[eurobit] David Birch – Next Generation Money

EhVedadoOAnonimato

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Quote from: david birch

if you think you're going to sell bitcoin to the mass market because the general public wants an anonymous, irreversible, cryphtographically strong, pre-payed, electronic cash replacement system, I can proove to you, absolutely: they don't and you're completely wasting your time.

I partially disagree with that. IMHO, the "general public" does want to avoid taxes. And the percentage of people willing to do so will probably only increase from now on, in most places. So, yeah, indirectly, people do want an anonymous payment system, since that's an imperative requirement if you want to safely avoid taxes.

farfiman

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Quote from: herzmeister on December 28, 2011, 11:49:48 AM

no i was joking. i was taking the phrase and applying it to how internet technology might have been seen ~20 years ago. i mean to say that there can and will be applications built upon bitcoin as a money that will be easy enough for the general public to use, without them having to understand the exact nature of the technological foundation or leveraging every of its features.

Correct! look at me sig...

herzmeister

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no i was joking. i was taking the phrase and applying it to how internet technology might have been seen ~20 years ago. i mean to say that there can and will be applications built upon bitcoin as a money that will be easy enough for the general public to use, without them having to understand the exact nature of the technological foundation or leveraging every of its features.

genjix

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Quote from: herzmeister on December 28, 2011, 11:36:51 AM

"if you think you're going to sell teh interwebz to the mass market because the general public wants a pseudonymous, distributed, relatively failsafe data transfer and publication protocol, I can proove to you, absolutely: they don't and you're completely wasting your time."

Kiss

Is this a real quote? Who is this from?

farfiman

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Quote from: molecular on December 28, 2011, 04:42:31 AM

An electronic cash replacement system? What the heck is that? He's clearly putting bitcoin into some sort of pre-made category system for payment systems he has (I bet he had to add "cryptographically strong" for bitcoin), which bitcoin doesn't fit.

David Birch fails to see that bitcoin is money.

Maybe he didn't do his homework but maybe he doesn't see it to be money because he thinks the majority
( besides those freaks on Antique PC's....) won't see it as money.

In that case whats left for Bitcoin ( in his opinion) is possibly a payment system.....

and even then he tries to prove that NOBODY ( the masses) cares about all the qualitys
that Bitcoin users quote as the reasons for using it.

herzmeister

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"if you think you're going to sell teh interwebz to the mass market because the general public wants a pseudonymous, distributed, relatively failsafe data transfer and publication protocol, I can proove to you, absolutely: they don't and you're completely wasting your time."

Kiss

phatsphere

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i like his 5 points and what he says is mostly true, but fall somewhat short for bitcoins inherit actual problems. e.g. facebook will lock out all others and second, there will always be the problem of converting bitcoin to fiat money and vice versa.
if google wallet will ever be "open" to other systems, it's for course a must for bitcoin apps to integrate there.
bitcoin is also not as anonymous as he thinks. it's easy for a reciever to create a new unique address and hence identify when the sender has actually sent the money. that's basically what he was talking about.

kangasbros

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Quote from: kwukduck on December 28, 2011, 09:32:12 AM

See, people stop caring about their privacy, security and even sound money... as long as it's easy and they don't have to think about it for more then half a second.

That is a well known truth. To make things successful, you have to make them easy to use. There are many businesses which make money by making something easier for people to find/use/etc, and they have no other advantages.

kwukduck

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Quote from: mcorlett on December 28, 2011, 01:35:27 AM

Here's that "Square" thing David was talking about. It's pretty cool, I must say.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_ORpi4OOt0
https://squareup.com/

See, people stop caring about their privacy, security and even sound money... as long as it's easy and they don't have to think about it for more then half a second.

lonelyminer (Peter Šurda)

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My impression is also that he does not get it. I'll give him a small credit though, he is correct in saying that in order to be successful, Bitcoin needs to cater to the needs of potential users, and he made some useful examples of how. But other than that, he missed it. Such as this one:

Quote from: molecular on December 28, 2011, 04:42:31 AM

He's probably right in saying: if you want to be successfull, you have to be on the phone.

When I heard him say this, I was like duh? Plenty of people at the conference had Bitcoin on their phones. Poorly researched.

Bitcoin is open source and how it is developed does not mimick how centralised products are launched. Just like assorted pundits did not get linux 10 years ago, other pundits do not get Bitcoin now. Remember those articles and "research papers" about how linux has high TCO, is not user friendly and all that other made up stuff? They were wrong. Linux works. Bitcoin works. Obviously, it can work better in the future. And most likely it will. There is a steady demand for it, because the alternatives (Windows / fiat money) suck. They won't suck less merely because of what some pundit thinks.

kangasbros

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Quote from: molecular on December 28, 2011, 04:42:31 AM

He's probably right in saying: if you want to be successfull, you have to be on the phone.

I got the impression that he hadn't researched bitcoin enough, bitcoin is very well presented in the mobile phones. In fact, I think mobile clients are perhaps the most impressive thing about bitcoin.

For example, currently it is trivial to create a mobile website, where I sell digital content for bitcoins, and the payment can happen with Schildbach's Android bitcoin wallet within the phone. For example, it would be very easy to create my own bitcoin book/movie/app store.

Also with bitcoinspinner, I can download, install & receive my first bitcoins to the phone in 5 minutes. It is very impressive.

molecular

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I really liked Birchs talk. He offers some unique insights into a market most of us have no experience with, yet are trying to enter.

He's probably right in saying: if you want to be successfull, you have to be on the phone.

Back in Prague I couldn't help thinking: Damnit, this guy doesn't get it, he keeps talking about Bitcoin as if it was merely a transaction processing system, like visa or whatever. It is not, Bitcoin is a money. I can see the point of marketing Bitcoin as a payment processing system for now, but it really is more than that, clearly.

EDIT: let me quote him:

Quote from: david birch

You know, you're not the only people, that are looking to develop new payment systems and are trying to find a niche, so here we go: if you think you're going to sell bitcoin to the mass market because the general public wants an anonymous, irreversible, cryphtographically strong, pre-payed, electronic cash replacement system, I can proove to you, absolutely: they don't and you're completely wasting your time.

An electronic cash replacement system? What the heck is that? He's clearly putting bitcoin into some sort of pre-made category system for payment systems he has (I bet he had to add "cryptographically strong" for bitcoin), which bitcoin doesn't fit.

David Birch fails to see that bitcoin is money.

kjj

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Quote from: sadpandatech on December 28, 2011, 12:50:41 AM

I will listen to the entire thing here eventually. Two minutes in though, there is a glaring difference between Mastercard, et al, creating an alternative system and Bitcoin. And that is that in the former the creating entity retains control over the money put into their system...... Yea, I bet Mastercard did spend 150mil just to find people were not interested. I know my first thought would be, "Why would I want Mastercard to control my money?'...

Agreed. He goes on to list a bunch of failed electronic currencies from the last 15-20 years. Hopefully he'll realize the one critical factor that is different between all of them and bitcoin. Watching it now to see how it goes.

dunand

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Really interesting. A must for all bitcoin developers.

mcorlett

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Here's that "Square" thing David was talking about. It's pretty cool, I must say.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_ORpi4OOt0
https://squareup.com/

sadpandatech

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I will listen to the entire thing here eventually. Two minutes in though, there is a glaring difference between Mastercard, et al, creating an alternative system and Bitcoin. And that is that in the former the creating entity retains control over the money put into their system...... Yea, I bet Mastercard did spend 150mil just to find people were not interested. I know my first thought would be, "Why would I want Mastercard to control my money?'...

genjix

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http://bitcoinmedia.com/eurobit-david-birch-next-generation-money/

I personally liked David Birch's talk and feel it added a lot- if not for understanding what the conventional wisdom is. He made us challenge and confront our beliefs, and doing so can only make you more confident of success if you are right.

An interesting talk.

Topic: [eurobit] David Birch – Next Generation Money (Read 2133 times)