How to introduce someone to Bitcoin?

[Davey360]

Hey guys
I just heard about Bitcoin at the end of the last yer but since them I've become interested in Bitcoin. The fact that it has been growing so well and that there are daily conferences about Bitcoin around the world is fascinating to me.

I've been trying to introduce people to Bitcoin, but with no success. I normally show them websites that accept payments in Bitcoin, and I also show them coinmap.org, where they can see that there are about 3000 physical places in the world already accepting Bitcoin. At this point everything is going fine.

But then, I'm trying to think of an advantage of using Bitcoin over physical money, and I can't think of many. I tell them that opening a wallet is a lot easier than opening a bank account. But then I try to warn them that software wallets in the computer they use daily is a bad idea because of attacks from hackers, keyloggers and trojans, and that scares them and it also scares me a little bit to be honest.

Then, they ask me "How can I get Bitcoins?". And I'm not sure of what to say. A lot of people aren't very interested in economics or in investments, and some maybe are but at this point where a single Bitcoin can cost 800 USD it's very hard for a small investor to get into Bitcoins. I also mention that you can mine Bitcoins using your computer, but that it will cost them a lot of money to a get decent hardware to do that because CPUs and GPUs aren't great to mine Bitcoin anymore, and let's not forget the electricity costs.

So, I can't really convince anyone. The only thing that I can say about Bitcoin is that you can open a wallet in under 20 minutes and that's it.

Do you have any ideas?
Thanks.

[Sutters Mill]

Hey guys
I just heard about Bitcoin at the end of the last yer but since them I've become interested in Bitcoin. The fact that it has been growing so well and that there are daily conferences about Bitcoin around the world is fascinating to me.

I've been trying to introduce people to Bitcoin, but with no success. I normally show them websites that accept payments in Bitcoin, and I also show them coinmap.org, where they can see that there are about 3000 physical places in the world already accepting Bitcoin. At this point everything is going fine.

But then, I'm trying to think of an advantage of using Bitcoin over physical money, and I can't think of many. I tell them that opening a wallet is a lot easier than opening a bank account. But then I try to warn them that software wallets in the computer they use daily is a bad idea because of attacks from hackers, keyloggers and trojans, and that scares them and it also scares me a little bit to be honest.

Then, they ask me "How can I get Bitcoins?". And I'm not sure of what to say. A lot of people aren't very interested in economics or in investments, and some maybe are but at this point where a single Bitcoin can cost 800 USD it's very hard for a small investor to get into Bitcoins. I also mention that you can mine Bitcoins using your computer, but that it will cost them a lot of money to a get decent hardware to do that because CPUs and GPUs aren't great to mine Bitcoin anymore, and let's not forget the electricity costs.

So, I can't really convince anyone. The only thing that I can say about Bitcoin is that you can open a wallet in under 20 minutes and that's it.

Do you have any ideas?
Thanks.

First of all, remember to tell your friends that they can get a small amount of bitcoin for free to play around with until they're convinced. They can do this with bitcoin faucets. They can then ramp it up and start getting more free bitcoin by doing things like advertising in their signature on here.

Regarding the advantages over normal money (also known as fiat):

• No central bank that controls your money, creating/amending rules on the fly
• You can send money with no fees in most cases
• There's no tax to pay on Bitcoin earnings (yet!)

Read this post as there are loads of advantages - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=60049.0

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[keithers]

It is starting to get easier to introduce people to bitcoins, but it is still pretty intimidating for someone who isn't that tech savvy to wrap their head around the entire concept.

I have explained it to children as a universal currency that can be used worldwide without the need to convert it into the currency of the country in which you are trying to spend money. I've also said that you can send money anywhere in the world almost instantaneously without it costing either person very much money.  I've also compared it to precious metals as it is a storage of value because as of right now, to spend the bitcoins you typically convert it back to dollars, yen, pesos, etc). This is temporary until more and more business accept bitcoin as a currency. 

My third grade daughter's teacher actually asked her to write a report on litecoin after she brought in a physical litecoin to school to show everyone.  So i am currently working on describing btc and ltc in terms that a kid can understand.

[Sutters Mill]

It is starting to get easier to introduce people to bitcoins, but it is still pretty intimidating for someone who isn't that tech savvy to wrap their head around the entire concept.

I have explained it to children as a universal currency that can be used worldwide without the need to convert it into the currency of the country in which you are trying to spend money. I've also said that you can send money anywhere in the world almost instantaneously without it costing either person very much money.  I've also compared it to precious metals as it is a storage of value because as of right now, to spend the bitcoins you typically convert it back to dollars, yen, pesos, etc). This is temporary until more and more business accept bitcoin as a currency. 

My third grade daughter's teacher actually asked her to write a report on litecoin after she brought in a physical litecoin to school to show everyone.  So i am currently working on describing btc and ltc in terms that a kid can understand.

Great idea. If this all pans out the way we're all hoping, I want to explain it all to my son at some point. If only for him to understand how to inherit and use my BTC.

[jcoin200]

It seems most people that know of it only see it in a negative light, aka used for the silk road. Also it seems that most people get confused on the mining process, which didn't even concern most people. That's what initially confused me and so I waited to buy some. Keep it simple when you tell people about btc

[jongameson]

is that there is usually gold stored at brainwallets 1,2,3, etc..

in case of humanitarian disasster when US Dollar is worth $1

[Cryptopher]

There are usually a load of questions that newbies who have heard about Bitcoin in the media or in other conversations tend to ask.

Usually those questions float around how Bitcoins come into existence, how something non-tangible and created seemingly out of nothing can hold such value, and (for those who have heard mostly stories about Bitcoin's Silk Road days) how Bitcoin must be bad because it has been linked to drugs.

They are great to explain to newbs. I wouldn't encourage too many folk to invest into Bitcoin, particular older family members as they may not keep tabs on things - just in case things go tits up and they kick off at you. Ultimately Bitcoin's trajectory should be moon-bound, so maybe they would make the greatest bag holders lol.

[franky1]

three key things that made bitcoin acceptance work in my area:

1. talk about it like a foreign currency not a 'product'. when they mention about it being hard to buy, or never at the true exchange rate, mention neither is foreign currency. you cant simply buy foreign currency at a 7-11, and the price you pay is always different then the main forex rates. bureau de change always have premiums.. so do bitcoin exchanges. the only difference (begin to mention point 2)

2. if the person is interested they will ask how to get them, and as such get to know local people already in your area that have bitcoin. a few of them like to sell their bitcoin now and again, and as such mention to whomever your explaining bitcoin to that they can buy bitcoin off of this person. or even through zipzap, localbitcoins. but always offer them a local solution. dont just avoid the question or it would be like a sales man with the best pitch in the world, but no stock/products to sell.. utterly pointless basically.

3. dont talk about bitcoin as a replacement of a credit/debit card, tell them its the FUTURE replacement of those things and that bitcoin is still young, and growing. the main point is that getting in early means that their investments will grow, or if they are a merchant, their customer base and profits will grow. bitcoin has well over 100 years of life, so its not disappearing soon,

[remotemass]

Bitcoin is the separation of State and money and the end of fractional reserve banking.
With that you can have democratization of money that will bring an incredible amount of prosperity and abundance.
I think you should educate yourself a bit about the problems that fractional banking is at the root of.
Bitcoin is also the beginning of a very disruptive reorganization of the whole society in a decentralized model: with decentralized communications, decentralized law, decentralized production and decentralized finance.
The democratization of money and this disruptive decentralization of society will be at the source of an unprecedentedly productive and free society.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFrSyydyA5A
http://www.moneyreformparty.org.uk/

To buy and sell bitcoins I highly recommend you to introduce your friends to https://localbitcoins.com and to "satoshi square" concept

[remotemass]

You should only keep on your software wallets small amounts of bitcoins for your daily usages.
The rest you should keep on paper/brainwallets.
But - and that's why I always insist on this although most people don't seem to realize yet how important it is to stress that - to understand paper/brainwallets you need to understand how private keys and bitcoin addresses are related, and what it is exacly to create/discover a bitcoin address from a random private key. If you understand it you are fine. You know that you can always import/redeem a private key to access the balance associated with the corresponding bitcoin address.

You may find it useful to watch my youtube video production: United Colors of Bitcoin.


To explain bitcoin mining try this:

The latest transactions are put in a list/group called a block.
All previous transactions were also put in blocks and this makes a chain of blocks. But each new block needs information from the previous blocks because its ID is actually the cryptographic hash of a previous one. The cryptographic hash used is called SHA256 and hashing is a bit like a compressed tweet unique to a text of characters of any length. When you hash a text of any length with SHA256 you get a number of 256 bits, that is, 256 zeros and ones.
So the ID of each block, that is, the sha256 of previous one, will be a number with 256 bits.
One important propriety of a cryptographic hash is that a small change to the input text of characters makes a complete change to the output in a way that you cannot relate these results to guess the origin of them and so this result uniquely identifies that text length of characters without giving you any hints of what made it actually give that output.
Anyway, all these blocks make a linked list because each block has as its id the hash of the previous one that as also as ID the hash of its previous one, and so on, till the genesis block.
So new blocks get stacked on previous ones and because the ID of a block has to be the same as the cryptographic hash of the one before it, you cannot make a new block that can be added to the chain without it having in it all the history of the chain.
Pretty much like with our DNA. It has all the history of life on Earth in it. In the same way, the ID of a block has also all the history of blocks in it.
Mining is to find a block of the latest validated transactions with an arbitrary imaginary transaction called the "nonce" added at the end.
This imaginary transaction added at the end is a complete fiction and is not a real transaction. It is just a random gibberish added so that it will make the hash of the block different every time you change it.
So in mining computers are always changing this imaginary transaction to see if the cryptographic hash of the block with it added to the list of real transactions that comprises the block will give a hash result starting with the number of zeros actually required by the puzzle challenge at present level of difficulty.
The difficulty level is how many zeros are at the start of this 256 bits hashing result. The more zeros that are required at the left the harder the puzzle gets because the computers need to find by trial and error a match that is much more unlikely and so will probably need to try much more hashing the block with a different imaginary transaction - called the nonce, as was said - to see if it will give a result with the required number of leading zeros.
An added zero required makes it twice as much harder and so the difficulty rises exponentially with the number of zeros required following: two to the power of n, where n is the number of zeros.
This makes sure all transactions in the chain are valid and mutually consistent and makes it possible to achieve consensus and agree on the current block as for the new block to be agreed on it must have a comparable value regarding how much valuable it is in terms of being computationally expensive. As the latest block has in it a kind of DNA that accounts for the whole history of the chain of blocks it is astronomically computationally expensive and all extra spurious work of the puzzle/difficulty/nonce will be making the following blocks with even more expensiveness added to it.