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Comment by have_faith | Hacker News Reader

A thought experiment I like to use when working on a new user interface is to imagine if my mum could use it, or if I could easily explain it to her in a way that made sense. (she represents the average non-technical person)

I like to use this thought experiment when imagining Bitcoin adoption. And then I realise that after all the reading I've done and being fairly technically literate I can barely explain Bitcoin to myself in a coherent way.

The conclusion I come to with this over-simplified view is that highly technical people are creating a larger divide of Us and Them. This isn't through malice, people are free to create and experiment intellectually as they see fit. But it would be nice if the average persons use-case was considered when planning your utopian money system that you have a head start on in accumulating wealth.

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You make a good point, however I'd like to point out that explaining how money is created through the federal reserve system is no less complicated to the average person.

They don't need to understand it, only trust it.

> "I like to use this thought experiment when imagining Bitcoin adoption. And then I realise that after all the reading I've done and being fairly technically literate I can barely explain Bitcoin to myself in a coherent way."

I understand the sentiment, but what is there that's hard to explain about Bitcoin? Bitcoin is just a form of digital money. Seriously, for the average user, that's all it is.

We already have Bitcoin wallets, which are the equivalent to your personal bank account. Let's imagine for a second that we also have Bitcoin cards you can use to spend Bitcoin in shops. What difference is there between that and a credit card or debit card? For the end user, very little.

Perhaps the issue isn't so much that Bitcoin is hard to understand, but that money as a concept is hard to understand, or at least it's not immediately obvious how it functions. I'd say the main thing to understand about money is that it is just numbers, but we associate value with those numbers, and in order for us to associate value with those numbers we have to assume others will also do the sane. It is this collective agreement which gives value to money, nothing more. So, with regards to Bitcoin, do you think it will continue to be a valid medium of exchange, and do you think more people will also think this way?

Bitcoin is for the undeserved. It's unbelievably clunkly, but when you have no other choice - you'll learn to use it.

Exactly. Bitcoin is shit, but let me know when I can anonymously purchase an offshore VPS with anything else.

I don't think Bitcoin is going anywhere, but it will perhaps regress to a niche and often illegal market. Alternatively, black markets are very volatile anyway, so moving to a better anonymous currency could happen if a worthy competitor steps up.

Bitcoin will grow to precisely as large as is the vacuum of service for those that need it online. The size of that market might be very small (backpage, gambling, and VPS) or very large (improperly licensed direct to consumer drugs and capital flight) It depends entirely on the regulatory subsidy it receives from federal governments, in the form of credit cards cutoffs.

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