Do you have ZERO Bitcoins? Why?

[ripper234]

http://www.quora.com/What-are-some-reasons-a-lot-of-rational-people-dont-buy-just-1-Bitcoin

[Gabi]

Buying a few is a battle against taxes, fees etc. Move 10$ to mtgox... mmhh... i end up spending what, 50$?

[rjk]

Buying a few is a battle against taxes, fees etc. Move 10$ to mtgox... mmhh... i end up spending what, 50$?

For me, it costs all of 25 cents to use Dwolla. But if that isn't an option, the fee schedule for other locations could be different.

Actually, Dwolla transfers of less than $10 are free, so it costs me nothing. But any amount greater than $10 is only 25 cents.

[cbeast]

Willful ignorance and state supported FUD. When pundits realize that the bubbles are going to be much smaller now, they will feel more confident in price stability.

[proudhon]

So, bitcoins are lottery tickets.  Cool.

[ripper234]

So, bitcoins are lottery tickets.  Cool.

Yeah, expect that by my calculations, the expected value of each is greater than its current price, unlike lottery where the house always wins.

[proudhon]

http://www.quora.com/What-are-some-reasons-a-lot-of-rational-people-dont-buy-just-1-Bitcoin

I think the answer to the article is simple: inertia.

It took the internet - one of the most useful thing ever invented in the whole
history of mankind - 20 years to go from being functional to being used by a
sizable fraction of humanity.

I'm pretty sure the story is similar if not longer for other useful technologies:
running water in the house, steam, electricity, the lightbulb, the printing press,
the computer, etc ...

In terms of recent, large-scale successes, Facebook and Google are probably
the things that spread the fastest in the last ~20 years. And both each took
close to 10 years to reach planet-wide adoption.

In other words: it simply boils down to the fact that most people have no clue
of most of what's happening in the world around them, and only start paying
attention to something new once a at least 5 people in their close social circle
has finally hit them squarely on the head with it.

You want to see bitcoin succeed ? Talk about it around you at every possible
opportunity, show it to your friends, demand payment in bitcoins for ever little
transaction you do. If you want to start a forest fire proper, you must light small
fires in as many possible corners of the forest as possible.

And yes: you're going to get weird looks from people who'll be thinking "what
a dork". Bear with the pain. People said the same thing to early internet adopters.
Who's a dork now ?

Hopefully 10 years from now I can proudly wear a t-shirt that says "Bitcoin: Who's a dork now, bitch!?".

[dayfall]

I offer to give Bitcoins away to friends and family.  No takers.  Bitcoin is still too technical to use, or rather it is just too different. 

"Does my computer have to be on for me to receive Bitcoins?"
"GAAAAAA!!!!"

[ripper234]

I offer to give Bitcoins away to friends and family.  No takers.  Bitcoin is still too technical to use, or rather it is just too different. 

"Does my computer have to be on for me to receive Bitcoins?"
"GAAAAAA!!!!"

Try harder.

I personally got 4 friends and 2 family members to buy some.
One friend lost his wallet when he formatted his hard drive (of course I taught everyone how to back up ... didn't listen).

But I believe the others still have their BTC safely secured.

[Gabi]

Giving free bitcoins is not the way to do. Why? Cause they will think "meh you gave me bitcoin for free, so they are worth nothing, that's why you give them to ppl for free"

[ripper234]

Try harder.

I personally got 4 friends and 2 family members to buy some.
One friend lost his wallet when he formatted his hard drive (of course I taught everyone how to back up ... didn't listen).

But I believe the others still have their BTC safely secured.

Ah, and there was another friend who wanted to buy BTC from me. I wanted to sell him some, but my wife strictly vetoed it.
"We're not selling until Bitcoin reaches $30-$40, I don't care if it's just a small amount".

Truth be told, in Israel it's fairly simple to buy Bitcoin, you just do a normal bank transfer to bitcoil.co.il and get BTC. Sadly, my friend never actually made the time to do this simple transfer (15 minutes of his time, I guess).

If I had accepted, he would have handed me a bill or two in exchange for my coins.

So --> friction was the answer in this case.

[ripper234]

Try harder.

I personally got 4 friends and 2 family members to buy some.
One friend lost his wallet when he formatted his hard drive (of course I taught everyone how to back up ... didn't listen).

But I believe the others still have their BTC safely secured.

Ah, and there was another friend who wanted to buy BTC from me. I wanted to sell him some, but my wife strictly vetoed it.
"We're not selling until Bitcoin reaches $30-$40, I don't care if it's just a small amount".

That was my initial reflex as well.

That, my friend - and feel free to tell your wife - is shortsightedness
pure and simple.

The way you do it is: you immediately sell the person the coins with
a comfy margin atop the gox rate, go back home and buy back the
exact BTC amount you sold.

Net effect:
    . You made a profit, leveraging your expert skills (i.e. you know how to procure BTC)
    . You injected value in the bitcoin ecosystem, thereby increasing the fiat value of your own BTC
    . The size of your stash is unchanged
    . You potentially sired a convert

As a matter of fact, this is exactly the way I operate with every single thing I purchase
with bitcoins: buy BTC on GOX, spend BTC on stuff, stash didn't move.

The whole shebang takes slightly longer, but goes a long way in advocating bitcoins.

Ordinarily I'd agree, but the truth is since buying Bitcoin really is trivial in Israel (Thanks to Meni), then I expect someone to take these 15 minutes and send in the money to bitcoil. Really, it's that easy, and teaches them how to acquire larger amounts of BTC in the future if they so choose.

[foggyb]

Willful ignorance

Such a nice turn of phrase !

Permission to re-use ?

That's from 2 Peter 3:5.

[btc_artist]

http://www.quora.com/What-are-some-reasons-a-lot-of-rational-people-dont-buy-just-1-Bitcoin

Just buy a physical bitcoin from memory dealers.  Done.

[dooglus]

Willful ignorance

Such a nice turn of phrase !

Permission to re-use ?

That's from 2 Peter 3:5.

That's a weird looking IP address.

[wareen]

Ah, and there was another friend who wanted to buy BTC from me. I wanted to sell him some, but my wife strictly vetoed it.
"We're not selling until Bitcoin reaches $30-$40, I don't care if it's just a small amount".

Seems your wife is even more a believer then - I have been granted permission to sell some at 15$

back on topic:

If (and that's a big if) Bitcoin one day becomes huge (say 1% of the world's economy), 1 Bitcoin will be worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $100,000 to $10,000,000.

I'm not really able to quantify the chance that the above scenario will happen, but I argue it's more than zero, and even more than 0.0001.

So, by my (biased) opinion, "every rational person" should spring $5 today and buy 1BTC, because the downside if he lost his entire investment is minimal.

While I can relate to your line of thought, I think one reason is that Bitcoin is relatively hard to understand for somebody unfamiliar with crypto, P2P, monetary systems, etc. Even if you explain the concept to them, they pretty much only have your word for it. You might just as well advocate some random startup or penny stock.

To do a rational risk assessment of an investment in Bitcoin requires quite a lot of research and that's an effort many people (however rational) are not willing to make.

According to Rick Falkvinge, it takes about 10 years for a new technology to really reach the masses. He stated that it was about the same time it needed for blogging, Internet video and Wikipedia. I remember vividly when people were laughing about the concept of Wikipedia... Times are changing - often not as fast as one could wish, but Bitcoin is definitely here to stay. I for one am looking forward to 2019

[ripper234]

I for one am looking forward to 2019

The waiting is difficult

[Elwar]

Compare 1BTC to 1 oz Silver.


Total silver in the world is 45,000,000,000 (45 billion).

Max amount of BTC will be 20,000,000 (20 million).

Currently silver is about 37 USD per oz.

That equals $1,665,000,000,000 (1.6 trillion)

If 1BTC were to become as popular as 1oz of silver at the max amount of BTC supply, it would be worth $83,250 per BTC.

[coraz]

http://www.quora.com/What-are-some-reasons-a-lot-of-rational-people-dont-buy-just-1-Bitcoin

I think the answer to the article is simple: inertia.

It took the internet - one of the most useful thing ever invented in the whole
history of mankind - 20 years to go from being functional to being used by a
sizable fraction of humanity.

True, see this 1995 article about internet for example:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/1995/02/26/the-internet-bah.html

It looks ridiculous now but back then people were seriously thinking that internet would fail for technical reasons.

[Matthew N. Wright]

I offer to give Bitcoins away to friends and family.  No takers.

I am pretty confident we are solving this problem inside the DCAO. I expect to see Bitcoin go mainstream in 2012 thanks in part to some major investors of an invention of mine.

Also, when Bitcoin Magazine gets out in the air, it's going to start picking up some major glances and interests.