Has Bitcoin outgrown the "coin" metaphor?

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

While most people who really understand Bitcoin talk about it as a ledger, the media and the public in general still talk about it in what seems a very "2011" way, speaking of "virtual coins" and how they're "created" by mining. The average person ends up wondering what the hell a "bitcoin" really is. Of course it's just an entry on a globally synchronized, unforgeable public accounting ledger, and mining rewards just assign entries to people's addresses if the come upon a solution to a math problem.

See this article's wording in the title, which just sounds scammy:

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2013/11/12/bitcoin_entrepreneurs_want_to_put_virtual_coins_in_your_wallet.html

And of course the WeUseCoins video, saying, "Bitcoins are digital coins you can send through the Internet... You can purchase video games, etc." It's neat as a first promotion, but now rather than just catch people's eye we have to make a serious pitch to shrewd and skeptical people, and I think "coins" just gets in the way.

This metaphor to physical coins may have served a valuable purpose in the early days, but I'm wondering if it's outlived its usefulness.

Here's a surprisingly positive article from CNN pumping Bitcoin, but the comments show so many signs of the coin metaphor just causing confusion. A sampling:

The biggest allure for gold is that the owner can take physical possession. For this reason alone, the BitCoin is at a huge disadvantage.

What is one of Bitcoin's greatest strengths is mistaken as a negative.

Bitcoin is to money as The Show About Nothing is to television entertainment. It is simply a way for individuals, companies and countries to launder money by "investing" in something that is vapor. You cannot touch it, flip it, spend it at Walmart. Your kids won't take it for their allowance and if, like Fort Knox, you managed to sneak a peak into the Bitcoin vaults, you would find nothing. So of course, it's bound to be worth whatever individuals bid it up to.

As long as people are expected to think of it like a coin, it causes endless confusion.

Instead, I suggest promoting it from the very beginning as an unimpeachable, globally-synchronized public ledger. The coin thing can be relegated to just a cute metaphor. "Coins" have nothing to do with anything. A bitcoin is simply 0.00001% (approx.) of all the units available in that public ledger, or one of the 12 million (eventually to be 21 million (technically of course 100 million of the 2.1 quadrillion satoshis)) units available in that ledger. Of course you'll get questions about how the number of units of account available can be immutable, but that is easier to explain than what a bitcoin is, and really explaining what a bitcoin is just leads back to the ledger explanation anyway.

It seems to me that "coins" are a relic from when Bitcoin needed to be seen as an asset. Now that it's established as having a basically permanent, if volatile, market value, I think the analogy is doing more harm than good. The idea of a public ledger that keeps track of who provided value to whom isn't that conceptually difficult, when all is said and done. It's simple to imagine God's list, or Santa's list, keeping track of who did something of value for others.

What do you think? Is it time to de-emphasize the "coin" angle and move toward the more sophisticated ledger explanation as the default one?

[toddfletcher]

The coin metaphor is also confusing because a lot of people assume the smallest unit you can buy is one coin. So when the price hits $300 it's "too high" to buy in if you have less than $300, or so they think.

Understanding the blockchain is the key to trusting that Bitcoin, but that's not an easy thing to explain.

[Number6]

I think the coin metaphor is great and should stay. Just because most modern currencies have relegated coins to the "loose change" category, doesn't mean it was always this way.

Coins have a long and proud tradition as serving as currency. In the past silver and gold coins were routinely broken up into smaller pieces, thus the familiar "two-bits" which were obtainable from a pieces-of-eight silver piece.

Heck, even now you can buy 1 oz Gold American Eagle "coins" which have been valued between $1200-$1800 in the last 12 months, which compares nicely with Bitcoin due to a fluctuating market price. Bitcoin should not be in the business of trying to change people perceptions about it as a viable currency, instead people need to be changing their perceptions on what constitutes a viable currency.

[Carlton Banks]

Yes.

Simple solution, say "bits" instead of "coins". Still comes from the name, factually descriptive.

[Digicoiner]

Right now it seems the market is treating it more as a commodity that is rapidly gaining value rather than as a currency or 'coin'.  As long as it's rapidly gaining value people won't have the incentive to trade it for goods and services.

[bluemeanie1]

now change 'mining' to 'transaction processing'.

doesn't sound quite so magical anymore, does it?   

[Arksun]

BitCoins just a catchy name, I like it anyways. I really don't think its the name thats holding it back in the large scheme of things, other factors yes, nice catchy name? naaa.