2014 is going to be a GOOD year for bitcoin they said...

[Bonio]

Just my 2 cents.

For me personally as a relative n00b it has been a bad year so far LOL

I got Goxed and Butterfly Lab.ed. My excuse for the goxing is when just about every ticker appa and widget has MTGOX label on it you kind of think they must be the trusted standard.

Surely things can only get better?

I hope so but consider this:

Lots of new people came on board when the price of BTC was going skyward, many wanting to invest and earn. Since the latter part of 2013 there has been more bad news than good, there are many burnt fingers. People will now be shy of having anything to do with Bitcoin in the future and if the price hits $1000 again I think there will be a massive amount of people who didn't get GOXED will simply get out and maybe not come back.

I hope I am wrong, we really do need some good news stories about how Bitcoin is doing good in the world!

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[BittBurger]

and we're only in March!

[exocytosis]

It could be a bit of a hassle, generating/hiding all these paper wallets, usb backups, updating them all with every change.

Indeed. And the Bitcoin evangelists actually expect the Average Joe to go through all that hassle.

Ain't gonna happen.
This is the reason BTC will never go mainstream. (I.e.: It will never be used by, say, as many as 20 million people.) It's just way too user-unfriendly.

[bbeagle]

Indeed. And the Bitcoin evangelists actually expect the Average Joe to go through all that hassle.

Ain't gonna happen.
This is the reason BTC will never go mainstream. (I.e.: It will never be used by, say, as many as 20 million people.) It's just way too user-unfriendly.

I completely agree. Someone who is good at simplifying things, like an Apple, needs to step forwards and make the process easier. There should be 100% security in what you own, and 100% accuracy when you move bitcoins around. Right now, it's the wild west where nothing is secure, and the geeks pick on average folks telling them, 'well you should have done xxxxx' when an average person loses their bitcoins. An average person doesn't understand security risks - they need a company to help them, where they are charged a fee, like .05% a month to guarantee security. THIS is where the money should be made, not on speculation.

There must be secure apps written, like on a cell phone, where you can simply type in a dollar amount, touch phones, and the person on the other end gets your bitcoins, instantaneously with no problems at all. No possibilities of using bitcoins twice, no problems with them being stolen. We're not even CLOSE to being there. Nobody cares about making the system WORK, they just care about increasing their profits making bitcoins worth 10k each, 100k each, etc. Completely ridiculous.

[TTM]

There must be secure apps written, like on a cell phone, where you can simply type in a dollar amount, touch phones, and the person on the other end gets your bitcoins, instantaneously with no problems at all. No possibilities of using bitcoins twice, no problems with them being stolen. We're not even CLOSE to being there. Nobody cares about making the system WORK, they just care about increasing their profits making bitcoins worth 10k each, 100k each, etc. Completely ridiculous.

There are already few services as you described. For example: Blockchain online wallet.

[exocytosis]

Indeed. And the Bitcoin evangelists actually expect the Average Joe to go through all that hassle.

Ain't gonna happen.
This is the reason BTC will never go mainstream. (I.e.: It will never be used by, say, as many as 20 million people.) It's just way too user-unfriendly.

I completely agree. Someone who is good at simplifying things, like an Apple, needs to step forwards and make the process easier. There should be 100% security in what you own, and 100% accuracy when you move bitcoins around. Right now, it's the wild west where nothing is secure, and the geeks pick on average folks telling them, 'well you should have done xxxxx' when an average person loses their bitcoins. An average person doesn't understand security risks - they need a company to help them, where they are charged a fee, like .05% a month to guarantee security. THIS is where the money should be made, not on speculation.

There must be secure apps written, like on a cell phone, where you can simply type in a dollar amount, touch phones, and the person on the other end gets your bitcoins, instantaneously with no problems at all. No possibilities of using bitcoins twice, no problems with them being stolen. We're not even CLOSE to being there. Nobody cares about making the system WORK, they just care about increasing their profits making bitcoins worth 10k each, 100k each, etc. Completely ridiculous.

Exactly. But try telling this to the BTC evangelists. They'll just close their ears and continue ranting about the importance of supercold storage and other extremely complicated, user-unfriendly ways to "safely" store this "fast, reliable money of the internet".

As you correctly pointed out, what's needed is a company like Apple. But apparently they're already busy inventing their own type of currency ... I suspect that one might achieve mainstream adoption, since Apple are good at marketing and building hype. And creating user-friendly, simple products.

[waxwing]

It could be a bit of a hassle, generating/hiding all these paper wallets, usb backups, updating them all with every change.

Which is exactly why you use Electrum or other deterministic wallets. You never have to update backups. You just keep the 12 word seed and that's it.

[Lauda]

Which is exactly why you use Electrum or other deterministic wallets. You never have to update backups. You just keep the 12 word seed and that's it.

Then you should pray that Electrum has a decent security team.

[Bonio]

How Ironic wold it be if Apple did launch a crypto currency especially after people were smashing up their iphones.

It would be a bit like Linux and Windows, we all know which system is better (I would hope but which one is on more home PC's?

Bitcoin could be left behind is a major player like Google or Apple can encourage the masses to use their payment system.

[waxwing]

Which is exactly why you use Electrum or other deterministic wallets. You never have to update backups. You just keep the 12 word seed and that's it.

Then you should pray that Electrum has a decent security team.

All wallets are in the process of going deterministic as it's an obviously superior model.

Once you go deterministic, you never go back.

[Meuh6879]

There are already few services as you described. For example: Blockchain online wallet.

and android bitcoin wallet (schildbach), too ...

[Lauda]

All wallets are in the process of going deterministic as it's an obviously superior model.

Once you go deterministic, you never go back.

Please interpret. Deterministic?

[waxwing]

All wallets are in the process of going deterministic as it's an obviously superior model.

Once you go deterministic, you never go back.

Please interpret. Deterministic?

You have a seed which generates a master public key. Then an algorithm generates an infinite list of keys from that. It means that, instead of randomly generating keys/addresses when you need new ones, the same list is generated every time.

This means that if you delete your wallet, but remember the seed, you can recover the entire same set of addresses every time. Thus, backing up and re-backing up your private keys is not necessary.

[Swapster]

I lost my BTC to Gox as well. How many is irrelevant, but at the end of the day I lost $2500 invested. Thankfully, I spent $1500 on retail before the crash.

I think that we need to stop worrying about how big bitcoin becomes. Let's just use it as a means of payment when required. If I need to have BTC for some purpose, I will buy what BTC I need and use it. As we have seen, the explosive growth in value only raises eyebrows of the PTB and lead to more trouble than it's worth. Just quietly use your BTC when you need it and stop worrying about getting rich on it as an investment.

[Lauda]

You have a seed which generates a master public key. Then an algorithm generates an infinite list of keys from that. It means that, instead of randomly generating keys/addresses when you need new ones, the same list is generated every time.

This means that if you delete your wallet, but remember the seed, you can recover the entire same set of addresses every time. Thus, backing up and re-backing up your private keys is not necessary.

Oh, thanks for the explanation.
That's the better way in this case. Much easier.