Why do this?

[Gespenster]

This is the same problem I've encountered with a couple of friends I've talked to about bitcoin. A lot of people don't have the economic insight to understand why bitcoins have certain intrinsic advantages over other currencies. To them it's just play money you can generate with some obscure algorithm on a computer and then convert into "real" money. At best they see it as some form of speculation or pyramid scheme (which currently is a deflating factor imho) and in the worst case they see it as some unworldly hippie thing.

Some serious thought should be put into making people understand the intrinsic benefits of bitcoins, but I'm not sure how to do that either. Most people simply don't care and just use whatever money their government wants them to use.

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[TTBit]

This is the same problem I've encountered with a couple of friends I've talked to about bitcoin. A lot of people don't have the economic insight to understand why bitcoins have certain intrinsic advantages over other currencies. To them it's just play money you can generate with some obscure algorithm on a computer and then convert into "real" money. At best they see it as some form of speculation or pyramid scheme (which currently is a deflating factor imho) and in the worst case they see it as some unworldly hippie thing.

Some serious thought should be put into making people understand the intrinsic benefits of bitcoins, but I'm not sure how to do that either. Most people simply don't care and just use whatever money their government wants them to use.

What kind of a nut would want a computer in their home in 1985?
What did people think of a network of computers communicating with each other in 1995?

I don't know what will catch-on and what will fail. Bitcoins seem to solve current problems, and are worth investigation.

[Anonymous]

So I need to give all my information to a bank or financial site to buy something online? lol

[kiba]

This is the same problem I've encountered with a couple of friends I've talked to about bitcoin. A lot of people don't have the economic insight to understand why bitcoins have certain intrinsic advantages over other currencies. To them it's just play money you can generate with some obscure algorithm on a computer and then convert into "real" money. At best they see it as some form of speculation or pyramid scheme (which currently is a deflating factor imho) and in the worst case they see it as some unworldly hippie thing.

Some serious thought should be put into making people understand the intrinsic benefits of bitcoins, but I'm not sure how to do that either. Most people simply don't care and just use whatever money their government wants them to use.

What kind of a nut would want a computer in their home in 1985?
What did people think of a network of computers communicating with each other in 1995?

I don't know what will catch-on and what will fail. Bitcoins seem to solve current problems, and are worth investigation.

That, and I have 500 dollars on the line. I plan on making it succeed so I can collect my 500 dollars bet.

[caveden]

Some serious thought should be put into making people understand the intrinsic benefits of bitcoins, but I'm not sure how to do that either. Most people simply don't care and just use whatever money their government wants them to use.

You make a good point there.
That's not easy, as we can see by this topic.

Maybe we should start with libertarian communities.
I wrote a text for a Brazilian libertarian site, talking about bitcoins. Here's the automatic translation of it: http://tinyurl.com/38llgfq
I could make a "human translation" if the some English (or French) libertarian site wants to publish it.

It would be really nice if we could get a libertarian institute like the Mises or Catto Institute to write something about bitcoins, or even better, to accept them on their online shops. If an institute of this importance start accepting bitcoins, other libertarian institutes might do as well.

Once several renamed institute are accepting btcs, maybe it would be easier to convince "geek" sites like ThinkGeek to accept them. And once many geek and libertarian sites are doing it, it gets easier to convince general purposes sites to do so, since bitcoins do have short term advantages like low transaction fees and anonymous transfers...

[Aqualung]

Generating coins is not the purpose of bitcoin.  Trading is.  The strength of bitcoins are their ease of storage/movement, almost no transaction costs, good security, pseudonymity, their limited inflation, etc.  In fact, their difficulty to generate is one of bitcoin's strengths.

If you are frustrated trying to generate bitcoins, you should try selling some goods or services for bitcoin to help the economy.

i wonder how many users are simply trying to generate some bitcoins just because they can be exchanged for money... it seems to me there are a lot of that kind of users

[caveden]

i wonder how many users are simply trying to generate some bitcoins just because they can be exchanged for money... it seems to me there are a lot of that kind of users

They are probably wasting money if doing so.... I think that the electricity costs of generation highly exceed what you can get for it.
But, well, let's not complain... they are helping the network by donating processing power to the block building process, as well as allowing us to buy cheaper bitcoins 

[Bimmerhead]

This is the same problem I've encountered with a couple of friends I've talked to about bitcoin. A lot of people don't have the economic insight to understand why bitcoins have certain intrinsic advantages over other currencies. To them it's just play money you can generate with some obscure algorithm on a computer and then convert into "real" money. At best they see it as some form of speculation or pyramid scheme (which currently is a deflating factor imho) and in the worst case they see it as some unworldly hippie thing.

Some serious thought should be put into making people understand the intrinsic benefits of bitcoins, but I'm not sure how to do that either. Most people simply don't care and just use whatever money their government wants them to use.

I think residents of Zimbabwe would have a special, natural insight into the advantages of Bitcoin.

[BrightAnarchist]

This is the same problem I've encountered with a couple of friends I've talked to about bitcoin. A lot of people don't have the economic insight to understand why bitcoins have certain intrinsic advantages over other currencies. To them it's just play money you can generate with some obscure algorithm on a computer and then convert into "real" money. At best they see it as some form of speculation or pyramid scheme (which currently is a deflating factor imho) and in the worst case they see it as some unworldly hippie thing.

Some serious thought should be put into making people understand the intrinsic benefits of bitcoins, but I'm not sure how to do that either. Most people simply don't care and just use whatever money their government wants them to use.

I think residents of Zimbabwe would have a special, natural insight into the advantages of Bitcoin.

+1

[Babylon]

This is the same problem I've encountered with a couple of friends I've talked to about bitcoin. A lot of people don't have the economic insight to understand why bitcoins have certain intrinsic advantages over other currencies. To them it's just play money you can generate with some obscure algorithm on a computer and then convert into "real" money. At best they see it as some form of speculation or pyramid scheme (which currently is a deflating factor imho) and in the worst case they see it as some unworldly hippie thing.

Some serious thought should be put into making people understand the intrinsic benefits of bitcoins, but I'm not sure how to do that either. Most people simply don't care and just use whatever money their government wants them to use.

What kind of a nut would want a computer in their home in 1985?
What did people think of a network of computers communicating with each other in 1995?

I don't know what will catch-on and what will fail. Bitcoins seem to solve current problems, and are worth investigation.

I was really into both, at those mentioned points, and I didn't have electricity in my home in 1985 or a computer there in 1995.  I think you are setting adoption points a bit late.

[eurekafag]

Nice thread. I also thought that bitcoin is a money from thin air first. Everybody talked that it's not the point of them but anyway I generated to become rich. Now I see it's pretty useless for creating wealth, too slow and profitless. Generating is needed of course but not for getting rich.

Now I see the great possibilities of bitcoin. Recently a market was opened so I can exchange roubles to BTC and then BTC to PayPal via any other exchanger. For now I didn't calc savings but expect some. Also I can invest some funds in BTC because their cost is growing and then exchange them back to roubles. It's like gold while we can convert it to any country currency. I see here a great future where we'll trade goods worldwide for bitcoins and use regular currency only for bills or buying food. Sadly enough big players like paypal will raise difficulties against bitcoin if they'll see its potential.

As Gandhi said: «First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.» Waiting for laughing...