings and how you attracted so many interested investors.

I'm not the organizer,  and I don't know the details of how the meetings are advertised.

There are several Japanese guys that organize investment/business clubs or organizations of some sort.
They are organizing everything and just have me helping explain Bitcoin.
I think their primary interest is making money through investing,  and after hearing about Bitcoin,  they see the potential.
I'm careful to explain that in several years, one bitcoin will likely be worth a lot of money or nothing at all,  and almost certainly not what they are worth today.
I think we may see some Japanese businesses starting to use Bitcoin by 2013.

[kiba]

Roger, talk to us about how you advertised the meetings and how you attracted so many interested investors.

I'm not the organizer,  and I don't know the details of how the meetings are advertised.

There are several Japanese guys that organize investment/business clubs or organizations of some sort.
They are organizing everything and just have me helping explain Bitcoin.
I think their primary interest is making money through investing,  and after hearing about Bitcoin,  they see the potential.
I'm careful to explain that in several years, one bitcoin will likely be worth a lot of money or nothing at all,  and almost certainly not what they are worth today.
I think we may see some Japanese businesses starting to use Bitcoin by 2013.

Did that get explained to the audience as well? It wasn't just all hype is it?

[cypherdoc]

Roger, talk to us about how you advertised the meetings and how you attracted so many interested investors.

I'm not the organizer,  and I don't know the details of how the meetings are advertised.

There are several Japanese guys that organize investment/business clubs or organizations of some sort.
They are organizing everything and just have me helping explain Bitcoin.
I think their primary interest is making money through investing,  and after hearing about Bitcoin,  they see the potential.
I'm careful to explain that in several years, one bitcoin will likely be worth a lot of money or nothing at all,  and almost certainly not what they are worth today.
I think we may see some Japanese businesses starting to use Bitcoin by 2013.

you really should find out how they're advertising it.  the middle agers, investors, and the Ms. Watanabe types are really who need to keep attending these things as they tend to be the one's with the money.  getting large turnouts like you are is key and duplicating this model in other countries will help spread the word.  good work.

[cypherdoc]

I'm careful to explain that in several years, one bitcoin will likely be worth a lot of money or nothing at all,  and almost certainly not what they are worth today.

the next time you let your conscience get to you, think about what your competition is doing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGEppgLna8U&feature=youtu.be

[World]

It will be nice to see BitInstant in Japan the third largest national economy.

[dissipate]

I'm careful to explain that in several years, one bitcoin will likely be worth a lot of money or nothing at all,  and almost certainly not what they are worth today.

Oh no! You didn't fall for the 'all or nothing' fallacy, did you? Discussion on that here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=99689.0