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Comment by stuhood | Hacker News Reader

> If it's not simple enough to explain to someone's mom it's not going to flourish as a serious currency.

Do you think that the way the Visa/MC network is implemented is simple enough to explain to someone who does not understand computers? No? Hm, I wonder how people use it...

The point of articles like this is usually to highlight usability improvements for a particular solution, and in this case, to highlight the fact that their is no hardware requirement for bitcoin.

Also, re: the difficulty of acquiring bitcoin: mobile apps like this mean that if one party in a transaction has bitcoin, the other party can go from 0 to 60 on accepting bitcoin in the time it takes to download the app from their app store.

By almost any metric (including value) bitcoin is healthy, and slowly growing: http://blockchain.info/charts

And in the interest of full disclosure: yes, I have an investment in bitcoin, because I truly believe in the strength of the concept.

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Hey mom, here's a credit card. Swipe it on that machine, sign your name, and at the end of every month you'll get a bill of all the money you have to pay back. Pay it off every month and you won't pay interest. Keep the balance and you'll pay an interest on the balance. Easy.

Mom: "What's bitcoin Chris?"

Geek shit. Download the bitcoin desktop or mobile app. Make sure your wallet file is backed up otherwise you can lose all of your money. Using Dwolla transfer money (takes 5-7 days) from your bank account into MtGox and buy bitcoins. The time you buy them determines their value (just like exchanging currency). Then when you want to pay for something put in the person's bitcoin address 1HULMwZEPkjEPeCh43BeKJL1ybLCWrfDpN and send them some bitcoins. The seller might want to wait until the network confirms a transaction. And in the event of a rollback? What then? Oh and you have to keep transferring money from your bank account to dwolla to mtgox to your bitcoin wallet every month if you want to seriously use it like a credit card or check.

All of this to avoid transaction fees and give yourself the feeling of "freedom". Wow.

Many of the bitcoin enthusiasts are what I call "repeaters". They simply repeat how great bitcoin is/can be without ever having actually tried to use it as a real currency. They saw the phrases "transaction free", "p2p", and "no government control" and assumed it was the best thing ever. I was one of those people. I have learned and moved on and hope others do too.

> Pay it off every month and you won't pay interest.

You're skipping the part where she needs to have a bank account, check book, and possibly postage stamps in order to pay her credit card bill.

> ... transfer money (takes 5-7 days) from your bank account...

> ... seller might want to wait until the network confirms a transaction...

She is already familiar with financial institutions taking forever to process payments/clear checks. Additionally, she is familiar with checks bouncing, and with cards being declined.

> Then when you want to pay for something put in the person's bitcoin address

Or, as seen in the linked article, she hits 'Send bitcoins', and then waves her phone at the recipients phone.

> I was one of those people.

It's brave of you to admit that you did not research the thing you invested in. Many of us have.

It's not clear that improved usability will make any difference while fundamental problems (like unwieldy currency exchange) remain unsolved (possibly unsolvable). Likewise, if mobile apps allow Bitcoin to go from 10,000 users to 20,000 that's still virtually nobody.

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