Tony gives us his thoughts on how to spread the bitcoin message; all the amazing advantages of bitcoin like instant remittance and low fees will be why people adopt it.
I hold an opposite school of thought here. Bitcoin will not stand out from the crowd by being sold. Old me would not be interested in bitcoin for low fees and being international (both properties paypal has). Those arguments instead elicit a ‘Delete Spam’ response.
Bitcoin is democratic money or a weapon against banks- that’s exciting! Everyone wants to be part of the revolution. Bitcoin’s decentralisation is the single most important property from which all other advantages derive from. It is the root of the system.
Note: I am not the typical person. I do not use a telephone, I use IRC and email only, both over an SSH terminal. I have a mistaken tendency to stretch my atypical personal experience to other people. Do not take my words above as gospel.
Tony continues on in the talk and lists groups of people that are naturally receptive to bitcoin like Ron Paul supporters and gold-bugs. He enumerates a good list here.
I agree with you Amir.
It seems like the bitcoin community is selling themselves short by trying to be just like everyone else and denouncing bitcoin’s ability to be anonymous and free of corporate/governmental control. While it dose give ammunition to toughs who seek to destroy bitcoin they are also what make it unique, powerful, and most of all valuable. In my option the bitcoin community needs to grow some balls and be proud of who they are. Rolling over an playing dead is not going to dissuade the opponents. It will only weaken the the defense by turning away potential backers and slowing adoption.
When Tony is speaking about eliminating currency risk, that strategy may be true but it also negates one of the benefits of bitcoin which to get paid and also to spend in bitcoin. The more that bitcoin is kept within the bitcoin ecosystem, the less reliance it will have on the exchanges. Far better to maintain some bitcoin balances and sensibly hedge the currency risk; national currencies have risk as well.
Good point, Mr. Matonis. Excellent show you did for the Keiser report a few months back, would love to see you in the media more. Your writing on Austrian school economics & cryptocurrency is terrific.
I do not agree with you Amir. Paypal is king today because it was “sold” to the Internet public on it’s economic advantages. And Bitcoin certainly has some economic advantages over Paypal. Not the least of which is that Paypal is *not* truly international.
I really don’t like the idea of a ‘bitcoin community’ – normal folk are never going to be part of this community. People who use dollars or pounds don’t call themselves the ‘dollar community’ – people don’t define themselves by the currency they happen to use (they have better things to do with their lives).
If people choose to use Bitcoin it will because they see the advantages, but they are not going to base their lives on it.
Mark, if the only thing you can find to pick apart is semantics than bitcoin must be doing pretty well for itself. People like to categorize things, and it just happens that the one thing the large and diverse *community* using bitcoin has in common is…you guessed it…*bitcoin*. It’s almost like a…well, a bitcoin community…
Well, we do sorta have a community for the USD. Called the United States. You have to think in terms of time and adoption. Right now, yeah everyone knows what the Dollar is basically everywhere, but it wasn’t like that at the start.
Same with Bitcoin. Without some type of “community” spreading the word about it and keeping some semblance of being organized, Bitcoin would just be lost in the tech-geek white noise and no one would know that it even existed.
Also It’s not controlled by any government or central banking authority so you can’t just say “this governments currency” or “so and so bank of whatever” it’s a currency controlled by the people who use it… what else do we call it? Community is as good a word to use as any really.
I use the term “bitcoin community” becuase it is an Open Source project. I am just use to useing that term when refering to the users of Open Source code, like “The Linux Community”, “The BSD Community”, “The KDE Community”…. it is just semantics.
great video! great ideas and suggestions!
Bitcoin should defintely be adopted as a mainstream technology, just like the internet and email.
But the internet wasn’t promoted as a “revolution over the newspapers” and email didn’t define itself as a “F.U. to the post office”.
I don’t believe that the mainstream would be excited to have a weapon against the government or some corporations. Who wants to go through all that trouble? I believe the mainstream population has other things on the mind then to start a fight like that.
Therefore I strongly agree with Tony and the contents of the video!
Except for a few flaws:
Bitcoin is an easy way to spend money, yes. Just like email.
But if you try to avoid the risk of the fluctuation in value by only buying it when needed, then you take this advantage away. Storing your Dollars to buy Bitcoins with an exchange plays requires trust (and after what happened with all the exchange places, I don’t have that trust anymore to keep my money with them.) So unless you store dollars with the exchange place, you’d have to deposit your dollars ever ytime before you make a transaction. This can be a hassle, because depositing money is still based on those slow, expensive and old systems, which we are trying to replace with Bitcoin.
So if you are trying to stay away from the risks of price fluctuations and the “new, unknown, and experimental nature” of Bitcoin and all the projects/businesses going along with it, Bitcoin isn’t right for you.
You are either in with all the advantages and risks that come with bitcoin, or you are out.
I guess at this point the advantages aren’t quite outweighing the risks…
Just like when email first started, people would call and ask if the email was received. Might as well call in the first place, instead of using email.
So I hope we can lower the remaining risks and find even more advantages of Bitcoin, that are appealing to mainstream users.
Early internet. I know it isn’t an exact analogy or model, but it will suffice for now…
Bitcoin support is YOUNG. Amazingly young. It took decades before the internet was CONVENIENTLY & widely available to the common public (particularly advent of the world wide web).
Bitcoins MUST become widely and conveniently available to the common public. As happened with the world wide web part of the internet, it will explode.
Convenience, simplicity, and availability are the groundwork that must be laid before Bitcoin can be successful as a money. What many folks forget is that Bitcoin MUST serve its primary function better than the competition: as a currency…a medium of exchange.
To those who wish their Bitcoins to rise in value…obviously you can ride a bubble or fluctuation etc….but for long term, you will want Bitcoin to succeed as a currency too.
Bitcoin is a beautiful creation. Form MUST follow function. Make it work.
I think the problem with acceptance is inertia, I ask my kids all the time would you like to go climbing, archery, canoeing, but they never do. Look at Open office, Free office Software instead of Windows Office Suite, Look at Linux, free, fast sleek operating system, all Free and yet Joe Public keeps doing the same things over and over despite the fact that there are better alternatives.
The same with Bitcoin, a far better form of money even more trustworthy than Gold, ( Google ‘Gold Tungsten’ )
It is not Bitcoin that has a problem it is we lazy human slobs.
Unfortunately, that’s what Bitcoin, and Linux and Open Office have to deal with, Human Inertia. In years to come we will wonder how we ever put up with Windows and being robbed blind by Bernanke and his Kleptocratic Buddies, but till then..
I think your analogy says more then you think it dose.
For some reason people like to say Linux, BSD, LibreOffice, and the like are not dominating despite them being better. However, Linux completely dominates the Embedded Device market, Linux & BSD dominate the Server market, Linux is killing in the smart phone market (Sybian, Android), iOS is based on mostly Open Source software (though not open development), Linux dominates the dumb phone market, but no not the ‘Desktop’ (however, it most likely has about the same market share as Apple). Whole nations like Brazil are moving all schools and government computers over to Linux. LibreOffice is also being mandated by EU nations and Brazil for government use.
I am fairly certain Bitcoin will see the same massive success after it matures. However, maybe people may like to say the same incorrect statements about Bitcoin at that time too.
Owe, and Linux powers nearly 100% of the Super Computers.
I hope bitcoin rises like a pnoehix.As an alternative to trad. currencies, it could allow all the tax breaks the rich currently get only this time, for the man in the street. No surprises TPTB don’t like it.