I remember seeing articles about people trying to live for a week without leaving the house but instead using "the internet" for all shopping and communications. Thinking back to that time there seem to be so many parallels with how the internet was perceived then to how bitcoin is perceived now.

This is stupid and it proves nothing. It's the equivalent of living on Rupees for a week. Sure, you might find some Indian people who will take your money, but nobody's trying to replace the USD with either the Rupee or the Bitcoin. Pure sitespam, this.

"nobody's trying to replace the USD with ... the Bitcoin"

That's blatantly false, it's been presented as a potential replacement since infancy.

"Pure sitespam, this."

Forbes.com as a whole is spam. I'm genuinely amazed by how many articles get upvoted. I guess whatever anti-voting-ring measures in place here can't compete with forbes employees :/

Honestly this is the first Forbes article I ve read in months that had actual, real content in it. Reporters in the ground and not just trolls making polarizing statements to generate web traffic.

I thought it was pretty good. By Forbes usual standards, stellar.

This is like trying the first Android beta there ever was and then saying that there aren't a lot of apps for it yet.

Nearly all current users could have told him that living on Bitcoin for a week is hard to do right now because there is simply no support. This is why we are early adopters, we use something before it's mainstream. You can't actually walk up to anyone and expect to be able to pay them in any currency you can think of.

Walking up to people and paying people for goods and services is a good measure of how useful something is as a currency.

Right now, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that bitcoin is fairly useless to most people as a currency, a hard truth for some.

What is it not useless for? Well mainly as an investment/get rich quick scheme as well as money laundering, drug deals and soothing the paranoia of hard money cranks.

If it was so easy to get rich with bitcoin, everyone would have it already. Besides that, what are Dollars useful for besides drug deals and tax evasion? I can't pay a taxi in Dollars here (a very good measurement for how useful a currency is) but I can use dollars to buy stuff from some Chinese seller that doesn't make me pay tax over the bought goods. It's a hard truth for some.

This reply is total bullshit, I know. I'm trying to connect with him on his level.

"If it was so easy to get rich with bitcoin, everyone would have it already. "

Who said it was easy, straw man much?

Pushing pump and dump stocks via spam emails or selling worthless plots of land to old folks might very well be hard but that doesn't mean it isn't a scam or a get rich quick scheme.

"I can't pay a taxi in Dollars here"

Who is trying to push the dollar as a viable currency for Chinese people to buy things with in China?

OTOH Bitcoin hypers are trying to push it as a global currency. Well, spoilers: it sucks for that.

> OTOH Bitcoin hypers are trying to push it as a global currency. Well, spoilers: it sucks for that.

We're pushing for it, but we're not saying it's there yet. The person I replied to said "Walking up to people and paying people for goods and services is a good measure of how useful something is as a currency." while clearly that's not the case yet, and we never said it was. In the future, hopefully, it will be though.

Why do you think it sucks as a global currency?

I'll be honest Bitcoin is a lot more accepted than I ever expected it would be and looks to have a lot of growth in terms of the things you will be able to purchase with it. That said the bar to be a successful working currency is really high and the investment angle works against it's use as a currency.

Bitcoin detractors read this article and think people like the author are suckers for buying Bitcoins to begin with. Then there's a lot of Bitcoin enthusiasts that probably think people using Bitcoins to buy stuff are suckers for not holding on to them. You can't draw any strong conclusions from that but it's a bad sign when people on both sides of an issue think you're a sucker.

I was amazed at how much you can do. I need to start collecting BTC.

*her

SF retail chain accepts now bitcoin (artisan food & gift, 3 locations: Ferry Building, Haight-Ashbury, North Beach):

http://yelp.com/biz/buyers-best-friend-san-francisco http://yelp.com/biz/buyers-best-friend-mercato-san-francisco http://yelp.com/biz/buyers-best-friend-wholesale-and-market-...

Is there any concern with keeping the price of an individual bitcoin down so that they can be used more like a proper currency? Meaning, at around $140 per coin currently that's not exactly an ideal 'base' value of a currency.

Is there an equivalent to a stock split that could be applied?

Just seems like Bitcoin can never really fulfill its dream of being a true global currency if the lowest value of an individual 'coin' is so expensive.

The unit of bitcoin is currently 10^-8 bitcoins, or about one ten-thousandth of a penny. A smaller unit can be adopted at any time if a majority of the network starts using a client that supports a smaller unit.

You don't need to use Bitcoin in 1-coin denominations. The clients even have support for viewing it in much smaller (millionth) pieces. So the "base" value is really quite irrelevant apart from psychological aspects when trading BTC.

One Bitcoin can be divided down to 0.00000001 BTC.

Yes, I'm aware of this. My comment was about wide-spread adoption.

I have a hard time imaging my parents working with fractions just to buy a coffee.

Come on, you lack imagination. Do you really not see that a simple change of units would solve the pb? It is a mere convention change, not even a technical change! Call 0.001 bitcoin 1 millibitcoin, or 1 mBTC, or 1 "new bitcoin". Done! They do this all the time in countries with inflation/deflation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_franc#New_franc

Your ancestors did just fine with salaries of a few dollars a year, once upon a time.

It's just a terminology problem because people aren't used to "bitcents" or "mBTC" yet.

There is some effort to switch the discourse to mBTC.

"after a failed attempt to do so via Mt. Gox, the value-setting Bitcoin exchange based in Japan; my bank refused to send funds to Mt. Gox’s account saying it was suspended"

Funny how this journalist is the only one having gotten that. Seeing as MtGox is the biggest exchange, that would've been quite the news otherwise, but it isn't, because it's so far working for everybody.

To be honest, everyone else is probably used to problems like this now, to the point that it's not really news.

Well, difficulty transfering money, why sure. But MtGoxes account being shut down, that would be news.

Perhaps the nice lady should've stated which bank is telling her bullshit. Name and shame.

Given the price of BTC, can we start talking about bitcoins in a more readable unit? Like... an iPhone costs 300cBTC? centibitcoins? or 30dBTC 30 decibitcoins?

How is 300 cBTC more readable than 3 BTC?

Edit: anyway, more common units are mBTC for 1/1000, uBTC for 1/1,000,000 and "satoshi" which is the smallest division the protocol currently supports, 1/100,000,000. (Satoshi Nakamoto is the pseudonym used by the creator of bitcoin.)

The point may have been that if BTC is the only unit, then most every-day things will cost something like .05 BTC, which doesn't seem all that intuitive (at least coming from a USD area).

Also remember that things started costing 5 cents until inflation ran those same items up to dollars.

If bitcoin ever takes off, its built-in deflation will run the problem in the other direction (making it even worse than it is now).

by just saying the word "bitcoins" here, I know this post will worth a million dollar somewhere in the future.