Why do people have such a love/hate reaction to Bitcoins when hear about it?

[gabriella]

when a human being hears about bitcoins he either becomes a true faithful and start posting on forum.bitcoins.org, or they laugh at you what a stupid retard you are for believing in a scam.

how come there is no middleground?

[Astro]

how come there is no middleground?

Middle ground doesn't exist on the Internet.

[Bitcoin Swami]

Lots of haters are gold and silver bugs who just went through a huge transformation when they realized that the US dollar is just paper really.  So they built up their stacks and they sat back and relaxed.  Right after they sit back and relax, here comes bitcoins to throw them for another loop thats totally out the box.   The first reaction is to attack I guess.  I am a gold and silver person and initially brushed it off until I did a little research.

 

[silverback]

Unfortunatly it's human nature. People absolutly hate seeing others succeed. Doen't matter whether the success is financial, academic, business, achieving fame or whatever. Any success is  always despised. People especially hate it when their peers do well. So expect extra added bitterness from people who you consider friends.

If you ask me gold is the supreme form of money. Silver comes a close second. Bitcoins are just the new kid on the block. So right now I like gold and silver more than bitcoins. But I can see how moneythat can be encrypted and hidden in a jpg on a pen drive could be useful. There is money to be made in bitcoins and I want a slice of the action.

[nickwit]

Because we've all seen speculative bubbles before...

... and hearing about irritating twerps who are all "me me me" acting out of pure greed, talking about "how great they're doing"...

... is a pain in the arse, because they'll probably fail and it's not worth listening to.

or

... is a pain in the arse, because some succeed, and THE LAST people to deserve success are irritating twerps who are all "me me me".

or

... they've gone into evangelising mode whereby they tirelessly try to enroll other people... and for some reason, this is even more irritating than "me me me", especially if it either fails, or succeeds... and it will probably do at least one of these.


Basically.

We've seen it all before you see.


Compounded onto that is the way that irritating-twerps who are all "me me me" acting out of pure greed have seriously fucked the global economy twice in the last 10 years, but I don't think people are really responding to that... it's just the "me me me" bit. The world does not need people who are out for themselves. We all instinctively know this.

[JeanLucPicard]

when a human being hears about bitcoins he either becomes a true faithful and start posting on forum.bitcoins.org, or they laugh at you what a stupid retard you are for believing in a scam.

how come there is no middleground?

Someone whom shall remain nameless that we all know.... has been "dead" for 2000 years now, and there's still no middle ground on who he was, what he did for us and what he left us with...

[evoorhees]

It's hard for there to be middle ground on a question like, "should people be free or enslaved?" and that is at the core of Bitcoin, believe it or not. 

[FreeMoney]

how come there is no middleground?

Middle ground doesn't exist on the Internet.

I love the middle ground Bitcoin posts.

"Bitcoin is a great idea and would revolutionize the world, but alas, there are only 21 million and this is not enough for our big world."

[asdf]

People develop a mental model of how the world works and identify with that model. When you tell them about something that contradicts this model, they take it as a personal insult. You're basically telling the ego that it is invalid.

This is why people become so entrenched in their beliefs. The ego is the sum of the mind's beliefs.

[Jaime Frontero]

People develop a mental model of how the world works and identify with that model. When you tell them about something that contradicts this model, they take it as a personal insult. You're basically telling the ego that it is invalid.

This is why people become so entrenched in their beliefs. The ego is the sum of the mind's beliefs.

+1

'asdf'.  now where have i seen that before?

[FreeMoney]

People develop a mental model of how the world works and identify with that model. When you tell them about something that contradicts this model, they take it as a personal insult. You're basically telling the ego that it is invalid.

This is why people become so entrenched in their beliefs. The ego is the sum of the mind's beliefs.

This is part of my model of the world (and so is Bitcoin).

[juken]

There seems to be a certain group of people in the gold/silver community who seem to misunderstand what fiat currency means and would apply their own definition of it to anything that is not gold and silver. This is simply wrong.

There's another camp of people who think the world is going into an economic collapse mode and that bitcoins will be impractical for those times.

I'm not going to be so closed-minded as to denounce bitcoins without knowing truly what it is. I have high hopes for this community and bitcoin's future. I guess that puts me in the PRO camp.

The lack of middle-ground can be applied to many debates where you simply CANNOT take a middle ground. Fence-sitting usually means someone cannot commit to anything, and is also the equivalent to denying facts.

It's like someone saying they're not racist, but.....

[mikewillz]

People have been brainwashed. Be happy you get it. It's proof you didn't buy in to the propaganda.

[airdata]

some people just have a natural reaction to hate on things which they aren't a part of.

[sceeth0]

Beliefs tend to become more extreme after debate.  As asdf mentioned, your ego is threatened every time your beliefs are challenged.  If the challenge fails to convince you, the most common response is to react against it, hardening your viewpoint.  The degree to which the subject is emotionally charged also matters here.  In something that has little meaning, one can easily be swayed back and forth as more evidence accrues.  With something like money that sort of fence sitting is almost impossible for any length of time, except for the hyper-rational among us.  We already have an emotional subject with ramifications to the ego, and these forums provide a high density of easily accessible arguments.  So a high percentage of those who remain here any length of time would be expected to gravitate towards an extreme view.

[ElectricMonk]

I can barely contain my indifference to this topic.

[cloud9]

No middleground - Maybe

Because if a financial industry sponsored, lawyer firm sponsored Senator ( see http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=N00001093&cycle=2010 ) take a stand against it, and negate it publicly - it will terribly fail in the United States

or

If the United States citizens stop calling Bitcoin a currency and start calling it what it really is, a digital crypto-commodity (like those you buy at MtGox and not those that bitcoin.org refers to as P2P Virtual Currency - it might terribly succeed as it does not fall within the reaches of the financial industry and is a pure barter transaction between the digital crypto-commodity for goods/services.  Or a sales transaction when you buy or sell your digital crypto-commodity.

The United Kingdom and Australia see it as a digital asset, and not a currency:

It seems like Australia and the United Kingdom's tax offices view Bitcoins in the latter manner.  see http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/08/bitcoin_under_attack/

UK considers Bitcoins legal and taxable unique intellectual property assets? : "... quoting Her Magesty’s Revenue & Customs as saying that turning Bitcoins into currency could make transactions taxable..."  (turning Bitcoins into currency = Bitcoins not a currency, but a digital good?)

Australia considers Bitcoins legal and taxable unique intellectual property assets? : "... If traced by the Australian Tax Office, Bitcoins would probably get the same treatment as “barter” exchanges, with tax assessed on the value of traded goods or services. ..." (barter of digital goods?)

Also MtGox has carefully worded their website as well as to proclaim that you can buy or sell the internet commodity known as Bitcoin.  Unlike bitcoin.org proclaiming it to be a currency, for some unknown reason?

Is calling your Bitcoins that you buy/sell/(trade/barter for goods) a digital P2P crypto-commodity not maybe more accurate and legally acceptable if it is traded/exchanged/bartered or bought/sold not within the scope of financial industry?

Disclaimer:  Applies to all Cloud9 posts.  Poster's opinion only.  On a forum like this we don't need to give you permission to derive your own opinion in the manner you feel suitable.

[BubbleBoy]

"Bitcoin is a great idea and would revolutionize the world, but alas, there are only 21 million and this is not enough for our big world."

You betcha. If they are to revolutionize the world, there should be plenty of them to go around.

Oh, I see now, it's not about revolutionizing the world: it's about changing the current oligarchy with a brand new plutocracy of which you are a member, that consists of no more than 21.000 people each owning 1000 BTC. What's not to ridicule, the pompous self importance these people give to themselves, or the absurd notion that they could somehow succeed ?

[kiba]

So they react like this? http://bitcoinweekly.com/articles/reactions-to-bitcoin

Indifference is hard to detect because they don't make lot of noise.

[cloud9]

"Bitcoin is a great idea and would revolutionize the world, but alas, there are only 21 million and this is not enough for our big world."

You betcha. If they are to revolutionize the world, there should be plenty of them to go around.

Oh, I see now, it's not about revolutionizing the world: it's about changing the current oligarchy with a brand new plutocracy of which you are a member, that consists of no more than 21.000 people each owning 1000 BTC. What's not to ridicule, the pompous self importance these people give to themselves, or the absurd notion that they could somehow succeed ?

Based on your assumptions of Bitcoin's intentions:  If it's so easy to become world dominator by your definitions - why don't you just buy $30k worth and become one of them   ?

Did you know: If you buy 1 btc you buy 100,000,000 divided units of divisable bitcoin currently at $30 / 1btc .

So if you want to speculate on bitcoins success you can currently get about 100,000,000 divided units of 1 btc divisible unit.  Is there enough for your purposes?

If you use two of the divided units decimal positions for deci, and centi you have ultimately 1,000,000 divided units with an additional deci, and centi position.  21,000,000 divisible btc units into 1,000,000 divided units with an additional deci, and centi position gives 21,000,000,000,000.00 .  Would that be a large enough economy for your bitcoins to take accounting of?  The world GDP at current purchase power parity stands at $US 74,264,873,000,000.00 ( see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP%29 ) - so is 21,000,000,000,000.00 enough for world domination - not quite?  Unless you throw away the centi place holder in the above assumption.

Disclaimer:  The postings of Cloud9 on forum,bitcoin.org is an individual opinion.  This being a forum, you do not need permission to derive your own opinions.