Topic: How can we make Bitcoin simpler? - page 3. (Read 731 times)

I would actually think that Bitcoin's big advantage when compared to other cryptocurrencies _is_ it's simplicity of design. Most projects that strive to compete merely add a lot of obscurity (e.g. to hide the fact that they removed important components like a working consensus mechanism).

That being said, it might be interesting to research what bells and whistles could be removed from Bitcoin, while still keeping the main mechanism and its potential to layer all the complexity on the top of it.

The older generation will need to learn how to use digital devices or they get left behind the world is changing and even the dollar will not be physical in 10 or 20 years instead we are moving onto a digital currency which should encourage people to convert to Bitcoin because people will learn more about security because it will be forced if they want to keep it safe. Evolution happens because you NEED to adapt.

In those cases; no, probably not. The simplest way to use bitcoin, while still maintaining some amount of safety and self custody and not just relying on a centralized custodial (which after all is the whole point), is to download a good wallet app on your smartphone, write down the 12 or 24 words it gives you, and generate a receiving address. It can't really get much simpler than that. If, however, we are talking about people who have never learned how to use a smartphone at all, then no, they cannot use bitcoin, just as they cannot use digital banking, Google Pay, PayPal, or any other electronic fiat app.

It is worth pointing out that such people are in the minority, and without being too macabre, that minority is rapidly shrinking. In developed nations where smartphones are ubiquitous and have been for years, then as time goes on the elderly population which have never used them shrinks, while the number of people who have exposed to them pretty much from birth grows. With the technology getting cheaper and with more and more old and second hand devices being sold, then in developing nations they are becoming much more common as well. As time goes on, the number of people in the category you are referring to will continue to shrink.

You simply can't use a digital currency without some ability to use a digital device.

Don't you know any older and non-techie people that use Bitcoin? (I assume that a smartphone skill is not enough to fall into the techie category.) Moreover, there are services for computer illeterate people so they can use Bitcoin just like they do their "banking physically", e.g. brick-and-mortar Bitcoin exchanges https://www.bitcoin-store.net/_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fblog.bitcoin-store.net%2Fcontent%2Fimages%2F2021%2F10%2Fthe_cover_of_the_wall_street_journal_article_about_brick_and_mortar_cryptocurrency_exchanges.png&w=1080&q=100

If these people who have problems with technology and struggle with anything digital is what you had in mind when you asked "How can we make Bitcoin simpler?" then the answer is we can't. There is nothing we could do and things can not get simple enough for such people, they will continue struggling with "digital" bitcoin.

Ok maybe I was wrong saying that every one understands the dollar but do we think Bitcoin is ready for adoption by the least technical people possible? I am thinking old people who did not grow up with computers who struggle to use banking software and do most of their banking physically. How can Bitcoin help convert that generation to Bitcoin or are we going to accept that these people will never adopt Bitcoin and we should look to attract the younger generations?

Cryptography is difficult to debunk, be it tech or secret codes, and it's the unswerving foundation of the bitcoin network. Distilling a simple bitcoin technology down to simpler form can be detrimental to its existence. Aside the development aspect of bitcoin the use case is understandable and people who find it difficult can seek help. Like others said, the reason for lesser adoption is the time range or young existence of bitcoin. Fiat has been around for years with the central bank attached to the Government, which controls the citizens. Bitcoin is at war with world leaders, and top bank officials who express to the masses how nefarious bitcoin can be to their life savings. Bankers can give customers bad instances of bitcoin to help retain compound interest customers on their nest, because they're people that actually need bitcoin.

Inflation has drifted out the profits compound interest should have presented to investor, but they're far from the truth. The bank officials make more money off their savings. We wouldn't be having this conversation, if only, such people had few hours trust for bitcoin and studied the this and that accompanying bitcoin growth; and how it can yield profits on the long run more than compound interest can do for them Since its a battle between the bank and bitcoin, the adoption would be tough, bankers can as well pump and dump the market to chase away potential bitcoin investors back to the bank. Yet that doesn't mean bitcoin should become ABC, that will take away trusted and firm users of bitcoin even more. As the process goes bitcoin will become stronger enough to attract more users.

You are only partly right. People are interested of bitcoin because of its price going up rapidly. This being said, many just keep their coins at exchanges without knowing nor caring about the wallets and whether it's easy or not to use them.

Now, about the wallets. It can be made easier, actually afaik some custodian wallets use/used to be pretty easy. But yeah, custodian plus made by some developers paid by that company.
I kept saying some months and years ago that easier to use wallets should be a plus. It should have been, but that time frame has closed.

Now we need safer wallets, then, if possible, easier. And since some hardware wallets makers are going to the direction of making them like credit cards, your wish may come true faster than you'd think. It won't be the wallets people will advise because you won't have the control the established wallets provide, but for some that's OK. You won't reach the safety of the hardware wallets that have their own screen, but again, for some that's not a biggie.
So it won't be perfect, but may be something.

I really don't think we need to make Bitcoin even simpler to use. The easier it is to buy Bitcoin the easier it will be to lose it. Some learning curve is necessary, if you have to use your brain to buy Bitcoin, you will also use your brain to not lose it. I got to know Bitcoin back in 2010 and for me Bitcoin is as easy as FIAT. Even easier in fact. I suspect that people don't want to buy Bitcoin not because they don't know how or they don't want to learn but because they don't want change. Change is frightening, change is uncomfortable. You get used to things, get stuck inside your comfort zone. And no hardware wallet or reversible tx will fix this.

There is the assumption that Bitcoin is not simple and therefore newcommers make errors and lose their money (bitcoin). I can't find any argument supporting it in your comment above. In my opinion Bitcoin is fairly simple. In the end, an owner can only keep/store it (a.k.a. HODL) and transfer just like ubiquitous so-called "digital assets",  money, tokens, secrets etc. I think that irresponsibility (pride and sloth - "ceasing to utilize the seven gifts of grace" or the "brain power") is the predominant cause of loss of bitcoin/errors by people. The current state of software and hardware tools seem to be of secondary importance and improve with time.

People only understand the very basics of fiat currencies. The actual process is quite complicated behind the scenes. I've said it in the past, but I believe Bitcoin's biggest problem is it's complexity, and jargon. When new users are asked questions, they're bombarded with jargon which isn't helpful at all as it adds time onto their learning. Bitcoin probably does need to simplify for the end user if we want mass adoption, not because Bitcoin is massively more complex than fiat, but because fiat has already been established, and thus it's taught in schools, universities, and basically right from a young age. Bitcoin isn't, and at the moment there's no real use to teaching young people about Bitcoin, since it's likely not going to be their primary concern.

I think wallet UI/UX has already achieved a pretty good standard. Hardware wallets are pretty easy to use. The idea of seed backup might seem alien at first, but is pretty easy to explain, and understand. Security is a big issue, whenever you have the users themselves looking after their security, who don't understand a whole lot about security then that's a problem. However, users are also absolutely awful at fiat security, and the only real backup they have is the banks can reverse any fraudulent activity. Although, the banks can also plain stop you from making transactions, so there's that.


Most wallet software adjusts the fee accordingly these days, so there's no real need to manually work it out, unless you want to save as much as possible since they do tend to overestimate. There's a little bit of knowledge required when waiting for confirmations, but that's pretty easy to grasp. I think the main problem is securing your seed, but people have been securing other things for decades. It should be pretty easy for most people.

When you start delving under the hood of Bitcoin, then yeah I'd agree it's very complex, but so is fiat currencies. The thing is most people don't really need to delve into it that far, and they don't with fiat currencies.

It's a noble goal, but it reminds me of this: https://xkcd.com/927/

As you say, there are a lot of beginner resources out there already. People will have different preferences. I personally recommend https://learnmeabitcoin.com/ quite frequently as a great beginners' resource. But I don't think it should be the only beginners' resource out there, and other people will prefer different sites and different guides. The fact is that bitcoin is too big a topic to be covered by one guide. Someone could write a great beginners' guide about how to set up and use Electrum, and someone else could come along and decide that Electrum is the wrong wallet for newbies and they should be using Sparrow instead, for example. There will never be complete consensus about the contents of such a resource, and so alternative resources will continue to exist, as they already do.

I think it's also a good thing to use a multitude of resources. You don't want to be in the situation where you are taking 100% of your knowledge, instructions, or advice from a single source.

There was news during the last few years that some banks offered this very service, but if you ask me personally, it's a bad idea because in most cases the bank will not provide anything more than an exchange/custodial service, and that means a potentially worse situation than what we have with CEX. The advantages of banks becoming crypto exchanges would be that clients would not have to do additional KYC with various private companies, and that in banks Bitcoin would be secured in case of hacking, as is the case with deposits in savings accounts which (at least in the EU) are insured by the state in the amount of EUR 100 000.

But that kind of approach to owning Bitcoin would be completely wrong for me, because if you don't own your private keys, you don't actually own anything. Therefore, it might be better to leave banks aside, because as much as it seems that banks would be a system that would allow Bitcoin to become available in a simple and easy way, let's not forget that one of the reasons why Bitcoin exists is precisely to bypass banks.

Electrum is safe and very simple. I used it for a long time with never had a problem. I don't know why we should buy if have some safe free application out there like electrum?.

It depends on your mindset, brain, and thinking bro. Many bitcoin wallets are very easy to operate than a hardware wallets. If you 1st think a wallet is complicated, then it will be complicated next and difficult to implement it even if very easy to use beginners.

I disagree.
People don't really understand a lot of things they are using including fiat. Nobody knows how "dollar" works, majority of people don't even know the difference between money and currency or the fact that dollar is not money.
The thing is, what people refer to "understanding" is just being used to something. You may not know how your computer works but you are still using it to post here.

It's the same with bitcoin. Under the hood it is complicated but for the end user it is actually pretty easy and straight forward to use. The only thing is that bitcoin is different from what people are used to and they all want to understand it at technical level.
For example you don't really see people ask about the cryptography used in the credit/debit card most people use every day, yet they use it. But you always see them question how 256-bit elliptic curve is secure when it comes to bitcoin!

Some good points.

I think the keys thing makes it seem harder because you can't just remember what you key is and you have to worry about losing it. And then in terms of Lightning there is probably a technical hurdle for most people that makes it a good bit harder than just going to a bank and opening up a bank account.

I think we really just need like a standardized education. A few resources that quickly explain things and everyone knows where to go to learn. Instead people have to just google around trying to figure out how things work and hope they are doing things correctly. Basically Bitcoin usage education just needs to enter the common domain where itrs very straightforward to learn how to use it and new people aren't worried about screwing things up. I mean just a few years ago a friend of mine asked me how I get bitcoin and if I can just sell it when I want and I was like what yeah of course i just open up the exchange and can buy or sell at any point. So even just the basics of like hey there are online markets operating 24/7 isn't even well understood by the general public.

We need a base level of common knowledge about how to get bitcoin, how to use keys and setup new keys, how bitcoin is stored, how to get on lightning (for the future, not needed yet), how to secure your keys and how to use wallet software. All of (other than maybe setting up lightning) could be taught to someone in 30 minutes, less time than it takes to go to the bank to set up an account. But there just isn't a sense of common knowledge around Bitcoin because there is no single place to go figure it out like say showing up at a bank and they walk you through setting up an account. We need a standardized resource of knowledge that everyone knows about so that when people want to get into Bitcoin they can just go to a website or something and in 30 minutes understand everything they need to know.

Bitcoin keys have 256 bits in size, but their security level has only 128 bits, see: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/bitcoins-public-key-security-level-2859033

I would point out that almost nobody actually understands how the fiat banking system works, how loans work, and how new money is created. And almost nobody understands how their online banking account is secured, how money is actually transferred, or how credit cards work. And yet almost everyone uses these things every day. You do not need a deep underlying knowledge of something in order to use it.

I would also point out that fiat is only easy to get in to because it is the default that everyone is exposed to from birth. So by the time they become an adolescent and start using the fiat system, they have already had a decade or more of exposure to it. If you were presented with the two systems, and had zero prior experience or knowledge of either of them, then I firmly believe that bitcoin is easier to understand. You own a wallet, you receive bitcoin to an address, you send it to someone else's address. Easy. You open an account with a third party bank, they receive money on your behalf and credit it to your account, you open a credit card account with another third party, you use that credit card to pay someone else except it's not really them you are paying but yet another third party, your third party credit card issuer transfers some money to this other third party but actually it won't really be transferred for 3-5 business days, you then tell your third party bank to pay your third party credit card issuer to clear the debt on your credit card... Not easy at all.

If you can operate a fiat bank account and a credit card, then you can operate a light bitcoin wallet. It's not a question of complexity; it's a question of desire to learn.

After 7 years I managed to explain 2^256 bit security range for bitcoin keys to my family, they just realized the level of security, other things they understood 7 years ago. For them it was the complicated stuff that made them understand how the bitcoin keys are safe.

Anyone who could read and learns how to use a mobile phone can also learn how to use BTC wallet. It's not rocket science. The majority of the population has phones, and each person in India even has two phones. They don't have to buy a hardware wallet for they can already use thier phones with an app wallet. 

I didn't make it complicated for my sister to learn to use BTC. Only receiving and sending BTC using the app wallet was enough for her. But of course I remind not to share the Priv key.