We need an incentive to make first world population use Bitcoin

[Dinki]

Transaction fees is another setback that should be looked into, you don't pay to spend fiat but you have to pay to spend bitcoins.

[Hirose UK]

sadly we just haven't found something worth than daily stuff to buy with bitcoin.

in this first world you can pay bills, buy home, etc by fiat. that's why people prefer to convert their bitcoins to fiat if they don't find that worth things they can buy with bitcoin in their countries.

[Senor.Bla]

i can agree on a lot of points made. and i think we need to raise the number of places you can pay with bitcoin. this is so important.
also we need to develop bitcoin further, as it need to handle more transactions per second.
also fees are a problem. and here is a thing OP missed. the 2+3 world surely would like to use bitcoin, but the fees (which are a joke in the first world) are quite high in their local currencies.

[Holliday]

Transaction fees is another setback that should be looked into, you don't pay to spend fiat but you have to pay to spend bitcoins.

Freedom isn't free. The decentralized network needs a reason to exist. The mining subsidy isn't permanent. Bitcoin's security model must slowly move from coin base rewards to transaction fees. Early adopters have been spoiled by the high coin base reward / low transaction fee bootstrapping period.

Fiat has the wonderful hidden fee (or tax) known as inflation, which is chosen at the whim of a board of directors (to enrich the few at the expense of the many).

[Denker]

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. 

Most of the people in western countries will use Bitcoin as a store of value or long term investment as they have seen how much it had grown in the past.
From it's first official exchange price of $0.07 to first halving in 2012, price was around $12,16 at that time, it grew a tremendous 17371%!!!
And now to second halving this year, price of $635,  BTC grew another 5222%!!!
So I can absolutely understand people who speculate for similar growth in the next years.
Let's assume we could make another gain of 500% until 2020 to halving 3. That would be a price of $3175!
Of course that assumption could be completely naive, but I can understand people who think like that.
So seing Bitcoin and treating it as a digital gold is imo not the dumbest.
Sure spending and using it as currency aprreciated and needed as well. But the smart guys who know about the potential will buy back the amount they have spent before.

[Senor.Bla]

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. 

Most of the people in western countries will use Bitcoin as a store of value or long term investment as they have seen how much it had grown in the past.
From it's first official exchange price of $0.07 to first halving in 2012, price was around $12,16 at that time, it grew a tremendous 17371%!!!
And now to second halving this year, price of $635,  BTC grew another 5222%!!!
So I can absolutely understand people who speculate for similar growth in the next years.
Let's assume we could make another gain of 500% until 2020 to halving 3. That would be a price of $3175!
Of course that assumption could be completely naive, but I can understand people who think like that.
So seing Bitcoin and treating it as a digital gold is imo not the dumbest.
Sure spending and using it as currency aprreciated and needed as well. But the smart guys who know about the potential will buy back the amount they have spent before.

like any other bitcoin fellow i also like to play with the number in to the moon scenarios. the fun thing about this is, that nobody or nothing in the case of bitcoin has done this before in a globally connected world. so nobody can really say where this has the potential to end up. but if you just look on the number of people using bitcoin then there is a lot of potential. starting now you are late to the party but not to late since we are the first percent to use bitcoin if it goes global.
but will this happen if everybody just holds? no, or at least not that quick. so we do need to not only invest and hold, but also use it. even if it is not much.
maybe just buy bitcoin for holding and spent in bitcoin what you earn in bitcoin. this would be a start. also accept bitcoin, even if it is just for you friends or small stuff you sell. 

[gentlemand]

Transaction fees is another setback that should be looked into, you don't pay to spend fiat but you have to pay to spend bitcoins.

Freedom isn't free. The decentralized network needs a reason to exist. The mining subsidy isn't permanent. Bitcoin's security model must slowly move from coin base rewards to transaction fees. Early adopters have been spoiled by the high coin base reward / low transaction fee bootstrapping period.

Fiat has the wonderful hidden fee (or tax) known as inflation, which is chosen at the whim of a board of directors (to enrich the few at the expense of the many).

Sadly that's not how most people think and never will. Plenty of humans lack an innate sense of bigger picture. Still, hopefully there are enough relatively smart folks who can process that.

[tyz]

I do not think we need a special incentive for the first world population. Most of them have the money to buy and try Bitcoin on their own when they see a need to own or use them. As long as the current paper money system is working this way that the inflation is low and that you can buy daily needed products with it, only enthusiasts will switch to Bitcoin or alternative currencies.
It is time-wasting in my opinion to convince someone who will not directly have an advantage from the switch. It would make more sense to incentive second or third world people. Many people there would definitely have an advantage to switch to alternative currencies like BTC.

[manselr]

Transaction fees is another setback that should be looked into, you don't pay to spend fiat but you have to pay to spend bitcoins.

Mmmh how the fuck you don't pay to spend fiat? You mean physically? Well physical cash will be removed in the future so what then? Everything will have some kind of tax, well it does right now already.

[skyline_king]

i can't see bitcoin hitting mainstream first world any time soon or at all... for one the price is way way to unstable me as a merchant why take bit coins when say i sell a product at 1 bitcoin today and then tommorow it could be worth half that price... we need a more stable market and less this bull shit hacking and exchanges going down... all it takes is 1 neg thing to scare people from the 100 positve things they hear and read....

[franky1]

Transaction fees is another setback that should be looked into, you don't pay to spend fiat but you have to pay to spend bitcoins.

Freedom isn't free. The decentralized network needs a reason to exist. The mining subsidy isn't permanent. Bitcoin's security model must slowly move from coin base rewards to transaction fees. Early adopters have been spoiled by the high coin base reward / low transaction fee bootstrapping period.

Fiat has the wonderful hidden fee (or tax) known as inflation, which is chosen at the whim of a board of directors (to enrich the few at the expense of the many).

trying to keep capacity down to force a fee war today is stupid to a magnitude of 21million.
fee's are not important today, the block reward exists.
fee's are just considered an unneeded bonus right now.

the fee's become important in 20+ years, it may even be longer then that if we keep bitcoin being useful to have the side effect of a larger market cap so that the reward amounts to a healthy fiat value to cover miners electric bill.

increasing capacity means more people. more people means less each person has to pay to get to a combined total that benefits miners.
this is something that can happen naturally without impacting people.

as for thinking that spending 10cents is meaningless.. that is the mindset of the western world and the mindset of people only caring about market caps. bitcoin needs and should remain useful. afterall once people start to think 20cents fee is acceptable and a $10 holding is just spam then you are just throwing people out of bitcoin making it as corrupt as the fiat banking world.

and this is coming from someone with hundreds of bitcoins.. but atleast i can put aside my greed and see bitcoin for what it is and what it should be

[franky1]

i can't see bitcoin hitting mainstream first world any time soon or at all... for one the price is way way to unstable me as a merchant why take bit coins when say i sell a product at 1 bitcoin today and then tommorow it could be worth half that price... we need a more stable market and less this bull shit hacking and exchanges going down... all it takes is 1 neg thing to scare people from the 100 positve things they hear and read....

by going the speculation route of not having merchants. the bitcoin valuation will pump and dump more often. so the only way to stabalise bitcoin is to have a natural growth of users and merchants.. (which has a natural side effect of making speculators rich, so no lose situation) rather than the pure speculative route of barriers to entry, forcing capacity not to grow purely to increase fee's now for something meaningless over the next 2 dacades, and large whale investors having no real world uses of it.

natural growth of users and merchants is the logical, sensible route

[zeaderza]

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. 

alright. buying bitcoin to pay for shopping is silly and even it is stupidity. but what about those people who work for bitcoin and earn bitcoin? they need to pay with bitcoin or exchange bitcoin to fiat.
everyone here is not getting bitcoin just for holding reason.

[skyline_king]

i can't see bitcoin hitting mainstream first world any time soon or at all... for one the price is way way to unstable me as a merchant why take bit coins when say i sell a product at 1 bitcoin today and then tommorow it could be worth half that price... we need a more stable market and less this bull shit hacking and exchanges going down... all it takes is 1 neg thing to scare people from the 100 positve things they hear and read....

by going the speculation route of not having merchants. the bitcoin valuation will pump and dump more often. so the only way to stabalise bitcoin is to have a natural growth of users and merchants.. (which has a natural side effect of making speculators rich, so no lose situation) rather than the pure speculative route of barriers to entry, forcing capacity not to grow purely to increase fee's now for something meaningless over the next 2 dacades, and large whale investors having no real world uses of it.

natural growth of users and merchants is the logical, sensible route

 Well I know natural growth is the best for btc. the worst thing tho is all these hacks and exchanges going scam or closing with users funds.. wall Street would never just close with funds and the exchanges need some better control or face it bitcoin will stay where it is as no legit and trusted place to sell and buy them... alot of people will not trust people they don't know or if they can't see what there funds are doing at all times...

So maybe I will change and say bitcoin can go mainstream when there is a transparent and trusting exchange that show what and where all user funds are at all time and that has no problem spending millions on security

[chixka000]

I think that this topic is quite complicated. I cant see any situation where to put in those incentives your are saying. Maybe bitcoin is really not for buying goods? But this thing would rrally matter on how are we going to use bitcoin

[Holliday]

Transaction fees is another setback that should be looked into, you don't pay to spend fiat but you have to pay to spend bitcoins.

Freedom isn't free. The decentralized network needs a reason to exist. The mining subsidy isn't permanent. Bitcoin's security model must slowly move from coin base rewards to transaction fees. Early adopters have been spoiled by the high coin base reward / low transaction fee bootstrapping period.

Fiat has the wonderful hidden fee (or tax) known as inflation, which is chosen at the whim of a board of directors (to enrich the few at the expense of the many).

trying to keep capacity down to force a fee war today is stupid to a magnitude of 21million.
fee's are not important today, the block reward exists.
fee's are just considered an unneeded bonus right now.

the fee's become important in 20+ years, it may even be longer then that if we keep bitcoin being useful to have the side effect of a larger market cap so that the reward amounts to a healthy fiat value to cover miners electric bill.

increasing capacity means more people. more people means less each person has to pay to get to a combined total that benefits miners.
this is something that can happen naturally without impacting people.

as for thinking that spending 10cents is meaningless.. that is the mindset of the western world and the mindset of people only caring about market caps. bitcoin needs and should remain useful. afterall once people start to think 20cents fee is acceptable and a $10 holding is just spam then you are just throwing people out of bitcoin making it as corrupt as the fiat banking world.

and this is coming from someone with hundreds of bitcoins.. but atleast i can put aside my greed and see bitcoin for what it is and what it should be

Every discussion isn't about the block size. The fact is fees need to take over as the mechanism for securing the block chain. It should be gradual so we don't have the shock of spoiled brats crying about high fees (which we already have today with the currently ridiculously low fees). The block reward has halved twice now, it's perfectly reasonable to expect fees to start taking some of the burden, today.

[offtopic block size debate pushed into every thread franky1 posts in]

Bitcoin is not, and never will be, suited for mainstream mundane transaction volumes while every-transaction-is-stored-on-the-permanent-record-which-every-full-node-must-keep-forever. It's nonsensical to even try and achieve such a thing. Bitcoin can't compete with Paypal or VISA (or any other centralized service) when it comes to everyday transactions. And it shouldn't. Bitcoin provides censorship-proof value transfer, and any and every change must be approached with that in mind. Ignoring it while trying to compete with centralized services is a sure fire way to destroy the very thing that makes Bitcoin useful.

Every transaction does not need to be censorship-proof as long as the option exists.

Franky1, your problem is that you can't see the forest for the trees. That and you think every discussion is about the block size.

[/offtopic block size debate pushed into every thread franky1 posts in]

[mlbs]

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.

[MingLee]

To be honest, for the first world, unless something happens with the mainstream financial situation and they lose a lot of their work (houses, cars, bank accounts, etc.), they have no incentive. The status quo works for a ton of them already.

With the third world they can think of Bitcoin as a way to make more money and live more comfortable lives. For the first world, their fiat would serve them just fine.

[xdrpx]

Let's think about it this way. There will be 21 Million coins and in many videos where Bitcoins are introduced to new people they're made aware of this and also told that Bitcoin at one point will be scarce and will increase in price a lot. Keeping this in mind most people prefer storing Bitcoins rather than spending because they expect it be be of higher value cause of the limit that it'll reach one day for mining. The incentive to increase spending for Bitcoins would be to generally accept Bitcoins as a payment at more Brick and mortar stores which would induce people to buy goods for cheap. Probably a discount on goods purchased using Bitcoins would be nice cause it helps sellers eliminate credit card fees in Western counterparts.

Bitcoins should be advertised as a currency to help the decentralization trend and motivate them to spend it to buy electronic and digital goods as well as daily necessities. To have this happen we'll need a Debitcard operator that provides a Bitcoin debit card for almost the same yearly fee as we pay to our banks for fiat debit cards. We will also need to eliminate monthly transaction fees and ATM fees for it. This way people can use Bitcoins to buy anything outside even if the vendor doesn't accept Bitcoins at their POS.

[davis196]

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.

If we use cheaper price as an incentive the profit for the merchants will be very small or even zero.

Then whats the incentive for merchants to use bitcoin?

Bitcoin advantages like lower transaction fees has to be the incentive.