Please Read!! Help Stop This Madness.

[Ibian]

The problem is you are trying to convince people whose lives depend on fiat theories that their entire worldview is wrong. That just is not going to happen until bitcoin impacts their personal finances or some similar event.

What I would do, if you truly believe in bitcoin, is to buy up enough to live on the rising price. Then quit, and establish yourself as an independent bitcoin expert. Ten years down the road, meet up with your profs and laugh in their face.

[johnyj]

The department keeps arguing against bitcoin with these points.

1) Bitcoin is deflationary and it will cause it to fail. (facepalm)

2) Bitcoin is doomed to fail because people hoard it instead of spending it. No Economy exist.(facepalm x2)

3) Nobody uses Bitcoin for anything (Not Mainstream=Not real???) (Facepalm x 1,000,000)

Replace those "bitcoin" words with "gold" and turn it back to them

To be honest, all the professors I knew in my economy department are just not able to understand it.

The real problem behind the scene is: When they hear the word "money", they become panic and lost most of their ability to think, they start to seek some powerful forces that back it, without that force, they feel extremely insecure about its value

[Ibian]

The Powerful Force in this case is We The People. And that terrifies them.

[An amorous cow-herder]

3) Nobody uses Bitcoin for anything (Not Mainstream=Not real???) (Facepalm x 1,000,000)

Replace those "bitcoin" words with "gold" and turn it back to them

Granted, i would also say that most of the worth of gold is more or less symbolic, but gold is actually usefull.
Bitcoin can be usefull as well, sure, assuming it is actually used as a transaction medium. But so far its only potentially usefull.

[Ibian]

3) Nobody uses Bitcoin for anything (Not Mainstream=Not real???) (Facepalm x 1,000,000)

Replace those "bitcoin" words with "gold" and turn it back to them

Granted, i would also say that most of the worth of gold is more or less symbolic, but gold is actually usefull.
Bitcoin can be usefull as well, sure, assuming it is actually used as a transaction medium. But so far its only potentially usefull.

It's making a lot of us rich. That's useful. The currency part will come, in time, maybe around the 100k mark.

How much of mainstream speculating actually has practical value?

[An amorous cow-herder]

Granted, i would also say that most of the worth of gold is more or less symbolic, but gold is actually usefull.
Bitcoin can be usefull as well, sure, assuming it is actually used as a transaction medium. But so far its only potentially usefull.

It's making a lot of us rich. That's useful.

Yeah, for the ones becoming rich, obviously. Not arguing about that.

The currency part will come, in time, maybe around the 100k mark.

So, in other words, you are saying the bitcoin network is worth than Apple, MS, IBM and Oracle combined?
Or worth a lot more than E-Bay (which own Paypal), Visa and Mastercard combined?

How much of mainstream speculating actually has practical value?

None, aside from making some people rich and others poor. But we already had that point above.

[Ibian]

The currency part will come, in time, maybe around the 100k mark.

So, in other words, you are saying the bitcoin network is worth than Apple, MS, IBM and Oracle combined?
Or worth a lot more than E-Bay (which own Paypal), Visa and Mastercard combined?

Will be*. Yes.

[An amorous cow-herder]

The currency part will come, in time, maybe around the 100k mark.

So, in other words, you are saying the bitcoin network is worth than Apple, MS, IBM and Oracle combined?
Or worth a lot more than E-Bay (which own Paypal), Visa and Mastercard combined?

Will be*. Yes.

Hmm, is that before or after BTC is declared the official currency of the United Federation of Planets in the Milky Way?

[Ibian]

The currency part will come, in time, maybe around the 100k mark.

So, in other words, you are saying the bitcoin network is worth than Apple, MS, IBM and Oracle combined?
Or worth a lot more than E-Bay (which own Paypal), Visa and Mastercard combined?

Will be*. Yes.

Hmm, is that before or after BTC is declared the official currency of the United Federation of Planets in the Milky Way?

That's just if it becomes a popular way of storing wealth similar to gold. If in addition it becomes a proper mainstream currency it could go higher. Much higher.

Keep in mind that bitcoin is international. Literally the entire world is the target demographic.

[medialab101]

Economists fail... drop out, get rich. That's what i did...

[deisik]

The department keeps arguing against bitcoin with these points.

1) Bitcoin is deflationary and it will cause it to fail. (facepalm)

2) Bitcoin is doomed to fail because people hoard it instead of spending it. No Economy exist.(facepalm x2)

3) Nobody uses Bitcoin for anything (Not Mainstream=Not real???) (Facepalm x 1,000,000)


My Goal: Raise Awareness about Bitcoin. Starting with the economics department and then expanding to the whole campus then the whole town.

I see that I'm not alone in stating that your economics department is actually right, but this would be too obvious an answer and surely not what you would like to hear. Probably, it is also too late to mend matters and change anything, but if I were you and had been interested in Bitcoin and all that, I would probably make my thesis on investigating a Ponzy nature of Bitcoin from an economical standpoint (even if you don't believe it to be) or just stick to some particular feature of it that could be interesting for an economist. This would possibly cause much more excitement and agitation in your tutor and the department as whole and also would give you a better understanding of the true nature of Bitcoin

Raising awareness about Bitcoin seems to be a rather strange subject for an economics student...

[PenAndPaper]

Economists fail... drop out, get rich. That's what i did...

Gamblers some times get rich. That doesn't mean that statistcs fail.

[deisik]

If that is what you believe, then argue your way out with economic theories, market observations or historical data. You don't seem to be doing that... However, I don't think you have a strong argument (in economic theories). Besides, professors will wiggle their way out with even more obscure theories.

I really liked that last piece of yours. Your strategy is to know and understand economics (or whatever science for that matter), your tactics would be to learn about the theories these professors like or dislike most (and their kinks overall), and get yourself prepared properly for the thrashing with that knowledge in your hand...

[deisik]

Replace those "bitcoin" words with "gold" and turn it back to them

To be honest, all the professors I knew in my economy department are just not able to understand it.

The real problem behind the scene is: When they hear the word "money", they become panic and lost most of their ability to think, they start to seek some powerful forces that back it, without that force, they feel extremely insecure about its value

Unlike Bitcoin gold is used in jewelry and has industrial application as well

Besides that, nothing substantial would actually change much then, save maybe for gold being also used by some hard-wired goldbugs as a store of value (with varying degrees of success) and for speculation purposes indeed. The first two points would remain absolutely valid if we substituted gold for Bitcoin...

[niothor]

Replace those "bitcoin" words with "gold" and turn it back to them

To be honest, all the professors I knew in my economy department are just not able to understand it.

The real problem behind the scene is: When they hear the word "money", they become panic and lost most of their ability to think, they start to seek some powerful forces that back it, without that force, they feel extremely insecure about its value

Unlike Bitcoin gold is used in jewelry and has industrial application as well

Besides that, nothing substantial would actually change much then, save maybe for gold being also used by some hard-wired goldbugs as a store of value (with varying degrees of success) and for speculation purposes indeed. The first two points would remain absolutely valid if we substituted gold for Bitcoin...

Also add food and beverage , also with gold you can more easily show off , it's not that easy to carry a 27 inch screen with your bitcoin wallet around.

[minorman]

Economists...

I love this quote:

"You can pretty much draw a one to one parallel between economics and astrology: they use the same technique (fooling the gullible), serve the same purpose (ensuring the practitioner makes a living), and have similar predictive power (none)."

[niothor]

Economists...

I love this quote:

"You can pretty much draw a one to one parallel between economics and astrology: they use the same technique (fooling the gullible), serve the same purpose (ensuring the practitioner makes a living), and have similar predictive power (none)."

Well , I 'll have to defend economics on this one.
Astrology is making guesses based on stars even though some of the stars in their prediction are already dead. )
Economist use half dead models.

[btceic]

You haven't done enough research,


Stop looking at bitcoin as just a currency or even a payment system, even though that is what we are seeing it being used as today, that is not nearly what can be done with it.

Bitcoin is a P2P, Decentralized, Global, Open Source, Proof of Ownership system.

The value that a transaction on the block-chain via colored coins or other mechanism can literally be anything, from stocks, bonds, smart property, a voting system, wills, deeds, proof of invention, a pdf, an mp3, as well as a system to allow for off-chain micro transactions, etc. etc. etc.

tl;dr; bitcoin is so much more then just money or a global payment system, for all of the above and the services that can be layered on top of the bitcoin protocol is why we are seeing the huge upswing in demand and thus price in the past ~30 days.

See the following videos for a tiny glimpse of what bitcoin can become.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jl-HZWfxUFw

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Contracts

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mD4L7xDNCmA

[cAPSLOCK]

My biggest piece of evidence: I have established an online wallet and provided the address to whole economics department and information on how to check it.

Why don't you point the "biggest piece of evidence" to a charity address or well known bitcoin organisation donation address, instead of your own?

There are already about 1000 people with bitcoin holdings of over $1 million. We are the biggest piece of evidence. Month ago the number was barely 150.

Thinly veiled brag... :-)

[An amorous cow-herder]

Stop looking at bitcoin as just a currency or even a payment system, even though that is what we are seeing it being used as today, that is not nearly what can be done with it.

Bitcoin is a P2P, Decentralized, Global, Open Source, Proof of Ownership system.

P2P? Decentralized?
Well, unless it really gets used. Then you are gonna need centralized servers for the full block chain and prune the blockchain on normal clients and nodes.

The value that a transaction on the block-chain via colored coins or other mechanism can literally be anything, from stocks, bonds, smart property, a voting system, wills, deeds, proof of invention, a pdf, an mp3, as well as a system to allow for off-chain micro transactions, etc. etc. etc.

Yeah, sure. You could layer on top of it. Question remains if that really makes sense or rather develop a custom solution directly on top of tcp.
And there are dozens of bitcoin clones around. Why choose bitcoin when you can use an identical cheap altcoin instead?