Want to save Bitcoin? Here's how YOU can help.

[btcvc]

There has been a lot of talk on the forums lately about how the currency is slowly spiraling down. This is true, and there's a good reason for it. At this point, Bitcoin is little more then a stock. It is diving because it is primarily being used as an investment vehicle, similar to a junk bond or a penny stock, and people have hyped it up and now are dumping it off. It is a classic pump and dump. If you want to see examples in the market, go look at LEXG, CCME, SPNG. It was tragically foreseeable that bitcoin would be pumped and dumped the same way -- so now what. The miners making more bitcoin every day is called dilution. It happens with penny stocks too.

The biggest difference between Bitcoin and a penny stock is that bitcoin can easily be transferred from one person to another, directly, without having to deal with any kind of broker or third party. This means that as long as people are willing to accept BTC for goods and services, BTC will always have SOME kind of value. What people need to realize is that the run up to 30$/BTC was caused by an infusion of cash from daytraders who were using bitcoin as a cheap version or forex, or playing arbitrage games. These do NOT stimulate the value of bitcoin in any way, and these people can continue to use Bitcoin regardless of the price, because there money is in and out quickly enough to not suffer from downward price swings.

So Let's talk about how we can get together and make some good publicity for bitcoin.
I'm sure we've all got skillsets we could be putting to use to help generate interest in bitcoin - it's a pretty straightforward process.

Find something you're good at, preferrably something that can be transferred over the internet - web design, graphic design, coding, database work, writing copy, doing research, anything really - and set up a website where you offer your services. Offer the standard industry rate, accept paypal and bitcoin, and do it 20-25% cheaper for bitcoin. Yes it sucks doing things on the cheap, but you're not planning on selling your BTC right away anyways, you're planning on waiting until the price stablizes and goes up. The only thing that will make it go up is people having a reason to use bitcoin, and that's will be a steep discount at first. If you think that doing something for 20-25% cheaper is insane, consider this -- your BTC is worth 50% what was less a month ago, where do you think it's going to go if the world economy continues to contract and people are no longer looking at fringe investments?

There's a meet up in Seattle tomorrow that some of us in the area will be attending, I'll be bringing these points up. I think a lot of miners will be at this meeting, probably scared to death.

[bitplane]

Currently doing some Python hacking for BTC, and since the price drop I'm probably working for 10% of my usual rate. However, I'm having fun doing it; it's the kind of thing I'd usually do in my spare time for free, so I'm not losing out.

I encourage other developers to do the same with small projects, I'm certainly enjoying it

[btcvc]

Currently doing some Python hacking for BTC, and since the price drop I'm probably working for 10% of my usual rate. However, I'm having fun doing it; it's the kind of thing I'd usually do in my spare time for free, so I'm not losing out.

I encourage other developers to do the same with small projects, I'm certainly enjoying it

Some of my fellow cohorts and I were kicking around the possibility of opening a poker room in Seattle that would offer to payout in Bitcoins.

[Trader Steve]

Currently doing some Python hacking for BTC, and since the price drop I'm probably working for 10% of my usual rate. However, I'm having fun doing it; it's the kind of thing I'd usually do in my spare time for free, so I'm not losing out.

I encourage other developers to do the same with small projects, I'm certainly enjoying it

Some of my fellow cohorts and I were kicking around the possibility of opening a poker room in Seattle that would offer to payout in Bitcoins.

Interesting...I guess you'd be taking the angle that you are not betting "money" or whatever it is that is prohibited by the central planners?

[FXRiot]

I'm in the process of very soon releasing a public Mt.Gox and Tradehill motion graphic to be used (Possibly done later tonight when done rendering).  There are also 2 other websites that will be graced with graphics.

This gives Bitcoin an aesthetically pleasing appearance to newcomers.  The Mt.Gox graphic looks particularly cool.

[Tasty Champa]

if you want to save bitcoin.

kill this forum,
and every other forum where lots of people talk about bitcoin.

[btcvc]

Currently doing some Python hacking for BTC, and since the price drop I'm probably working for 10% of my usual rate. However, I'm having fun doing it; it's the kind of thing I'd usually do in my spare time for free, so I'm not losing out.

I encourage other developers to do the same with small projects, I'm certainly enjoying it

Some of my fellow cohorts and I were kicking around the possibility of opening a poker room in Seattle that would offer to payout in Bitcoins.

Interesting...I guess you'd be taking the angle that you are not betting "money" or whatever it is that is prohibited by the central planners?

There are for-profit poker rooms all over Seattle.

[btcvc]

if you want to save bitcoin.

kill this forum,
and every other forum where lots of people talk about bitcoin.

Then where do you think the money is going to come from? Thin air? New people have to adopt the use of bitcoin for it to work. For that to happen, there need to be people who are incubating small businesses.

[johnyj]

The total amount of the coin is 21 million, and currently 6.8 million has already been produced, they belongs to a handful amount of people who joined this game early

This means, the game in a large degree benefit those who joined this game earlier, it is still a "first come, first get" model, no matter how technically advanced, the ownership model has no difference than today's society, this model always slave/disencourage later adapters, it's just a matter of time before people start to lose interest

[pennytrader]

If you want to see examples in the market, go look at LEXG, CCME, SPNG.

Excellent examples. BTW, shorted LEXG and took a 50% profit in 2 days.

[markm]

The total amount of the coin is 21 million, and currently 6.8 million has already been produced, they belongs to a handful amount of people who joined this game early

This means, the game in a large degree benefit those who joined this game earlier, it is still a "first come, first get" model, no matter how technically advanced, the ownership model has no difference than today's society, this model always slave/disencourage later adapters, it's just a matter of time before people start to lose interest

Well quick then, get into devcoin while there are still so few miners that you can mine it with CPUs, then later you too can laugh at latecomers while you swim in your huge stack of coins.

-MarkM-

[kiba]

This means, the game in a large degree benefit those who joined this game earlier, it is still a "first come, first get" model, no matter how technically advanced, the ownership model has no difference than today's society, this model always slave/disencourage later adapters, it's just a matter of time before people start to lose interest

What is a late adopter? The guy who come after me. What is an early adopter? The guy who come before me.

It's all relative. As long as you have enough human beings who want to adopt bitcoin, the late adopters will become early adopters and the late adopters have incentive to convince people to join in the bitcoin economy. Don't also forget that early adopters have incentive to invest in the bitcoin economy and convince people to join in. You see? This is an advantage of bitcoin, not a flaw.

[johnyj]

This means, the game in a large degree benefit those who joined this game earlier, it is still a "first come, first get" model, no matter how technically advanced, the ownership model has no difference than today's society, this model always slave/disencourage later adapters, it's just a matter of time before people start to lose interest

What is a late adopter? The guy who come after me. What is an early adopter? The guy who come before me.

It's all relative. As long as you have enough human beings who want to adopt bitcoin, the late adopters will become early adopters and the late adopters have incentive to convince people to join in the bitcoin economy. Don't also forget that early adopters have incentive to invest in the bitcoin economy and convince people to join in. You see? This is an advantage of bitcoin, not a flaw.

This is not sustainable in long run, when most of the people joined the game, it's over

[wumpus]

I encourage other developers to do the same with small projects, I'm certainly enjoying it

Same here. My belief that the idea is sound is not affected by the market swings. I guess I'm less manic-depressive than the traders here

Many people are also just too impatient. Where was Linux two years after the first release? Or any other open source project with major impact?

People are only now slowly learning the advantages, disadvantages, and peculiarities of cryptocurrencies, and how to handle them. That will take a while... You can't seriously believe that it would take over the world in a few months. This isn't a "aim for the heavens or die trying" plan. It needs time to sink in.

We're still going through the initial bumps. And I don't think the rollercoaster will end any time soon. You'll remain saner if you regard this as an interesting experiment with an grassroots free-market distributed global currency, instead of simply a profit opportunity... and realize there is nothing to be "saved".

[markm]

This is not sustainable in long run, when most of the people joined the game, it's over

Yeah, I too thought kiba sounded like many another pyramid scheme's spiel.

But its not over. I saw another pyramid scheme start up just the other day. Heck I don't even go looking for them and still I come across them quite often. So no, the game isn't over, far from it. devcoins can still be mined with a CPU fergoshsakes. Namecoins haven't hardly begun even to settle on a decent way to let people actually browse the sites they buy the name of. United Kingdom Britcoin, CZech Bitcash, Canadian Digital Notes, Martian Botcoins etc etc etc have not even let the unwashed masses in on the mining end of the deal yet. WEEDs and BEERcoin are still only just working the bugs out of merged mining. Etc etc etc.

The game is barely afoot yet!

-MarkM-

[btcvc]

If you want to see examples in the market, go look at LEXG, CCME, SPNG.

Excellent examples. BTW, shorted LEXG and took a 50% profit in 2 days.

Unfortunately there's no real good way to "short" bitcoin.

[Tasty Champa]

if you want to save bitcoin.

kill this forum,
and every other forum where lots of people talk about bitcoin.

Then where do you think the money is going to come from? Thin air? New people have to adopt the use of bitcoin for it to work. For that to happen, there need to be people who are incubating small businesses.

i got my money from investors.

[LokeRundt]

Lol, "save" bitcoin.  And how do you figure bitcoin needs "saving"?

[Cryptoman]

The total amount of the coin is 21 million, and currently 6.8 million has already been produced, they belongs to a handful amount of people who joined this game early

This means, the game in a large degree benefit those who joined this game earlier, it is still a "first come, first get" model, no matter how technically advanced, the ownership model has no difference than today's society, this model always slave/disencourage later adapters, it's just a matter of time before people start to lose interest

You're still treating this as some sort of investment or get-rich scheme.  The OP is suggesting that we concentrate on its use as a medium of exchange.  If you accept Bitcoin in exchange for a product or service, and those coins can be traded for other things you need/want, how does this disadvantage you?  Granted, some of the early adopters have done well financially, but please offer us some constructive suggestions on how to bootstrap a decentralized, peer-to-peer currency where this problem is avoided.

[edd]

There are many unique aspects to Bitcoin. For a few months, it was exposed to a quickly. growing audience and, consequently, grew in value, which in turn made it attractive to investors, who inflated the value even more. It now appears that many speculators are getting out. Those of us still willng to use bitcoins as currency are trading it for goods and services, and I, for one, only trade it for USD when necessary. As more and more merchants join the movement, I expect this necessity to diminish.

BitBrew is doing its part to stabilze the BTC economy by keeping prices static, come hell or high water.