Frustration at the Digital Money Forum

[matonis]

I need to vent and this forum seems like the best place! For the last two days I have been attending/following via Twitter the 14th annual Digital Money Forum in London hosted by my friend, Dave Birch.  Here is the agenda link: http://www.chyp.com/  (click thru to get to agenda) ...or...  http://www.chyp.com/digitalmoney/agenda-2011/

Keep in mind that the speakers and attendees are paid many thousands of dollars/pounds/euros per month to study and implement electronic money concepts for multinational banks, payment associations, and payment companies. For Hushmail, I even presented at the Forum in 2001 regarding web-based digital signature technology but i think it was Digital Identity Forum at the time. And, this is why bitcoin is going to blindside everyone:

1) there is not an awareness of market demand for decentralized p2p digital currency;
2) many 'experts' do not understand the difference between centralized vs. decentralized as it relates to digital cash;
3) many 'experts' do not recognize that bitcoin requires the chain to prevent double-spending;
4) people react with the same antipathy that they have towards gold standard or else, conversely, they fail to understand that bitcoin value doesn't rest upon the intrinsic value economic argument;
5) quasi-competitors, Facebook credits and Linden dollars, etc. as virtual currency, restrict two-way convertibility;
6) generally people dismiss it as a fad and they are not aware of the floating exchange rate;
7) lastly, it was mentioned that they could invite someone from bitcoin to attend the forum next year (I guess that would mean Satoshi if anyone can find him or if he wants to be found, but if I were him, I wouldn't attend -- that's the whole point of distributed p2p value).

You can follow the hashtag #dmf14 on www.twitter.com if you want to view the conference comments. Godspeed.

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[hazek]

Do you really expect them to have a positive attitude towards an invention that could potentially seriously compromise their market share of facilitating transactions between people and loose all those fees they collect? I sure hope not.

They're going to fight BitCoins with teeth and nails so the best thing we can do is to just ignore them because they are irrelevant and find other ways of spreading awareness(youtube, facbook, twitter other media).

If there's value to the market to use BitCoins, the market will use BitCoins. The most important thing we can and must do is give the market a chance to learn about it.

p.s.: I only just learned about BitCoins on Saturday and had previously no clue something like this was invented and I think it's the greatest thing I ever learned about in terms of money inventions.

[kiba]

Payment processors can bring value to the bitcoin economy by facilitating ever lower transaction fees, increasing trusts, etc.

[Anonymous]

It's their loss.

[ribuck]

You can follow the hashtag #dmf14 on www.twitter.com if you want to view the conference comments.

There are some interesting points being made in those tweets.

(1) The claim is made that most of the audience are old men who take notes with pen and paper. The implication is that those people won't be the agents of change.

(2) The claim is made that 30% of the Gross National Product of Kenya is now transacted through the mobile phone system. That's more than I would have expected.

(3) The claim is made that the poorest tenth of the UK population spend more money than each of the next two tenths. The implication is that those who are officially poorest are more likely to be agoristically-inclined.

(4) The claim is made that supermarket chain Tesco's loyalty card data is being used to detect tax evaders. If you spend more at Tesco than you declare to the taxman, expect a visit.

Bitcoin is in some way related to, or relevant to, each of these.

[grondilu]

They're going to fight BitCoins with teeth and nails so the best thing we can do is to just ignore them because they are irrelevant

+1

[Stephen Gornick]

1) there is not an awareness of market demand for decentralized p2p digital currency;

At some point, there will be ...



http://bit.ly/bitcoinnodes

[Timo Y]

It's an entertaining clash of cultures.  

Bitcoin is a bit like going to a Swiss private bank and being attended by a punk sporting facial tattoos and a ripped anarchy t-shirt.

People who work with money tend to be very conservative, parochial, risk-averse, authoritarian, uptight, narrow-minded, detail-oriented, left brained, and ISTJ, because traditionally, those traits were advantageous in this industry.

The Bitcoin ecosystem contradicts pretty much everything they stand for: It's revolutionary, unpredictable, anti-authoritarian, disruptive, concept-oriented, "weird", right-brained, and rather INTP.

It's no surprise these people are not enthusiastic to learn about Bitcoin. There will be a lot of cognitive dissonance once market forces force them to learn about it.

[kiba]

The philosophy of Bitcoin contradicts pretty much everything they stand for: It's revolutionary, chaotic, unpredictable, anti-authoritarian, disruptive, concept-oriented, anarchic, "weird", right-brained, and rather INTP.

Meh, we use both side of our brain.

[hazek]

It's an entertaining clash of culures.  

Bitcoin is a bit like going to a Swiss private bank and being attended by a punk sporting facial tatoos and a ripped anarchy t-shirt.

People who work with money tend to be very conservative, parochial, risk-averse, authoritarian, uptight, narrow-minded, detail-oriented, left brained, and ISTJ, because traditionally, those traits were advantageous in this industry.

The Bitcoin ecosystem contradicts pretty much everything they stand for: It's revolutionary, unpredictable, anti-authoritarian, disruptive, concept-oriented, "weird", right-brained, and rather INTP.

It's no surprise these people are not enthusiastic to learn about Bitcoin. There will be a lot of congintive dissonance once market forces force them to learn about it.

I'm an INTP and I think you're right.

[markm]

I have been talking to "nations" that do see the bitcoin approach as well worth considering. They are nations in a game, so they do not have as much vested interest to worry about as "real" nations, they might even be more open-minded "players", and they are not "nations" that have huge populations of bankers and bureaucrats, so their views are not likely to reflect quite those of current day "real" nations.

Nonetheless they do have some concerns, mostly around the idea that thy would prefer to "own" most of "their" money themselves rather than have it appear in the hands of a population of "miners" that might not be very easy to designate.

Basically they are not keen to "back" some random miner's currency rather than "their own" currency, especially if the miner might not even be one of their citizens. Heck the miner might even be a person in a nation one is not eager to help in any way.

Some of the "nations" that have been looking into this though are determined to give it a try. They like the distributed network as a way that many nations can participate in each using each currency, and they plan to have only "nations" and "banks" do any mining until a few years down the line, maybe even after the full quota of coins have been mined.

Each nation is committing to trade at par some huge number of coins with each other nation that is part of the pact, but as a direct central bank to central bank exchange rate not a commitment to exchange at par with any tom dick or harry who happens to be a citizen of a participating "nation".

For reasons that actually derive from conditions on "the mythical planet known as Earth", the Hacker "nation", which supposedly used actual bitcoins as its currency, is not participating in the exchange at par agreement nor in the buy so much of each other's currency agreement. That mostly comes down to the fact that no-one who might be construed as a representative of the Hacker "nation" has indicated any desire or intent to put such large numbers of coins into this "experiment". So although initially the possibly many new block-chanin based currencies will start of at par, they might all as a group be far from at par with actual bitcoins.

Hopefully this will be an interesting experiment. I am setting up IRC bots right now to provide a simple interface with just very basic command such as balance, address, send and exchange.

-MarkM-

[hazek]

markm I wish your post made sense to me but I have no fking clue what you're on about.

[grondilu]

markm I wish your post made sense to me but I have no fking clue what you're on about.

I gave up trying to understand him long time ago.

[slush]

Bravo!!! Particularly love your application of ISTJ and INTP.
 
I bet that current bitcoin population has like 50% or more of INTP's as opposed to 3-5% in general population.

I think that ISTJ fits to me perfectly and I still (at least partially) understand the Bitcoin .

[Cryptoman]

markm I wish your post made sense to me but I have no fking clue what you're on about.

I gave up trying to understand him long time ago.

I think he's been shopping at Silk Road. 

[Anonymous]

As an INTJ/P (50% P, 50% J), I endorse this thread.

[eMansipater]

As an ENTP, I'm going to help get Bitcoin out to everyone else

[Garrett Burgwardt]

Myers-Briggs tests are crap, very similar to horoscopes.

[Binford 6100]

It's their loss.

+1

i'd like to come out with a 4 char selfevaluation as well but too many cream+kahlua+vodka's to judge my sobber part properly

[asdf]

Myers-Briggs tests are crap, very similar to horoscopes.

really? I found the description of INTP to fit me with incredible precision, after being classified as such. And it's obvious to me that INTP would love something like bitcoin.

It's really just a way of classifying personality types. Some may fit these classifications rather strongly and some may not be so polarized in all of the four dimensions.