Happy New Year from down under...
Without intending to, I ended up acting as a bit of a Bitcoin advocate tonight while out with friends at a New Years Eve party. I tried to enlighten them (inadvertently came up with a different analogy each time) as to what Bitcoin really was, but in the end the main 'argument' they had against it was "If I can't touch it, it's not real - I don't trust the internet with it". Which is ironic since that is basically what they're doing with their bank accounts.
One guy was a Financial Advisor (capital 'F', capital 'A' - his distinction, not mine) who said he was happy to "argue against Bitcoin all night". I (successfully, I think) countered every roadblock he threw up about Bitcoin and ended up betting him that one Bitcoin would be worth more than $50,000USD in 3 years (perhaps a little bullish, although can you blame me?)*. I confess, I may have been a little inebriated by this point, but I am getting a little fed up with the ramblings of people who have not taken a few minutes out of their day to research what Bitcoin actually is (i.e. a protocol as well as a currency), but instead act as if they're experts who foresee the demise of this 'imaginary money'.
Does anyone else get a little fed up with this sort of attitude?
(Apologies if this post does not belong in this thread... It's just that this is the main thread I read (every morning without fail, I trawl through the 8 or so pages that have been posted overnight... > 8 pages = something big has happened, < 8 pages = price has remained stagnant.) Although, it seems 'stagnant' in Bitcoin vernacular is akin to 'short-term' or 'temporary' in normal trading terms.)
*Bought at $1060 and have been 'hodling' ever since.
Hi JulieFig, my counter-attack against such people is to appeal to the logical desire to maximize wealth. You ask them this:
You meet a generous billionaire who loves to gamble just for the lulz. He offers you a bet: he says he's going to toss a coin (a provably fair coin) and you get to call it in the air. If you lose, you lose your bet, but if you win, you win 20 X what you bet. You only get one shot at this. How much would you bet?Even if you detest the concept of bitcoin and assign it a small probablity of success, it is logical to at least make a small bet in case it succeeds. Why not risk $100 in case it goes to $500,000 per bitcoin?
*To do this, you must be able to convince them that should bitcoin *one day* become a dominant global currency, it must have a market cap measured in hundreds of billion or trillions of dollars. This is fact, but still some people can't understand that if more people buy something of limited supply that the price must rise.
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