Topic: We need an incentive to make first world population use Bitcoin - page 4. (Read 3751 times)

I do not think we need a special incentive for the first world population. Most of them have the money to buy and try Bitcoin on their own when they see a need to own or use them. As long as the current paper money system is working this way that the inflation is low and that you can buy daily needed products with it, only enthusiasts will switch to Bitcoin or alternative currencies.
It is time-wasting in my opinion to convince someone who will not directly have an advantage from the switch. It would make more sense to incentive second or third world people. Many people there would definitely have an advantage to switch to alternative currencies like BTC.

Sadly that's not how most people think and never will. Plenty of humans lack an innate sense of bigger picture. Still, hopefully there are enough relatively smart folks who can process that.

like any other bitcoin fellow i also like to play with the number in to the moon scenarios. the fun thing about this is, that nobody or nothing in the case of bitcoin has done this before in a globally connected world. so nobody can really say where this has the potential to end up. but if you just look on the number of people using bitcoin then there is a lot of potential. starting now you are late to the party but not to late since we are the first percent to use bitcoin if it goes global.
but will this happen if everybody just holds? no, or at least not that quick. so we do need to not only invest and hold, but also use it. even if it is not much.
maybe just buy bitcoin for holding and spent in bitcoin what you earn in bitcoin. this would be a start. also accept bitcoin, even if it is just for you friends or small stuff you sell. 

Most of the people in western countries will use Bitcoin as a store of value or long term investment as they have seen how much it had grown in the past.
From it's first official exchange price of $0.07 to first halving in 2012, price was around $12,16 at that time, it grew a tremendous 17371%!!!
And now to second halving this year, price of $635,  BTC grew another 5222%!!!
So I can absolutely understand people who speculate for similar growth in the next years.
Let's assume we could make another gain of 500% until 2020 to halving 3. That would be a price of $3175!
Of course that assumption could be completely naive, but I can understand people who think like that.
So seing Bitcoin and treating it as a digital gold is imo not the dumbest.
Sure spending and using it as currency aprreciated and needed as well. But the smart guys who know about the potential will buy back the amount they have spent before.

Freedom isn't free. The decentralized network needs a reason to exist. The mining subsidy isn't permanent. Bitcoin's security model must slowly move from coin base rewards to transaction fees. Early adopters have been spoiled by the high coin base reward / low transaction fee bootstrapping period.

Fiat has the wonderful hidden fee (or tax) known as inflation, which is chosen at the whim of a board of directors (to enrich the few at the expense of the many).

i can agree on a lot of points made. and i think we need to raise the number of places you can pay with bitcoin. this is so important.
also we need to develop bitcoin further, as it need to handle more transactions per second.
also fees are a problem. and here is a thing OP missed. the 2+3 world surely would like to use bitcoin, but the fees (which are a joke in the first world) are quite high in their local currencies.

sadly we just haven't found something worth than daily stuff to buy with bitcoin.

in this first world you can pay bills, buy home, etc by fiat. that's why people prefer to convert their bitcoins to fiat if they don't find that worth things they can buy with bitcoin in their countries.

Transaction fees is another setback that should be looked into, you don't pay to spend fiat but you have to pay to spend bitcoins.

We have a long bumpy way to go before Bitcoin hits the mainstream and it's mainly bcs of limited awareness & not incectives (personal opinion). For example 2 days ago I learnt about PayPal frozing Bundy ranche's donations and commented on their facebook page about BTC especially when it comes to donations, sure I got some likes but I had a wacko posting huge replies saying bitcoin is a ponzi scam and that it got hacked the other day xD

Just teach people about it, mention it like the phenomenon it really is and more will come (like I and you did).

agreed, in the context of bitcoin being the "one world order" single currency.

but if you think about it as just another of the 180 real world currencies, used in places that dont have a good currency/banking infrustructure. and not used 43times a month(buying everything) but instead just 5 times a month, (weekly groceries and monthly rent). then it is much more achievable.

also it doesnt need to suddenly explode from 2 milllion users today to 263million users next year. it can grow naturally and usefully.
even stats show that when 4mb blocks are activated (yes even core now likes 4mb after all the cries that 2mb was bad) we can have capacity of 8 million users doing 5 transactions a month happily in the near future, onchain.
(or if you want the greedy fiat lovers pump and dump stats: 1billion users doing 1tx every 2 years to HODL)

my point of my last post is that if we imagine it as a natural growth over the next 20-30 years with rational, workable expansion for real usage then trying to get 8million next year, 16mill in a few years and 32mill a few years after that, is natural and healthy and scaling also grows with it

trying to push for 1billion users tomorrow is flawed for many reasons and wont work or make bitcoin stronger in any way shape or form

as for the developed vs developing cultures
but trying to get 32million americans (10% population) to use bitcoin is actually harder than trying to get 32million indians(2.5% population) to use bitcoin, for these reasons:
1. developing coutries are more open to change and open to better financial self-control
2. developing countries need new financial tools, developed countries (blindly) think they already have everything they need
3. if you had a group of people... 2.5% is a less stressful number to convince than 10%

in short
32m population for real world usage as a medium term target is easier than a 1billion speculative background reserve currency target
by concentrating on a useful bitcoin rather than a speculative bitcoin makes bitcoin stronger.

if you disagree and are going to reply about something related to fiat valuations. then sit back and realise you are not a true bitcoiner if your only goal is to eventually hold bags of fiat. and also realise by going the rational route of useful bitcoin, will also positively increase the market cap so even you fiat lovers will profit

Bitcoin can only handle 3.7 or so transactions per second, worldwide. We regularly hit that now, so no need to bring more people into using Bitcoin, they'll just get disappointed.

Apparently segwit in April and lightning in August will solve all that tho... so best just relax for a while.

When monolithic lightning hubs have taken over the transactional load from the Bitcoin network, we can talk about growing the userbase again.

People just need to see a reason to use it and an easier way to buy it. More companies need to accept it and have to make using it worth it, like Purse.io!

It'll take some time, and a ton of time to say the least

Basically this.

No one will even try to incentive it, because there's no need for it. Every organization already make the required income, if not they wouldn't be there for obvious reasons.

An incentive? Let's think first about who will provide it. Who will pay for it? Who will organize it? The BTC foundation? Coinbase? Your family? All the users of this forum?

Your average Joe on the street isn't going to be buying Bitcoin on-chain, simple as that. People are terrible with basic things like passwords, do you think they are ready for key management? Hardcore fans find it hard to keep their money secure, the average person is essentially lost. Most likely, the adoption of Bitcoin will come from secondary-layers on top - everything from ETFs to centralized services like Coinbase/Circle. Those will bring Bitcoin to the everyday people. Like it or not, the whole world isn't ready to adopt Bitcoin owning their private keys tomorrow. Block-size isn't a problem for adoption yet.

The best way to get people using Bitcoin is to get a big retailer or service provider accepting it with a decent discount rate (looking at something like 2-4%) as well as offer incentives for employers to start offering tiny vouchers or whatever of Bitcoin that their employees can use. Basically get it circulating within the economy, get companies accepting Bitcoin with some decent discount rates to get consumers to use it more, and get more people throughout the world interested in it and get them something that has some money value outside of the current fiat economy. However having Bitcoin become a more common thing might cause some faith in the fiat currencies to waiver, causing some currencies to begin going down in value. That is something a lot of governments don't want to happen.

It's impossible to reach the volume of transactions per second that it would be needed in order to reach mainstream usage of people buying on the street everywhere with bitcoin on-chain, it will be with lightning network or it will not be and Bitcoin will remain as digital gold, simple as that.

There are some services that stopped accepting some fiat based payment options. You know the classified services that supposedly favored human trafficking and stopped accepting CC payment. 

There are also some causes that are being boycotted, such as FreeSnowden and other whistle blowing sites. These sites will not get funding if it was not for Bitcoin. You can check out some of these

sites here -->  https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Donation-accepting_organizations_and_projects 

I totally agree but its just finding the killer app or use-case that is goin to take bitcoin to the masses.  i am sure it will happen eventually but it could be 10-15 years out still.  There is still alot of problems with bitcoin: and i dont mean technically, i mean in useability, the average joe just wont have a clue about bitcoin address and can you imagine if the majority of people you know started using bitcoin, it would be a scammers field day.  ive been using bitcoin since 2012 and i still double check everything i do. 

Majority of population in first world countries heavily relies on credit. People like spending money they don't have yet, as long as they can buy now and just charge it, the hefty fees don't matter. If this feature could somehow be integrated with bitcoin, then that's a pretty big incentive. (unlikely though)