Losing Critical Mass and Call to Action

[kiba]

The rate of posting is low this month, and there are few real members creation. We don't have enough critical mass for takeoff. I don't know if we're losing momentum, but just to make sure, double the amount of energy into increasing the mass for takeoff. We can't expect others to do their share of the work, we must do it ourselves. Slashdot so far is only our signifigant source of new members blast. We may need a couple more blasts to go to the rest of the J curves but we shouldn't relies on it to make our success. If anything, user blasters will be the product of creating our own "lucks".

Keep showing up on IRC and forums. Keep building web services. Keep writing letters. Most of all, find yourself a niche. Division of labor has made our wonderful civilization like this. Let seize it in our new society.

I know I also need to do my part too, so I shall contribute in some small way. I'll shall begin working on a prediction market no later than this Wednesday.

[BioMike]

I think many people loose interest when they see that it is very difficult to generate bitcoins. But buying bitcoins isn't so hard, so getting them is not the problem. I think more in the lines of being able to spend them. Sure, there are some nice ways to spend them, but many things are a bit of a niche currently (relative little people have real use for it). If I have a look in the first few topics in the Marketplace, I see financial related stuff and lotteries/poker related stuff. None of which I would be interested in.

Also, please note that amount of forum sign ups doesn't need to be related to the amount of people using bitcoin.

[kiba]

I think many people loose interest when they see that it is very difficult to generate bitcoins. But buying bitcoins isn't so hard, so getting them is not the problem. I think more in the lines of being able to spend them. Sure, there are some nice ways to spend them, but many things are a bit of a niche currently (relative little people have real use for it). If I have a look in the first few topics in the Marketplace, I see financial related stuff and lotteries/poker related stuff. None of which I would be interested in.

I think you'll need to express your needs and see if people are willing to offer and try to get started. However, at this point, we have too few users to facilitate much trading since there is a lack of coincidence between what you want and what resources they have.

Two months is too long to realize that generating bitcoin is a waste of time, I believed. It's not a plausible hypothesis.

However, this is September so school is probably a plausible hypothesis pulling bitcoiners from the community a little while.

Another hypothesis is that the community has already say much about bitcoins and that we're running out of stuff to post. That's probably implausible though but I don't know how to determine this.

[jimbobway]

Just emailed http://www.apmex.com to see if they could start trading bitcoins.

I think the key is to get the big players involved.  Imagine if PayPal started to accept bitcoins.  It's game over for other currencies.

[hugolp]

I noticed the same.

I have started accepting bitcoin donations at my blog, and I keep promoting bitcoin at the forums I visit (yesterday for example).

But I completely agree that being able to spend bitcoins is the key to success. I have said several times that having business that accept bitcoins is the key to success. Maybe we should do something to target business. Maybe not big business because that would be unrealistic, but local small business. Maybe going to some local business association would be a good idea. Just thinking out loud.

[jgarzik]

Some things I think bitcoin needs for success:

• Payment processor, well supported, with sandbox, and a shopping cart interface similar to this or this or this.  mtgox and gazoakley (bitcoinpay.com) both have some merchant tools, but they need to be "fleshed out."
• More businesses accepting bitcoins.  (see payment processor, above)  If you cannot convince a business to accept bitcoins, start one of your own!  We need legitimate, trusted businesses that cater clients other than wholly-anonymous ones.
• Exchange with major currencies (USD mostly there; EUR barely there; needs more asian currencies)
• More generating nodes.  Too easy for someone with US$100,000 to own the entire network.  We should encourage generation for the sake of network health, not money.  It's not worth it to simply make money generating coins.

Note that this list does not include casinos, prediction markets, HYIPs, etc.

Most people use cash because it's widely accepted by businesses and individuals, not because cash is [mostly] anonymous.

[FreeMoney]

Just emailed http://www.apmex.com to see if they could start trading bitcoins.

I think the key is to get the big players involved.  Imagine if PayPal started to accept bitcoins.  It's game over for other currencies.

I agree that a huge business accepting bitcoins would be excellent and launch bitcoin into the stratosphere, but it just won't happen. When 50 small businesses accept BTC then a medium one will, when many medium ones do then a large one will, when a few large ones do then we will be off. But it just makes no sense for a large established company to jump on the chance to use an unknown, rarely used currency.

If you think bitcoins are valuable, sell what you do for bitcoins. I play poker and win pokerstars money, I am willing to sell it for bitcoins.

I want to learn to program too, I am very glad there are so many programmers and site builders making things like the poker room, lottery, and randomizer. And silver on the bidding pond too! I've bought over an ounce.

[mizerydearia]

Maybe we should do something to target business.

http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=909.0

[hugolp]

• Payment processor, well supported, with sandbox, and a shopping cart interface similar to this or this or this.  mtgox and gazoakley (bitcoinpay.com) both have some merchant tools, but they need to be "fleshed out."

This is very important for business to adopt bitcoins. I bet if there was a drupal module to do it automatically a lot of online places would accept them.

The most e-commerce module for Drupal is Ubercart (http://drupal.org/project/ubercart and http://www.ubercart.org/) so making a module for this would be a great asset. I am starting to look into Drupal and PHP because we just started an economic blog with some friends, but obviously I am no expert at all yet. If someone knows PHP and/or Drupal I would not mind collaborating with him/her to create the module. I honestly dont see myself capable of doing it on my own. My idea before I read this was to learn to create a module for Drupal creating a "Donate Bitcoin" module. So if anyone likes the idea of a bitcoin module for Ubercart (or something similar) pm me.

[Felix Gabrielov]

the way i see it the main problem is that you cannot easily get hard cash for your coins.

[BioMike]

"Bitcoin" should get a freshmeat.net account. That will give it some exposure (especially with the many releases).

[jgarzik]

Another thing that would help bitcoin adoption:

python, perl, php libraries and common code for interfacing with bitcoin.

For example, Perl or Python code that verifies that "17NdbrSGoUotzeGCcMMCqnFkEvLymoou9j" is a valid bitcoin address, and "098123409813lkjasdflkjasdflk" is not, would be useful to anyone wishing to implement a bitcoin web interface.

[mizerydearia]

Another thing that would help bitcoin adoption:

python, perl, php libraries and common code for interfacing with bitcoin.

For example, Perl or Python code that verifies that "17NdbrSGoUotzeGCcMMCqnFkEvLymoou9j" is a valid bitcoin address, and "098123409813lkjasdflkjasdflk" is not, would be useful to anyone wishing to implement a bitcoin web interface.

Hummm, well, I didn't have any luck finding how to determine what constitutes as an address examining the c++ code, but here's a PHP function that should work as expected:

Code:

<?
	function is_bitcoin_address($address) { return preg_match("/1[1-9A-HJ-NP-Za-km-z]{32,33}/", $address); }
	if (is_bitcoin_address("17NdbrSGoUotzeGCcMMCqnFkEvLymoou9j")) echo "yes";
	else echo "no";
?>

Ah yes, thanks for clarifying theymos.  I updated my code.  I confirmed and of all of my addresses they contain at least one of all alphanumberic characters except 0, I, O and l.

[theymos]

Hummm, well, I didn't have any luck finding how to determine what constitutes as an address examining the c++ code, but here's a PHP function that should work as expected:

Code:

<?
	function is_bitcoin_address($address) { return preg_match("/1[a-zA-Z0-9]{33}/", $address); }
	if (is_bitcoin_address("17NdbrSGoUotzeGCcMMCqnFkEvLymoou9j")) echo "yes";
	else echo "no";
?>

Bitcoin excludes a few normal characters for the sake of readability, and a Bitcoin address can be either 33 or 34 characters long. It's:
1[1-9A-HJ-NP-Za-km-z]{32,33}

[Anonymous]

http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1024.msg12532#msg12532

In this thread chaord and I have an ideas for the best way forward we believe which is in education.

[Immanuel]

If people are still generating Bitcoins, I wouldn't be concerned.

[kiba]

Another thing that would help bitcoin adoption:

python, perl, php libraries and common code for interfacing with bitcoin.

For example, Perl or Python code that verifies that "17NdbrSGoUotzeGCcMMCqnFkEvLymoou9j" is a valid bitcoin address, and "098123409813lkjasdflkjasdflk" is not, would be useful to anyone wishing to implement a bitcoin web interface.

Possible coding bounty.

[em3rgentOrdr]

OK, to help boost bitcoin, I'll sell my PS3 and all my PS3 games for bitcoin at a reasonable rate.  What is the best place for me to advertise a sale, other than just posting this forum?

Kiba, what was your luck with trying to sell gameboy games?

[ByteCoin]

Bitcoin excludes a few normal characters for the sake of readability, and a Bitcoin address can be either 33 or 34 characters long. It's:
1[1-9A-HJ-NP-Za-km-z]{32,33}

Incorrect. The smallest valid BitCoin address is
1111111111111111111114oLvT2
so the addresses can go down to 27 characters. Also, 34 character BitCoin addresses can't start with "1R" "1S" "1T" etc...
I also have the ability to generate useful novelty BitCoin addresses. The best one for me  so far is
1ByteCosnsUNJun4KL3HSt1NfFdXpzoRTy (pesky s)

ByteCoin 

[mizerydearia]

Bitcoin excludes a few normal characters for the sake of readability, and a Bitcoin address can be either 33 or 34 characters long. It's:
1[1-9A-HJ-NP-Za-km-z]{32,33}

Incorrect. The smallest valid BitCoin address is
1111111111111111111114oLvT2
so the addresses can go down to 27 characters. Also, 34 character BitCoin addresses can't start with "1R" "1S" "1T" etc...
I also have the ability to generate useful novelty BitCoin addresses. The best one for me  so far is
1ByteCosnsUNJun4KL3HSt1NfFdXpzoRTy (pesky s)

ByteCoin 

I have a couple bitcoin addresses that start with 1R, but they are very rare compared to the others. Same with 1S, 1T, etc.. Actually

Starting from 1R, all the way to 1Y, 1Z, 1a, 1b, 1c, .., 1x, 1y, 1z - these are all very rare but still they can exist.