Topic: Are newcommers to bitcoin laggards or what? (Read 4977 times)

this thread was sleeping, thank you for actually appreciating this thread..i will read your blog

I agree with the others that we are still in the innovator stage. 

Bitcoin has not broken out into the mainstream and in many ways I see it more like the internet in the early 1990s before Netscape even came out.  It was know to a few people but had not widely disseminated and that is exactly what the innovation stage is about.  Buy the mid 1990s people could use the internet without knowing anything about it (thanks to graphic browsers like Netscape) and we are not there yet with bitcoin.

We have room for a lot more innovation with Bitcoin and a lot more people to welcome to it.

that is a sign of innovation/ early adopter phase.

Think about mobile phones in their very early phase. Or the internet.

Many people are skeptical about new ideas and technologies until at some point everyone uses it and no one even remembers what it was like without it.

The fact that people say they won't touch it just means they don't see the benefits yet, but in time they will.

Just like back in the 90's people said "who needs a cellphone anyway, if people want to call me they can call to my home phone, and when i'm not at home they can just wait"

look where we are now.

This can be a tool to get more people into bitcoin,
But we as a community need to agree on the dates and then promote it.

Innovators: 2009 - 2010
Early adopters:2011 - 2014
Early majority: 2015 - ?
Late majority: ?
Laggards: ?

we are still in innovator stage as new things like hardware wallet need to be made (by this i mean user friendly true retail-ready for average joe).. we arent quite there yet
we need proper forex quality exchanges with top end security, proper financial audits, transparency in regards to cold stored coins matching the database balance sheets. and fully licenced to accept fiat properly.. we arnt quite there yet
we need big businesses that want to accept bitcoin and hoard it. much the same way FIAT businesses only cash out their 10%-50% costs and keep the profits.

although we dont need government regulation, we need to build atleast some form of contractual moral code (list of promises/term and conditions) that have a basic standards that businesses need to work towards/achieve, else be sanction by a court (breach of contract)

we also need more gateways for people to push signed tx's to. allowing for transactions sent via API and not only tcp

we need a second alternative to a full node. i dont mean these lightweight wallets already made, but a new full node program that is an alternative to bitcoin-core. to ensure the protocol cant be changed by bitcoin-core with a simple update.

we are relying too much on bitcoin-core, blockchain.info and prototype quality products and services.. so i think innovation still has alot to achieve.

we are leaving innovators-stage and just entering into early bird stage from what i see.

In my single month of newbieness, the way I view where we are with bitcoin is about the same place we were with the internet around 1995-1999. Lots of people were online by then, email had just "taken off", cordless slash cell phones were available for the wealthy and were carried in the equivalent of an ammo can...there was much hype about the potential of the internet - and a huge push for early adopter businesses to get online to do transactions. A few did...and the porn industry online paved the way for the Joe Blows of the world.

Meanwhile, Geraldo, Good Morning America, Sally Jessie, and Jerry Springer were all warning us of the inbred child screwing mafia illuminati sorts who were flocking to the internet to hatch plots to steal and eat your children...the Y2K thing had a field day...and how the internet was a fad, a passing craze, and oh, what's that? Televise a court hearing? A congressional session for legislators to figure out the definition of sex? Wait! You mean we can download music with this internet (and three days later listen to a song?) Wow...there might be something to this!

Remember Amazon just starting out and this entire push for "e books" and software to make them - and there was the same, exact protesting: I LOVE HARD COVER REAL BOOKS! YOU'RE NOT A REAL AUTHOR UNLESS A REAL PUBLISHING HOUSE PUBLISHES YOUR BOOK! NOBODY'S GONNA READ AT THE COMPUTER! And now, the majority of people shop Amazon and publish their own books and publishing houses are nervously watching old school industry fall apart - those who incorporate digital books survive...those who resist go away.

By about 2001, cell phones were way smaller, most flip tops, uncomfortably expensive payment contracts, and businesses were now securely online.

I don't think bitcoin has reached the 2001 level yet. We're still in the 90s era internet where there is a push for businesses to get bitcoin, set up accepting it, and the die hard computer geeks, and those with no geek blood but a lotta heart and vision (like me) can see the long term potential shift the internet would be bringing and are getting on board.

I didn't know squat about it at the time, so I wasn't the one who had the presence of mind to buy sex.com. But I did have the presence of mind to see what was coming, so I learned HTML, js and CSS and learned how to design websites so I could sell shovels to the miners! Since the infrastructure wasn't really in place for me to sell stuff online and accept payments, I worked out the freebies option instead and gave away ebooks on how to establish a web presence for free...and provided my list of resources. Now I can do business online and have probably 15 domains and sites of varying topics...just waiting on bitcoin to catch up!

It is surprising seeing how people view the stage of mass adoption we are in at this time for me also.  I can't see this stage we are in currently as anything but the early adopter stage.  Not the earliest stage for sure, that time has passed but this is the time to buy IMHO.

Why are you participating in this forum if you think "Bitcoin will hit the ditch of history pretty soon.". Seems a bit strange...

I am newbie. It seems really confusing to me. Looking for right direction from any experienced one.

To add

Average Joe also refused to go near the internet. Refused to ever use email, didn't know what that was and found it ridiculous - why do all that when he can just write out the damn letter, stick it in an envelope, slap a stamp on it and walk it to the mailbox? Having to get a computer and internet and an email account is just waaaay too much trouble. Remember 3 or 4 years later he refused to cut off his landline because he used it for sending faxes? And then remember when he refused to bother getting a smart phone because the dumb one he had with Verizon for the next 15 years at 289 a month was just fine? Remember when he refused to upgrade to Windows98 because he liked 95? Remember when he bitched about Windowsxp? And then Windows Vista? And Windows7 and if you listen real close you can hear him refusing, hands down, to mess with Windows 8.1.

And no, he's not going to get a tablet because he's still got a perfectly good desktop. Nor is he going to buy Google Glass because he already has the internet on his stupid smart phone.

It's like that for Average Joe. The world moves on without him and he realizes that if he wants to be functional in it, he upgrades too, bitching every step of the way.

LOL. I think I love you 

That was really nice to read from start..how we have come across negative opinions throughout history.

Sort of like the Internet in the very early 90s.

"The Internet's takeover of the global communication landscape was almost instant in historical terms: it only communicated 1% of the information flowing through two-way telecommunications networks in the year 1993, already 51% by 2000, and more than 97% of the telecommunicated information by 2007.[1] Today the Internet continues to grow, driven by ever greater amounts of online information, commerce, entertainment, and social networking."

Right now, a lot of people have HEARD of Bitcoin
but relatively few own or use it.

I would say the concept of crypto-currencies can't fail, it's only a matter of time when we can say it's widely adopted. That said, I think we can talk about wide adoption when it stabilizes and people are getting their salaries in BTC (but not converted fiat->BTC amounts, just BTC amounts).

I'm pretty sure we're at least early adopters and possibly innovators. It all depends on how many people will end up using bitcoin.

Right now only about a million or less people use bitcoin (hard to know exactly), while there's over 7 billion people alive.

So about 0.014% of the world's population has bitcoin or 140 per million.

There's PLENTY of room to grow.

Either bitcoin fails within a couple of months/years or bitcoin will become MUCH larger (and thus more valuable).

Was talking about the situation right now, and I just hope it will change in few years, like it changed for many other techs...

Whaaaaat? So many people even in this forum think we're in late majority stage? That surprises me. We're only now starting to get a glimpse of the full potential of Bitcoin. If Bitcoin is going anywhere near mainstream adoption we're in innovators/early adoption phase. And Bitcoin is simply too useful and too hard to stop to not be mainstream. It will probably take some time though.

Anyway, why not just dig up a graph of how many new wallets are created every day and compare it to the history. Is the number growing exponentially we're innovators/early adopters/early early majority, is it kind of constant we're going from early to late, if declining, late/laggards. Of course there's a lot of temporary variations day to day/month to month etc but might be possible to get an idea.

Indeed.

"The truth is Oil won't become a serious player in the energy industry until it is user friendly. People are generally very lazy to convert crude oil into workable refined oil, and it can be said there are many obstacles for doing so. You can't even use oil in the majority of the world which is still using horses mainly for transport, the internal combustion engine was only invented just a few years ago, most folks in the world don't even know how to use one, let alone put one in front of their buggy for transportation purposes. Oil is heavy, dirty, dangerous, difficult to extract, and expensive to transport. Oil creates foul pollution when you burn it, AND it smells foul. Really more of a burden than anything. Horses by comparison are cheap, plentiful, and everyone already knows how to ride one! This is silliness, at this rate oil will never catch on. You can have your dirty, disgusting, difficult oil. I'll stick with trusty old coal and horses, thank you very much."

-----------------

1530:
"The multitude of books is a great evil. There is no limit to this fever for writing; every one must be an author; some out of vanity, to acquire celebrity and raise up a name, others for the sake of mere gain."
-Martin Luther

1800:
"What, sir, would you make a ship sail against the wind and currents by lighting a bonfire under her deck? I pray you, excuse me, I have not the time to listen to such nonsense."
-Napoleon Bonaparte, when told of Robert Fulton’s steamboat, which had just been invented.

1825:
"What can be more palpably absurd than the prospect held out of locomotives traveling twice as fast as stagecoaches?"
-The Quarterly Review

1830:
"Rail travel at high speeds is not possible because passengers, unable to breathe, would die of asphyxia."
-Dionysius Lardner, Professor of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy at University College, London, and author of The Steam Engine Explained and Illustrated

1864:
"No one will pay good money to get from Berlin to Potsdam in one hour when he can ride his horse there in one day for free."
-King William I of Prussia, on hearing of the invention of trains

1865:
"Dear Mr. President: The canal system of this country is being threatened by a new form of transportation known as "railroads" ... As you may well know, Mr. President, "railroad" carriages are pulled at the enormous speed of 15 miles per hour by "engines" which, in addition to endangering life and limb of passengers, roar and snort their way through the countryside, setting fire to crops, scaring the livestock and frightening women and children. The Almighty certainly never intended that people should travel at such breakneck speed."
-Martin Van Buren, Governor of New York

1865:
"Well-informed people know it is impossible to transmit the voice over wires and that were it possible to do so, the thing would be of no practical value."
-The Boston Post

1872:
"It’s a great invention but who would want to use it anyway?"
-Rutherford B. Hayes, U.S. President, after a demonstration of Alexander Bell’s telephone

1872:
"Louis Pasteur’s theory of germs is ridiculous fiction."
-Pierre Pachet, professor of physiology at Toulouse

Get the picture? Throughout history, fearful nay-sayers have almost always been proved to be clueless fuckwits.