“What is needed is an electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust, allowing any two willing parties to transact directly with each other without the need for a trusted third party.” Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System
Have you ever noticed the notches on the side of old coins? Sometimes they’re all the way around, sometimes they’re interspersed across the edge. Those simple notches are a security feature. When a coin is made of precious metal, like gold or silver, the metal has inherent value. An enterprising thief could shave or file off the outer edge of each coin. You might not notice from one coin to the next, but that’s a fair amount of metal from all the coins that cross a person’s path. When the coin is notched, or “reeded” as they say, you can tell right away. Shaving value from coins becomes impossible without being immediately noticed.
Trust and money have a funny relationship. A system without trust can’t exist. We either trust the inherent value of gold, or the bank where we deposit funds, or the federal reserve that centrally controls our monetary system, or the merchant we do commerce with, believing that whatever we’re trading our hard-earned cash for really is worth it. Nobody wants to be taken for a sucker.
Existing financial institutions try to win trust in a variety of ways, from their large stone pillars, suggesting permanency, to the FDIC, guaranteeing a return if the bank is robbed (up to a quarter million per account).
When bitcoin was first proposed, Satoshi Nakamoto suggested that this would eliminate the need for a trusted third party. No bank, no credit card company, no PayPal account. The transfer goes from one person, directly to the other. But trust still is, and always will be, a critical piece of the system.
For people who understand cryptography, decentralized networks, or open source software, trust is taken care of. They understand the nature of the thing, and trust it. I know my brother-in-law’s dog. I trust that if I leave food on the floor in his kitchen, the dog will eat it. That’s the nature of the thing. I also know that open source software is under the scrutiny of the whole coding community, and can be much more secure that way. That’s the nature of the thing.
But for people who don’t know those things, and who have no hope or interest of knowing what crypto-currency is, trust is still a huge issue with bitcoin. Everybody Beccy and I have talked to who has enlisted to accept bitcoin has mentioned that they trust us. We don’t look like scammers (whatever that looks like). We have a camera-man with us. Why would con artists film their own con? For various reasons, we seem trustworthy. Thank heavens.
Nobody we’ve talked to has mentioned that they trust the heavy cryptography at play in each bitcoin transaction. Nobody mentions that they trust a distributed network rather than the control of a central bank. Those are of course features built into the currency, and an overly zealous evangelist will shout those features all day long. But those things won’t convince most people to use bitcoin.
They have to trust you.
If you’re trying to spread bitcoin, start there. Start with the people that trust you. It’s a lot easier to win the trust of people for yourself, rather then convince people to trust a technical system they’ve never heard of involving several academic disciplines they’ll never grasp.
This whole bitcoin thing will work, right? You promise? Okay. I trust you.