>50% of the population still think a blockchain is some kind of magic

[BlackHatCoiner]

What would you do if you found out that some in Gaza are currently trading DOGE for some goods and services there right now? Wouldn't that sorta ruin your thesis?

What is my thesis? That bitcoin is the most liquid cryptocurrency? It is. There's no doubt about that. Every person who accepts crypto, accepts bitcoin.

Perhaps people who are starving don't care about bringing down the secret cabal of Jews running the world and just want to transfer value from one place to another?

Lol. I didn't mention anything about the Fed. I'm simply pointing out a tangible use case, and you're in denial because bitcoin being used more than any other digital asset goes against your business interests.

[o48o]

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Lol. So basically, the richest users determine what is correct and what is fake. While it does solve the sybil attack problem somewhat, it is easily manipulable, and if the founders hold lots of the tokens (like it's common in altcoins) then they basically are those deciding about the "correctness" of a fact.
-cut-

And it's not like the major problem would be forged articles from credible medias, that people wouldn't be able to distinguish from each other.

Problem is that some people are unequipped to deal with media in the first place. They lack tools to validate the source, or separate credible media from random people shouting in the internet. Some people believe memes and pictures of charts over actual studies, and if those charts / memes are discredited, there will be 10 more replacing it, because it's firehose of falsehood we are fighting against. Those debunked stories have less views then original lies.

So what would that timestamp help, when people don't care about the sources now? How would they confirm anything with blockchain, when they don't want to confirm anything now. Some people just don't care. They don't have tools or time to confirm or debunk anything, so their version of critical thinking is just not to believe, and doubly so if it's from "mainstream" media. It's all confirmation bias and self grandiose these people are after. People just love to see themselves as part of a small group, that have figured it out better and then others. That's why they seek anything that's weird and over the top conspiracies over reality.

This is a huge opportunity for some media persons to cash in, and for hostile countries to spread distrust. There's enough financial incentives for mis/disinformation right now, even without traditional advertisements to disrupt good media.

[legiteum]

What would you do if you found out that some in Gaza are currently trading DOGE for some goods and services there right now? Wouldn't that sorta ruin your thesis?

What is my thesis?

Your thesis is that every means of value transfer ever invented before by mankind, and every one that will be invented in the future, is "shit" and Bitcoin will always be better than them no matter what. That's life being a Bitcoin maxi .

[alastantiger]

But once these people educate themselves to this technology, I would say, they can change their mind towards this industry. People will wonder on so many things but once they start learning something, they would just say that it is easy. And they will appreciate more the things that they have been ignoring for so long.

This statistics is making more sense and as I read through the thread I can see reasons why some people still consider Blockchain to be magic. There are things that are made possible with the Blockchain that most people didn't think was possible untill they saw it being achieved with Blockchain. Bitcoin is a good example as people didn't believe there could be a currency that is independent of the government and doesn't have to rely on the government for it to be capable of surviving. Bitcoin has done that for more than a decade and it's still very much alive. Without knowing how the Blockchain technology function, you too will call what it does, magic and there are more that we can achieve with Blockchain technology. The more research are carried out, new solution through the help of the Blockchain will be discovered.

[Lanatsa]

But once these people educate themselves to this technology, I would say, they can change their mind towards this industry. People will wonder on so many things but once they start learning something, they would just say that it is easy. And they will appreciate more the things that they have been ignoring for so long.

This statistics is making more sense and as I read through the thread I can see reasons why some people still consider Blockchain to be magic. There are things that are made possible with the Blockchain that most people didn't think was possible untill they saw it being achieved with Blockchain. Bitcoin is a good example as people didn't believe there could be a currency that is independent of the government and doesn't have to rely on the government for it to be capable of surviving. Bitcoin has done that for more than a decade and it's still very much alive. Without knowing how the Blockchain technology function, you too will call what it does, magic and there are more that we can achieve with Blockchain technology. The more research are carried out, new solution through the help of the Blockchain will be discovered.

Dont know on where we do get that 50% but no matter on what are the current numbers now or as of this moment then those numbers will really be that increasing as we do know that adoption and recognition is on the move or something which is inevitable. We are already on an era on where technological advancement is improving even more as we do go ahead and blockchain technology is included and Bitcoin had started it all. If we do really tend to look at on its utility then this is something which is really that revolutionary or something that hadnt been created before and thats why its getting that too much attention.

It isnt really just that good when it comes into utility but also because of the opportunity that it do gives into those people who do make out investment and this is something that most people do really focus into and thats why they do really accumulate it as much as they could. We do know that once Bitcoins price is making up some buzz into the market then we could expect that there would be that sudden spike when it comes to its value or price and to those who had bought on the bottom are really that making up some money and this what makes it interesting on accumulating.

[fruktik]

What would you do if you found out that some in Gaza are currently trading DOGE for some goods and services there right now? Wouldn't that sorta ruin your thesis? I certainly don't feel like looking it up, but seems pretty plausible to me.

What choice did they leave for people who found themselves in a difficult situation? Crypto is the only valuable tool that can be used in such circumstances. It is a completely normal situation when people started using DogeCoin. At least it is possible to somehow preserve a semblance of a traditional financial system.

In Venezuela, citizens of the country did exactly the same. If I am not mistaken, they use DashCoin. They did not lose their heads and found a way out. The government is very unhappy with this situation, but there is nothing they can do about it.

[legiteum]

What choice did they leave for people who found themselves in a difficult situation? Crypto is the only valuable tool that can be used in such circumstances. It is a completely normal situation when people started using DogeCoin. At least it is possible to somehow preserve a semblance of a traditional financial system.

In Venezuela, citizens of the country did exactly the same. If I am not mistaken, they use DashCoin. They did not lose their heads and found a way out. The government is very unhappy with this situation, but there is nothing they can do about it.

Exactly. Now imagine you are a Bitcoin maxi, and you'd rather starve to death rather than use some means of value transfer that isn't Bitcoin.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Your thesis is that every means of value transfer ever invented before by mankind, and every one that will be invented in the future, is "shit" and Bitcoin will always be better than them no matter what.

I believe bitcoin is the best money ever invented, primarily because it has the best money properties to this date. I don't think that it's absolutely the best medium of exchange or "means of value transfer" as you call it. For a point-of-sale transaction, for example, it is absolutely worse than cash or debit card. But, to send money to a sanctioned country, it is better than cash and debit card. This is all I'm saying. No Fed, no Jews, no nothing. It's just that bitcoin being superior as medium of exchange in certain cases triggers you, because you're in complete denial that bitcoin can be more useful than x.

[Pmalek]

A little bit off-topic maybe, but the average Joe doesn't need to know how the Bitcoin blockchain works to use bitcoin. They need to know the basics of sending and receiving BTC. It's recommended that they understand how to backup their seed, protect their keys, select fees, and use common sense to avoid scams. They can consider the technical part to be magic if they want. We have had credit cards since the 50's, and I bet you that most of their users wouldn't know how they worked either. What's important is that they do, and when they swipe it at a retailer, the bill gets magically paid.

[d5000]

Problem is that some people are unequipped to deal with media in the first place. They lack tools to validate the source, or separate credible media from random people shouting in the internet.

I agree with this part of your post. And yes, timestamping would only solve a small part of the problem.

However, tools based on digital signatures -- not blockchains! -- can, in my opinion, help a bit here. Science institutions can deliver data and sign them, and the sources can be tracked completely in a completely automated fashion. I liked the Semantic Web idea, where you can link all kinds of facts together. For example: Researcher X in University Y found out that a certain indicator has the value Z. All values by all researchers could be encoded into RDF (a language to represent knowledge) and signed by the institution. [1] This is of course happening but on a smaller scale that it should and mostly in disciplines like medicine where it's absolutely necessary (in social sciences, it's more the exception than the rule, and it's mainly social sciences where "culture wars" are fought).

If all researchers in science would use open standards like RDF and digital signatures a bit more extensively, it would be much easier to create meta-studies, which are the best thing we have in the 21th century about "assessing the credibility of facts". You could search the papers for all values of Z for example, order the results by the credibility of the source, and you would have a good result about value Z.

Of course some will cry "gatekeepers!!!". And there may be loopholes where you could get a peer-reviewed study in a journal, and thus you could end up with a single result for e.g. value Z which is completely wrong. However, this won't happen that frequently, so your "automated meta-study" would still find the best result.

Now educate children at a relatively early age about "media literacy", give them those tools, and fake news would have already a much harder task. Some would still not care, but at least those that want to know truths, would have the tools at their disposal.

But blockchains? They would not fit much in that process. It's even an additional problem if people assign credibility to a Proof-of-stake "fact credibility voting" platform.

And @legiteum, I'll be very short because we have already discussed the topic of Bitcoin use cases/advantages in other threads:

- you confuse the word "L2" with centralized sidechains, but many L2s like Lightning do not fit into that model and aren't centralized at all,
- "the market has spoken" means nothing, sorry. Bitcoin usage "as money" may be a bit stagnant, but its a complex topic where volatility is a key factor and it can change at any time.

I will create a more on-topic thread about "Bitcoin use cases/advantages" soon. And I think you should re-think your marketing strategy

[1] Some will say ChatGPT could actually do that too, but I believe these tools still are not good enough unfortunately. They could however help in categorizing studies.

[shield132]

I just saw the following statement in a global poll by Consensys (the company managing Metamask) and couldn't resist to create a thread about this:

Over 75% of respondents are concerned about AI generating fake news and fraudulent content, while 54% believe blockchain can mitigate those risks.

Source: Consensys report press release

Most of these 54% chose the option "Yes, but I'm not sure how", while an outright "Yes" was much less common.

I think this is very insightful, because it shows the low amount of knowledge people have about Bitcoin and blockchains. And this is also probably the reason why people still massively fall into scams promising all kinds of "magic" features from "blockchains".

Really, how should that blockchain-based magic "removal of AI fake news" even work? Okay, let's see one of the companies proposing to tackle that problem: fact.technology.

Through governance vote, rules are formed and decisions are enforced within the Protocol. All FACT token holders except NRs and NVs can exercise their right to governance vote.

Source: Whitepaper

Lol. So basically, the richest users determine what is correct and what is fake. While it does solve the sybil attack problem somewhat, it is easily manipulable, and if the founders hold lots of the tokens (like it's common in altcoins) then they basically are those deciding about the "correctness" of a fact.

This protocol doesn't solve anything. AI content being "curated" by rich entities like Meta, X or Google is nothing new, and doesn't need blockchains at all.

Blockchains are not magic. There are very few applications which solve real problems and really need blockchains. The Bitcoin use case, a censorship resistant decentralized currency, is the most significant of them.


PS: Mods, if you believe this belongs into the altcoin forum please move it. I think it fits better here as it covers all blockchains.

Even those 51% of people who claim to understand what cryptocurrencies are, have only heard about crypto from TV or advertisements and have no idea what it really is. One guy was telling me that he was an expert in cryptos but had no idea what is Bitcoin Core and Node but he thought that Blockchain.com was the best crypto wallet and Binance was the best exchange.

I remember that in old days, the word Blockchain was abused and ICOs were collecting massive profits by using the term Blockchain. Today I see that tendency is changing and AI is taking its place. It's ridiculous how many companies lie about the use of AI. AI trading is one of the most common bullshit in crypto.

My country integrated blockchain technologies in title registry and I remember how one woman was demanding from consultant to not register her title on Blockchain because he was afraid of it. She was explaining how Blockchain didn't exist during her times but people were still owning lands and she was blaming the consultant