Topic: Explaining Bitcoin to regular people (Read 3608 times)

I think that we need to address this. It's our responsability. I think the introduction video could be more accurate in some aspects.

I describe it as a new form of electronic currency. Most don't get it, but the real problem is, most people simply don't care. Before someone can understand Bitcoin, they need to understand money. Most people simply do not understand money... at all. Think about how many people spend recklessly and have tons of debt thanks to their habit of buying stupid things. They don't care enough to develop any coherent thoughts about money. Only someone who understands that money has no basis in reality will understand that it's okay for money to be based on data. It's not the tech savvy who will understand Bitcoin, it's the finance savvy people who are most likely to get it. There's no need to explain the cryptography to anyone. Most people use email, yet they know nothing about the mechanics of email. It doesn't matter.

The biggest problem I had was explaining this to my dad. When I first told him I spent $40 on Bitcoin, he reacted like I had been indoctrinated by a cult that incinerates money for fun. Eventually I got through to him, which is important because I'm still young/irresponsible enough to financially leech off of my parents. My mother, on the other hand, understood and liked Bitcoin immediately, despite the fact that my Dad is an extremely good computer programmer and my mom's not a programmer at all. I think it's because my dad has poor investment sense, unlike my mom.

I managed to get two of my close friends into Bitcoin so far. The first one understood immediately but did not find it interesting. He only started to like it when he realized Bitcoin could "finally take down the government." The second one struggled to understand and still doesn't get it, despite multiple attempts on my part to explain the basics of economics to him. He started mining, hoping it would make him rich, but he still believes Bitcoin is a bubble, or better yet a ponzi scheme. Some people...

I made several facebook status updates about it and nobody cares. I guess facebook only cares when I post links to hilarious videos. Someone make a hilarious Bitcoin video please.

It kinda reminds me of the Einstein quote explaining how radio works.

"You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat."

--Albert Einstein, when asked to describe radio.

Long cat is looooooooooooong. 

+1

 It's a doozie for all those Zombies out there I tell ya. I just want them to stay sleep a lil while longer, so mt. gox and dwolla won't be so backed up.

I've had a hard enough time explaining it to people who are software developers with crypto backgrounds.
Common folk have no chance.

When I do try to explain it I have to basically simplify it to the point that what I'm saying is completely incorrect.

I leave out the part that only a fraction of the 21M exist.
Then I just say there is a closed system of 21M tokens that will not get larger and they are spent by encrypting them to someone else.

None of that is correct but its the closest I can get without having peoples eyes glaze over.

+1

If someone doesn't already understand the difference between fiat and gold, don't bother.

Yeah dream on. History shows us that the vast majority of people are sheep who see only what's right in front of them and are very susceptible to trickery and fraud. If you are right and people could understand how the fiat money hurts them, they would have never given up the privilege to own real money in the first place. If and when Bitcoin will be used by these general types it won't be because they understand it like we early supporters do but because they see others use an trust it. And you can count on it.

I believe that one of the benefits of Bitcoins over traditional currencies is that it pushes you to actively find out what is it about. Traditional currencies are considered "given" and taken for granted. Maybe with a more concious population Greece, Ireland and US crisis wouldn't have happened at all.

Generally speaking, this is because people think that there is something backing the dollar, or whatever.

I just tried explaining BTC to an old person IRL.  They don't believe that anything that you can't hold in your hand has any value.  The example of chinese people mining gold in WoW as a full time job didn't phase them.

I think the content is important, but it should be as didactic and sythetic as possible. Maybe too much information can be counterproductive. Still thinking of it.

Would this be a valid way of how to explain it?: http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=10502.0

I generally lead strong.

U WANT MIRRION DOLLAR?!

+1

That's what I'm talking about. Great posts guys, keep 'em coming.

When I explain people I have to go all back and explain them why the money (a piece of paper) has a value, and I tell them to think about how money was created in first place

Tell your wife to imagine a blank sheet of paper.
Then she should imagine whoever in your country prints money (federal bank...) printing a bank note on that paper.
Ask her "Were did the 100 Dollar/Euros/... come from, that were printed on this sheet of paper?"

Answer: Someone calculated that it's ok and reasonable at this point of time to issue x amount of bank notes. They come from nowhere.

The same goes for bitcoin, only that it has been predetermined far longer than with other money (as the boss of the central bank might have a good day and decide to print 2 million dollars more, because it's Tuesday) since after the money has been released, there is no longer someone controlling it. It has rather been said "This is how much there will be, ever!" and if anyone in the network tries to change this, the rest of the network will just say "you don't play by the initial rules, I don't believe you!".

Computing Power / ( Electricity + Time )

You are buying bitcoins in your own house while sitting on your couch.

Not anymore. The only twitter account I ever used was for the sole purpose of tweeting while I was pooping or when I saw someone heading to the bathroom to poop. It was all just gross pooping details and postulating what coworkers ate the previous day based on my observations. Friends all thought it was some sort of commentary on how I thought that they should stop tweeting and facebooking mundane crap in their lives that nobody cares about. But the real purpose was that I had an office right next to a bathroom and devised the scheme as a way to make coworkers walk to another floor to do their business. It worked.

In this tale there is actually some sort of half-assed lesson about explaining bitcoins. People are less inclined to eat sausage if you truthfully and accurately explain sausage-making to them, unless they are huge sausage nerds who are really into sausage production. If your goal is to get people into bitcoins and they aren't massive finance nerds, sometimes it's best to just talk about delicious sausages and how you are able to buy them and eat them with your profits from bitcoin mining.

the BitStork.