Public Relations

[Anonymous]

If Bitcoin is going to fail, it's not going to be because of a software bug or security issues but something inherently wrong with the design of the system itself and the social science that goes along with it.

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[jed]

I agree with Fleembit.

This is what I said in another thread. But is more appropriate here:

The problem is the way bitcoin is presented. You guys all like it because you are libertarian types. But keep in mind that the vast majority of people in the world aren't. But bitcoin doesn't just appeal to libertarian types. All you need to say to promote it is:

Bitcoin is a free paypal that anyone can use.

Please leave the libertarian, going to replace all other currencies, take over the world stuff out of it. That just turns people off.
The only important thing for people to know is that it is better than what people use now for online payments.

People had other ideas but you get the point. Something short and simple that people can understand. Something that let's them clearly see why they should use it regardless of their ideology.

Gavin: I think your portrayal of it above is definitely better than the forums. I still think it should be toned down.  I feel like "revolutionizing the financial system" is still too up in people's mix.

I understand most people want that to happen but a) it isn't realistic b) it scares people c) it antagonizes people that are powerful
My point is if you want bitcoin to be as big as it can be and have the biggest chance of "replacing banks" you should downplay this hope. Let them come to you. There is no point in yelling this is a revolution. Just let the revolution quietly happen.

Also bitcoin can definitely succeed without doing all this revolution.  It is already useful and used.

[jaromil]

This post is worrying as it follows the arbitrary removal of Genjix from the list of developers, right after the /. interview you made with him.

Now you ask to normalize the public views which, on top of this events, implies you are fencing the bitcoin project from the people who don't have your same view. I understand your arguments, yet I believe that no matters how much one pushes him or herself to the fringes, everyone should be aloud to speak their point of view and share it, in primis people who have contributed to Bitcoin in the first place.

I just hope this doesn't go unnoticed, as it marks the passage of bitcoin from the *community* stage to the *project* lead.
To those whose attention on the topic will survive long enough the sentence whether it was really necessary or not for Bitcoin.

FWIW and if you are wondering I'm not genjix thug nor he ask me to write this 1st stupid post in what might soon become "your forum", this is my open agenda in all this http://DYNDY.net and not particularly interested in such turf wars, but feeling the need to highlight what is really happening in this thread.

ciao

[mewantsbitcoins]

I agree with Fleembit.

This is what I said in another thread. But is more appropriate here:

The problem is the way bitcoin is presented. You guys all like it because you are libertarian types. But keep in mind that the vast majority of people in the world aren't. But bitcoin doesn't just appeal to libertarian types. All you need to say to promote it is:

Bitcoin is a free paypal that anyone can use.

Please leave the libertarian, going to replace all other currencies, take over the world stuff out of it. That just turns people off.
The only important thing for people to know is that it is better than what people use now for online payments.

People had other ideas but you get the point. Something short and simple that people can understand. Something that let's them clearly see why they should use it regardless of their ideology.

Gavin: I think your portrayal of it above is definitely better than the forums. I still think it should be toned down.  I feel like "revolutionizing the financial system" is still too up in people's mix.

I understand most people want that to happen but a) it isn't realistic b) it scares people c) it antagonizes people that are powerful
My point is if you want bitcoin to be as big as it can be and have the biggest chance of "replacing banks" you should downplay this hope. Let them come to you. There is no point in yelling this is a revolution. Just let the revolution quietly happen.

Also bitcoin can definitely succeed without doing all this revolution.  It is already useful and used.

I have a slightly different take on it. If you don't believe in changes that Bitcoin is going to bring - that's fine, but just consider that possibility.
If we downplay the implications of Bitcoin, when things actually happen it won't be pretty. I know that for the majority it's easier to just look the other way and ignore problems, like they do with current financial system, but in my opinion people who start using Bitcoin should be fully aware what may be the consequences - good and bad. It will help to build a stable user base.
I do, however, agree that some views expressed on this forum(including my own) can be extreme and unnecessary.

[Timo Y]

as a suggestion against short-term self-interest (and against the interests of enough other early adopters that it won't be popular), i am convinced that the absolute best thing for the bitcoin technology at this moment would be for gavin to release a version of the client that restarts the block chain.

Great, then we would have two competing currencies, Bitcoin v1 and Bitcoin v2. Until somebody comes along and thinks that Bitcoin v2 is unfair too, and starts a Bitcoin v3.  The community would be split into three tribes, The Pioneers, the The Restarters, and The Laggards.   The majority of users (who don't care about our politics and just want Bitcoin to work) would end up purchasing all three of them anyhow, to make sure their cash is accepted everywhere.

As if Bitcoin wasn't confusing enough for newbies already.   KISS.

[genjix]

@Jaromil - I think there was a misunderstanding. Sirius has taken me off bitcoin.org because I am not considered a core developer. I think there are simply so many things happening now and since our projects are more long term, it is easy for people not to see the extent at which I am involved. I will send him a message and clear it up.

no worries

[unk]

@forever-d, multiple competing chains could be quite robust without ever getting in the way of e-commerce, but we can cross that bridge when we come to it. for now, we could think of a restart as what happens when we move out of 'beta' toward real production. this is a particularly good moment in time to consider it.

(another way to say it: you can't prevent other people from starting new block chains. what's hard is getting new chains to benefit from the network effects of a community. better gavin, now, than paypal, citibank or facebook in six months.)

many bloggers and journalists are specifically recommending against adoption because of the history of the current block chain. they don't say it that way, but it's what their arguments boil down to. that block chain comes with a get-rich-quick mentality and has been overpromoted in speculative terms. and what's the reason to keep it, really, except to reward people like us in ways the public won't particularly want and at best will be neutral to?

with a new chain, gavin's promises in interviews that 'everyone can be an early adopter' would be more nearly true. and bitcoin would more clearly stand or fall as a payments system, not as a quirky speculative store of value subject to manipulation that's scaring people away. restarting the chain, at this particular moment in time, emphasizes payments and deemphasizes speculative bubbles. the more people use it to make transfers, and the fewer who use it as a retirement-planning vehicle that appeared one day from heaven, the more likely the technology will be important and help people.

[wumpus]

as a suggestion against short-term self-interest (and against the interests of enough other early adopters that it won't be popular), i am convinced that the absolute best thing for the bitcoin technology at this moment would be for gavin to release a version of the client that restarts the block chain.

I think you see this wrong. The whole idea that the currency can be 'rebooted' at any moment and people will lose everything they have is a reason people will stay away from it. If you do it once, they will think you'll do it every time something happened that you don't like. The idea of a completely digital distributed currency is already scary enough for most without such crazy ideas.

[goatpig]

@forever-d, multiple competing chains could be quite robust without ever getting in the way of e-commerce, but we can cross that bridge when we come to it. for now, we could think of a restart as what happens when we move out of 'beta' toward real production. this is a particularly good moment in time to consider it.

(another way to say it: you can't prevent other people from starting new block chains. what's hard is getting new chains to benefit from the network effects of a community. better gavin, now, than paypal, citibank or facebook in six months.)

many bloggers and journalists are specifically recommending against adoption because of the history of the current block chain. they don't say it that way, but it's what their arguments boil down to. that block chain comes with a get-rich-quick mentality and has been overpromoted in speculative terms. and what's the reason to keep it, really, except to reward people like us in ways the public won't particularly want and at best will be neutral to?

with a new chain, gavin's promises in interviews that 'everyone can be an early adopter' would be more nearly true. and bitcoin would more clearly stand or fall as a payments system, not as a quirky speculative store of value subject to manipulation that's scaring people away. restarting the chain, at this particular moment in time, emphasizes payments and deemphasizes speculative bubbles. the more people use it to make transfers, and the fewer who use it as a retirement-planning vehicle that appeared one day from heaven, the more likely the technology will be important and help people.

You are saying people will be reluctant to join Bitcoin because early adopters return on high risk investments makes the outsiders so jealous they'd rather give up on the economical advancement of Bitcoin altogether, and your proposed solution is to smite those early adopters that got Bitcoin where it is now to allow newcomers to get that profit for themselves instead?

[jed]

unk: I don't think it is a bubble. There are just more users now than when it only cost .06 but basically the same number of coins. Don't you expect the price to roughly correlate with the number of users?
The exact same thing would happen if you somehow managed to start a new chain.

[tomcollins]

I'm always relieved to see how realistic Gavin is about the project.

[tomcollins]

@forever-d, multiple competing chains could be quite robust without ever getting in the way of e-commerce, but we can cross that bridge when we come to it. for now, we could think of a restart as what happens when we move out of 'beta' toward real production. this is a particularly good moment in time to consider it.

(another way to say it: you can't prevent other people from starting new block chains. what's hard is getting new chains to benefit from the network effects of a community. better gavin, now, than paypal, citibank or facebook in six months.)

many bloggers and journalists are specifically recommending against adoption because of the history of the current block chain. they don't say it that way, but it's what their arguments boil down to. that block chain comes with a get-rich-quick mentality and has been overpromoted in speculative terms. and what's the reason to keep it, really, except to reward people like us in ways the public won't particularly want and at best will be neutral to?

with a new chain, gavin's promises in interviews that 'everyone can be an early adopter' would be more nearly true. and bitcoin would more clearly stand or fall as a payments system, not as a quirky speculative store of value subject to manipulation that's scaring people away. restarting the chain, at this particular moment in time, emphasizes payments and deemphasizes speculative bubbles. the more people use it to make transfers, and the fewer who use it as a retirement-planning vehicle that appeared one day from heaven, the more likely the technology will be important and help people.

You are saying people will be reluctant to join Bitcoin because early adopters return on high risk investments makes the outsiders so jealous they'd rather give up on the economical advancement of Bitcoin altogether, and your proposed solution is to smite those early adopters that got Bitcoin where it is now to allow newcomers to get that profit for themselves instead?

People ARE jealous.  Human nature and all.  Except he'd raise a fit if the next generation wants to wipe out his coins.

[unk]

@jed: by no plausibly conceivable measure is there enough new money in the system to justify the current price increases fundamentally. the price is only an expectation of future 'value'. that doesn't logically entail that it's a bubble, but almost everyone who's looked closely at it thinks it is. mike is trusted more around here than i am, for good reason given his longstanding contributions, and he agreed with me and wrote in another discussion:

there is a bubble, and when it pops it will unfortunately tarnish the name of Bitcoin for a long time. I don't think it's avoidable, better to just hope it happens soon and we get it over/done with.

i'm suggesting that we have a good opportunity, at this particular moment in press coverage and in the growth of the user base, to prevent this. it won't last forever, nor will the press coverage. the press moves on very quickly, as will most users at present. i want to see the technology succeed far more than i care about the wealth that inheres in the current block chain. it's mostly random 'wealth' anyway, and it's most probably not going to last to begin with.

@goatpig: that's not at all what i'm saying. i don't care much about the original distribution, and i'm agnostic as to whether the public will either. as i said, it's just an incidental observation of a potential benefit to a restart.

[ribuck]

... an incidental observation of a potential benefit to a restart.

But don't you see that, a couple of years down the track, the next wave of new users will complain about the early adopters of the restarted chain, and the block chain will need to be restarted again ... and again ...

[cloud9]

Only ease of use, especially now that non-tech savvy people want to join - will prevent Bitcoin from being a niche.  Ease of use in exchanges, Bitcoin-otc is not for non-tech savvy people, Liberty Reserve is for people who are willing to jump through a lot of loops.  If Bitcoin-otc can have a simple username, password system with a catchy web url and drop down menus of what the user have and wants and then the site gives the match and the transaction is automatically handled through clearcoin - then we are talking mainstream.

[Garrett Burgwardt]

Only ease of use, especially now that non-tech savvy people want to join - will prevent Bitcoin from being a niche.  Ease of use in exchanges, Bitcoin-otc is not for non-tech savvy people, Liberty Reserve is for people who are willing to jump through a lot of loops.  If Bitcoin-otc can have a simple username, password system with a catchy web url and drop down menus of what the user have and wants and then the site gives the match and the transaction is automatically handled through clearcoin - then we are talking mainstream.

I've been bugging nanotube to implement a simple password system forever.

As for the other transaction system you hint at, there was someone working on one at my behest, yet he dropped the project, unfortunately. More info here: http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=7417.msg108906#msg108906

[unk]

@ribuck:  the simple answer is: yes, exactly. and bitcoin would be a huge success, technologically and economically, if we had that problem.

the longer answer is: such a repeated mechanism for restarts, if it serves the interests of the majority of users (or more strictly hashing power, since at that point it couldn't be prevented regardless of what we say or what gavin does) at the time, turns individual deflationary bitcoin block chains into a meta-chain of moderately inflationary currencies. thus, it's perhaps an overcomplicated way of doing what the 'inflacoin' people are suggesting, and i'd be inclined to support their efforts too.

but the more important point is that it doesn't matter. the current block chain is (conceptually) doing to gold or dollars what future block chains can do to the current block chains. none of them is going to last forever; 'this too shall pass'. satoshi knew that early on, if you read his early writings.

nothing prevents the newbies from starting up their own block chain anyway. i'm arguing that at this moment, it would be better for the bitcoin technology if gavin and the core dev team does it, while the press is still hot. it's a context-full argument; it's not amenable to political or economic generalisations, and i assure you that i understand both the bitcoin technology and the surrounding economics. (you can read my contributions to other discussions in order to convince yourself of that.)

[xf2_org]

This post is worrying as it follows the arbitrary removal of Genjix from the list of developers, right after the /. interview you made with him.

For the record, that edit was mine, not Gavin's or sirius'.  The edit was made in last 12h.

The list on bitcoin.org reflects satoshi + the people with git push access + Sirius (webmaster).

It's not intended as an exhaustive list of contributors to the overall bitcoin ecosystem.

[AtlasONo]

Keep doing what you're doing Gavin! You have exactly the correct outlook in my opinion.

[xf2_org]

Yeah, +1 to Gavin's pragmatism and realism.  That kind of thinking is the only way bitcoin will be a success.