Topic: How can we make Bitcoin simpler? (Read 790 times)

While it's technically built as a layer on the top of Bitcoin, it seems that in order to participate, users would either have to buy themselves in, or to clear the hurdle of getting into Bitcoin mining under today's difficulty conditions. No way to directly participate when already holding BTC. So it might miss an important opportunity of building upon Bitcoin, providing an easy path for the userbase. Having to buy in, it essentially has to compete with all the non-BTC smart contract platforms.

What use has a currency which one day is worth $100 000 and the next day 10 000? You need to be an adventurer or trader to love that. People grow older and tend to be more cautious. That apart, Bitcoin is slow and cannot acomplish similar simultanious payments transacctions as Visa. Bitcoin lacks a trusted central authority that validates transactions. Being decentral. 

#1: Yes agreed, they get into bitcoin when they learn about its value (as I said) meaning its utility (as you said). Also of course for appreciation in value. Nothing wrong with that. And generally appreciation in value is the reason they start to learn more about it. I got into Bitcoin to make money, and then eventually learned more and more about it and learned more about money and fiat and now I have a decent understanding of the whole subject, because I initially wanted to make money. Nothing wrong with most people getting in to make money. But they only stay in Bitcoin when they learn about its value, otherwise they just crash out during a bear market and get scared off for a few years.

#2: I mean everyone will always continue to use fiat. Bitcoin isn't going to replace fiat. Governments aren't going to stop issuing their own currencies just because Bitcoin becomes a popular alternative in the future. "Fiat users" don't care about using Bitcoin as a currency because they haven't learned about why it's valuable yet. Everyone is a "fiat user" as you are defining it, until they learn about Bitcoin's value, and that's when they get interested in using Bitcoin. It's not like people who are fine using fiat don't use Bitcoin because they are fine with fiat, they don't use Bitcoin because they don't know anything at all about Bitcoin. I'm fine using fiat, though I look forward to the day when I can also easily use my bitcoin as well. Fiat, whether bank money or stablecoins (which is fiat cuz its pegged to fiat) are useful for shorter term savings and payments because it is relatively stable in the short term. Bitcoin is useful for long term savings (which includes storing wealth) and for payments once you have been holding bitcoin for a while and are therefore in profit. Both will continue to exist side by side, Bitcoin will just get much more useful and some of fiat use will move over to bitcoin use. But its not like "fiat users" will never want bitcoin, it is just simply an education thing, they need to learn the value of bitcoin.

#3: Education, and making bitcoin simpler to use for the average person, are definitely the main things we need. Most of the reasons people are afraid to get into Bitcoin, or just don't want to get into Bitcoin (yet) are because they aren't educating on it, and secondly they don't know how to use it. Sure the idea of having to secure a private key is a small hurdle for those who don't want the responsibility of banking themselves, but that kinda goes with the whole education and ease of use thing, which are what need to be improved.

Bitcoin or any other crypto is not a bank, banks finance business' banks give credit.
A few whales have what makes them whales thru banks connections.
There are only a few crypto "Banks" which speaks volumes about the character of the holders.
Where is the bitcoin development bank? The Etherum Development bank, and so on?

It's even worse in Africa:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/zvlzb4/togolese_human_rights_activist_explains_french/

When you give someone a few dollars, do you have to teach them about the US financial system first before they understand how to use their money? Of course not.

Basically, people only need to know the following two three things:

1- How to buy bitcoins using cash
2- How to sell bitcoins for cash
3- How to avoid getting robbed online and offline

Everything else should be handled by the wallet or whatever platform is holding the bitcoins. In particular, "buying things with bitcoins" should be so intuitive that nobody needs to explain how to do that. QR codes and bitcoin: URIs are really helping in that regard though.

Like BlackHatCoiner, I find Bitcoin easier to use, but I do agree with the responsibility factor. Therefore, I strongly believe that wallets (hardware and software) and most software around Bitcoin are already 'simple enough', but we may need to find a way to get people comfortable with it and to assume responsibility.
One way is simply education and help forums (like the Help section on Bitcointalk), however I'm also intrigued to have a closer look at the https://keys.casa/ service. It seems to me like they could take over the role of the 'bank lady' who you can call or visit to ask questions about your bank account, special transfer (e.g. when you need an international bank transfer) or other advice. Someone knowledgeable who gives you peace of mind and also reduces responsibility somewhat, since they can keep (and back up) one of your multisig keys.

I quite disagree on the convenience part. As someone belonging to this little group of people who got used to Bitcoin before they even create a bank account, I can assure you that I honestly found it difficult to adapt. Maybe my expectation that the banking sector would be more simple than Bitcoin did hype up the situation, but it wasn't very convenient to me.

Maybe it's just my e-banking app, but I see accounts, credit and debit cards, buttons for "New Payment" and "New Transfer" instead of just "New transaction", money boxes, savings, loans, investments, securities, amounts of money I have not reported to the taxman, then in "Transfers" I get the option to send to my banking account, to someone else's bank account of the same bank, to someone's bank account of another bank within the country's borders, to someone outside my country, or to someone just by giving a phone number (with IRIS). If I don't want to transfer via bank accounts, I need to withdraw some in my debit card, and thing goes on and on. There are statistics, profile stuff, and even an option to merge accounts and debit / credit cards that I don't yet understand what is all about.

And that's before I even mention the bureaucratic nonsense that costed me time when I had to go and get my debit card from the bank, and all these obscurities the banking sector is consisted of, like charging me 2 EUR for moving more than 15 EUR to another bank.

Revolut is much better, but I still don't find it more convenient than, say, Electrum.

Also convenience.  They want convenience.  Click a button and voila.  If something goes wrong, responsibility is put on some body else's shoulders.  So what the user is looking for is convenience and transfer of responsibility.

But are these two not also coming from a lack of education?  You can not be afraid if you have knowledge and are educated.  It is usually the unknown giving people so much fear.

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Regards,
PrivacyG

People get into Bitcoin either due to its utility as currency, or to have fiat gains. Unfortunately, we can all agree that the latter are overwhelmingly more.

For the sake of simplicity, I meant users who're fine at using fiat as currency. Fiat users who don't care about bitcoin as currency is the overwhelming majority of fiat users.

No. This is not enough, you're wrong. Education isn't the best, but it isn't what's missing. The real reason we don't have millions of users on board is that people are afraid of responsibility. They are satisfied in the feeling that in the current system, they have a third party to address to (even if they don't get the assistance they want). The extra responsibility bitcoin adds is unfortunately intimidating for the most.

What tromp probably referred to is the simplicity of the system design. Make sure to check this video [1] if you're interested in the topic.

If you read the content of the linked page, you can see separate functionalities being enumerated like consensus model, emission, blockchain format, sync format, supply audit, PoW Algo etc.
If we define these as vectors and define 0 to be the simplest solution that can theoretically exist then we can, with some bias, assign a value to each dimension.
This means a blockchain can be seen as a point in a multidimensional space where (0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0) is the theoretically simplest possible blockchain to exist.
Of course we don't know what that looks like. But from the systems I've seen, I would agree Grin is by far the closest to that origin point and thus the closest to the theoretical optima of blockchain system simplicity.
That said, Bitcoin is closer to origin point than most of the other chains, but it's quite a bit more complex than the design linked. With regards to making Bitcoin simpler, it can be made simpler to use, but system complexity is unlikely to go away because you'll need to support all the current functionality which includes its expressiveness (scripting).

1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKtk3HCgTa8

I think Bitcoin Core was actually meant to be that way.  Complex as in, you have all the functions you need in one software.  There is the possibility to create a double faced Bitcoin Core.  Choose between Simple and Complex UI in the initial setup stage.  But by removing even part of the complexity, you are removing a possibly very useful feature.  How do you define basic or simple UI?  Have only Receive, Send and only use one Address?  That is a Privacy risk and it means removing a LOT of very important information.  If you agree it is important to show information such as Confirmations and Fees.  Then why is it not important to have RBF option.  If RBF is important to have.  Then why remove the Console.  And so on.

Some body who has no idea how Bitcoin works will not understand fees, why their receiving Address changes every time they receive some Bitcoin, what Inputs and Outputs are, what Confirmations are et cetera.  This is why Bitcoin is not for every body.  Unfortunately, this is technology.  Look at computers.  How many people understood how a computer works 20 years ago.  How many people understood how Smartphones work.  Still, even today, a lot of people do not understand how either work.  And this is not bad.  And we do not necessarily have to do something about it.

Here is how I see the situation you are describing.  Technology will progress.  Bitcoin will progress.  People, not always.  And not every single one of them.  Some will accept and adapt, others will stay behind.  We have to accept this and move on.  I do not know if this is fortunate or not but Bitcoin is complex although it is as simple as it can be.  You can not compare a Bank with Bitcoin.  Because Bank workers do a lot of things behind the scenes.  Banks are Centralized.  Remember the saying?  Bitcoin is being your OWN Bank.  You have to check every thing thoroughly.  And, any mistake is a thing you are responsible for.

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Regards,
PrivacyG

Hardware wallets are becoming more popular and I think development will be prioritized to support hardware wallets instead of software wallets in the future. I think that would be a welcome development with all the people who lose their funds because they do not understand security. I was talking about Bitcoin Core when I made that post and I hope it does not get any more complex because I think people prefer to use Electrum because of its user interface.

Will do, thanks.

You should not have a Bitcoin wallet if you do not understand how to use it and it does require learning fees, double spend, confirmations and addresses. It is a lot different banks and to say it is not is not true. A lot of people struggle with ATM like the elderly and even more elderly people do not understand Bitcoin. I am what you an call elderly or getting old and a lot of my friends do not understand Bitcoin and are scared of the digital money era.

well, the white paper did describe "a p2p digital cash system"

and cash shares the description of your listed problems:

• initial investment required
• loss is often not recoverable

I've lost cash before. Not much, but it happened.

I don't think this is the right way to think. Because EVERYONE is a fiat user. If this is how the world worked then there would be zero bitcoin users. People get into Bitcoin when they learn about its value. To say "fiat users", which is everyone, don't have the slightest interest in Bitcoin is just plain wrong. There's already many millions of fiat users who have gotten into Bitcoin.

To get more people into bitcoin, and specifically bitcoin as a means of payment, we need to spread bitcoin education, stop the vast amount of misinformation that makes people have a negative view of bitcoin, make bitcoin easier and simply to get into and use, which also of course includes making the LN simpler and easier to use because that is where 99.9% of bitcoin payments will be done.

So yes making bitcoin simpler is a big part of getting more people using it. Though the most important part is better bitcoin education.

Sending Bitcoin and sending money using a bank's ATM which is simpler? Bitcoin is, and requires no prior knowledge to send or receive money, the wallets UI are user friendly such that anybody can send Bitcoin swiftly. The Bitcoin usage is not a reason why it's not been adopted. Fiat users prefer to have same balance in their account over fluctuations. Even the elderly people can operate an ATM so Bitcoin wouldn't be that difficult to them, reducing Bitcoin transaction process to anything other than what it's now I don't know if they'll be need for that.

Well said.

It's about interest, and I'm afraid that we hesitate to admit it; the title of this topic proves it. OP wants Bitcoin to become simpler so fiat users can adapt. But fiat users don't have the slightest interest in using Bitcoin as means of payment. My experience with real-world conversations about this has convinced me. I'd argue that the Gresham's law applies as well, among with this lack of interest.

Interest is a motivation to learn but if Bitcoin becomes the main currency then people will not be interested they will just need to use it. I think you can learn the basics in a day or 2 but you cannot learn security in that time and I think a lot of people will lose their Bitcoin because they are their own bank but do not know how to secure it.