Re:Ask HN: Do you consider people buying into Bitcoin today ...
by adventured on Tuesday November 26, 2013 @09:03PM
(#6805735)
There are two early adopter classes that I think matter in this sort of case.
First are what I'll refer to as technologists. No elaboration necessary, you get the gist.
Second are Jane & Joe consumer.
People buying into Bitcoin today are early adopters as far as consumers are concerned, and they're years behind on the technologist scale.
Bitcoin has reached enough publicity at this point that a former business partner of mine - she's in her mid 60's, and is a very very light user of technology, that hasn't yet joined Facebook, has never once used Twitter, has heard / read about Bitcoin. She is a CPA, so we had an interesting conversation about the implications of Bitcoin. She gets the premise of digital currencies, but not exactly how Bitcoin works (why mining exists, who controls it, how the encryption works, and so on).
Publicity wise, Bitcoin is quite widespread, it has spent months in the mainstream media at this point. Consumer adoption is clearly still in the first inning however.
First are what I'll refer to as technologists. No elaboration necessary, you get the gist.
Second are Jane & Joe consumer.
People buying into Bitcoin today are early adopters as far as consumers are concerned, and they're years behind on the technologist scale.
Bitcoin has reached enough publicity at this point that a former business partner of mine - she's in her mid 60's, and is a very very light user of technology, that hasn't yet joined Facebook, has never once used Twitter, has heard / read about Bitcoin. She is a CPA, so we had an interesting conversation about the implications of Bitcoin. She gets the premise of digital currencies, but not exactly how Bitcoin works (why mining exists, who controls it, how the encryption works, and so on).
Publicity wise, Bitcoin is quite widespread, it has spent months in the mainstream media at this point. Consumer adoption is clearly still in the first inning however.