Co-workers talking about bitcoin.... so much misinformation still today

[slaveforanunnak1]

"The last posting from your IP was less than 360 seconds ago. Please try again later.'   I know someone from my work is on this site all the time, because every once in while i get that error. we all share the same NAT.
I wonder who you are!!!!!!

[Remember remember the 5th of November]

I'm at work right now w/ 2 of my co-workers and one of them says "did you hear what happened to bitcoin?"

"the creator decided to shut it down, so everyone who had money in bitcoin has lost everything"

other co-worker: "was it that old guy from california they recently discovered?"


me: "are you sure the entire bitcoin network was shut down? I thought this just happened to one of the exchanges?"

co-worker: "No pretty sure this affected everyone's bitcoins"

other co-worker: "I don't know why anyone would put money in bitcoin... unless you're into drugs"

(btw- they don't know I have any bitcoins)

I didn't feel like correcting them or anything so I just kept quite. Regardless I got scared as shit for a moment and I immediately came here to see if there were any new updates... but it looks like he was referring to the whole GOX fiasco.

Wow.. I just got a first hand taste of the common perception/mentality of bitcoin. What's worse is that these guys are highly technical, not your avg common folk. We got a long way to go fellas.

I am deeply offended that you did not correct them and actually believed that Bitcoin was shutdown, you can't shutdown a worldwide project.

[Dafar]

^ refer to post #9 ITT

[rohnearner]

I am deeply offended that you did not correct them and actually believed that Bitcoin was shutdown, you can't shutdown a worldwide project.

You can shut down a worldwide project but you cant shut down a decentralized project..! this is why torrents are still there even after millions of $$ has been spent demolishing  the network

[spazzdla]

My co-workers now will come ask me first about any bitcoin news before believeing it.

[franky1]

i said people who fear debates and would never turn up to protests, or answer back to authority, or correct a friend, due to emotions are sheeple.
sheeple panic sell due to emotions
sheeple think ethiopia is 100% anorexic, when the reality of 2014 is that they have skyscrapers and macdonalds.
sheeple believe the red cross spends more money on the poor then it does on its own buildings leases/mortgages and staffing wages
sheeple believe media and fear causing a debate

i never used the phrase "you are a sheeple" i said certain people with the attributes mentioned in last 2 posts like sheeple.

[Serge]

"The last posting from your IP was less than 360 seconds ago. Please try again later.'   I know someone from my work is on this site all the time, because every once in while i get that error. we all share the same NAT.
I wonder who you are!!!!!!

~everyone starts looking around their cubicles~

[alc]

They are "highly technical" but also "highly dumb".

Likely they're not "dumb" but simply misinformed. The question is, why would they be informed? Most people don't know what "fiat currency" means, but they use theirs fine without knowing.

The Bitcoin protocol is not universally interesting. Irrespective of how big Bitcoin gets there will never come a day when you can stop the man in the street and ask a question about miners or the blockchain and expect a cogent, accurate response. If Bitcoin is ever going to gain a significant measure of adoption among regular folk then it is vital that a comprehensive systemic understanding not be a prerequisite to its use. This shit simply doesn't matter to most people, and it shouldn't need to. They should be able to just point their phone at the barcode thingie, press the button, and know that payment has been sent.

The best we can do, in my opinion, is gently correct the major inaccuracies in simple terms (Bitcoin is a technology like email, not a company, and no one person or company controls it) and let people find out the details for themselves, if it interests them.

[grifferz]

You should have corrected them, OP. Conveying a fact isn't the same as trying to get someone to switch to Apple or change religion. You don't need to get them into bitcoin. You just should have a reasonable try at correcting things that are factually wrong.

I know how it is, I know a lot of people don't actually want to learn anything. Just try once though. These aren't anontrolls on a Yahoo! page, these are real people you work with. It's worth a try.

[jonald_fyookball]

They are "highly technical" but also "highly dumb".

Likely they're not "dumb" but simply misinformed. The question is, why would they be informed? Most people don't know what "fiat currency" means, but they use theirs fine without knowing.

The Bitcoin protocol is not universally interesting. Irrespective of how big Bitcoin gets there will never come a day when you can stop the man in the street and ask a question about miners or the blockchain and expect a cogent, accurate response. If Bitcoin is ever going to gain a significant measure of adoption among regular folk then it is vital that a comprehensive systemic understanding not be a prerequisite to its use. This shit simply doesn't matter to most people, and it shouldn't need to. They should be able to just point their phone at the barcode thingie, press the button, and know that payment has been sent.

The best we can do, in my opinion, is gently correct the major inaccuracies in simple terms (Bitcoin is a technology like email, not a company, and no one person or company controls it) and let people find out the details for themselves, if it interests them.

so true...go watch some of Mark Dice's "fake peitition" videos... idiots in California believe Martin Luther King Jr just died yesterday... etc... good grief

[leopard2]

what this means is that $600 is still low

this is like the internet in 1999 

[googlemaster1]

We have an uphill battle to go with the media.  For instance, lets say a few ideal things come into place within the next 6 months.  lets make some modest predictions and possible media responses to them:

Lets give ourselves a decent scenario for news in July:

-Wikipedia integrates BTC*
-US Based Exchange launches and volume surpasses btc-e within 30 days of operation.*
-Sweden recognizes BTC as secondary currency.*

So lets stir up some possible news headlines for all of these:

"Wikipedia accepts Bitcoin, but converts it all to USD immediately because they consider it "A Speculative Assett"
"Will US Based Exchange go bankrupt and get hacked like Mt Gox?"
"A country that hosts most of the worlds illegal file sharing accepts bitcoin, coincidence?"

And of course, because this is actual good news, the price would reflect that.... it is likely we would see a headling like this:

"Bitcoin barely passes $1000, still WAY off their record highs from last year.  Is the currency losing steam?"


So that just goes to show you, the media sentiment gets more attention when it does negative press on bitcoin, because they have done a good job of painting it in a dirty image, and they will do everything they can to say "I TOLD YOU SO" until no one wants to hear it anymore.  It will be an interesting year....

[CryptoPanda]

I'm at work right now w/ 2 of my co-workers and one of them says "did you hear what happened to bitcoin?"

"the creator decided to shut it down, so everyone who had money in bitcoin has lost everything"

other co-worker: "was it that old guy from california they recently discovered?"


me: "are you sure the entire bitcoin network was shut down? I thought this just happened to one of the exchanges?"

co-worker: "No pretty sure this affected everyone's bitcoins"

other co-worker: "I don't know why anyone would put money in bitcoin... unless you're into drugs"

(btw- they don't know I have any bitcoins)

I didn't feel like correcting them or anything so I just kept quite. Regardless I got scared as shit for a moment and I immediately came here to see if there were any new updates... but it looks like he was referring to the whole GOX fiasco.

Wow.. I just got a first hand taste of the common perception/mentality of bitcoin. What's worse is that these guys are highly technical, not your avg common folk. We got a long way to go fellas.

I also see every day that people are ignorant beyond possible, I just can't believe how that is possible....
And those are grown people not  6 year old ones.....

[keystroke]

Reminds me of the days people said...

H T T P COLON BACK SLASH BACK SLASH ....


meanwhile it is not even a backslash, but that sounds more "technical" than slash.

[freedomno1]

and the problem with this and many other stories is:

I didn't feel like correcting them or anything so I just kept quite.

too many people don't want to poke the bear and correct people or even ask the right questions to get to the truth. they prefer to just let it ride, just to not cause a debate or evoke emotions that someone is wrong.

i call these people 'sheeple' who follow other people based on feelings, that just coast through life and will never be seen at a protest or attempt to confront a scammer and slap them with a wet fish.

.. welcome to the human race. just a shame its a egg and spoon race where people concentrate on the egg 12 inches from their nose.. and not a marathon where people are looking 26 miles infront of them

Specializing tends to mean that you can't see the larger picture as clearly as a generalist
That said we need specialists to explain bitcoin to get rid of misinformation
I do enjoy poking my bear otherwise nothing would get done and things only happen if you make them happen

[IamCANADIAN013]

When i visited my parents last month, I was asked if I lost all my Bitcoins. Apparently they were referring to the Mt.Gox melt-down: With the exchange reporting a large number of missing Bitcoins.

Heard about the apparent suicide at work. Had to filter through all the Mt.Gox news to find reference to it here.

When Gox went down my phone started ringing. There were a lot of "I told you so" and a couple "Sorry you lost all your coins"

Not sure why some people are so happy to see others fail. They seemed so happy that they were right and I was wrong about Bitcoin.  Little did they know.

People are so clueless when it comes to Bitcoin, mostly because they consider mainstream media as a credible source.  I used to try and correct people, now I don't bother. I figure they can figure it out for themselves down the road. I just know who to laugh at it Bitcoins do take off to where we all hope it does.  I'll be sending them all postcards from somewhere very nice.  On the back all it will say is "Wish you were here, but I told you so"

[sidhujag]

mine an ex msft employee sees it as an experiment.. Not a currency because you cant manipulate intetrst rates using bitcoin.. no banks would lend etc etc.. another said it had no fungible value since u cant pay taxes with it

[Beliathon]

It's a conundrum.

If the masses don't believe in bitcoin, they won't use it, and it won't go up in value, it might fail.

You could possibly not be more wrong if your life depended on it. What the masses think in March 2014 is irrelevant.

See what the masses will think in March 2016, that's what's relevant. Stop worrying and hold like a man.
 

[pungopete468]

I feel like it's in the best interests of everybody involved in the conversation if I explain things.

So they were talking down about Bitcoin because they heard some rumor somewhere. Had you just said "well, I use Bitcoins whenever I can because it's easier than a credit card, I don't have to type in my personal information, and if the merchant gets hacked like Target did; the hackers won't get any personal data on me. Just because one business that trades Bitcoin over in Japan files bankruptcy doesn't mean Bitcoin failed, I didn't do business with them anyways. I use CoinBase, an American company. Bitcoin is something actually worth investigating, you should look at it with an open mind..."

Then I would say, "It seems like everybody has that great missed opportunity in life where if they could just go back, it would change everything. I think that's what Bitcoin might be to a lot of people who don't know what it really is."

I've changed the opinions of 5 people so far just by explaining logic. That's 5 people that would otherwise trash talk Bitcoin and discourage others, but now use it and support it.

[Bit_Happy]

did any one of you watch the fucking idiot on bloomberg tv, today, talking about bitcoins?
what a fucking idiot.
The beautiful Ms. Chang was talking to this guy about bitcoin and his words were as stupid as they get.
He obviously knew nothing about bitcoin and didn't want to know.
He was more interested in playing his fucking guitar than talking about the coin and what he knew about it.
Poor Ms. Emily didn't have the know how to as him the tough questions, either.
In the end, his comments were "Who really cares (about bitcoins) ?"

Well, dumbass, the interviewers did or they wouldn't have asked about it. You didn't know shit about it or you wouldn't have said "who cares". And obviously it is negative if YOU don't know shit about it, huh,smart ass?
What a fucking idiot...........

As stupid as I am, I could have given a better interview (about bitcoin's future) than that idiot......

These guys went around San Francisco, trying to find vendors who accept bitcoin.
The very first one they asked, said they did.
The next few didn't, but what fucking laundrymat is going to accept bitcoins for their washers, when they use quarters.
What you think someone is going to put a 600 dollar bitcoin in the machine to wash a load of cloths?
How fucking stupid are you?
At least most of them knew what it was, asshole.
They said they asked a bunch of kids (teenagers) about bitcoins and they all knew about it, and were apparently excited about it.
But the dumbass you were interviewing knew nothing about it.
Interview the teenagers, not the fucking idiot who was at  the interview table. He only wanted to play his fucking guitar, which we all know has a lot to do with stocks and bonds and commodities.

Chang does that a lot.
She never gets down to the nitty gritty and asks these idiots she interviews the tough questions.
When someone says "I don't want to talk about that, then by god ask them the question again, because now you have hit a nerve and they won't discuss it because they 1) are hiding something, or 2) don't know jack shit about it.

But this was one of the stupidest thigs I have seen her do, yet.
She is SUPPOSED to be talking about technologies.
But today she had her head up her pretty little ass.

TV makes us all smarter