It's hard to explain it to newbies.
I never talk about bitcoin to my friends or people around me, as the price of bitcoin is really disappointed.
SEE and this is why you should not introduce the currency as a commodity to invest in.
INSTEAD you introduce the currency as a currency to use to buy things.
When did anyone ever introduce a fiat to you talking about its exchange value with other currencies. Most people come into contact with 'foreign' currencies when they visit other countries, and at that time you really, for practical purposes, don't care what the exchange rate is you just want the local currency so that you can buy things.
How you convince someone to be interested and use bitcoin is dependent upon the target audience, but the three easiest ways to do it are:
1) Go to a store or restaurant that excepts Bitcoin and buy something with bitcoin in front of them (repeat if needed)
2) Send them a off the chain tip or gift with coinbase or changetip that gives them bitcoin without them having and account yet and lets you know if they setup an account to claim the free gift(by returning unclaimed)
3) Buy something on amazon for 15-25% off with purse.io or brawker in front of them and brag how bitcoin saves you so much money.
BINGO ... give them money and have them BUY SOMETHING!
Nope. Completely wrong. 99.99+% of people are content with their national currency. There is absolutely 0 benefit to using bitcoin currently. Any potential discount is completely offset by the difficulty in obtaining bitcoins, and the transaction + exchange costs associated with it.
It's clear that the bitcoin of today is no where near as versatile, as useful, and as easy to use as USD, chinese yuan, japanese yen, euro, or any other major currency. Bitcoin fails on pretty much every point for the average person.
The bitcoin of today is about as useful to the average joe as the first computers were. Or the first airplanes. Or the internet in 1990. It simply is NOT useful yet.
Even if the action of sending bitcoins from one address to another is not particularly difficult, that is only a small part of the whole process, as it is. Showing people how to do that doesn't help. Even if they think, okay, that's not too difficult, when they look for an exchange and see how hard it is to actually obtain bitcoins, they'll give up right away.
But let me ask you this. If I had this card, and I show you how it works (say it works exactly like a credit card, except it's accepted at 1/10000th the number of stores visa/mastercard is accepted at) and you see it's not too difficult to use, what motive do you have to suddenly start using my card? None. There's no benefit to it. So you're not going to use it.
It's really that simple. The reason you guys might want to use it is because you're motivated by a particular interest, whether it's in technology or some political agenda. But the vast majority of people in the world don't have that motive. They need to see actual, real benefits to THEM. They don't care if this technology succeeds or not. So they have no reason to use bitcoin.
Again, the selling point of bitcoin is in its promise as a TECHNOLOGY. Perhaps it will ONE DAY be feasible as a currency, once the foundations have been set, and disruptive businesses have been built on and around it. Once it's easy to use, and is beneficial for the average person. Currently, that's just not the case, and to "force" it into a currency won't help at all.
People are pretty skeptical these days. Words such as "digital money, virtual currency" only give people red lights, and make them think it's an elaborate scam. Especially when you tell them that this "money" essentially came out of thin air. The fact that fiat came from thin air as well doesn't even matter, because people are hypocritical, people are irrational like that. They're used to fiat, they're not used to this new thing, and they'll be skeptical.
I think we should avoid bringing up those words. Especially when you're talking with someone who's never heard of bitcoin before. If they've heard of it, don't stress that point. Rather, stress it's amazing potential as a technology, how it might be used to build business that was not possible before, how innovative it is, and how it'll continue to improve as more and more people build on top of it. I think people will be less skeptical, and less defensive like that.
