How to grow the Bitcoin idea?

[dduane]

Yes, I think everyone is on the right track here by asking organizations we love and respect to accept witcoins.  I just sent a message to the ACLU asking them
if they had an address:
Hi,
  I would like to make a donation to ACLU for all of the great things that it does to protect our liberties.  I use Bitcoin to send money over the internet but I don't see a Bitcoin address to use on your "Make Additional Gift" page.  Do you have a Bitcoin address I could use?

Thanks,
   --Darrell

If others continue to ask they'll take notice and put an address up, and then others who also want to support the ACLU or whichever organization it is will see this and want to learn more about Bitcoins.

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[barbarousrelic]

The best way to grow Bitcoin is to offer more goods and services for Bitcoins - not just on Bitcoin sites, but other sites like Craigslist.

I think asking businesses and organizations to accept it is like the cart pulling the horse. Businesses should want to accept Bitcoin because of the things they can buy with it. Being freely exchangeable with USD is nice, but the business will just ask itself,


 "If I can't pay the rent, or buy my kids food and clothes with it, I'll have to exchange it for USD. Why don't I just stick with USD then?"

[So_Cynical]

I suppose one alternative market for BTC is "American refugee's" these people tend to be older Americans with strong Republican leanings, politically right wing with somewhat extremist views, they are also often gun nuts and they don't want the socialist Obama Govt to know what there doing...i tend to bump into them on alternative retirement forums (Panama and the Philippines) don't know how they would take the anarchist thing though?  these guys tend not to be too tolerant and accepting.

Maybe Bitcoin needs a spokes person or 2 to do promotional (forum) work?

[ribuck]

It seems to me that Bitcoin has passed the point where it needs promotion. It is now growing from its own momentum. Enjoy the ride!

[So_Cynical]

It seems to me that Bitcoin has passed the point where it needs promotion. It is now growing from its own momentum. Enjoy the ride!

I agree BC has momentum, but big picture its still very much a non event....a going concern worth around 5 mill USD is almost nothing...its like 6 nice houses in Sydney.

[kiba]

It seems to me that Bitcoin has passed the point where it needs promotion. It is now growing from its own momentum. Enjoy the ride!

I agree BC has momentum, but big picture its still very much a non event....a going concern worth around 5 mill USD is almost nothing...its like 6 nice houses in Sydney.

We're still in the early days of growth. For example, the forum achieved a sustained posting rate of 700ish for 4 days. That never happened before.

[abstraction]

Somebody who is good on the phone could call in to The Peter Schiff Show on http://www.schiffradio.com/.

[So_Cynical]

It seems to me that Bitcoin has passed the point where it needs promotion. It is now growing from its own momentum. Enjoy the ride!

I agree BC has momentum, but big picture its still very much a non event....a going concern worth around 5 mill USD is almost nothing...its like 6 nice houses in Sydney.

We're still in the early days of growth. For example, the forum achieved a sustained posting rate of 700ish for 4 days. That never happened before.

I've been around here for about 5 or 6 days and can see what's happening, the forum numbers are impressive...i found this site via a contrarian investment commentary blog (cant remember which one now) so there is some somewhat "mainstream" interest....problem is that from a fundamentalist investment viewpoint the BC economy is almost non existent....the only market worth trading is LR(USD)/BTC and even that is very suspect.

And i get the feeling that the Anarchist community don't like currency speculators...again fundamentally this could cause some problems down the road as i suspect that the bulk of the hoarders are anarchists?

[kiba]

And i get the feeling that the Anarchist community don't like currency speculators...again fundamentally this could cause some problems down the road as i suspect that the bulk of the hoarders are anarchists?

It's only the weird oddballs that hate currency speculators.

[caveden]

True, Peter Schiff could be a great supporter! The harder thing would be to make him understand how reliable bitcoins are.

And I wouldn't be much surprised if he just fails to understand it. Take for example the Mises institute. As far as I know, they haven't yet published anything on bitcoins, although bitcoin is practically a grass-root manifestation of everything they defend in terms of money. That's just because they don't get the fact that particular numbers may be a scarce commodity themselves, and not only a representation of something else. So they keep asking "but it's not backed by anything?", without realizing that gold itself is not backed by anything either.

Anyway, all I'm saying is that sometimes it's hard to convince non-geek gold-worshipers of the advantages of bitcoins.

[So_Cynical]

without realizing that gold itself is not backed by anything either.

Anyway, all I'm saying is that sometimes it's hard to convince non-geek gold-worshipers of the advantages of bitcoins.

I don't want to side track this thread but Gold is rare and peak gold production was in 2001/2003...world production is in decline despite world record prices = good fundamentals.

[abstraction]

True, Peter Schiff could be a great supporter! The harder thing would be to make him understand how reliable bitcoins are.

And I wouldn't be much surprised if he just fails to understand it. Take for example the Mises institute. As far as I know, they haven't yet published anything on bitcoins, although bitcoin is practically a grass-root manifestation of everything they defend in terms of money. That's just because they don't get the fact that particular numbers may be a scarce commodity themselves, and not only a representation of something else. So they keep asking "but it's not backed by anything?", without realizing that gold itself is not backed by anything either.

Anyway, all I'm saying is that sometimes it's hard to convince non-geek gold-worshipers of the advantages of bitcoins.

I think he would get it if given enough information. I think he bites his tongue on a lot of things due to regulations.

[N12]

without realizing that gold itself is not backed by anything either.

Anyway, all I'm saying is that sometimes it's hard to convince non-geek gold-worshipers of the advantages of bitcoins.

I don't want to side track this thread but Gold is rare and peak gold production was in 2001/2003...world production is in decline despite world record prices = good fundamentals.

[curator]

I suppose one alternative market for BTC is "American refugee's" these people tend to be older Americans with strong Republican leanings, politically right wing with somewhat extremist views, they are also often gun nuts and they don't want the socialist Obama Govt to know what there doing...i tend to bump into them on alternative retirement forums (Panama and the Philippines) don't know how they would take the anarchist thing though?  these guys tend not to be too tolerant and accepting.

Maybe Bitcoin needs a spokes person or 2 to do promotional (forum) work?

I think you just described my leanings, so I'll respond .  I look at Bitcoin to be a well controlled currency (unlike the printing press crazy USD, or the jacked out CHN yuan), that happens to be "government free" rather than "anarchist" (which to me, is two separate situations).  The possibility of easy conversion to local currency is what really attracts me, besides being a life long geek who has been processing on distributed.net for years.

To push Bitcoin, I propose looking at what the third parties to facebook do: make scan cards that can be filled up at store registers and push Bitcoin as the choice for purchasing virtual goods.

[Garrett Burgwardt]

I suppose one alternative market for BTC is "American refugee's" these people tend to be older Americans with strong Republican leanings, politically right wing with somewhat extremist views, they are also often gun nuts and they don't want the socialist Obama Govt to know what there doing...i tend to bump into them on alternative retirement forums (Panama and the Philippines) don't know how they would take the anarchist thing though?  these guys tend not to be too tolerant and accepting.

Maybe Bitcoin needs a spokes person or 2 to do promotional (forum) work?

I think you just described my leanings, so I'll respond .  I look at Bitcoin to be a well controlled currency (unlike the printing press crazy USD, or the jacked out CHN yuan), that happens to be "government free" rather than "anarchist" (which to me, is two separate situations).  The possibility of easy conversion to local currency is what really attracts me, besides being a life long geek who has been processing on distributed.net for years.

To push Bitcoin, I propose looking at what the third parties to facebook do: make scan cards that can be filled up at store registers and push Bitcoin as the choice for purchasing virtual goods.

Government free and anarchy aren't necessarily different

I used to think that as well, but after some reading on the subject I've come over to the Anarcho-Capitalist side of things.

So don't discredit it offhand, do some reading! I'll be posting a paper within a few months that will give a mostly economic and historic look at Anarcho-Capitalism, might be worth your time.

And I think that your idea is good if we can get the technical limitations fixed - though as long as you have a trusted corporation running the business, no problem, it would work similarly to most other cards.

[Bimmerhead]

True, Peter Schiff could be a great supporter! The harder thing would be to make him understand how reliable bitcoins are.

And I wouldn't be much surprised if he just fails to understand it. Take for example the Mises institute. As far as I know, they haven't yet published anything on bitcoins, although bitcoin is practically a grass-root manifestation of everything they defend in terms of money. That's just because they don't get the fact that particular numbers may be a scarce commodity themselves, and not only a representation of something else. So they keep asking "but it's not backed by anything?", without realizing that gold itself is not backed by anything either.

Anyway, all I'm saying is that sometimes it's hard to convince non-geek gold-worshipers of the advantages of bitcoins.

Yes this seems to be a big problem.  It seems any person you are talking to has to have an extraordinarily open mind or they won't 'get' bitcoin unless they are a geek libertarian who spent their formative years with Napster.

Perhaps it would be useful information if we had a demographic breakdown of the current members of this forum.  Data like:
-age
-gender (are there any females on here yet?)
-interests
-profession
-political views
-geography
-education

Once we know who already supports bitcoin, then we can formulate a plan to go after the rest of the planet who are just like us.

[Bimmerhead]

Actually endorsement/smorshment... what we really need is killer apps for bitcoin. The facebook micro-payment idea really is one of the best things I've seen so far to drive users to Bitcoin, making our "stock" go up

I concur that a killer app is necessary.  I personally have never paid any money for anything on facebook.  Is there a way for us to assess the market?  Are any facebook app developers out there actually profitable from their internal currencies? If so, who?  

I'd like to know how much USD is currently flowing through facebook applications.  If it's substantial we actually could have a very good value proposition for the developers, by decreasing their dependence on PayPal.

A rule of thumb floating around out there is that a Facebook app user is worth $1/year.  I've had a few apps  and those that we tried to monetize actually peaked at $1/user/MONTH.  Too bad we didn't have more users.

So yes, there is huge money in Facebook apps.  That's why Zynga is a $5 billion company.  By these metrics Farmville alone is taking in $50 million/year, I'd bet they're monetizing at better than average.

I remember when My Aquarium launched in summer 2007 (one of the first apps), it was grossing $3000/day.  For a virtual fish tank.  Go figure.

[stakhanov]

For me a good way to popularize the bitcoin system would be to donate a substantial amount to either:

• Application developers
• Influential social network users or bloggers

Imagine that we post on reddit (or some other social site) something among the lines of "We (the bitcoin community) will give 100$ in bitcoins to the best 30 developers / users with more than 15000 karma who request it". It would probably hit the front page very quickly (free money!!!), but appart from the advertising inpact, giving bitcoins to highly influential people would probably have a lot of repercussions.

Of course that may seem like a lot of money, but for the few early adopters of bitcoin that have a lot, it would probably be a wise investment.

That said, letting the bitcoin economy grow naturally instead of trying to inflate it at all costs is not a bad idea either.

[Bimmerhead]

A small thing: put www.bitcoin.org in your signature at other forums you participate in

[curator]

Just made it the website to my twitter profile.