Using MEMES to explain bitcoin's appeal, its problems, and my proposed solution

[dacoinminster]

I just posted a slideshow to Bitcoinmedia.com explaining my "Second Bitcoin Whitepaper" using memes (I'm hoping to reach the broadest possible audience).

http://bitcoinmedia.com/using-memes-to-explain-bitcoin/

Comments welcome!

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[rjk]

I just posted a slideshow to Bitcoinmedia.com explaining my "Second Bitcoin Whitepaper" using memes (I'm hoping to reach the broadest possible audience).

http://bitcoinmedia.com/using-memes-to-explain-bitcoin/

Comments welcome!

It was good at the beginning, but then you started pushing an altcoin or set of altcoins or something. Near the end, the memes become less and less relevant.

[OgNasty]

It was good until you started talking about coins with chargebacks.

[dacoinminster]

Just to be clear, I don't want to replace bitcoin, but to build on top of it.

Also, I'm not talking about chargebacks, but protecting long-term savings. No merchant would accept coins sent directly from a savings account. You would have to transfer them to a checking wallet and wait until the waiting period was over before attempting to spend them.

[REF]

decent paper. I dont agree with problems 2 and 3.

2 - If that is your argument the average person is just as likely to have money stolen from there PP account as there bitcoin wallet.
3 - it is "hard" to get bitcoins but there are legitimate sites to go through which you dont need to worry about scamming.

[dacoinminster]

decent paper. I dont agree with problems 2 and 3.

2 - If that is your argument the average person is just as likely to have money stolen from there PP account as there bitcoin wallet.
3 - it is "hard" to get bitcoins but there are legitimate sites to go through which you dont need to worry about scamming.

Agreed that some exchange websites are probably trustworthy, but I haven't decided which ones yet.

Also, Paypal can undo fraudulent transactions . . .

[MaxSan]

Good idea. Gay font.

[mufa23]

>le

Stopped reading right there.

[Tittiez]

>le

Stopped reading right there.

le le le le le le le le le le

>4chan
>reddit

[casascius]

Is this that "The Second Bitcoin Whitepaper" vomit again?

Change the name if you want any respect from me.

This paper's ideas are nowhere near as novel as Satoshi's.  Using a title like that is about as ludicrous as me calling myself Shakespeare.  This paper belongs in the format of a BIP, and nothing more.

[mufa23]

>le

Stopped reading right there.

le le le le le le le le le le

>4chan
>reddit

Christopher, you probably want to hide your email in your profile.

[rjk]

>le

Stopped reading right there.

le le le le le le le le le le

>4chan
>reddit

Christopher, you probably want .......

And you should have said that in a PM.

It's disabled by default, so it would have required a specific action to enable it.

[kangasbros]

Just to be clear, I don't want to replace bitcoin, but to build on top of it.

Also, I'm not talking about chargebacks, but protecting long-term savings. No merchant would accept coins sent directly from a savings account. You would have to transfer them to a checking wallet and wait until the waiting period was over before attempting to spend them.

Well, you should then write your proposal (alternative currencies which could be backed to anything) a little better. It is actually very difficult problem, and because you tried to propose it in this format, it just seems like it is not serious.

I would link this to this article, if you just dropped the other half away. It ruined it.

[swissmate]

ISHYGDDT

[LightRider]

[Boussac]

decent paper. I dont agree with problems 2 and 3.

2 - If that is your argument the average person is just as likely to have money stolen from there PP account as there bitcoin wallet.
3 - it is "hard" to get bitcoins but there are legitimate sites to go through which you dont need to worry about scamming.

Agreed that some exchange websites are probably trustworthy, but I haven't decided which ones yet.

Also, Paypal can undo fraudulent transactions . . .

Have you tried to get paypal to reverse a person to person payment ?

[dacoinminster]

Have you tried to get paypal to reverse a person to person payment ?

If your account gets hacked, they absolutely will.

Thanks for the feedback guys. It seems I should have used a different font!

This saga has taken an amusing twist. The internet and bitcoin community, whom I designed this presentation for, doesn't seem very interested in these ideas. On the other hand, the big companies in the mobile phone space, whom I was afraid would think the presentation silly and unprofessional, are taking it very seriously. Go figure!

[kangasbros]

This saga has taken an amusing twist. The internet and bitcoin community, whom I designed this presentation for, doesn't seem very interested in these ideas. On the other hand, the big companies in the mobile phone space, whom I was afraid would think the presentation silly and unprofessional, are taking it very seriously. Go figure!

The problem with bitcoin "community" is that there is lots of talk, and a little execution. I eyed a little your whitepaper, but it was too long, and it wasn't very clear if you really have the skills to tackle this kind of problem you are arguing you could handle with your idea. I would almost bet my left testicle that you don't actually have the competence.

Edit: usually good ideas (with an actually workable solution) can be expressed within 1-5 sentences. Call it an elevator pitch.

[Portnoy]

One does not use memes. They use us. 

meme: /meem/ [By analogy with "gene"] Richard Dawkins's term for an idea considered as a replicator, especially with the connotation that memes parasitise people into propagating them much as viruses do...

-----

I find it a rather lame materialistic theory myself along with most of the genetic determinism stuff [ selfish gene etc. ] Dawkins writes about.

But most people misuse the term and this is off topic so nm...   

[julz]

I hereby create a user currency 'MonaCoins' with the following properties ...

- Target value - The assessed value of the Mona Lisa, adjusted for inflation  (currently about $750 Million USD)
- 'Only' 1000 of these coins will ever exist... I already own a few hundred.. so get in fast!


Of course, this *fabulous* offer is not without risk, because if the Mona Lisa is ever destroyed - MonaCoins will be worthless.
Don't worry though.. as the holder of several hundred  billion dollars worth of monacoins, you can rest assured that I will be spending a small fortune on a private army to guard the real thing.


Coming soon.. my next coin: 'BattlestarGalacticaCoin' -  tied to the theoretical cost of constructing a fully functional Battlestar Class Military spaceship (yes - with FTL drive!) - as assessed by a team of the best scientists,futurists and sci-fi geeks!



If you see no problem with driving the price of a few thousand competing mysterious internet entity's "OilCoin" or "GoldCoin" offerings to their target price despite them not even being in the oil or gold industry - you should have no qualms at all with my innovative Art-Backed and Future-Technology-Backed coins.
What could possibly go wrong!? These are sure to hit face-value faster than the 2011 bitcoin took to hit $100! Up Up Up baby!

[dacoinminster]

I hereby create a user currency 'MonaCoins' with the following properties ...

- Target value - The assessed value of the Mona Lisa, adjusted for inflation  (currently about $750 Million USD)
- 'Only' 1000 of these coins will ever exist... I already own a few hundred.. so get in fast!


Of course, this *fabulous* offer is not without risk, because if the Mona Lisa is ever destroyed - MonaCoins will be worthless.
Don't worry though.. as the holder of several hundred  billion dollars worth of monacoins, you can rest assured that I will be spending a small fortune on a private army to guard the real thing.


Coming soon.. my next coin: 'BattlestarGalacticaCoin' -  tied to the theoretical cost of constructing a fully functional Battlestar Class Military spaceship (yes - with FTL drive!) - as assessed by a team of the best scientists,futurists and sci-fi geeks!



If you see no problem with driving the price of a few thousand competing mysterious internet entity's "OilCoin" or "GoldCoin" offerings to their target price despite them not even being in the oil or gold industry - you should have no qualms at all with my innovative Art-Backed and Future-Technology-Backed coins.
What could possibly go wrong!? These are sure to hit face-value faster than the 2011 bitcoin took to hit $100! Up Up Up baby!

I'd just like to point out that you actually COULD release monacoins as a user currency, and you COULD drive their value to $750 million each. The only problem is that there wouldn't be much demand for them, so the protocol would never release more than a tiny fraction of one coin. I'm afraid you would not be able to hold hundreds of them unless you did something different than what I described in my paper.

[julz]

I hereby create a user currency 'MonaCoins' with the following properties ...

- Target value - The assessed value of the Mona Lisa, adjusted for inflation  (currently about $750 Million USD)
- 'Only' 1000 of these coins will ever exist... I already own a few hundred.. so get in fast!


Of course, this *fabulous* offer is not without risk, because if the Mona Lisa is ever destroyed - MonaCoins will be worthless.
Don't worry though.. as the holder of several hundred  billion dollars worth of monacoins, you can rest assured that I will be spending a small fortune on a private army to guard the real thing.


Coming soon.. my next coin: 'BattlestarGalacticaCoin' -  tied to the theoretical cost of constructing a fully functional Battlestar Class Military spaceship (yes - with FTL drive!) - as assessed by a team of the best scientists,futurists and sci-fi geeks!



If you see no problem with driving the price of a few thousand competing mysterious internet entity's "OilCoin" or "GoldCoin" offerings to their target price despite them not even being in the oil or gold industry - you should have no qualms at all with my innovative Art-Backed and Future-Technology-Backed coins.
What could possibly go wrong!? These are sure to hit face-value faster than the 2011 bitcoin took to hit $100! Up Up Up baby!

I'd just like to point out that you actually COULD release monacoins as a user currency, and you COULD drive their value to $750 million each. The only problem is that there wouldn't be much demand for them, so the protocol would never release more than a tiny fraction of one coin. I'm afraid you would not be able to hold hundreds of them unless you did something different than what I described in my paper.

No no.. it's a user defined ticker right?   I'm up front about about that.. it's defined as a curve to start at 0.0000001 of a % of actual value and ramp up in a strictly defined manner over time to the ultimate target of 100% of the Mona Lisa's value.

All of my family and friends completely random investors/art appreciators are cool with this.. and as the current ticker target price is still 'only' around 1% of the ultimate value - What a bargain! you too can get in now for massive upside!

Seriously though - what is to stop someone using a ticker curve that favours early adopters? Only the 'intelligence' of the marketplace seeing through that play?  Ha!

[dacoinminster]

No no.. it's a user defined ticker right?   I'm up front about about that.. it's defined as a curve to start at 0.0000001 of a % of actual value and ramp up in a strictly defined manner over time to the ultimate target of 100% of the Mona Lisa's value.

All of my family and friends completely random investors/art appreciators are cool with this.. and as the current ticker target price is still 'only' around 1% of the ultimate value - What a bargain! you too can get in now for massive upside!

Seriously though - what is to stop someone using a ticker curve that favours early adopters? Only the 'intelligence' of the marketplace seeing through that play?  Ha!

You are absolutely right on that front. Since I'm letting users create their own currencies, people would be able to define a currency that simply targets a 10%/year increase vs the dollar. If lots of people grabbed that, someone else might make one that targets a 50%/year increase. Obviously those schemes will eventually collapse (and the logic for handling the collapse is described in the paper). It will be interesting to see what people come up with.

[ZodiacDragon84]

>le

Stopped reading right there.

agreed

[dacoinminster]

>le

Stopped reading right there.

agreed

I asked myself: what is the lowest form of communication on the internet? I need something that could connect with people, no matter how low their intelligence. I figure I'm covering the highest band of intelligence with the whitepaper, and the lowest level of intelligence with the memes. Some smart people like memes, and some dumb people will try to read the paper, so I'm figuring I've got a pretty broad cross-section.

If the unintelligent conventions of the meme world annoy you, you are probably not in the low intelligence category

[ZodiacDragon84]

you took that surprisingly well. I sir, commend you.

[Boussac]

Have you tried to get paypal to reverse a person to person payment ?

If your account gets hacked, they absolutely will.

Sorry, but you answered a question I did not ask.
My question was, have YOU tried ?
Obviously, you haven't. If you did, how would paypal know which side to take ?

When a consumer disputes a charge form a business, it's their policy to side with the consumer and let the business eat the cost of the fraud. The business in turn will factor in the cost of the fraud so everybody is paying for it at the end of the day.

In a p2p payment, it's just too easy to pretend your account was hacked so the same policy cannot be applied.

[dacoinminster]

Sorry, but you answered a question I did not ask.
My question was, have YOU tried ?
Obviously, you haven't. If you did, how would paypal know which side to take ?

When a consumer disputes a charge form a business, it's their policy to side with the consumer and let the business eat the cost of the fraud. The business in turn will factor in the cost of the fraud so everybody is paying for it at the end of the day.

In a p2p payment, it's just too easy to pretend your account was hacked so the same policy cannot be applied.

You've hit the nail on the head.

I'm figuring that a lot of people would like to put some restrictions on their savings account so that if some hacker DOES get access to it, it's not game over right then.

You wouldn't be able to spend money straight out of your savings account to a merchant. You would have to transfer it to your checking account, and you would have to wait until the waiting period was over before you could spend it. This is a feature that could be added to bitcoin if a lot of people wanted it, so it isn't the central thrust of the paper.

The main thing I want is to allow the creation of new currencies with new rules, no programming required, all running on top of the bitcoin protocol. I'm convinced that the ability to create coins that track the value of a ticker is going to be a really big deal.