We need an incentive to make first world population use Bitcoin

[thejaytiesto]

Im not including third/second world because I think eventually people that don't have access to banks will naturally see Bitcoin as the solution, but as of right now, the average person in a first world country in a regular situation, if they learn about Bitcoin they will threat it as something that is worth holding long term, like gold, but not something that's worth paying groceries for with, or anything ordinary. I mean, why would anyone pay something you can buy with fiat already, without having to change your fiat to BTC, losing money in the conversion?

This is why we need an incentive, such as cheaper prices. Purse.io is the only reason I know of why I would want to pay with BTC. Other than that, I see no reason and I value my BTC too much to spend on "stuff".

Therefore it is established that we need to incentive people to use it.

If we can't find any ways to do so, Bitcoin will remain as a new form of electronic gold with special features, maybe until "Government Coin" is launched and millions of people start looking for alternatives (since with "Government Coin" it will mean physical cash, that is paper and metal coins, will be removed from circulation, this may be the point where Bitcoin goes to 100k+ per coin, since the entire underground economy will not simply stop existing, but it will find its way for alternatives, and Bitcoin will be the best alternative)

But until then, like I said before, I don't see real reasons of why the average joe is going to pay with BTC, specially when they don't get paid in BTC, because if you get paid directly in BTC you are more prone to spend it, since you don't need to do the stupid fiat->BTC->buy conversion.

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[Lauda]

Surely, any kind of incentives are welcome regardless of what kind of population are we talking about. However, is this necessarily the best approach? What happened to spreading the awareness of the corrupt system? Generally, I think a combination of awareness and incentives/services/merchants is required in order to make Bitcoin more desirable.

This is why we need an incentive, such as cheaper prices. Purse.io is the only reason I know of why I would want to pay with BTC. Other than that, I see no reason and I value my BTC too much to spend on "stuff".

A decent amount of services offer discounts on Bitcoin purchases. What I see lacking is primarily Ebay/Amazon/Google/Apple/Samsung. Once you have those on-board, you get an access to wast amount of content without having to go through intermediaries (e.g. buying gift cards somewhere, or asking people to buy stuff for you).

But until then, like I said before, I don't see real reasons of why the average joe is going to pay with BTC, specially when they don't get paid in BTC, because if you get paid directly in BTC you are more prone to spend it, since you don't need to do the stupid fiat->BTC->buy conversion.

You make a fair point, but the solution to this 'problem' isn't a simple one either. It would be great if there was a possibility to opt-in for a salary in Bitcoin.

[Cereberus]

Surely, any kind of incentives are welcome regardless of what kind of population are we talking about. However, is this necessarily the best approach? What happened to spreading the awareness of the corrupt system? Generally, I think a combination of awareness and incentives/services/merchants is required in order to make Bitcoin more desirable.

This is why we need an incentive, such as cheaper prices. Purse.io is the only reason I know of why I would want to pay with BTC. Other than that, I see no reason and I value my BTC too much to spend on "stuff".

A decent amount of services offer discounts on Bitcoin purchases. What I see lacking is primarily Ebay/Amazon/Google/Apple/Samsung. Once you have those on-board, you get an access to wast amount of content without having to go through intermediaries (e.g. buying gift cards somewhere, or asking people to buy stuff for you).

But until then, like I said before, I don't see real reasons of why the average joe is going to pay with BTC, specially when they don't get paid in BTC, because if you get paid directly in BTC you are more prone to spend it, since you don't need to do the stupid fiat->BTC->buy conversion.

You make a fair point, but the solution to this 'problem' isn't a simple one either. It would be great if there was a possibility to opt-in for a salary in Bitcoin.

The salary in bitcoin is been discussed even other times in another thread but my point here is that only first world countries citizens can opt for such a thing. I think this can opt to be paid like 75% in cash for their spendings and their normal life and 25% in bitcoin. They are the only ones who can do it as I think anyone of such countries can make at least 25% of savings from their monthly payroll. I agree with you that this is not easy to do but its the only option to make salaries in bitcoin a reality.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

Your points are a good ones and I've always said it's silly to buy BTC just to spend it.  And I'm totally cool with it being digital gold. 

Even if we we paid in bitcoin, stuff is still priced in fiat--rent, utilities, phone bill, and the local adult bookstore are all fiat-only.  And then there's still the problem of volatility,  which makes people not want to spend it. 

[franky1]

the main objection people have against bitcoin is simple
"what can i do with bitcoin once i have it"

so the obvious solution is to make bitcoin spendable. eg if you can buy toilet paper, car gasoline and baked beans. (travel, food, toiletries) then everyone will see bitcoin is not just speculative but actually real and useful.

yes i know people say that bitcoin should be a reserve currency and other currencies should be the daily spend currencies. but those people do not care about bitcoin and only want buyers to buy and hold so that sellers can sell at a profit back into fiat.
greed and narrowmindedness of just wanting a fiat increase could make bitcoin useless and eventually cave in on itself.(pump&dump coin)

by making it useful by expanding capacity and keeping the fee's low and having lots of merchant acceptance. would increase bitcoins popularity and gain more users which (side-effect: will increase the greedy fiat price).. will actually make bitcoin stronger and not cave in on itself.

in short
dont lazily advertise bitcoin as a speculaive reserve currency, purely for a price pump. actually realise bitcoin needs to grow and expand to gain real world popularity and usefulness. then everyone can be happy and bitcoin can be stronger.
dont fall for the sidechain for daily spend strategy. it wont help bitcoin

[gentlemand]

Maybe the incentive will be the first world observing lesser worlds having an explosion in commerce due to crypto.

[franky1]

Maybe the incentive will be the first world observing lesser worlds having an explosion in commerce due to crypto.

agreed,,
why waste efforts trying to convert 320m americans 64m brits. 700m europeans
when aiming for 1.2bill africans, 1.2bill indians, 4.5billian asians would hlp the world more. while having less resistance due to the lack of corporate control there

[Holliday]

There already is an incentive, it's just that your typical debt slave doesn't care about that incentive in the slightest.

Guess what, that's OK. Every transaction does not need to be censorship-proof as long as the option exists.

Bitcoin's barrier to entry is having the appropriate level of understanding to realize that there is a need for a system of value transfer that is outside of the reach of those who would choose to exert control over everything. Most people don't understand this. Quite the opposite, most people favor those controls as long as they are fed the line that it's put in place to fight bogeymen. Anyone who is willing to sacrifice their freedom for alleged temporary security has no reason to use Bitcoin.

[neochiny]

Majority of population in first world countries heavily relies on credit. People like spending money they don't have yet, as long as they can buy now and just charge it, the hefty fees don't matter. If this feature could somehow be integrated with bitcoin, then that's a pretty big incentive. (unlikely though)

[calkob]

I totally agree but its just finding the killer app or use-case that is goin to take bitcoin to the masses.  i am sure it will happen eventually but it could be 10-15 years out still.  There is still alot of problems with bitcoin: and i dont mean technically, i mean in useability, the average joe just wont have a clue about bitcoin address and can you imagine if the majority of people you know started using bitcoin, it would be a scammers field day.  ive been using bitcoin since 2012 and i still double check everything i do. 

[Kprawn]

There are some services that stopped accepting some fiat based payment options. You know the classified services that supposedly favored human trafficking and stopped accepting CC payment. 

There are also some causes that are being boycotted, such as FreeSnowden and other whistle blowing sites. These sites will not get funding if it was not for Bitcoin. You can check out some of these

sites here -->  https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Donation-accepting_organizations_and_projects 

[oblivi]

the main objection people have against bitcoin is simple
"what can i do with bitcoin once i have it"

so the obvious solution is to make bitcoin spendable. eg if you can buy toilet paper, car gasoline and baked beans. (travel, food, toiletries) then everyone will see bitcoin is not just speculative but actually real and useful.

yes i know people say that bitcoin should be a reserve currency and other currencies should be the daily spend currencies. but those people do not care about bitcoin and only want buyers to buy and hold so that sellers can sell at a profit back into fiat.
greed and narrowmindedness of just wanting a fiat increase could make bitcoin useless and eventually cave in on itself.(pump&dump coin)

by making it useful by expanding capacity and keeping the fee's low and having lots of merchant acceptance. would increase bitcoins popularity and gain more users which (side-effect: will increase the greedy fiat price).. will actually make bitcoin stronger and not cave in on itself.

in short
dont lazily advertise bitcoin as a speculaive reserve currency, purely for a price pump. actually realise bitcoin needs to grow and expand to gain real world popularity and usefulness. then everyone can be happy and bitcoin can be stronger.
dont fall for the sidechain for daily spend strategy. it wont help bitcoin

It's impossible to reach the volume of transactions per second that it would be needed in order to reach mainstream usage of people buying on the street everywhere with bitcoin on-chain, it will be with lightning network or it will not be and Bitcoin will remain as digital gold, simple as that.

[Yakamoto]

Im not including third/second world because I think eventually people that don't have access to banks will naturally see Bitcoin as the solution, but as of right now, the average person in a first world country in a regular situation, if they learn about Bitcoin they will threat it as something that is worth holding long term, like gold, but not something that's worth paying groceries for with, or anything ordinary. I mean, why would anyone pay something you can buy with fiat already, without having to change your fiat to BTC, losing money in the conversion?

This is why we need an incentive, such as cheaper prices. Purse.io is the only reason I know of why I would want to pay with BTC. Other than that, I see no reason and I value my BTC too much to spend on "stuff".

Therefore it is established that we need to incentive people to use it.

If we can't find any ways to do so, Bitcoin will remain as a new form of electronic gold with special features, maybe until "Government Coin" is launched and millions of people start looking for alternatives (since with "Government Coin" it will mean physical cash, that is paper and metal coins, will be removed from circulation, this may be the point where Bitcoin goes to 100k+ per coin, since the entire underground economy will not simply stop existing, but it will find its way for alternatives, and Bitcoin will be the best alternative)

But until then, like I said before, I don't see real reasons of why the average joe is going to pay with BTC, specially when they don't get paid in BTC, because if you get paid directly in BTC you are more prone to spend it, since you don't need to do the stupid fiat->BTC->buy conversion.

The best way to get people using Bitcoin is to get a big retailer or service provider accepting it with a decent discount rate (looking at something like 2-4%) as well as offer incentives for employers to start offering tiny vouchers or whatever of Bitcoin that their employees can use. Basically get it circulating within the economy, get companies accepting Bitcoin with some decent discount rates to get consumers to use it more, and get more people throughout the world interested in it and get them something that has some money value outside of the current fiat economy. However having Bitcoin become a more common thing might cause some faith in the fiat currencies to waiver, causing some currencies to begin going down in value. That is something a lot of governments don't want to happen.

[ruletheworld]

the main objection people have against bitcoin is simple
"what can i do with bitcoin once i have it"

so the obvious solution is to make bitcoin spendable. eg if you can buy toilet paper, car gasoline and baked beans. (travel, food, toiletries) then everyone will see bitcoin is not just speculative but actually real and useful.

yes i know people say that bitcoin should be a reserve currency and other currencies should be the daily spend currencies. but those people do not care about bitcoin and only want buyers to buy and hold so that sellers can sell at a profit back into fiat.
greed and narrowmindedness of just wanting a fiat increase could make bitcoin useless and eventually cave in on itself.(pump&dump coin)

by making it useful by expanding capacity and keeping the fee's low and having lots of merchant acceptance. would increase bitcoins popularity and gain more users which (side-effect: will increase the greedy fiat price).. will actually make bitcoin stronger and not cave in on itself.

in short
dont lazily advertise bitcoin as a speculaive reserve currency, purely for a price pump. actually realise bitcoin needs to grow and expand to gain real world popularity and usefulness. then everyone can be happy and bitcoin can be stronger.
dont fall for the sidechain for daily spend strategy. it wont help bitcoin

It's impossible to reach the volume of transactions per second that it would be needed in order to reach mainstream usage of people buying on the street everywhere with bitcoin on-chain, it will be with lightning network or it will not be and Bitcoin will remain as digital gold, simple as that.

Your average Joe on the street isn't going to be buying Bitcoin on-chain, simple as that. People are terrible with basic things like passwords, do you think they are ready for key management? Hardcore fans find it hard to keep their money secure, the average person is essentially lost. Most likely, the adoption of Bitcoin will come from secondary-layers on top - everything from ETFs to centralized services like Coinbase/Circle. Those will bring Bitcoin to the everyday people. Like it or not, the whole world isn't ready to adopt Bitcoin owning their private keys tomorrow. Block-size isn't a problem for adoption yet.

[countryfree]

An incentive? Let's think first about who will provide it. Who will pay for it? Who will organize it? The BTC foundation? Coinbase? Your family? All the users of this forum?

[LordCoder]

An incentive? Let's think first about who will provide it. Who will pay for it? Who will organize it? The BTC foundation? Coinbase? Your family? All the users of this forum?

Basically this.

No one will even try to incentive it, because there's no need for it. Every organization already make the required income, if not they wouldn't be there for obvious reasons.

[squatz1]

People just need to see a reason to use it and an easier way to buy it. More companies need to accept it and have to make using it worth it, like Purse.io!

It'll take some time, and a ton of time to say the least

[beastmodeBiscuitGravy]

Bitcoin can only handle 3.7 or so transactions per second, worldwide. We regularly hit that now, so no need to bring more people into using Bitcoin, they'll just get disappointed.

Apparently segwit in April and lightning in August will solve all that tho... so best just relax for a while.

When monolithic lightning hubs have taken over the transactional load from the Bitcoin network, we can talk about growing the userbase again.

[franky1]

It's impossible to reach the volume of transactions per second that it would be needed in order to reach mainstream usage of people buying on the street everywhere with bitcoin on-chain, it will be with lightning network or it will not be and Bitcoin will remain as digital gold, simple as that.

agreed, in the context of bitcoin being the "one world order" single currency.

but if you think about it as just another of the 180 real world currencies, used in places that dont have a good currency/banking infrustructure. and not used 43times a month(buying everything) but instead just 5 times a month, (weekly groceries and monthly rent). then it is much more achievable.

also it doesnt need to suddenly explode from 2 milllion users today to 263million users next year. it can grow naturally and usefully.
even stats show that when 4mb blocks are activated (yes even core now likes 4mb after all the cries that 2mb was bad) we can have capacity of 8 million users doing 5 transactions a month happily in the near future, onchain.
(or if you want the greedy fiat lovers pump and dump stats: 1billion users doing 1tx every 2 years to HODL)

my point of my last post is that if we imagine it as a natural growth over the next 20-30 years with rational, workable expansion for real usage then trying to get 8million next year, 16mill in a few years and 32mill a few years after that, is natural and healthy and scaling also grows with it

trying to push for 1billion users tomorrow is flawed for many reasons and wont work or make bitcoin stronger in any way shape or form

as for the developed vs developing cultures
but trying to get 32million americans (10% population) to use bitcoin is actually harder than trying to get 32million indians(2.5% population) to use bitcoin, for these reasons:
1. developing coutries are more open to change and open to better financial self-control
2. developing countries need new financial tools, developed countries (blindly) think they already have everything they need
3. if you had a group of people... 2.5% is a less stressful number to convince than 10%

in short
32m population for real world usage as a medium term target is easier than a 1billion speculative background reserve currency target
by concentrating on a useful bitcoin rather than a speculative bitcoin makes bitcoin stronger.

if you disagree and are going to reply about something related to fiat valuations. then sit back and realise you are not a true bitcoiner if your only goal is to eventually hold bags of fiat. and also realise by going the rational route of useful bitcoin, will also positively increase the market cap so even you fiat lovers will profit

[VC George]

We have a long bumpy way to go before Bitcoin hits the mainstream and it's mainly bcs of limited awareness & not incectives (personal opinion). For example 2 days ago I learnt about PayPal frozing Bundy ranche's donations and commented on their facebook page about BTC especially when it comes to donations, sure I got some likes but I had a wacko posting huge replies saying bitcoin is a ponzi scam and that it got hacked the other day xD

Just teach people about it, mention it like the phenomenon it really is and more will come (like I and you did).