THIS is Why Bitcoin Has and Will Gain Support and Popularity

[Mageant]

Same reason for me. I want the freedom to choose what I use as currency and especially one that is *not* controlled by banks or government.

See also here (in german):
http://www.911komplott.de/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=436&Itemid=28

[marcus_of_augustus]

Why bitcoin?

FREEDOM!

[Phinnaeus Gage]

This is a great video.  Think of how pertinent it is to Bitcoin, particularly at the 11-12 minute mark!  What are we doing to push the adoption rate past the 15% barrier?

I just ordered the domain name whybitcoin.org  

I intend to put it up as a not-for-profit community Bitcoin promotion site, with the central idea of Simon Sinek's video as the driving force behind the site.  I really like the spiels I've read of this thread.  Perhaps we can put up pseudocode's copy as the leading text (with permission, of course), then expand into some of the other promotional writings, like tymothy's.  If someone makes a video based on the "why" of Bitcoin, I'd love to embed it.

Also, I'll make personalized whybitcoin.org addresses available to the first 5 people to PM me (part of the domain name deal).  No charge for the e-mail addresses to the first five takers, but a small Bitcoin donation to cover my expenses (which are minimal) would be welcome.

If any graphic designers have ideas on how to design this site, please post it on this thread.  I can't guarantee I'll use them, but I'd love to see your ideas.



 

First, continue what we're doing right with Bitcoin to reach that 15%, and it'll tip on its own.

Image the future laggers still holding on to their dollars carrying a sign that reads "Brother, can you spare a Bitcoin?".

[BkkCoins]

Why Bitcoin?

Because giving Big Brother the finger feels goood!

[Phinnaeus Gage]

Bookmarked this when I first saw the post, just got the chance to watch it this morning. Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.

Since others are posting their "inside out" spiel, here's mine:

Why bitcoin? Hell, why dollars?

If there's one thing I despise, it's being lied to, having the wool pulled over my eyes. So when my government tells me that their money has value and that we measure the value of things with their money I get angry. You see, money has no value other than what we agree it has - we aren't measuring the worth of a house or a car by how many dollars it costs, rather we're measuring the worth of a dollar by saying how many of them equals a house or a car. THINGS have value, TIME has value, money is just a system that makes it easier to exchange them; and it's a poor one, at that.

Money as we know it is broken. The simple act of buying a candy bar at the corner store should involve two people: me and the merchant. If I pay with cash, in person that's exactly how it works, but the moment I break out a credit card... Now there are middlemen - LOTS of middlemen - the merchant service company the store owner works with, both banks involved, Visa, Mastercard, American Express, etc. They probably have hardware or software that they're paying a support contract on, hell half of this stuff you can't even BUY, you *have* to RENT it. Somewhere in all these per-transaction fees, monthly fees, support costs, warranty costs and hardware costs the merchant loses a substantial percentage of the "dollars" I've sent him and has to mark up my candy bar to pay for it all. If this sounds like a pile of horse manure to you, that's because it is. If it sounds like the kind of absurdity designed for banks to profit at the expense of the public, that's because it is. If it sounds like technology designed in the 1970s being pushed far past its proper end-of-life... THAT'S. BECAUSE. IT. IS.

It's the 21st century now and it's time our money caught up with our lifestyles. We live in a post-scarcity world where almost everything is data: data can be shuffled about, reproduced a million times and NEVER lose a single bit of clarity - and all for costs that typically round down to zero. Banks hold hardly any paper money these days, it's all data and it costs nearly NOTHING to shuffle that data around. Why on earth should I pay 3% plus 12 cents for a bank somewhere to change one record in a database? It's on par with charging $20 for a CD that costs 14 cents to reproduce, including packaging - and have you noticed that almost no one buys CDs any more?

Bitcoin is digital money as it was meant to be. Bitcoin is digital cash - no absurd transaction fees for making one change in a database, highly secure, entirely digital, relatively anonymous and completely decentralized. I could ramble for hours about the technicalities, but that's not really what's important, is it? You don't want a pile of jargon, merchants don't want a pile of jargon, the two of you just want to exchange money safely and securely and with as few middlemen as possible, and bitcoin has that by the gallon. More than that it doesn't lie to you. Bitcoin doesn't claim to be worth anything, it has no intrinsic value and everyone involved knows it, admits it openly. It's worth what the market says it's worth and we all admit that things are worth bitcoins, not the other way around. Bitcoin admits its youth, admits that it will make mistakes and admits that some of those mistakes can't be fixed. When is the last time your bank or your government was that honest?

Sorry for the back-to-back posts in this tread, but needed to add my 2 cBTC to two posts.

From the quote above: "Bitcoin is digital money as it was meant to be." Upon reading that, I envisioned another tag line: Bitcoin: As it's Meant to Be (where the it is understood).

Here's another company based on "Why" and not to concern about profits: http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/8605 ONLY has 20 billion page views a month.

Case in point? If Facebook's growth was based on the golden circle (from the inside out), then why is Google trying again to build ANOTHER Facebook-type social media from the outside in? Is it because of profit motivation? http://www.freshnessmag.com/2011/06/29/google-project/

[m0w3r]

Why bitcoin?

FREEDOM!

like it

[Trader Steve]

And actually, come to think of it, it really does work well with Bitcoin especially.

"Why Bitcoin?"

"The current money situation is stuck in the stone age. Today when you buy something online, you have a few payment options, all of which are either involve large fees for the merchant, such as credit or debit cards or Paypal, or are slow and cumbersome, like direct bank transfers. If you try to buy something from a merchant in another country, you have limited payment options and even more fees. Even paying people in person is tough- cash is insecure and can be stolen or counterfeit and a check takes days for you to get your money after you drive to a bank to deposit it- assuming it doesn't bounce. The end result is higher prices for you, the customer and longer wait times. Basically, your money isn't even working like it should- to help you get goods and services that you want quickly and safely!

It's time for Money 2.0. Money that transfers in an instant and everyone knows is secure. Money that doesn't require big banks or payment houses to process so there can be zero fees for merchants and lower prices for customers. Money that anyone, anywhere can obtain and use, no matter their local currency. Money that can be everywhere you want it to be in an instant, and nowhere else. It's time for Money 2.0 and it's Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is a digital blahahabblablahbla........"

Someone take this and make a happy animated youtube video out of it.

+1

[Trader Steve]

Hey my early adopter friends. Let me assume for a second that you like I believe that Bitcoin is the greatest invention of our recent time and it is in our best interest and the interest of the whole world to get a critical mass of people use it and support it.

I think we're already doing a pretty good job of it but I also think there's a lot of room to grow. And in that spirit I was hoping you'd sacrifice 18min and watch the following presentation:

Simon Sinek: How great leaders inspire action

Thank you for your time.

You linked. I followed. Deserves a bump.

T-Shirt idea:

            Ask Me

        Why Bitcoins?

(insert Bitcoin image here)

I posted the above then moved on only to come back to this a few minutes later to write this: Hell with a t-shirt. How about a tattoo? And parade yourself in Sturgis, SD.

The only potential problem I see is that this could attract the wrong people - like those who might try "rubberhose cryptoanalysis" or someone in your sphere of influence who goes bad and installs a keystroke logger on your computer when you're away from it. Kind of like advertising "I carry anonymous cash"

[Phinnaeus Gage]

Hey my early adopter friends. Let me assume for a second that you like I believe that Bitcoin is the greatest invention of our recent time and it is in our best interest and the interest of the whole world to get a critical mass of people use it and support it.

I think we're already doing a pretty good job of it but I also think there's a lot of room to grow. And in that spirit I was hoping you'd sacrifice 18min and watch the following presentation:

Simon Sinek: How great leaders inspire action

Thank you for your time.

You linked. I followed. Deserves a bump.

T-Shirt idea:

            Ask Me

        Why Bitcoins?

(insert Bitcoin image here)

I posted the above then moved on only to come back to this a few minutes later to write this: Hell with a t-shirt. How about a tattoo? And parade yourself in Sturgis, SD.

The only potential problem I see is that this could attract the wrong people - like those who might try "rubberhose cryptoanalysis" or someone in your sphere of influence who goes bad and installs a keystroke logger on your computer when you're away from it. Kind of like advertising "I carry anonymous cash"

Very valid point. I guess I'll just nix the Bitcoin bling idea as well.

[theymos]

The root problem with conventional currency is all the trust that's required to make it work. The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust. Banks must be trusted to hold our money and transfer it electronically, but they lend it out in waves of credit bubbles with barely a fraction in reserve. We have to trust them with our privacy, trust them not to let identity thieves drain our accounts. Their massive overhead costs make micropayments impossible.

A generation ago, multi-user time-sharing computer systems had a similar problem. Before strong encryption, users had to rely on password protection to secure their files, placing trust in the system administrator to keep their information private. Privacy could always be overridden by the admin based on his judgment call weighing the principle of privacy against other concerns, or at the behest of his superiors. Then strong encryption became available to the masses, and trust was no longer required. Data could be secured in a way that was physically impossible for others to access, no matter for what reason, no matter how good the excuse, no matter what.

It's time we had the same thing for money. With e-currency based on cryptographic proof, without the need to trust a third party middleman, money can be secure and transactions effortless.

One of the fundamental building blocks for such a system is digital signatures. A digital coin contains the public key of its owner. To transfer it, the owner signs the coin together with the public key of the next owner. Anyone can check the signatures to verify the chain of ownership. It works well to secure ownership, but leaves one big problem unsolved: double-spending. Any owner could try to re-spend an already spent coin by signing it again to another owner. The usual solution is for a trusted company with a central database to check for double-spending, but that just gets back to the trust model. In its central position, the company can override the users, and the fees needed to support the company make micropayments impractical.

Bitcoin's solution is to use a peer-to-peer network to check for double-spending. In a nutshell, the network works like a distributed timestamp server, stamping the first transaction to spend a coin. It takes advantage of the nature of information being easy to spread but hard to stifle. For details on how it works, see the design paper at http://www.bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

The result is a distributed system with no single point of failure. Users hold the crypto keys to their own money and transact directly with each other, with the help of the P2P network to check for double-spending.

[Nescio]

A generation ago, multi-user time-sharing computer systems had a similar problem. Before strong encryption, users had to rely on password protection to secure their files, placing trust in the system administrator to keep their information private. Privacy could always be overridden by the admin based on his judgment call weighing the principle of privacy against other concerns, or at the behest of his superiors. Then strong encryption became available to the masses, and trust was no longer required. Data could be secured in a way that was physically impossible for others to access, no matter for what reason, no matter how good the excuse, no matter what.

Maybe I'm splitting hairs but the way this is phrased implies that he's not talking about a home user, since the home user is usually their own system administrator and trust in yourself is implicit. The same home user eventually will lose that privilege though, moving to the cloud (e.g. dropbox changing their TOS getting licence to your stuff), on locked down mobile platforms (e.g. Apple) or if companies like Microsoft get their way (no more administrator privileges, remote revoke rights on software etc. - this is already the case for ebooks, ironically 1984 was revoked from Kindle by Amazon). Obviously in a corporate environment the user has no admin privileges (sometimes they do have local admin rights, but these are often trumped by network admin rights implemented through domain policies for example).

If the user is not their own admin then the above is naive for a number of reasons. The admin will not allow user file/partition encryption on the system unless they get the key as well (or have a master key) since without this:
- no off-line virus scans are possible
- encrypted files cannot be compressed so will cost the company more storage for backups
- quota/policy enforcement on filetypes becomes more problematic
- no access to the user's files is possible in case of an accident, or employee leaving the company inamicably
- the company cannot comply with corporate and/or legal requirements to scan/monitor the user's performance/files/mail/whatever

As soon as the user does not comply with this, he'll be in trouble. Perfect example of the worst case scenario is Terry Childs.

[theymos]

You missed "a generation ago". He's talking about university (mostly) computer systems running Unix, with users connected from terminals.