Losing Critical Mass and Call to Action

[Bimmerhead]

Okey, when will be "Bitcoin Facebook Day?"

Hummm, what are some significant dates in the history of Bitcoin?  We could mark one of those anniversaries.

Or maybe December 23, since December 23, 1913 is the day the Federal Reserve Act was enacted.

I would say a date around 2 months from now: long enough to get organized, but not so far out that people lose interest.

[FreeMoney]

Okey, when will be "Bitcoin Facebook Day?"

Hummm, what are some significant dates in the history of Bitcoin?  We could mark one of those anniversaries.

Or maybe December 23, since December 23, 1913 is the day the Federal Reserve Act was enacted.

I would say a date around 2 months from now: long enough to get organized, but not so far out that people lose interest.

Too close to Christmas to get many people's attention. They'll all be thinking about charging gifts on the CC!

Earlier imo. But I don't use FB anyway.

[FreeMoney]

Haha, I just realized it's probably no coincidence that the FED was started near Christmas. It's for the exact reason I suggested it as a bad date, people are distracted.

[The Madhatter]

Actually, it was started over Christmas when most congressmen were on holidays.

A larger fraud could not be asked for.

[S3052]

Great thought about facebook and other social media sites. We should do this "bitcoin day".

In terms of timing I suggest it to be very soon (i.e. in the next 7 days). My experience in marketing / PR / ER tells me that we need to eat the potato while its still hot. Now we see a good postiive trend in coverage, and risk is that if we wait too long, we might start from a lower level.

Key question is how to mobilize all bitcoin supporters = how to reach them to align on a date.

Who has a "list" or an idea to communicate to all bitoin owners?

[Bimmerhead]

Great thought about facebook and other social media sites. We should do this "bitcoin day".

In terms of timing I suggest it to be very soon (i.e. in the next 7 days). My experience in marketing / PR / ER tells me that we need to eat the potato while its still hot. Now we see a good postive trend in coverage, and risk is that if we wait too long, we might start from a lower level.

Key question is how to mobilize all bitcoin supporters = how to reach them to align on a date.

Who has a "list" or an idea to communicate to all bitcoin owners?

I agree about eating hot potatoes (that's a new one I hadn't heard before), if we can make it happen.  I suggested two months for a target date just because I figured it would take that long to find a large number of Bitcoin supporters to make it happen.

Is there any value in doing media releases?  Has there ever been a full court press on getting Bitcoin noticed by the mainstream tech media?  A mention in Fast Company or Wired would certainly go a long way.  In the Bitcoin community, are there people like yourself with PR experience and connections that could be leveraged to get the word out both about "Bitcoin Day" and Bitcoin in general?  (Pardon me if all this has been tried before, I'm very new here).

Also enlisting the support of various libertarian/hard money institutes and some reliable newsletter writers (I first heard about Bitcoin through Elliott Wave International last Friday) to promote Bitcoin Day would help.

Just a quick note for those of you who don't use Facebook or spend very little time there, just be aware that there are more than 500 million people on Facebook, half of which check their account at least every second day.  If you've seen the Facebook Newsfeed in action, you understand the power of publicity on Facebook.  Facebook is the second most trafficked site on the planet, and for one month this spring actually outpaced Google (according to Alexa).

[em3rgentOrdr]

I would make one short comment: before we make a lot of public hype about bitcoin, let's make sure that the code has matured enough (obviously the main devlopers should have a voice in this).  Why do I say this?  Because I just read an article about the collapse of the supposedly censorship-resistant Haystack project after it inunintenionally exposed political dissedents in Iran: On Writing, Funding, and Distributing Software to Activists Against Authoritarian Regimes.  Here are some snippets from one of the developer's resignation letter:

“I would like to stress that I am not resigning in shame over the much-maligned test program. It is as bad as Appelbaum [developer Jacob Applebaum, who criticised the software after an independent test this weekend] makes it out to be. But I maintain that it was a diagnostic tool never intended for dissemination, never mind hype. I did have a solid, reasonable design, and described it in our brief overture of transparency. _That_ is what Haystack would have been. It would have worked!

“What I am resigning over is the inability of my organization to operate effectively, maturely, and responsibly. We have been disgraced. I am resigning over dismissing pointed criticism as nonsense. I am resigning over hype trumping security. I am resigning over being misled, and over others being misled in my name.

...

“There was plenty of error on my part too, of course. I should never have allowed that damned “test” program to be distributed at all, and should never have added diagnostics to it; running it once in a controlled environment was a risk — arguably an acceptable one at the time. Multiplying that risk by users and by uses was what made it a catastrophe. I should have stuck my head out of the code and more strenuously objected to the hype.

...

“I regret that we exposed anyone to undue risk, and that we deprived citizens of the effective anti-censorship tool that might have been. I regret standing silently while I listened to empty promises — and I especially regret that this whole ordeal has scarred the anti-censorship landscape so badly that it may be years before anything grows there again.

So basically, let's make sure we are very clear and deliberate when talking to the public and social networking friends that BITCOIN DOES NOT GAURENTEE ANONYMITY, but simply pseudonymity (because bitcoin address are public and because trading patterns can be analyzed to match them to people) and should be used in conjunction with TOR and new addresses for every transaction.  Also, make sure they know that the total amount of bitcoins sent to any particular address is public knowledge with bitcointools.

So I think some basic changes to the bitcoin client should be made: For example, having the ability to receive bitcoins by your IP address should be disabled by default, because it presents a small security risk to reveal the ip address of a bitcoin user.  Also, the client should indicate that messages included when sending to an ip address are just plaintext and NOT encyrpted.  Remember, very few people actually read the READMEs and development notes.  Maybe even a "TOR enabled/disabled" indicator should be present on the client.

So I would say let's not be too hasty before we make a collective bitcoin publicity splash.  We should wait at least two months, and make it a great shot...

[Anonymous]

How about we organize a Facebook Bomb like Mises did: http://blog.mises.org/10552/facebook-bomb/

We set a day where we all agree to promote Bitcoin to our Facebook friends by:
1) setting our status to something like "The Future of Money: http://www.bitcoin.org"
2) join the Bitcoin Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Bitcoin-P2P-Cryptocurrency/134466763256650
3) invite our friends to also join the page

There must be 100 bitcoin users on Facebook.  If we each average 120 friends (which seems like a low estimate) that would get the message out to 12,000 people...for free.

Any takers?

We should also do this on twitter with a #bitcoinendthefed hashtag  . I have over 600 friends on facebook and over 2300 followers on twitter so count me in.

[Bimmerhead]

So basically, let's make sure we are very clear and deliberate when talking to the public and social networking friends that BITCOIN DOES NOT GAURENTEE ANONYMITY, but simply pseudonymity (because bitcoin address are public and because trading patterns can be analyzed to match them to people) and should be used in conjunction with TOR and new addresses for every transaction.  Also, make sure they know that the total amount of bitcoins sent to any particular address is public knowledge with bitcointools.

So I think some basic changes to the bitcoin client should be made: For example, having the ability to receive bitcoins by your IP address should be disabled by default, because it presents a small security risk to reveal the ip address of a bitcoin user.  Also, the client should indicate that messages included when sending to an ip address are just plaintext and NOT encyrpted.  Remember, very few people actually read the READMEs and development notes.  Maybe even a "TOR enabled/disabled" indicator should be present on the client.

So I would say let's not be too hasty before we make a collective bitcoin publicity splash.  We should wait at least two months, and make it a great shot...

Hummm, you're causing me to pause and ponder this a little more.  Though for me the biggest selling points of Bitcoin are the virtually free micro-payment angle and the built-in inflation protection rather than the implied anonymity.  Maybe we need to have a more methodical approach to 'spreading the word'. 

Maybe this is why the word hasn't spread further already?

[Gavin Andresen]

I think a big publicity splash should wait until Bitcoin 1.0.  Bitcoin still has way too many rough edges for ordinary folk to use (watch them run away screaming as you try to explain that it is NORMAL for it to take half an hour to download the block chain the first time you start Bitcoin....).

[jgarzik]

I think a big publicity splash should wait until Bitcoin 1.0.  Bitcoin still has way too many rough edges for ordinary folk to use (watch them run away screaming as you try to explain that it is NORMAL for it to take half an hour to download the block chain the first time you start Bitcoin....).

Agreed...  payment systems for businesses need to mature as well.  MyBitcoin just got a payment processor / SCI, but it lacks docs, polish, and support for more than one programming language.

[FreeMoney]

I think a big publicity splash should wait until Bitcoin 1.0.  Bitcoin still has way too many rough edges for ordinary folk to use (watch them run away screaming as you try to explain that it is NORMAL for it to take half an hour to download the block chain the first time you start Bitcoin....).

Is the download time going to get better anytime soon?

[Timo Y]

What bitcoin needs to take off, is a killer app.

The only people who are motivated to use bitcoin at the moment are cyphergeeks, who are attracted the beauty of its internal mechanics, and rabid libertarians, who see it as a tool to spread their ideology. The vast majority of internet users are neither of those. Paypal fulfils their needs just as well as bitcoin, so why would they be motivated to switch?

The killer app, IMO, would be a system for trading bandwidth on anonymity networks such as Tor and i2p. The problem with these networks at the moment is that they are slow and inconvenient as they rely on volunteers to provide bandwith and suffer from congestion.

If Tor users had a way of paying for node providers anonymously, the size and speed of the network would explode.  Anonymous bittorrent would become viable, and judging from the amount of bittorrent traffic on the net, there is no shortage of demand. Increasingly draconian copyright laws, and their increasingly heavy handed enforcement, will motivate even the most lazy bittorrent users to switch.

That is one application where bitcoin has a big competitive advantage. There are few, if any, other currencies suitable for anonymous bandwidth trading.

[em3rgentOrdr]

What bitcoin needs to take off, is a killer app.

The only people who are motivated to use bitcoin at the moment are cyphergeeks, who are attracted the beauty of its internal mechanics, and rabid libertarians, who see it as a tool to spread their ideology. The vast majority of internet users are neither of those. Paypal fulfils their needs just as well as bitcoin, so why would they be motivated to switch?

The killer app, IMO, would be a system for trading bandwidth on anonymity networks such as Tor and i2p. The problem with these networks at the moment is that they are slow and inconvenient as they rely on volunteers to provide bandwith and suffer from congestion.

If Tor users had a way of paying for node providers anonymously, the size and speed of the network would explode.  Anonymous bittorrent would become viable, and judging from the amount of bittorrent traffic on the net, there is no shortage of demand. Increasingly draconian copyright laws, and their increasingly heavy handed enforcement, will motivate even the most lazy bittorrent users to switch.

That is one application where bitcoin has a big competitive advantage. There are few, if any, other currencies suitable for anonymous bandwidth trading.

VERY GOOD IDEA!!!  You should maybe talk to the bitcoin forum member torservers (http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1045) who runs Torservers.net.  He has a thread on this forum where he talks about how he now accepts bitcoin donations (http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1004.0) so you should read that thread and talk to him to ask about feasibility...and maybe see if he wants to try it out.  Definitely, adding market incentives to the allocation of TOR bandwidth would dramatically increase its efficiency.  It would allow the TOR network to grow because people would be incentivized to dedicate high-bandwidth low-latency routers for it.  Of course poor people could still use free donated bandwidth, but for the rich people living in industrial countries with high copyright restrictions (e.g. US) that want to share copyrighted files quickly and anomalously, fast TOR bandwidth is in high demand!

[Bimmerhead]

VERY GOOD IDEA!!!  You should maybe talk to the bitcoin forum member torservers (http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1045) who runs Torservers.net.  He has a thread on this forum where he talks about how he now accepts bitcoin donations (http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1004.0) so you should read that thread and talk to him to ask about feasibility...and maybe see if he wants to try it out.  Definitely, adding market incentives to the allocation of TOR bandwidth would dramatically increase its efficiency.  It would allow the TOR network to grow because people would be incentivized to dedicate high-bandwidth low-latency routers for it.  Of course poor people could still use free donated bandwidth, but for the rich people living in industrial countries with high copyright restrictions (e.g. US) that want to share copyrighted files quickly and anomalously, fast TOR bandwidth is in high demand!

Maybe I'm not understanding this completely, but it sounds vaguely to me that the suggestion is to use a 'rabid libertarian' tool to facilitate violation of intellectual property rights. 

I'm not being sarcastic, I'm just looking for clarification.

[kiba]

Maybe I'm not understanding this completely, but it sounds vaguely to me that the suggestion is to use a 'rabid libertarian' tool to facilitate violation of intellectual property rights. 

Intellectual property right violate real property right.

[em3rgentOrdr]

Maybe I'm not understanding this completely, but it sounds vaguely to me that the suggestion is to use a 'rabid libertarian' tool to facilitate violation of intellectual property rights.  

Intellectual property right violate real property right.

Thanks kiba!  Bimmerhead, I encourage you to read the following books:

"Against Intellectual Monopoly"
"Against Intellectual Property"

Basically the argument against intellectual property comes down to what kiba says:

Intellectual property right violate real property right.

Intellectual "Property" is the legal right to restrict duplication of patterns you came across voluntarily using your own property that you acquired voluntarily.  I prefer to call IP instead "State-Granted Violently-Enforced Pattern-Monopoly".  

And yes, Bimmerhead, you are understanding my suggestion perfectly:

it sounds vaguely to me that the suggestion is to use a 'rabid libertarian' tool to facilitate violation of intellectual property rights.  

[Bimmerhead]

Maybe I'm not understanding this completely, but it sounds vaguely to me that the suggestion is to use a 'rabid libertarian' tool to facilitate violation of intellectual property rights. 

Intellectual property right violate real property right.

This is new thinking for me.  I'm just reading through em3rgentOrdr's recommended "Against Intellectual Property".

So in the context of this discussion, how do you define "real property"?

[BrightAnarchist]

I'm not yet sold on the against-IP argument yet. I understand the scarce vs. non-scarce goods anti-IP argument that many libertarians are taking these days, but IMO it fails as soon as you say it voids private contracts. Disallowing individuals to enter into private contracts is obviously immoral, and yet some libertarians are arguing exactly that when they argue against IP. What's wrong with me selling you a reproducible good with a contract attached that says you agree not to duplicate it? If you do, it's dishonest and you've violated our contract.

That said, I dislike the totalitarian nature of government enforcement of IP, which is an entirely different story. Since modern IP is enforced using government this removes an important component of the price mechanism from the equation, and so modern IP is really just “fantasy” in the sense that all government-sponsored economic behavior is fantasy. Why should my labor (via taxes) fund the enforcement that is used to protect someone else’s contract, without my consent? This is just as immoral as the contract violations themselves in my opinion, and distorts the market and human behavior – in short, the costs of IP are socialized while the benefits are capitalized upon by a few. (Just like our banking system…lol)
 
Instead, if those who entered into contracts assumed the cost of enforcement, you’d see a dramatically different landscape and the emergence of ingenious methods of protecting contracts and IP without using the extreme expense of government enforcement. As Ayn Rand says, “the moral is the practical”, and I have no doubt that natural market equilibrium in a voluntaryist society would be far more efficient and just than taking a hard statist stance either for or against IP. I strongly dislike violence/coercive solutions (such as government sueing you for piracy), rather than peaceful ones (such as your ISP cutting off your internet because you had a “third strike” pirating from one of their business partners, who pays them a fee perhaps for this service, and it’s all part of your voluntary contract with your ISP, etc). The voluntary solution strongly favors the usage of reputation systems over direct violent enforcement, and IMO is always better. Who knows? Maybe internet access itself would be completely free is it was completely paid for with a share of IP holders profits from the sale of their digital media through the IP-enforced ISP. People who want to ignore IP, of course, would be free to pay for the non-IP enforced ISP.

But my point is quite broad really, which is basically that people should look to voluntary solutions rather than everyone lining up at the government’s door to enact new laws. Getting stuck in the pro-IP/anti-IP legal debate is a very, very statist mindset, since it assumes that the government must either enforce for it or enforce against it -- how about get the gov't out of the way and let people figure it out! Some of the anti-IP crowd is even more statist than the pro-IP crowd: read about Sweden’s proposal to legalize piracy (thus voiding private contracts), tax all internet traffic and have the government decide how to hand out money to “content creators”…. that is frightening and insane IMO.

[kiba]

I'm not yet sold on the against-IP argument yet. I understand the scarce vs. non-scarce goods anti-IP argument that many libertarians are taking these days, but IMO it fails as soon as you say it voids private contracts. Disallowing individuals to enter into private contracts is obviously immoral, and yet some libertarians are arguing exactly that when they argue against IP. What's wrong with me selling you a reproducible good with a contract attached that says you agree not to duplicate it? If you do, it's dishonest and you've violated our contract.

The libertarians that I talk to know and accept this argument. So you're arguing against quite possibly a strawman. What we're against is involving third parties who have nothing to do with the non-copying agreement.