Topic: The technology behind Bitcoin is not important - page 2. (Read 2936 times)
Read and reread Mastering Bitcoin by Andreas Antonopoulos. It's a good reference material for explaining Bitcoin.
Met a guy a few days ago, he told me he heard about BTC but he didn't quite understand how it worked. I guess I could have tried to explain (though, I'm hardly qualified for doing this) but I chose not too. Why explaining? Do people need to understand BTC to use it? I don't think so.
This very day, millions of people have been using a microwave oven, but I bet only a handful actually knows how this appliance works. I've read an article telling that millions of Americans are using Viagra. Everybody knows what it does, but who knows how it works? Same thing for computers or cars, most people don't know how they work, and they just don't care.
From now on, I propose we stop trying explaining how BTC works to people discovering it. The nerds already know about it, but to the general public, technology is not important. It's what you can do with technology which matters.
I shall just say that BTC is a new electronic currency, independent from all governments, which you can transfer safely anywhere and anytime fast and cheap.
This very day, millions of people have been using a microwave oven, but I bet only a handful actually knows how this appliance works. I've read an article telling that millions of Americans are using Viagra. Everybody knows what it does, but who knows how it works? Same thing for computers or cars, most people don't know how they work, and they just don't care.
From now on, I propose we stop trying explaining how BTC works to people discovering it. The nerds already know about it, but to the general public, technology is not important. It's what you can do with technology which matters.
I shall just say that BTC is a new electronic currency, independent from all governments, which you can transfer safely anywhere and anytime fast and cheap.
It's really important that we do (need to explain it). How cool is having a currency without a central issuer... This is the first of its kind. Most will not get it, but if they're interested then by all means, explain it to them.
I've merely given said examples as a way to convey what I wanted to say - if you know the technicalities, you can predict and react appropriately to price changes in order to preserve your capital and not have it halve several months down the line. And as I mentioned, it isn't needed to know about how your currency works to survive, but is needed to prosper.
I agree with what you say. In general you can divide capital into cold money and hot money. Things are more greys than black and white but suspending this realization for a minute, the cold money is that of the hoarders, the hot money is for the investors. In the bitcoin world money is coming into the system at a rate of 25 every ten minutes. Now, that money is most probably completely sold off to pay for the electricity and rent. Mining is not an altruistic activity now. The business man sells his bitcoin so he can keep operating. Users use bitcoin to live without creditcards. This is the hot money. A part of the money in the system is being saved, and not used in the economy. There is money in cold wallets. This money is virtually not part of the supply. This is the cold money.
When the award halfs, we will only be able to buy half the amount of bitcoin from the miners and so we will have to go to the hoarders who have already obtained it for the other half. Now, if bitcoin is going to tend to say $200 in spite of 25 BTC being created every ten minutes, it is bound go up when the creation rate halfs to 12.5 BTC per ten minutes.
sdp
OK, examples, but block halving is a very bad one since it happens less than one a year. It would matter if it happened every month, but we're far from that. Next one is this summer, and when is the next block halving? Many world leaders will have changed by then, and they may edict very strict regulations on exchanges which may jeopardize BTC's growth. So politics could be more important than tech, but that's not my point.
BTC is now very well known among geeks and web professionals, but BTC needs to be as easy to use as facebook of instagram to convince the general public. So maybe instead of explaining tech, BTC shall carry the message that it's the best tool to send money to a friend, or anyone, anywhere, fast and cheap.
June/July-ish. 2016, not this summer, fyi. Then around 4 years after that, so probably spring-summer 2020 depending on hash rate growth.
I've merely given said examples as a way to convey what I wanted to say - if you know the technicalities, you can predict and react appropriately to price changes in order to preserve your capital and not have it halve several months down the line. And as I mentioned, it isn't needed to know about how your currency works to survive, but is needed to prosper.
I agree with what you say. In general you can divide capital into cold money and hot money. Things are more greys than black and white but suspending this realization for a minute, the cold money is that of the hoarders, the hot money is for the investors. In the bitcoin world money is coming into the system at a rate of 25 every ten minutes. Now, that money is most probably completely sold off to pay for the electricity and rent. Mining is not an altruistic activity now. The business man sells his bitcoin so he can keep operating. Users use bitcoin to live without creditcards. This is the hot money. A part of the money in the system is being saved, and not used in the economy. There is money in cold wallets. This money is virtually not part of the supply. This is the cold money.
When the award halfs, we will only be able to buy half the amount of bitcoin from the miners and so we will have to go to the hoarders who have already obtained it for the other half. Now, if bitcoin is going to tend to say $200 in spite of 25 BTC being created every ten minutes, it is bound go up when the creation rate halfs to 12.5 BTC per ten minutes.
sdp
OK, examples, but block halving is a very bad one since it happens less than one a year. It would matter if it happened every month, but we're far from that. Next one is this summer, and when is the next block halving? Many world leaders will have changed by then, and they may edict very strict regulations on exchanges which may jeopardize BTC's growth. So politics could be more important than tech, but that's not my point.
BTC is now very well known among geeks and web professionals, but BTC needs to be as easy to use as facebook of instagram to convince the general public. So maybe instead of explaining tech, BTC shall carry the message that it's the best tool to send money to a friend, or anyone, anywhere, fast and cheap.
I've merely given said examples as a way to convey what I wanted to say - if you know the technicalities, you can predict and react appropriately to price changes in order to preserve your capital and not have it halve several months down the line. And as I mentioned, it isn't needed to know about how your currency works to survive, but is needed to prosper.
I agree with what you say. In general you can divide capital into cold money and hot money. Things are more greys than black and white but suspending this realization for a minute, the cold money is that of the hoarders, the hot money is for the investors. In the bitcoin world money is coming into the system at a rate of 25 every ten minutes. Now, that money is most probably completely sold off to pay for the electricity and rent. Mining is not an altruistic activity now. The business man sells his bitcoin so he can keep operating. Users use bitcoin to live without creditcards. This is the hot money. A part of the money in the system is being saved, and not used in the economy. There is money in cold wallets. This money is virtually not part of the supply. This is the cold money.
When the award halfs, we will only be able to buy half the amount of bitcoin from the miners and so we will have to go to the hoarders who have already obtained it for the other half. Now, if bitcoin is going to tend to say $200 in spite of 25 BTC being created every ten minutes, it is bound go up when the creation rate halfs to 12.5 BTC per ten minutes.
sdp
I guess it's not important regarding the usage aspect as it doesn't exactly require much knowledge to use one of the light-weight Bitcoin wallets and it is practically identical to using online banking if you use an online/semi-online wallet, however, as Bitcoin is a technological currency, one should understand how it works as there is no man up top who will adjust the currency so that your salary wouldn't reduce by half in a couple of weeks. When you know how it works, you can observe and predict what will happen as a result of the block-halving, selfish miners not including transactions in blocks, majority of the hashrate belonging to a single entity, etc.
Block-halving do not happen very often so I don't see this as an issue. Ditto selfish miners, there will be another miner to do it (if the normal fee is included, but recent software don't let you send a transaction without a fee), there's more of a problem with hash rate, but is it? Many people don't know that when they pay tax, they do not finance roads or schools but they're financing the deficit and the huge debt the country has accumulated. Many of the world richest countries would be declared bankrupt if there private businesses, but life keeps on going without many worrying.
I guess it's not important regarding the usage aspect as it doesn't exactly require much knowledge to use one of the light-weight Bitcoin wallets and it is practically identical to using online banking if you use an online/semi-online wallet, however, as Bitcoin is a technological currency, one should understand how it works as there is no man up top who will adjust the currency so that your salary wouldn't reduce by half in a couple of weeks. When you know how it works, you can observe and predict what will happen as a result of the block-halving, selfish miners not including transactions in blocks, majority of the hashrate belonging to a single entity, etc.
Block-halving do not happen very often so I don't see this as an issue. Ditto selfish miners, there will be another miner to do it (if the normal fee is included, but recent software don't let you send a transaction without a fee), there's more of a problem with hash rate, but is it? Many people don't know that when they pay tax, they do not finance roads or schools but they're financing the deficit and the huge debt the country has accumulated. Many of the world richest countries would be declared bankrupt if there private businesses, but life keeps on going without many worrying.
I guess we'll just have to gather silly teenage blondes into a colosseum and do testing on them. 
I guess it's not important regarding the usage aspect as it doesn't exactly require much knowledge to use one of the light-weight Bitcoin wallets and it is practically identical to using online banking if you use an online/semi-online wallet, however, as Bitcoin is a technological currency, one should understand how it works as there is no man up top who will adjust the currency so that your salary wouldn't reduce by half in a couple of weeks. When you know how it works, you can observe and predict what will happen as a result of the block-halving, selfish miners not including transactions in blocks, majority of the hashrate belonging to a single entity, etc.
I know several girls and boys in my clique who have absolutely NO idea how a car works! But they all have driver's license and can drive a car. But really absolutely no knowledge about the technic behind that.
Or use the internet as example. Most people know how to use a web browser to surf in the web. But ask them if they know what happeneds in the background when a webpage loads on the browser. The border gateway protocol routing algorithm that takes the TCP/IP package that your browser sends, uses the IP adress etc.....95% of the people have no fucking clue! But they know how to use a web browser.
We have to make bitcoin more user friendly. It feels a bit like in early 90s of the internet now without browser and search engines. I'm sure there are companies working on that.At least I hope so.
Or use the internet as example. Most people know how to use a web browser to surf in the web. But ask them if they know what happeneds in the background when a webpage loads on the browser. The border gateway protocol routing algorithm that takes the TCP/IP package that your browser sends, uses the IP adress etc.....95% of the people have no fucking clue! But they know how to use a web browser.
We have to make bitcoin more user friendly. It feels a bit like in early 90s of the internet now without browser and search engines. I'm sure there are companies working on that.At least I hope so.
Very true. I remember a survey among young drivers where most said they would totally unable to change a wheel. Sometimes, I feel like an older guy, but it isn't bad because every guy of my generation knows how to change a wheel.
Back to the subject, BTC needs to evolve to be usable by the silliest young teenage blonde you can find. That needs it has be explainable without any vocabulary only a geek would understand.
it is important because if you want to protect your bitcoin, you have to understand the technology behind bitcoin.
I hope one day people don't need to worry about the security of their bitcoin.
I hope one day people don't need to worry about the security of their bitcoin.
It's not important for those who want to use it after the value has been created by those who will go down in history (or at least enjoy a more fulfilling life).
We can say that bitcoin is just a kind of cash. You can send it to anybody without the help of banks.
Most ppl don't know how their currency or the U.S. dollar works and very few stop to think about it. When something is considered an alternative it's investigated and considered suspect. Bitcoin is the altcoin so people don't trust it.
I believe this is almost the same with every fiat currency. Most of the people don't know how our actual monetary system works. I find this kind of bizarre. Day in and day out people are working to get fiat money and have no idea about how it works. And that is what the governments and the elite are taking advantage of. Keep people busy so they don't have much time to scrutinize thinks. And if they start to do it give them scientific and difficult explanations so they will give up understanding quickly.
Most ppl don't know how their currency or the U.S. dollar works and very few stop to think about it. When something is considered an alternative it's investigated and considered suspect. Bitcoin is the altcoin so people don't trust it.
It's not important for those who want to use it after the value has been created by those who will go down in history (or at least enjoy a more fulfilling life).
This is so true, but at the same time Bitcoin is kind of unique in this respect in that what makes it so useful is the gritty details that most people don't care about/understand. And if you don't know how Bitcoin works and want to use it then your only option is to blindly trust the developers, which may not be a big deal for most people but a major selling point is the lack of trust needed to make Bitcoin work so that can be a deal breaker.
Also if you are blindly trusting the developers why don't they just trust blindly trust coinbase too and keep their bitcoin online for convenience? Now everyone is using a PayPal-like service to manage their Bitcoin and we've done all this for nothing.
Also if you are blindly trusting the developers why don't they just trust blindly trust coinbase too and keep their bitcoin online for convenience? Now everyone is using a PayPal-like service to manage their Bitcoin and we've done all this for nothing.
I think the best approach is rather than telling them about the technology behind, it would be better for them to discover it themselves. I'm sure most of us here have no idea about it in initially, I mean non-geeks, and once you find out how simple it is to use to transfer bitcoin to another party, naturally you will want to discover more information how the decentralization concept works and how bitcoin cannot be controlled by anybody.
From now on, I propose we stop trying explaining how BTC works to people discovering it. The nerds already know about it, but to the general public, technology is not important. It's what you can do with technology which matters.
I agree to that to a certain extent. Most new users just need to know what they can buy/do with bitcoin, how bitcoin is different to other payment systems, and what are the benefits for us. After they are interested, they will read more on the technology and understand how things are they way they are. Computer security is probably the only area new users needs to brush up on before they use bitcoin.
I find it is always good to have a "than' in every sentence so people can relate it to something they know
eg faster and cheaper than xyz for transfering money to far off places
I also try to push the blockchain too without using the word itself
eg its a better/easier way to prove to anyone that you own something (eg your house) or to express your views (eg voting) than traditional/current ways of doing so.
and for those over 60
it is like a commune on the internet where people are trusting one another to make progress rather than sitting on our arses waiting for the government to do something
eg faster and cheaper than xyz for transfering money to far off places
I also try to push the blockchain too without using the word itself
eg its a better/easier way to prove to anyone that you own something (eg your house) or to express your views (eg voting) than traditional/current ways of doing so.
and for those over 60
it is like a commune on the internet where people are trusting one another to make progress rather than sitting on our arses waiting for the government to do something
I think that we should just explain how to use it and what it is and in basic terms why it is better but then if people ask for more about the security and the blockchain then give them the infromation.
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