I initially wrote this post in response to the below quote from another thread, but I thought it was going a bit off topic for the thread, so decided to start a new thread.
The people can perfectly start using BTC on their own, we don't need to wait for institutions to jump in because they will most likely never do it. Anyway, in 10 years, a 10 year old will already know how to use BTC and recieve and send payments. By the time he is 18, do you think he is going to open a bank account? do you think he will like the fees, the waiting 3 days for an operation to get confirmed.. and all the rest of the shitty remarks of the traditional banking system? Nope. Thats how the traditional banking system will die.
What do ten year olds use currency for? The teenage years are an important range I think to become familiar with bitcoin. The world is something else at this age and they always need/want new stuff. When I left highschool napster had begun making waves, MSN messenger was used amongst my friends and mobile phones were part of the craze.
Any money which I used in my earlier teens came from pocket money, which would typically go towards a bus journey and a round of pitch and putt with my friends once a week, along with money each day to buy food/drinks at school. Money was not typically exchanged between friends, aside from any gambling game which we might play for small coins, but this was rare. Most of the time all we needed was a ball and we were right.
So what are kids going to use bitcoin for today? Buses wont likely accept bitcoins, sweet shops are possibly a bit more likely, but again not so likely and neither will most businesses in the short term. So what will make bitcoin cool to kids? Well the one answer that sticks in my mind is gambling. Social, skill based, gambling. I guess this depends upon the mentality of the child and questions of morality may arise, but yeah gambling on some sort of skill based decentralised gambling app on their smart phone I can imagine many a teenager thinking as being cool. I can foresee kids playing poker against each other in the middle of class getting their phones confiscated along with a detention. "Awwwww Sir!".
I don't think many kids playing casino games or sports betting sites will be seen as particularly cool amongst their peers but certainly if something decentralised was made available to them that allowed them to gamble amongst each other I could see that being popular. There would be bragging rights up for grabs.
Is there any thing else cooler that kids are going to want to use bitcoin for? Maybe buying a packet of crisps or a can of coke from their friend, but that's not particularly cool, just an opportunity for fledgling entrepreneurs.
It's always nice to see that a comment you make was interesting enough to create a new thread throught it. Anyway, I think the inflection point will be teens using BTC through online related revenue, namely, advertisement revenue through social media content. All those kids uploading Minecraft and GTA V videos hate banks and waiting for their check to arrive, the fees, the fact you need to reach % of income to withdraw, the fact you need your parents to authorize you to use a bank account.. same goes for music makers and whatnot. All those ways to make money off the internet where you need to be 18+ to even have a bank account, all those kids will be using BTC in the future and that is a multi billion dollar market alone. Who knows, we may see Youtube going myspace and streamium.io or something like that will be the new Youtube.
