Topic: The Bitcoin Establishment Plan: How to talk about Bitcoins properly - page 2. (Read 6177 times)

The original poster has correctly described how the speculative bubble inflates and bursts, but he maintains the illusion that it can be somewhat steered to become something other than a bubble.

Sorry pal, you don't know human nature; the people who will promote Bitcoin most aggressively are the early adopters or those who invested significant sums of money. They have a vested interest to draw more suckers in and inflate it even more, so they will skip the "make sure you go against your better judgement and spend any coin you might acquire, don't hoard them like me and become rich, for that will mean it's just a bubble" part.

You should expect them to cling on the dream to very end, "it's a temporary dip, a great opportunity, now is the time to buuuuy !". Some will undoubtedly live the dream and retire wealthy, but the vast majority is in for a big disappointment and even financial ruin for some. That's how a zero sum game works.

Anyhow, the spectacle of human nature is just startin` and I have front row seats

Good idea, jashan. I changed the subject.

When/if that other guy who wanted to donate 0.01 BTC to me figures out how to do so I'll just forward it to you.

Sounds cool ... but I'd like to propose a little amendment to that ;-)

Instead of saying "Hey friend, buy Bitcoins to get rich!" say "Hey stranger, offer valuable services and products you accept Bitcoins for to get rich!".

You might consider changing the subject from "Don't talk about Bitcoins! (Bitcoin Establishment Plan)" to "Bitcoin Establishment Plan: How to talk about Bitcoins" ;-)

I just don't think that that will be enough. For the currency to succeed, there needs to be a real economy, where you can buy real things.

Speaking of buying real things with bitcoins, the wiki page for that seems to be mostly incorrect. Does anyone know of a legitimate site where I could buy things like a new Android phone? I'm not interested in temporary things like renting a server or buying food.

Bitcoin as a store of value/ financial instrument is not a market?

Mischief. Mayhem. Alpaca socks.

"Satoshi's not here. Satoshi went away. Satoshi's gone."

"Get rich" is part of the problem...

If you want it established as a currency, then "getting rich" isn't one of the main reasons anyone should use it.

You don't get rich using US Dollars.  You get rich providing services, investing in ideas, or buying and selling goods, the currency you perform those actions in doesn't matter.  Bitcoins should make commerce easier, so it's easier to get rich performing commerce. 

If the only reason for Bitcoins existence is to speculate on markets related to Bitcoins themselves, we're doomed.

Well, just remember this rule of thumb:
Instead of saying "Hey friend, buy Bitcoins to get rich!" say "Hey stranger, accept Bitcoins to get rich!".

I was expecting something more like this...


The first rule of bitcoin club is you do not talk about bitcoins.

The second rule of bitcoin club is you DO NOT talk about bitcoins.

If your computer overheats, crashes, melts, or your power goes out, the mining is over.

Two GPUs per MB.

One pool at a time.

No cases, no monitors.

Mining will continue as long as it's profitable.

If this is your first night at bitcoin club, you have to mine.

First I opened this thread expecting to find someone who was trying to hold down the price while their money got to Mt.Gox, I was pleasantly surprised.

Secondly the cat is out of the bag on bitcoin, I don't think anyone can significantly slow the spread of the information now.

Lastly I don't think a price crash would destroy bitcoin, as long as the technology is sound people can pick up the pieces and build the bitcoin economy you want to see created. This would take place at a much slower pace then we are currently seeing but I don't see any reason why it couldn't happen.

This topic is about how to make sure that bitcoin ends up being a usable currency instead of just a pyramid scheme.

SHORT VERSION
1. Don't tell your friends "Buy Bitcoins and sell them later to make money!
2. Make people accept Bitcoins as donations/payments

LONG VERSION

Original Bitcoin Vision
Bitcoin COULD become a reliable way to transfer money to anybody. We can all agree, that Bitcoins that keep their value and can be used to buy  just about anything online would be a good thing.

Bitcoin value explosion "Bootstraping the Currency"
What we see at the moment is a rise in value that is caused by new people who hear about Bitcoin. Basically, there are these types of people:

(A) People who already have Bitcoins
(B) People who hate Bitcoins and won't buy any as long as it's not established as a currency
(C) People who would buy Bitcoins, if they knew they existed
(D) People who don't know, but wouldn't buy any if they did.

The only type of people who are relevant here are A and C. Let me explain:
At the moment, most type A people probably act like this: Make money by buying some Bitcoins, wait some time, sell them to type C people, who then become type A people. The interesting question is what will happen when we run out of type C people.

The Clock is Ticking
The rise in Bitcoin value is probably mainly caused by type C people turning into type A people. The number of type C people left is the countdown on the End Game Clock and it ticks faster the more press coverage / word of mouth Bitcoin gets.

End Game Scenario 1: Destruction
Assuming that you can't buy anything useful with bitcoins when there are no type C people left, nobody wants to buy any more Bitcoins. This means hyperinflation and the value will drop to zero almost instantly. A lot of people will have made a lot of money, even more will have lost some, but the important thing is that we won't have a nice, established online currency.

End Game Scenario 2: Useful Bitcoins
Lets say that a lot of retails and service providers accept Bitcoin. You can order everything you like using bitcoins, donate to your favourite youtube artist, book a vacation etc. When we run out of type C people, the value explosion stops, but Bitcoin should remain stable. You can just spend them to buy stuff and your local Bitcoin2Legacy-Money converter trades them at the stable rate to USD or whatever.

Now, in both scenarios you will have made a lot of money with bitcoins if you ran the "buy, wait, sell" tactic. But in the second scenario we get a useful crypto currency as a bonus on top of that!

Don't talk about Bitcoins!
Sure, telling your friends "Hey, invest 10 bucks into bitcoins and you'll have 100 in 2 months" is fun, but this isn't helping. All it does is make the End Game Clock run faster. It might not even help you make more money, since Bitcoin might not peak higher, just sooner. So you would only be making money faster, but not more.

Create a market instead!
So what we need for Bitcoin to stay is an actual Bitcoin market. Here's how to do that.

1. Start with people that you don't actually have to pay because you can get their stuff for free. This could be your favourite blogger or a youtube artist, who constantly asks for money at the end of his actually good videos http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6sdpc8stqI&feature=channel_video_title Be creative and make it sound like donating in bitcoin is a totally normal thing "Hey, I tried to donate to you but I couldn't find your bitcoin address anywhere on the site. Could you just mail it to me so I can donate?". Starting with these people is best, since they don't risk ANYTHING by using bitcoins: If it works out, they get extra donation, if it doesn't and Bitcoin fails, they haven't lost anything compared to not accepting Bitcoins in the first place.

2. If you can, sell your products/services accepting Bitcoins as payment.

3. Be bold towards sellers of stuff that you don't really need, but would be nice to have. Say you find something for sale somewhere (product, service...) and then tell the guy "I would buy it if you accepted Bitcoins". You have to be honest here, buy it if he accepts Bitcoins, don't buy it if he doesn't. It is very important that people don't start to think "Yeah, those crazy Bitcoin guys want me to pay with that, but I refused to accept it so they still bought it in USD!".

4. The hardest case is paying for stuff that you definitely will buy. Hopefully, convincing (1) and (2) will cause somebody of (3) to accept Bitcoins. If two shops offer the same thing for the same price, buy the thing paying with Bitcoins.

If you behave like this, you help establishing Bitcoin. Creating a market still takes time and the End Game Clock is running. Please don't speed up the clock by hyping Bitcoin! Telling your friends about Bitcoin, spamming forums etc. only cuts the time we have to get a real market going. You won't lose money if the Bitcoin value rises slower since it will still peak at the same level, only later.

Thanks for reading.

If you think this was worth reading:
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P.S.: I would appreciate it if this topic became sticky. I think it is very important that every Bitcoin user understands the consequences of their actions.