Slow adoption and decentralized nature of bitcoin

[plvbob0070]

That makes sense but I think it's not always knowing everything about bitcoin. As long as you know the basic and essential information or knowledge about it that can be used by most people when they adopted it is already enough, they don't need to know the difficult parts when they won't be using it. The basic information in bitcoin might still be too complex for other people but I think that's already part of innovation. As we keep on adopting technologies, it really becomes more complex that we also need to adopt.

[Nhor1011]

What should we do?

Should we learn bitcoin or not?
Should we promote simplicity and avoid complexity?
Can bitcoin continue to exist if majority of people don't want to be taught about importance of bitcoin and ideas behind it?

How can people adopt bitcoin if they don't have knowledge about it? How they can use it? It means it's very important to teach people even the basic bitcoin fundamental to learn about bitcoin. Many people will be having an interest in bitcoin if they will understand what is it? Why it was created? How to use it? How to earn from this? We all know that people will only adopt bitcoin if they understand all about it in an easy way.

[tomahawk9]

Should we promote simplicity and avoid complexity?

IMO, it's not a matter of whether we should do X or avoid Y, i think the main question is: do people want to trade one for the other?

Can bitcoin continue to exist if majority of people don't want to be taught about importance of bitcoin and ideas behind it?

it's been over 10 years since bitcoin went live and for almost a decade only a minority used it as intended and even then it kept getting more and more popular, no participation from the general public. I'm sure BTC will be fine without the masses flooding the cryptomarket and using btc

[bxipp]

Every traders that trade bitcoin need to know the basic of bitcoin technology before they can traded. Atleast they should know how much the supply and what algo is bitcoin using. Every person that need to know cryptos space need to know the basi on how to used the coin or atleast know what it the purpose of the coin before jump in to buy it. So knowledge is so important in cryptocurrency.

[dothebeats]

It's quite a paradox, really. If you want to get bitcoin adopted by a lot of people real fast, you have to dumb down almost all of the core knowledge that one needs to possess in order for almost everyone to catch up. However, this will lead to a lot of entities that will try to create centralized services for bitcoin even though it isn't necessarily required, because of people wanting things to be easy for them and not really doing the hassle themselves.

Though of course one doesn't really need to know the depths and breadth of bitcoin; they simply need to know a few things and they're good to go. Then again, we live in a generation when most people want everything to be spoon-fed without having to move a muscle, so you have to adjust to that unfortunately.

I still believe that in time, bitcoin will be widespread without having to sacrifice its decentralized nature, and people will learn how to appreciate the underlying genius within the said cryptocurrency and take the effort to learn the ropes of it, even just the basic, necessary ones.

[goldade]

This is a good example of an inverse proportion. The simple bitcoin becomes, the less people get to understand what makes bitcoin what it is now and the more it remains complex, the less adoption it gets.
It should be noted that both are of utmost importance for bitcoin to reach its full potential. I believe the only way around this problem is if there's a means by which both can be achieved simultaneously. Using Bitcoin becoming simpler so it becomes more adopted by people and still not losing its core characteristics

[Sanugarid]

Should we learn bitcoin or not?

Ideally, we should but I don't expect everyone to understand or try to learn how bitcoin transaction works.
It's the same situation with banks, I seriously don't think the masses even know how their money is being transferred or used. They just give their money then wait.

Well for me what's ideal to study is the blockchain that lies behind the bitcoin. Bitcoin is already there,you just need to know how it works but that's not the case for the blockchain since blockchain has a lot of application. And for my view about bitcoin, even how hard we try to push this coin, this will never reach the thing that we dreamed for it, we can't use it as our daily trading means, and that will be a fact to be checked.

Should we promote simplicity and avoid complexity?

Promote simplicity and give them the option to learn about the complexity if they so desire. We can teach them the basic features such as borderless payment and censorship resistant.

It is better to have these both since everyone has their own way of understanding, people must have understand complex things rather then simple, vice versa. Is it hard to understand how bitcoin works? A one minute video can teach no, I can tell.

[adzino]

-snip-
The author of the tweet argues that in order to use bitcoin, people should not be required to know or comprehend theories and technologies on which bitcoin is standing. He claims that for bitcoin to be successfully adopted, it needs to be simplified to such extent when people don't bother to know how it works, why it works, what purposes it was created for, etc.
-snip-

This is the part where I totally agree with the author. It is not necessary for people to know how bitcoin works. I mean it is good if they want to learn, but it isn't mandatory for them to lean. If you start teaching them what blockchain is and the technology behind it, they will start thinking it is a complex way of making payment. Instead they should be taught the very basics like how to keep a wallet secure, how to send and receive coins and what fees are.
There are tons of people out there that doesn't know how Paypal works (the technology and mechanism behind it), yet they can still send and receive payments without any problem.

[Mahanton]

-snip-
The author of the tweet argues that in order to use bitcoin, people should not be required to know or comprehend theories and technologies on which bitcoin is standing. He claims that for bitcoin to be successfully adopted, it needs to be simplified to such extent when people don't bother to know how it works, why it works, what purposes it was created for, etc.
-snip-

This is the part where I totally agree with the author. It is not necessary for people to know how bitcoin works. I mean it is good if they want to learn, but it isn't mandatory for them to lean. If you start teaching them what blockchain is and the technology behind it, they will start thinking it is a complex way of making payment. Instead they should be taught the very basics like how to keep a wallet secure, how to send and receive coins and what fees are.
There are tons of people out there that doesn't know how Paypal works (the technology and mechanism behind it), yet they can still send and receive payments without any problem.

Some people do really get easily discourage when someone do tend to teach them on a very complex way.Basic aspects of bitcoin will really be enough to poke out their interest specially if its a new way payment system plus having the chance on money-making opportunity if had done it right.I cant say that adoption is too slow and if we do base up on how big we are compared on past 10 years then we can eventually say that we did
really move forward. 10 years time is still young and theres still a huge room to grow.Lets not rush up because people will eventually find out on bitcoins existence.
We shouldnt really be that too impatient because everything would have its own time.

[pixie85]

The guy behind these tweets doesn't understand that in order to use electronic banking we also had to learn.

In the last 20 years we've learned how to use ATMs, how to use websites to send money, how to track our balance and invest online, how to activate and block credit cards online, how to set limits, how to track fees. It all came gradually and we find it to be easy now but it wasn't easy in the 90s!

Learning to use a wallet like Electrum takes a few minutes. It's not a big deal.

[roadrunnerjaiv2025]

People fear what they don't understand. But this fear often emanates from the "risks" that come with "lack of understanding".

It takes a lot of effort to convince people to pore over tons of blogs and videos about Bitcoin, and honestly not very many people who are well-versed in Bitcoin would want to do that. So, educating everyone doesn't seem to be a viable option.

While we shouldn't stop promoting the importance of learning the technical aspects of Bitcoin, I think we should put more effort into reducing the "risks" involved in using it.

If we can do that, we can deal with people's fear, thereby encouraging them to use bitcoin even without fully understanding how it works. Once they start seeing the benefits of it through actual experience and not just through the testimonies of people already using it, maybe it will be easier to convince them to learn more about it.  

So it's like letting them experience it first before pushing them to understand it.

[tbct_mt2]

Not so far from getting BTC globally accepted! Pornhub now accepts BTC & LTC.

Pornhub gives us another adoption on bitcoin. It will help to spread out the word bitcoin, make it more popular, increase the awareness of people on bitcoin and a few other cryptocurrency, Litecoin and Verge on pornhub at least.

Similar to the growth of the Internet, the adoption growth of bitcoin takes time. Now, more people know of, invest in and be aware of bitcoin than 10 years ago. What will we see next 10 years? A bigger adoption is a very promising future.

[witcher_sense]

This seem to be something that's impossible to argue against. Billions of people use cars without knowing anything about combustion physics. How many people who travel by planes know anything about aerodynamics? How many people could explain how electricity works? How many people who use computers and smartphones every day know how to code? And even from those who know how to code, how many know assembly languages and machine code?

People don't need to know how a technology works to effectively use a technology and enjoy its benefits. Successful bitcoin adoption shouldn't require everyone who wants to use bitcoin to become a computer expert.

It is impossible to argue, but I will try. You want bitcoin people to be passengers on a plane, people who don't know aerodynamics. The only person who probably should know that is a pilot. In such system, the pilot is a single point of failure(suppose system itself has no bugs), because if he fails, no one can fly the plane. Bitcoin is a plane with many pilots. The more pilots on a plane the less likely the plane will crash. How many pilots do we need to successfully aviate? It depends on how hard you want to survive the flight, I would prefer the situation where everybody is a pilot, the system is 100% safe in this case.

[dansus021]

People must know how Bitcoin works in order to trust Bitcoin enough to start using it in their daily lives.
Would you ever invest your hard earned money into a project that has a vague and obscure business model and goals?I don't think so.With more transparency comes more trust.The "average Joe" isn't obligated to know absolutely everything about blockchain technology,cryptography,etc.He should be familiar with the basic fundamentals of Bitcoin.I truly believe that the fundamentals of Bitcoin are simple enough to be easily explained to uneducated people.

Total agree with this and
it think there's some thread that discussed about How to make old people understand Bitcoin? https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5268958.0 this not only happen for old people, that's why there's some people not know or trust about it, and can lead with slow adoption rate of bitcoin. and some news about scammer that stealing lot of coin and laundry their asset with bitcoin become on of lot reason people not trust about it

[BeManga]

Should we learn bitcoin or not?
Should we promote simplicity and avoid complexity?
Can bitcoin continue to exist if majority of people don't want to be taught about importance of bitcoin and ideas behind it?

we need to learn bitcoin
everyone need to learn the basic and learn the complicated things after
for newbies we need make it simple for everyone to understand
the idea of bitcoin is large if you will also include blockchain its very very large
that's is why the simpliest the better let them know that bitcoin is online money where they can use to pay online
its acceptable by many merchant and they can earn it free online and so on.
if we will start in anonymity , decentralization, inflation , supply , mining and other complicated things it will be hard for them to understand
at first i also only know the basic about bitcoin but while i keep using it i start to learn the complicated things
and i think it will also be the same for those new in bitcoin.

[Janation]

Every traders that trade bitcoin need to know the basic of bitcoin technology before they can traded. Atleast they should know how much the supply and what algo is bitcoin using. Every person that need to know cryptos space need to know the basi on how to used the coin or atleast know what it the purpose of the coin before jump in to buy it. So knowledge is so important in cryptocurrency.

IMO, that is not necessary.

I mean they could still send Bitcoin and use it as they wanted to without knowing those things, right? Another thing is that one of the main reasons people use Bitcoin or maybe cryptocurrency as a whole is to either gamble with it or invest in it, but usually, it is the latter. Knowledge is important if you will be wanting to share it with other people, if you just want to use it, it is not needed. Either way, they could learn as they go so it is not a problem.

[posi]

The tweetstorm was actually right in the aspect that crypto need to be  made easy and shouldnt require people to study or understanding it scheme before using it because this was what stop 75% of all my friend from joining crypto and it will also make it hard for uneducated people so if we want Bitcoin to be totally adopt and become mainstream of payment it have to be so simple to use.

[SomeJasonGuy]

I think it's important to know how something works. I think the author means that when bitcoin is truly accepted as money, then people won't question the "why" part of it, since at that point it'd be redundant - they'd just use it as money. 

[witcher_sense]

<…>
There’s always that duality taking place, whereby Bitcoin can be seen as an investment (for the most) or a means of payment (the least nowadays I’d say).

That's true but I am more interested in duality inherent in bitcoin itself. From my point of view, bitcoin can be described as a system of two significant parts, parts which are inteconnected and constantly influencing one another. The first part is technical, it answers the question how bitcoin works. The second part is non-technical, ideological, philosophical, it answers the question why bitcoin works, what purpose it was created for. The author of aforementioned tweet claims that users have to know neither of said parts. However, I disagree. True that most people aren't computer experts (including myself), most people aren't interested in becoming computer experts (partly excluding myself), but some basic understanding of technology is required since we live in a digital age. I guess it is reasonable to claim that. So, in order for bitcoin to be adopted in technical terms, user interfaces should be enhanced. For example, if I want to run a full node, I can do that with a standard installation process, when I just keep pressing "Continue" button. But it is not enough. Why would I run a full node in the first place? The second, non-technical part of bitcoin may answer the question. This part is also important, it is inextricably connected to technical one. People should understand not only the fact that bitcoin is decentralized, but also why it should remain decentralized. That requires reading and learning.

[wxa7115]

It's quite a paradox, really. If you want to get bitcoin adopted by a lot of people real fast, you have to dumb down almost all of the core knowledge that one needs to possess in order for almost everyone to catch up. However, this will lead to a lot of entities that will try to create centralized services for bitcoin even though it isn't necessarily required, because of people wanting things to be easy for them and not really doing the hassle themselves.

Though of course one doesn't really need to know the depths and breadth of bitcoin; they simply need to know a few things and they're good to go. Then again, we live in a generation when most people want everything to be spoon-fed without having to move a muscle, so you have to adjust to that unfortunately.

I still believe that in time, bitcoin will be widespread without having to sacrifice its decentralized nature, and people will learn how to appreciate the underlying genius within the said cryptocurrency and take the effort to learn the ropes of it, even just the basic, necessary ones.

I believe the same which is why I am fine with a slow adoption as long as the people that are entering the market understand the reason why bitcoin exist and are not deceived to accept services they do not really need, however this brings us to the main problem, how can bitcoin gain widespread adoption?

And for the most part I have always thought that in order for people to fully understand why we need a form of money that is separated of the state and banks is to have a financial crisis that is really severe, people say the crisis we are in is bigger than the great depression but that is ridiculous, there has been nothing like it in recent history but if something similar were to happen then we could finally get people to understand why they need bitcoin and they need to hold it on their own wallets.