The problem is that bitcoin gained its notoriety from the sites like SR that sell contraband anonymously.
Many people barely know that bitcoin is used legitimately every day for regular things.
Its about education
Topic: The image of bitcoins (Read 1165 times)
Bitcoin is too big for the average person to understand in a 30 second elevator speech. What started off as a task to teach my kid some stuff about computers, it took me months to understand the enormity of Bitcoin and even then, it was just the tip of the iceberg.
Since my start with Bitcoin, I've had many failures in promoting Bitcoin and relatively few successes. But what I have learned in all those experiences is now what I feel is the true key to making Bitcoin a huge global success.
Personal relationships. You've already built the ties and foundation of trust, understanding, and comradery with your friends, coworkers and family. They trust you, or at least know where to find you if you fuck them. This is 95% of the battle. The other 5% is simply asking them to hold some bitcoins for some small, short term debt. A casual conversation about the main bullet points of Bitcoin, 30 seconds to install a wallet app and a promise to buy back the Bitcoins in a week at the same exchange rate so they are guaranteed to not take a loss. Get them to use it once and see the numbers over a period of time. Each successive time, if it was a positive experience (how could it not be), makes it that much easier of a sell the next time. Eventually, they have been trained and have learned to trust the store of value to use it in their own social circles.
I'm developing a simple project that will help each one of us Bitcoin lovers extend it to our own circles and it will probably be released next week. I hope you guys like the idea and help support it.
Since my start with Bitcoin, I've had many failures in promoting Bitcoin and relatively few successes. But what I have learned in all those experiences is now what I feel is the true key to making Bitcoin a huge global success.
Personal relationships. You've already built the ties and foundation of trust, understanding, and comradery with your friends, coworkers and family. They trust you, or at least know where to find you if you fuck them. This is 95% of the battle. The other 5% is simply asking them to hold some bitcoins for some small, short term debt. A casual conversation about the main bullet points of Bitcoin, 30 seconds to install a wallet app and a promise to buy back the Bitcoins in a week at the same exchange rate so they are guaranteed to not take a loss. Get them to use it once and see the numbers over a period of time. Each successive time, if it was a positive experience (how could it not be), makes it that much easier of a sell the next time. Eventually, they have been trained and have learned to trust the store of value to use it in their own social circles.
I'm developing a simple project that will help each one of us Bitcoin lovers extend it to our own circles and it will probably be released next week. I hope you guys like the idea and help support it.
I think that the key to long-term bitcoin success is their widespread usability. Right now, bitcoins have a generally negative connotation because the mainstream public only hears negative press about them (if they hear about them at all). I love the idea of donating to charities through bitcoins and i think that more efforts should be focused on these positive initiatives.
I agree bitcoins are amazing. Too get the image bigger for coins I think we should tell more and more people who don't know about it! Also start making more sites that accept bitcoins.
There is an article on the Bitcoin wiki that might provide some help when trying to describe Bitcoin:
- https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Public_relations
Amir of Bitcoin Consultancy wrote up a great resource:
- http://bitcoinmedia.com/bulleted-advantages
Online media gloms onto any sensational news development, whether it be a positive or negative development. That's what they get paid to do! People who aren't deep into the technology field then will llikely learn of Bitcoin first from the media. So as a result many will have preconceived notions about bitcoin based on what they've learned from the media. This past week they learned about the reddit forum where stripping for bitcoins occurs and the stories put out by the media were not favorable to bitcoin, of course.
And of course, there was the obligatory story about SR of the ZOMG! type that seem to appear about at least once a week somewhere in the world.
But the media isn't going to make or break bitcoin ... so for now, whatever happens happens and is water under the bridge.
Because bitcoin is not an organization, has no marketing department and no team of people working on how to best communicate what Bitcoin is to the world, the message each individual receives will likely vary based on which source is spreading the message to them.
When reading a blog post about bitcoin, the reader might feel the author has a libertarian slant and is trying to push an agenda. That's probably not something untrue.
When a visitor to a bitcoin-based website sees an amateurish web and graphic design of the site and concludes that it looks like it was done by a programmer who is unskilled at web and graphic design, that's probably not something that is untrue.
When a new visitor to this forum asks how to buy bitcoins with PayPal and gets lambasted for even mentioning that evil, six-letter word, that visitor might feel the experience was unprofessional. That's probably not something that is untrue.
Because bitcoin is not an organization, I don't know what will cause any of this to change (just yet). Some of these things are getting proper attention on their own so at least we are heading towards improvement. The UI in the bitcoin-qt client is an improvement over what the -wx client had. The websites of the exchanges are improvements in both form and function over their earlier incarnations.
We know what works though. Look at Bitcoin mining, for instance. That too has no organization, no marketing budget and no team of people guiding it with any authority (other than merit). But it has become an impressive industry and ecosystem in its own right. It has done so because there is an economic incentive to do things right. There's about $1 million a month going to miners and they've built up to that level or more (actually, way more).
Look at the level of interest in the mining forum (evidenced in 160297 posts) versus the handfuls of threads spread elsewhere in which the topic is how to do ecommerce with Bitcoin. Merchants don't see adding bitcoin ecommerce as something that will bring immediate economic gain so it will be an uphill battle to try to organically attract interest to that function.
Use of bitcoin as a currency used widely in commerce is something that must materialize or Bitcoin may not ever reach the lofty goals its speculators currently see as it having the potential to reach.
When short-term speculators give way to longer term investors with tens of millions of dollars of funds on the line, a few million spent towards projecting a proper image for bitcoin may not be a bad use of additional funds.
But why start too soon? Coins are being flipped at $5 today and in about 200 days the daily issuance of new bitcoins will drop in half, so building a concerted effort now to project a positive message is likely viewed as something premature.
Their thinking might be that restraint now will only make the eventual ascent to come be something even that much greater to savor.
- https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Public_relations
Amir of Bitcoin Consultancy wrote up a great resource:
- http://bitcoinmedia.com/bulleted-advantages
Online media gloms onto any sensational news development, whether it be a positive or negative development. That's what they get paid to do! People who aren't deep into the technology field then will llikely learn of Bitcoin first from the media. So as a result many will have preconceived notions about bitcoin based on what they've learned from the media. This past week they learned about the reddit forum where stripping for bitcoins occurs and the stories put out by the media were not favorable to bitcoin, of course.
And of course, there was the obligatory story about SR of the ZOMG! type that seem to appear about at least once a week somewhere in the world.
But the media isn't going to make or break bitcoin ... so for now, whatever happens happens and is water under the bridge.
Because bitcoin is not an organization, has no marketing department and no team of people working on how to best communicate what Bitcoin is to the world, the message each individual receives will likely vary based on which source is spreading the message to them.
When reading a blog post about bitcoin, the reader might feel the author has a libertarian slant and is trying to push an agenda. That's probably not something untrue.
When a visitor to a bitcoin-based website sees an amateurish web and graphic design of the site and concludes that it looks like it was done by a programmer who is unskilled at web and graphic design, that's probably not something that is untrue.
When a new visitor to this forum asks how to buy bitcoins with PayPal and gets lambasted for even mentioning that evil, six-letter word, that visitor might feel the experience was unprofessional. That's probably not something that is untrue.
Because bitcoin is not an organization, I don't know what will cause any of this to change (just yet). Some of these things are getting proper attention on their own so at least we are heading towards improvement. The UI in the bitcoin-qt client is an improvement over what the -wx client had. The websites of the exchanges are improvements in both form and function over their earlier incarnations.
We know what works though. Look at Bitcoin mining, for instance. That too has no organization, no marketing budget and no team of people guiding it with any authority (other than merit). But it has become an impressive industry and ecosystem in its own right. It has done so because there is an economic incentive to do things right. There's about $1 million a month going to miners and they've built up to that level or more (actually, way more).
Look at the level of interest in the mining forum (evidenced in 160297 posts) versus the handfuls of threads spread elsewhere in which the topic is how to do ecommerce with Bitcoin. Merchants don't see adding bitcoin ecommerce as something that will bring immediate economic gain so it will be an uphill battle to try to organically attract interest to that function.
Use of bitcoin as a currency used widely in commerce is something that must materialize or Bitcoin may not ever reach the lofty goals its speculators currently see as it having the potential to reach.
When short-term speculators give way to longer term investors with tens of millions of dollars of funds on the line, a few million spent towards projecting a proper image for bitcoin may not be a bad use of additional funds.
But why start too soon? Coins are being flipped at $5 today and in about 200 days the daily issuance of new bitcoins will drop in half, so building a concerted effort now to project a positive message is likely viewed as something premature.
Their thinking might be that restraint now will only make the eventual ascent to come be something even that much greater to savor.
This. Also, getting people who are enthusiastic about BTC to stop focusing on "da guvurnmint" when explaining BTC. When the average person hears words like "decentralized" and "anonymity" they will pause and wonder what exactly you are doing that needs to be so hidden from the government in the first place. These are all people who use facebook and twitter, so being non-anonymous is a GOOD thing to them.
Well I usually use "decentralized" and "anonymity" as arguments for security, rather than hiding from the government. 
Hi,
When bitcoins is a brilliant way to pay, hold your values safe and keep your values independed of a national currency, then it is very sad to hear about this gray area of bitcoins every time you tell someone about it. How can we make the image of bitcoins better?
-Casper
When bitcoins is a brilliant way to pay, hold your values safe and keep your values independed of a national currency, then it is very sad to hear about this gray area of bitcoins every time you tell someone about it. How can we make the image of bitcoins better?
-Casper
Here's a good video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRrUmOYHc0w
Make the image of Bitcoins better by creating a useful service that needs BTC to function. Right now, Silk Road is the only mainstream application that is created around bitcoins inherent utility. Once there's a popular bitcoin only product, the image will change in a good way.
This. Also, getting people who are enthusiastic about BTC to stop focusing on "da guvurnmint" when explaining BTC. When the average person hears words like "decentralized" and "anonymity" they will pause and wonder what exactly you are doing that needs to be so hidden from the government in the first place. These are all people who use facebook and twitter, so being non-anonymous is a GOOD thing to them.
Make the image of Bitcoins better by creating a useful service that needs BTC to function. Right now, Silk Road is the only mainstream application that is created around bitcoins inherent utility. Once there's a popular bitcoin only product, the image will change in a good way.
it is very sad to hear about this gray area of bitcoins
Please elaborate for me.Assuming you are talking about SR, the USD has a much longer history of being used to make illegal purchases. If you think even further into it, some of those SR sellers are exchanging their coin for USD anyway. You could say keyboards also have a gray area since they can be used to aid in a SR purchase. This line of thinking, as you can see, can go on for awhile. It's a flawed form of logic.
However, upon closer examination of the problem, you will see that it's actually people that have a gray area.
With that said, welcome to the forum sir!
Hi,
When bitcoins is a brilliant way to pay, hold your values safe and keep your values independed of a national currency, then it is very sad to hear about this gray area of bitcoins every time you tell someone about it. How can we make the image of bitcoins better?
-Casper
When bitcoins is a brilliant way to pay, hold your values safe and keep your values independed of a national currency, then it is very sad to hear about this gray area of bitcoins every time you tell someone about it. How can we make the image of bitcoins better?
-Casper
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