Warren Buffet and Benjamin Graham - Don't buy something you don't understand

[mackminer]

http://www.newswireless.net/index.cfm/article/9012

Hi,
I would be interested in hearing opinions on the above and how the community is going to solve this problem. Buffet and Graham do offer sound advice but most people have the herd mentality don't they.

Although it is hard to believe my parents using bitcoin I can see young people taking it on but will they feel safe, if not surely that will completely put them off.

[hashman]

http://www.newswireless.net/index.cfm/article/9012

Hi,
I would be interested in hearing opinions on the above and how the community is going to solve this problem. Buffet and Graham do offer sound advice but most people have the herd mentality don't they.

Although it is hard to believe my parents using bitcoin I can see young people taking it on but will they feel safe, if not surely that will completely put them off.

Nice article.  In this day and age though we buy stuff we don't understand all the time.  Do you understand the material in a car tire?  How about your CPU architecture?  Corn syrup refinement process?  etc. 

That being said, there is enormous social inertia against rapid acceptance of new technologies especially in the financial sector.   Changes will happen slowly. 

[USSJoin]

http://www.newswireless.net/index.cfm/article/9012

Hi,
I would be interested in hearing opinions on the above and how the community is going to solve this problem. Buffet and Graham do offer sound advice but most people have the herd mentality don't they.

Although it is hard to believe my parents using bitcoin I can see young people taking it on but will they feel safe, if not surely that will completely put them off.

*shrugs* There are always people scared of the new thing, because they don't understand it. For more information, go read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite . The community doesn't need to solve the problem; the death of fiat currencies due to everyone *hating* them (and finally having an alternative) will solve it. (Those who don't switch will simply starve.)

[Yatta99]

"There's a limit to how abstract we like our money to be."

Apparently, many people are willing to let their money become more and more abstract if the last ten years are anything to go by.

I don't get a paycheck that I take to the bank and cash for dollars, I get a direct deposit. I pay bills by ACH transfer or writing checks against the direct deposit I received. I pay my credit card bill by shuffling some bits from my savings account right to the card balance, no physical cash required. Many people at a brick-and-mortar store use credit cards, debit cards, gift cards, and check cards... again, no physical cash required. It's all bits... all 1's and 0's. With cash becoming accepted as that ephemeral, and only with that acceptance, Bitcoin stands ready to be accepted. Earlier attempts at e-cash failed because enough people weren't ready to just let their cash be strings of 1's and 0's. With the big pushes over the last decade for direct deposit and various non-cash ways to pay for things, people have become more accustomed to not using cash but rather cash equivalents. Success for Bitcoin is still a far way from a guarantee, but acceptance for it or something like it is much higher now than anytime in the past. Time will tell.

[mackminer]

Insightful replies. Thanks.

[99bitcoins]

This thing is still not mature yet. There is only one desktop client so far (that I know of) and it doesn't even register my real balance. It's hard to connect to other nodes. And all kinds of growing pains. But I still believe bitcoins have a future once the market kicks in.

[Vince Torres]

You can't compare a cryptocurrency to a bunch of British people losing their jobs.

[BitCoinBarter]

I don't think this applies to BitCoin.

Also you left something out (that I consider important). Buffet* and Graham was talking about investing.

It I remember correctly, Buffet said that you should be able to explain what your investment does in simple terms.
Without going into the weeds, you can do that with BitCoin. If someone can grasp (generally) what a credit card does, then they can understand BitCoin.

Even if you are getting BitCoin to invest only, it is still easy to understand. In this case, I would say it is even easier to understand because you would not need to know about GPUs, Blocks, hashing etc.

* For those who may not know (and don't want to look it up), Buffet was at one time the 2nd most richest person in the world (under Bill Gates).

[hashman]

I don't think this applies to BitCoin.

Also you left something out (that I consider important). Buffet* and Graham was talking about investing.

It I remember correctly, Buffet said that you should be able to explain what your investment does in simple terms.
Without going into the weeds, you can do that with BitCoin. If someone can grasp (generally) what a credit card does, then they can understand BitCoin.

Even if you are getting BitCoin to invest only, it is still easy to understand. In this case, I would say it is even easier to understand because you would not need to know about GPUs, Blocks, hashing etc.

* For those who may not know (and don't want to look it up), Buffet was at one time the 2nd most richest person in the world (under Bill Gates).

You mean according to Forbes I assume.  A lot of money out there doesn't want to be publicly acknowledged. 

[Apopfis]

I bought computer hardware which I understand, creating bitcoins with it is an extra feature.