Promoting Bitcoin

[ali]

Hello everyone, my name is Ali. I've been playing with bitcoin for a few years now. Like most of you, I read through the whitepaper for the first time with a huge grin on my face and my mind ran wild with the possibilities. We've come a long way since then but we still have a long road ahead of us.

I'd like to start a discussion on how we could simplify the idea of bitcoin for the laymen. On top of that how we could promote bitcoin to locals and merchants in our respective communities.

People are wary of scams these days and that's a good thing. But to someone who doesn't understand the technology as easily as we do, bitcoin sounds a bit too good to be true. I also think a big issue with the way a lot of people explain bitcoin is they overwhelm the listener with a lot of information they just don't need to get started. So how can we spread the knowledge in a succinct manner that anyone can understand?

[LiteCoinGuy]

Hi ali,

so how can we spread the knowledge in a succinct manner that anyone can understand?

Make a suggestion

[ali]

I'm not entirely sure which is why I wanted to initiate discourse. We could go through the standard avenues of promotion (i.e. advertising, brochures, meetups, etc). I think that brochures would work well as they contain all the basic information with resources for learning more and getting started.

So maybe we can start by designing/maintaining an up-to-date pamphlet and possibly finding print shops (local or online) that will accept bitcoin? :-)

[BitcoinXio]

I'm not entirely sure which is why I wanted to initiate discourse. We could go through the standard avenues of promotion (i.e. advertising, brochures, meetups, etc). I think that brochures would work well as they contain all the basic information with resources for learning more and getting started.

So maybe we can start by designing/maintaining an up-to-date pamphlet and possibly finding print shops (local or online) that will accept bitcoin?

I think "online" marketing is covered for the most part, it could be improved but when I say covered I mean, we don't need more of it when we actually need more "offline" marketing; which you said, pamphlets. There used to be bitcoinbigfoot.com which had pamphlets you could print out but their website seems to have shut down. I think you can still find their pamphlets online and probably print them out, but it wouldn't hurt to make updated ones and pass them out, go to local businesses and try to educate them. That part to me would be the hard part, as I have no experience going "door to door" trying to sell or educate on something....

[MGen]

I pitch it to everyone. My mechanic, a friend selling art online, waitresses, even the cashier at walmart. Our pool guy asked to be paid in cash which seemed like the perfect opportunity to pitch bitcoin but after explaining it and how he would get cash from it that he could use to buy stuff he said it sounded complicated and declined. It's a tough sell to the average joe.

[In4Coins]

2 big problems are

1) BTC is hard to explain,
2) BTC is "hard " to get (you have to register to an exchange, send ID's, proof of your adress,... ).. .

What I've been doing, when going at the restaurant with (good) friends, is letting them pay their share, then giving them that back in BTC... Most of them got really amazed, after installing mycelium on their phone, at how simple it is in practice...

Most of the time, the simple fact of holding a somewhat low but still significant sum in BTC get them interested, they read about it, ask questions, or at least follow the price,....

[ali]

In4Coins, I do the same thing. But my friends and I all understand bitcoin easily enough.

I don't even think it's enough to have the bitcoin. People need places to spend them, that's when they really begin to see the magic.

I think another discussion to have is, how can we make bitcoin simpler? After all, we can't just expect people to get smarter and we definitely don't want to discourage people from using it because it's too complicated.