Bitcoin Bolt

If you’re reading this, you probably already know the innumerable benefits of bitcoin first hand. To help our community spread word of these benefits, we compiled the action list below based on feedback gathered from technology marketing experts, implementation of Normalization Process Theory and our own expertise on the topic of bitcoin itself. We welcome your feedback in the comment section below.

Verbal normalization cues

When a vernacular adds qualifiers before commonly used terms, a mental separation is created for listeners between the object being discussed and the accepted norm for that topic. The term ‘crypto-currency’ is is a prime example of this. By adding ‘crypto’ in front of a common term, Bitcoin becomes inherently differentiated out of the mental realm of familiarity and into a realm of the uncomfortable unknown. The fact that ‘crypto-currency’ sounds more like something from The Terminator than something from a wealth manager doesn’t help either, but we’ll address that later in this article.

Just like dollars, yen, euros or pounds, bitcoins are simply “currency.”

“We can’t wait to get interracial married!”

Ask every merchant if they accept bitcoin

The first step towards adoption is awareness. Generating demand for bitcoin requires addressing the awareness gap for both consumers and merchants, and merchants will never be more attentive than when they are on the brink of making a sale.

Any time you’re about to make a purchase, simply ask, “Do you accept Bitcoin?” Given the number of merchants currently accepting bitcoin, we can safely assume what the answer will be for the foreseeable future, but remember: this is about awareness. Below is a brief sample script you can use:

You: “Do you accept bitcoin?”
Merchant: “What’s bitcoin?”
You: “It’s a currency being used all over the world. It makes purchases extremely easy for customers and eliminates payment processing fees for merchants. I’m surprised you haven’t heard of it.”

What do you mean you don’t accept bitcoin?

That’s all you need. Even if the merchant doesn’t act immediately or the employee you interface with doesn’t have the power to start accepting bitcoin, the impact has already been made.

One of the fundamental concepts in marketing is known as the Rule of Seven – the notion that a buyer must receive a marketing message seven times before they will act. While it’s absurd to assume a predetermined number will be a universal threshold, the principle is sound. Every reinforcement of a concept deepens the credibility and social proof of the message. Asking in person creates an additional data point on top of news articles, advertisements, or other conversations they have with info about bitcoin. The impact of this should not be underestimated.

Be the entry point for your friends

Bitcoin presents two primary barriers to participation. The first is generating interest which, as the chart below of Google trend data for the word ‘bitcoin’ indicates, initial interest is growing at an incredible pace.

It’s a good start.

Unfortunately, even if people are interested in trying out the world’s favorite new currency, there’s still the significant hurdle of converting their existing money into bitcoins. Wallet software can be set up quickly, but the process for someone to actually obtain their first bitcoins remains a multi-step and multi-day process, making it easy for someone to forget the whole thing.

That’s where you come in. Offer to be your friends’ first trading partner and help them bypass the initial difficulties of setting up a funded exchange account. Let them pay you market rate for their first bitcoins, which they can then easily drop onto an exchange and trade freely or use with accepting merchants. If your friends aren’t near you physically to pay you back, I recommend trying Venmo, a free traditional currency transfer app.

Update your messaging

As a result of bitcoin’s origins and structure, one shouldn’t be surprised that it’s initial adoption has been primarily from the tech community and freedom-oriented political groups. This has been a terrific start, but bringing bitcoin to the mainstream is going to mean drastically adjusting the marketing message to address a broader demographic.

As a bitcoin enthusiast, you’ve probably seen the video below, which has been circulating around the bitcoin world of late with overwhelmingly positive reviews. While it is absolutely stunningly produced, the tone it conveys is that of fear brought on by a dystopian worldview – simply not a message the average person can relate to or is comfortable with, no matter how many times that outlook it’s echoed around the blogosphere. In case you think I’m being overly dramatic, I also included the trailer for Tron – a movie that is literally based in digital dystopia. Note the musical and visual similarities.

Bitcoin Explained from Duncan Elms on Vimeo.

Yes, Tron is terrific, but it simply does not invoke the comfort needed for someone to allocate part of their pension account to a new currency. The only hope for bitcoin is if it is brought out of the darkness of the digital realm and into reality, and that means attracting a broader group of people with messaging targeted to new demographics.

We have this demographic locked down.	“What’s a Tron?”

When discussing bitcoin with colleagues, friends and family, think about which aspects of bitcoin would appeal to them, rather than focusing on the aspects that appeal to you. In particular, for the non-tech and non-libertarian friends you speak with about bitcoin, I recommend focusing on ease, speed, security, and multiple verifications of each transaction by the world’s largest computer network. Aspects like anonymity, advanced cryptography, and disrupting the central banking system, however beneficial they may be for a number of reasons, may raise red flags for someone unfamiliar with any need for such things.

“I am here for the crypto-currency. Give it to me.”

The post Five Easy Ways You Can Make Bitcoin A Mainstream Currency appeared first on The Genesis Block.

So it turns out traditional markets aren’t as stable as everyone thought. The S&P 500 – an index of the 500 largest companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange – dropped 13 points in a matter of seconds earlier today as a result of a hacked AP twitter account. The tweet in question described an explosion that allegedly injured the president.

The hacked tweet

The market’s response

The flash crash was the equivalent of over $100 billion in market cap disappearing almost instantly. For all of the concerns with bitcoin’s price instability, this would have evaporated 100x the bitcoin market cap due to a vulnerability completely unrelated to financial transactions. Bitcoin is in it’s infancy, but this just goes to show that some of the criticism is unduly applied.

Just like we’ve seen with Mt. Gox DDoS attacks, someone likely stood to make a profit by the destabilization of broader financial markets. The formula is simple: post a shocking news bit from a trusted source, wait for the market to nose dive, buy securities, profit immediately on recovery. Keep in mind one key difference between this attack and a bitcoin attack: authorities will be actively hunting down the cause of this attack for a series of offenses, including public market manipulation. The same governments that regulate monetary supply also enforce market regulations. Everything comes with it’s trade-offs.

The post Flash crash – and it wasn’t bitcoin this time appeared first on The Genesis Block.

By Jon Matonis
Forbes
Thursday, April 18, 2013

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmatonis/2013/04/18/the-fiat-emperor-has-no-clothes/

A piece from Paul Krugman in The New York Times
this week criticizes bitcoin for being antisocial and for not having a
State-controlled supply while secretly admiring its powerful
abstractness.

As a complicit minion in the State’s appropriation of the monetary unit, Krugman perpetuates ‘The State Theory of Money’ myth that the sovereign’s power to collect taxes and declare legal tender imbues a currency with ultimate value.

While that may be a reason to acquire a certain amount of government
fiat currency, it is a transitory value because in the end it is still
based on a State-sanctioned illusion. Anyone who has visited a weekend
flea market has noticed the old coin and currency collector displays
filled with past experiments in national fiat money. Those paper notes
were at one time valued for something too.

We don’t want a pristine monetary standard untouched by human frailty
as Krugman claims. We want freedom in the monetary standard untouched by the politicizing process.

In a Krugman world, centralized management of the money
supply is preferable to a market-based outcome because the
academically-informed economists will serve the best interests of the
economy at large. However, our monetary overlords possess no special
knowledge or secret sauce that justifies dictatorial control over money
any more than it would justify dictatorial control over the market for
something like soda beverages or dog food. Trust in mathematics trumps
trust in central bankers.

The question of political control over a monetary system is the
greatest litmus test for discovering those that seek control over
others. Usually, it will be cloaked in terms like full employment, price
stability, temporary stimulus, quantitative easing, and economic
growth, but manipulation of the money supply serves only to favor the
issuers of that particular monetary unit.

Money has a lot in common with religion. At some level, it requires a
huge leap of faith. Yes, a belief in gold requires this too as the
non-monetary value assigned to gold is probably no more than 5% of its
market price. However, this is also what makes bitcoin the ultimate social
money because for its value it merely requires others, not the law.
Money is already the most viral thing on the planet and the network
effect exponentially reinforces that.

Krugman actually struggles to assert that bitcoin is antisocial
because he cites economist Paul Samuelson who once declared that money
is a “social contrivance,” not something that stands outside society.
Samuelson is absolutely correct on that point and bitcoin stands firmly
within society. It is no one’s right to question why some place value on
bitcoin and some do not since all value is subjective. The rationale
for assigning value to bitcoin is as varied as the human fabric itself.

In this context, society can be defined as those mutual users willing
to agree to a medium of exchange and a store of value. Since bitcoin,
just as the Internet, recognizes no political boundaries, Krugman
resists seeing the global monetary unit as something social. Krugman sees society only as a multitude of aggregated fiefdoms where he is the emperor’s cherished tailor.

Though, just like the untainted child in the Hans Christian Andersen
fairy tale, some of us are beginning to notice. It’s not the illusion
itself that so offends our sensibilities, but more the notion that a
competitive illusion is not to be permitted. If a free market illusion
voluntarily agreed to from the bottom up is so desperately feared, then
the protectors of the State-sanctioned illusion must not have the most
benevolent of motives in store for us plebeians.

I don’t know about you, but I for one can stand up and exclaim: “the fiat emperor has no clothes!” What if more of us did?