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Bitcoin has the same sort of issues that plague Linux Desktop and why Linux never took off as the defacto standard for PC OS. It’s the lack of user focus. Sett

Bitcoin has the same sort of issues that plague Linux Desktop and why Linux never took off as the defacto standard for PC OS. It’s the lack of user focus. Setting up a bitcoin account, understanding the security implications, hardware wallet, secret keys, the whole enchilada is too big for an average consumer to digest. Somewhere in Jobs’ biography by Walter Isaacson, there is a snippet about how products often fail when they’re designed by geeks, engineers and technology people - they make products to sell to customers that are like themselves. I’m an engineer myself and I also think the contrary is also true - products and services developed by “MBA” kinds often fail because the people in charge of the company roadmap have no fucking clue about the technical details and trade-offs of the product. Bitcoin transaction process is designed for the most part for the nerds, not for the average Joe. I know there exists Coinbase and other “easy” setups for Bitcoin. But I’m talking about what happens when an average joe Googles “How to setup a bitcoin account”. Instant “nope” - I don’t have time for this shit and my personal money is at stake if I mess this up.

joshstrange 8y ago
This is a really good comparison that I had never thought of. You are 100% right, the user experience for BTC is terrible and not likely to get a whole lot better. Even coinbase can be a PITA sometimes, it's really the Ubuntu of the crypto-currency world IMHO. Also quick question: When was the last time you thought about the swipe-fees for your CC? I'll answer for you: Never. Yet with BTC and other crypto's this is a concern. And please, don't even talk about "Oh it's gotten better with the lightning network" or "The new QRS spec will speed this up", it's really just embarrassing.
- ecwilson 8y ago
  Depends on the industry. For very large transactions, like if you are paying a home improvement contractor for something, they will often make you eat the fees if you want to pay with a credit card. So you end up having to figure out where your checkbook is (probably collecting dust in a box somewhere). I give Bitcoin and LN a continuous pass on UX for now. We're in the infrastructure phase -- growing trust and improving reliability matters far more than UX. Before you know it, there will be 20 years of development and battle-testing behind the tech. The UX can come at any point in the future, while a breach of trust would be fatal. It's a question of ruthless prioritization. Thankfully, the open source devs behind these projects are long-term thinkers, not ponzi-scheme enablers. Lastly, the UX need not come from Bitcoin/LN. They are a protocol, not a product.
  - short_sells_poo 8y ago
    > So you end up having to figure out where your checkbook is (probably collecting dust in a box somewhere). Are you based in the US? Because almost everywhere else in the world when you say checkbook, people picture movies from the 1970s. When paying a home improvement contractor, they send me an invoice where they have an IBAN. I point my banks app at it, it pops up a screen where I just type in the amount that I wish to pay (and sometimes it fills that in automatically too), and within 5 minutes the contractor has the money on their account. Neither I nor the contractor pay any fees for this transaction.
    - jfk13 8y ago
      That's not limited to large payments such as home improvements, either. I do the same thing to pay the guy who comes to tune our piano; I even did it to pay each of the individual cleaners who did a few hours end-of-tenancy cleaning for us the last time we moved. Checking my chequebook, I see it's well over a year since I last used it.
      - stevekemp 8y ago
        It's been 20ish years since local grocery-stores, supermarkets, and most shops stopped accepting cheques in the UK. I've written less than 50 in my life, mostly for mail-order stuff back 15 years. In the past 15 years I've never even owned a cheque-book, the banks just don't give them out.
    - KineticLensman 8y ago
      Yes. I pay my window cleaner this way.
  - walterstucco 8y ago
    I'm 41, I'm from Italy, never used a check in my entire life.
cal5k 8y ago
I have a better analogy: Bitcoin has the same sort of issues as TCP/IP. It's weird that people are expected to interact with it on the protocol level. I think the term "cryptocurrency" is the "Big Data" of 2018. The term itself has been somewhat tarnished, but the underlying technology is super useful and will find its way into a lot of applications. And no, I don't mean "blockchain". I mean Bitcoin... it's rather nice as a business or individual to be able to send large amounts of money around the world without snaking through the nightmare that is international banking. Inherent in that idea is the notion that the coin itself has value independent of a particular application.
- fyfy18 8y ago
  Most of the issues with "international banking" are infact just issues with North American banks. I can transfer large sums of money around Europe and it will arrive in few days at the very latest. Within the same country transfers mostly arrive the same day (often it's under 1 hour), and sometimes that happens internationally too. Oh and I don't need to pay anything for that. A few years ago I was working in the Middle East, and before I moved back I transferred my savings from there (~€50k) back to Europe without any questions from either bank. I just did the transfer online, and it arrived in a few days. Now I'm working for a US company, and it took them a few weeks to setup paying me with their bank. It usually takes at least a week from when they tell the bank to pay me, until I receive the money in my account - to a USD account also in the US.
  - short_sells_poo 8y ago
    > Most of the issues with "international banking" are infact just issues with North American banks. This. Whenever someone says that Cryptocurrencies solve money transfer problems, I look where they are based and 99% of the cases it is the US. In Europe, transferring money is the same internationally as it is nationally. Type in the IBAN and the name of the recipient and they get it the same day, or latest the next day. I made seven figure international payments that went through in 24 hours. This is not a technical problem that Cryptocurrencies are somehow uniquely placed to solve. Technically, a money transfer could take miliseconds - updating a couple of database rows. National payments in Europe at least are actually pretty much instant since they are now fully automated. International payments can take up to a day due to an actual human checking the correctness (and perhaps doing due diligence for money laundering).
dnautics 8y ago
Yet today, half the world with computer access uses Linux, directly. And the entire world uses it indirectly.
- dtech 8y ago
  But ~0% of them know or care that they use Linux, it's either is a functional device for them or has a rebranded OS (Android)
- zeroxfe 8y ago
  Nobody is disputing that Linux became an overwhelming success. spectramax was comparing it to Linux on the desktop (which never really became mainstream).
- laurentdc 8y ago
  It's branding, it's more about perception than raw usage statistics. I wouldn't call my Android phone or smart TV a Linux box, and when I browse a website there's no "served by Linux" logo :) end users simply have no idea nor care about any of this.
- wheelie_boy 8y ago
  He's specifically talking about Linux on the Desktop, which is hovering around 2% market share ( http://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide/#monthly-201003-201807 http://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide/... ) It might be that bitcoin is similar to linux - used as a backbone, but not customer friendly enough to ever be used directly by customers. Like maybe banks use it to transfer large amounts of money between each other or something.
  - v_lisivka 8y ago
    Almost 3%, if combined with ChromeOS. IMHO, it is huge success, even if we forget about Linux domination in market of supercomputers, servers, smartphones, and large segment of market in IoT and robotics. Bitcoin is far far away from such success.
  - dnautics 8y ago
api 8y ago
I don't think you are wrong, but in the case of Bitcoin I think a lack of user focus is a secondary problem. The primary problem is that Bitcoin's economics don't work. If it becomes popular, its nominal value explodes due to deflationary effects. This makes it inconvenient to use for money and rewards speculation and Ponzi type behavior. This drives people away from using it as money and it crashes. Repeat. Bitcoin was getting some adoption in 2016 and early 2017, but the late 2017 bubble led to many retailers dropping it due to price instability. The late 2017 Bitcoin bubble was actually a deflationary collapse of the currency. After it there were only speculators left holding bags and trying to gradually get out before other speculators realized it was time to get out. That's where we still are today.
root_axis 8y ago
It's worse than that; there is no compelling reason to use it for the vast majority of people. It's a strictly worse experience in nearly all respects compared to centralized options except in the case of dark net commerce where it's the only option.
- beatgammit 8y ago
  It could be easier for tourism, online transactions, and person to person transactions. However, it's not, largely because of a chicken and egg problem similar to that which plagues Linux. People don't use Bitcoin because it's complicated and unstable. It's complicated and unstable because the types of people that use it want to speculate with it or use it for illegal purposes. Just making it more approachable won't fix the stability issues, so it likely won't increase the number of users in a meaningful enough way to get it to take off. The same is true for desktop Linux. And installing Linux is often easier than installing another OS (Windows or macOS). Take Ubuntu or Mint, for example. They're the most popular among users new to Linux, and installation is as easy or easier than Windows since drivers come preinstalled and the user is prompted if proprietary drivers are available. The problems arise when trying to use software not deigned for Linux (e.g. MS Office), and this is getting better all the time with investment into the Windows compatibility layer by Valve. However, the chicken and egg problem will always be there. A decentralized system like Bitcoin can't really be saved by investment from a third party since it can't solve the volatility problem without centralization. For this reason, I think looking at centralized, but not government run, systems is interesting. For example, GNU Taler is a centralized cryptocurrency that can be used for anything (one example was currency used at conferences) with incredibly low transaction costs. I think it's interesting because it gets people used to using something digital (and not government provided/managed) to make transactions, but without having to deal with volatility inherent in cryptocurrencies, and once cryptocurrencies stabilize, perhaps they can be a drop-in replacement. I really want decentralized currencies to work out (largely to make traveling less of a pain), but nothing I've seen is worth making more user-friendly.
  - mikeash 8y ago
    How can it get any easier than one of the 87 different mobile apps that let you send money to another person with a few taps?
asdgionbionio 8y ago
Bitcoin has a lot of problems which are individually fatal to the whole enterprise. It would be a terrible idea even if it were so intuitive a goldfish could use it.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
While I can agree about the lack of user focus, I disagree with the precise way in which lack of user focus is the failure point for both Linux Desktop and Bitcoin. See, neither of these things can be presented to a user as a tool that can make their lives better, which is what users actually want. Strip away all the hype and math and crypto jargon and what is Bitcoin to someone? An inconvenient currency they can't pay taxes with and have to jump through hoops to use for nebulous benefit. Where did Bitcoin actually find traction amongst users? As a way of transferring money overseas, because it could do it with a lot less hassle than traditional methods.
- spectramax 8y ago
  > See, neither of these things can be presented to a user as a tool that can make their lives better Did you read the article? Quoting: "In 2014 a large school of thought suggested that the main breakthrough use case for Bitcoin would be peer to peer transactions. That being customers and businesses paying for goods and services directly between one another without having to rely on payment networks such as Visa." The use case is certainly for consumers. Direct consumers. Same with Linux Desktop. Just go to Ubuntu.com - what are they pitching? In my view, there is no question whether there is a lack of user focus. It is one of the major reasons (if not the top reason) for lack of traction.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
    > That being customers and businesses paying for goods and services directly between one another without having to rely on payment networks such as Visa. We already have cash for that! It completely ignores the reasons why people use payment networks like Visa instead of just exchanging cash. There are fraud protections, credit, reward points, etc. What bitcoin brings to the table is simply not something very many people actually want for the tradeoffs involved.
    - spectramax 8y ago
      I’m with you. They’re not designed for consumer use. The core of the argument of this thread is - these technologies are being marketed and pitched towards consumers despite of what you’re highlighting.
bastawhiz 8y ago
> It’s the lack of user focus. Setting up a bitcoin account, understanding the security implications, hardware wallet, secret keys, the whole enchilada is too big for an average consumer to digest. I respectfully disagree. Bitcoin solves problems that the average consumer didn't care about, plus it introduces new problems. I would never make an everyday purchase with Bitcoin. If I don't get the product I was promised, I can file a dispute with my credit card company. If the product I purchased breaks, it may be covered by a warranty from my card company. If my card number is stolen, I get reimbursed for the fraudulent charges and get a new card in the mail. None of these conveniences come with cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency solved a problem with moving money ~anonymously with no interference from authorities. Most average folks want the exact opposite of that.
- aeternus 8y ago
  >I would never make an everyday purchase with Bitcoin. I used to think the same, but there is a coffee / snack shop nearby that accepts bitcoin/bcash/ethereum, and offers $1 off if you pay with it. A surprising number of people pay via cryptocurrency. For a small purchase like that, cryptocurrency is perfect. Amounts are small enough that you don't need to wait for blockchain confirmations, risk is low. Credit card fees are high in-part because they are providing that fraud protection. For a purchase like this, both the merchant and I save money by not having to worry about transaction reversals and fraud.
TomMckenny 8y ago
The other issue which kills wide adoption is price fluctuation. People using it as a regular currency need their account value to remain what they expect it to be. High viability strongly repels regular users and attracts high risk speculators. And maybe that is a fun outcome but it does make it unusable as currency. It's still worth accepting on principle of course.
Smokinator 8y ago
No-coiner who has never used Bitcoin spotted. You don't need an "account" to use Bitcoin. It's kind of the whole point. If I want to send you Bitcoin, you can download an app, we tap phones, and that's it. It's way easier to use than any other payment method. Bitcoin's price doesn't matter. Its value will become apparent when your bank cards stop working. Money without banks. In fact, money that is better in every conceivable way than bank money. Isn't that the dream?

joshstrange 8y ago

This is a really good comparison that I had never thought of. You are 100% right, the user experience for BTC is terrible and not likely to get a whole lot better. Even coinbase can be a PITA sometimes, it's really the Ubuntu of the crypto-currency world IMHO. Also quick question: When was the last time you thought about the swipe-fees for your CC? I'll answer for you: Never. Yet with BTC and other crypto's this is a concern. And please, don't even talk about "Oh it's gotten better with the lightning network" or "The new QRS spec will speed this up", it's really just embarrassing.

ecwilson 8y ago
Depends on the industry. For very large transactions, like if you are paying a home improvement contractor for something, they will often make you eat the fees if you want to pay with a credit card. So you end up having to figure out where your checkbook is (probably collecting dust in a box somewhere). I give Bitcoin and LN a continuous pass on UX for now. We're in the infrastructure phase -- growing trust and improving reliability matters far more than UX. Before you know it, there will be 20 years of development and battle-testing behind the tech. The UX can come at any point in the future, while a breach of trust would be fatal. It's a question of ruthless prioritization. Thankfully, the open source devs behind these projects are long-term thinkers, not ponzi-scheme enablers. Lastly, the UX need not come from Bitcoin/LN. They are a protocol, not a product.
- short_sells_poo 8y ago
  > So you end up having to figure out where your checkbook is (probably collecting dust in a box somewhere). Are you based in the US? Because almost everywhere else in the world when you say checkbook, people picture movies from the 1970s. When paying a home improvement contractor, they send me an invoice where they have an IBAN. I point my banks app at it, it pops up a screen where I just type in the amount that I wish to pay (and sometimes it fills that in automatically too), and within 5 minutes the contractor has the money on their account. Neither I nor the contractor pay any fees for this transaction.
  - jfk13 8y ago
    That's not limited to large payments such as home improvements, either. I do the same thing to pay the guy who comes to tune our piano; I even did it to pay each of the individual cleaners who did a few hours end-of-tenancy cleaning for us the last time we moved. Checking my chequebook, I see it's well over a year since I last used it.
    - stevekemp 8y ago
      It's been 20ish years since local grocery-stores, supermarkets, and most shops stopped accepting cheques in the UK. I've written less than 50 in my life, mostly for mail-order stuff back 15 years. In the past 15 years I've never even owned a cheque-book, the banks just don't give them out.
  - KineticLensman 8y ago
    Yes. I pay my window cleaner this way.
- walterstucco 8y ago
  I'm 41, I'm from Italy, never used a check in my entire life.

cal5k 8y ago

I have a better analogy: Bitcoin has the same sort of issues as TCP/IP. It's weird that people are expected to interact with it on the protocol level. I think the term "cryptocurrency" is the "Big Data" of 2018. The term itself has been somewhat tarnished, but the underlying technology is super useful and will find its way into a lot of applications. And no, I don't mean "blockchain". I mean Bitcoin... it's rather nice as a business or individual to be able to send large amounts of money around the world without snaking through the nightmare that is international banking. Inherent in that idea is the notion that the coin itself has value independent of a particular application.

fyfy18 8y ago
Most of the issues with "international banking" are infact just issues with North American banks. I can transfer large sums of money around Europe and it will arrive in few days at the very latest. Within the same country transfers mostly arrive the same day (often it's under 1 hour), and sometimes that happens internationally too. Oh and I don't need to pay anything for that. A few years ago I was working in the Middle East, and before I moved back I transferred my savings from there (~€50k) back to Europe without any questions from either bank. I just did the transfer online, and it arrived in a few days. Now I'm working for a US company, and it took them a few weeks to setup paying me with their bank. It usually takes at least a week from when they tell the bank to pay me, until I receive the money in my account - to a USD account also in the US.
- short_sells_poo 8y ago
  > Most of the issues with "international banking" are infact just issues with North American banks. This. Whenever someone says that Cryptocurrencies solve money transfer problems, I look where they are based and 99% of the cases it is the US. In Europe, transferring money is the same internationally as it is nationally. Type in the IBAN and the name of the recipient and they get it the same day, or latest the next day. I made seven figure international payments that went through in 24 hours. This is not a technical problem that Cryptocurrencies are somehow uniquely placed to solve. Technically, a money transfer could take miliseconds - updating a couple of database rows. National payments in Europe at least are actually pretty much instant since they are now fully automated. International payments can take up to a day due to an actual human checking the correctness (and perhaps doing due diligence for money laundering).

dnautics 8y ago

Yet today, half the world with computer access uses Linux, directly. And the entire world uses it indirectly.

dtech 8y ago
But ~0% of them know or care that they use Linux, it's either is a functional device for them or has a rebranded OS (Android)
zeroxfe 8y ago
Nobody is disputing that Linux became an overwhelming success. spectramax was comparing it to Linux on the desktop (which never really became mainstream).
laurentdc 8y ago
It's branding, it's more about perception than raw usage statistics. I wouldn't call my Android phone or smart TV a Linux box, and when I browse a website there's no "served by Linux" logo :) end users simply have no idea nor care about any of this.
wheelie_boy 8y ago
He's specifically talking about Linux on the Desktop, which is hovering around 2% market share ( http://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide/#monthly-201003-201807 http://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide/... ) It might be that bitcoin is similar to linux - used as a backbone, but not customer friendly enough to ever be used directly by customers. Like maybe banks use it to transfer large amounts of money between each other or something.
- v_lisivka 8y ago
  Almost 3%, if combined with ChromeOS. IMHO, it is huge success, even if we forget about Linux domination in market of supercomputers, servers, smartphones, and large segment of market in IoT and robotics. Bitcoin is far far away from such success.
- dnautics 8y ago

api 8y ago

I don't think you are wrong, but in the case of Bitcoin I think a lack of user focus is a secondary problem. The primary problem is that Bitcoin's economics don't work. If it becomes popular, its nominal value explodes due to deflationary effects. This makes it inconvenient to use for money and rewards speculation and Ponzi type behavior. This drives people away from using it as money and it crashes. Repeat. Bitcoin was getting some adoption in 2016 and early 2017, but the late 2017 bubble led to many retailers dropping it due to price instability. The late 2017 Bitcoin bubble was actually a deflationary collapse of the currency. After it there were only speculators left holding bags and trying to gradually get out before other speculators realized it was time to get out. That's where we still are today.

root_axis 8y ago

It's worse than that; there is no compelling reason to use it for the vast majority of people. It's a strictly worse experience in nearly all respects compared to centralized options except in the case of dark net commerce where it's the only option.

beatgammit 8y ago
It could be easier for tourism, online transactions, and person to person transactions. However, it's not, largely because of a chicken and egg problem similar to that which plagues Linux. People don't use Bitcoin because it's complicated and unstable. It's complicated and unstable because the types of people that use it want to speculate with it or use it for illegal purposes. Just making it more approachable won't fix the stability issues, so it likely won't increase the number of users in a meaningful enough way to get it to take off. The same is true for desktop Linux. And installing Linux is often easier than installing another OS (Windows or macOS). Take Ubuntu or Mint, for example. They're the most popular among users new to Linux, and installation is as easy or easier than Windows since drivers come preinstalled and the user is prompted if proprietary drivers are available. The problems arise when trying to use software not deigned for Linux (e.g. MS Office), and this is getting better all the time with investment into the Windows compatibility layer by Valve. However, the chicken and egg problem will always be there. A decentralized system like Bitcoin can't really be saved by investment from a third party since it can't solve the volatility problem without centralization. For this reason, I think looking at centralized, but not government run, systems is interesting. For example, GNU Taler is a centralized cryptocurrency that can be used for anything (one example was currency used at conferences) with incredibly low transaction costs. I think it's interesting because it gets people used to using something digital (and not government provided/managed) to make transactions, but without having to deal with volatility inherent in cryptocurrencies, and once cryptocurrencies stabilize, perhaps they can be a drop-in replacement. I really want decentralized currencies to work out (largely to make traveling less of a pain), but nothing I've seen is worth making more user-friendly.
- mikeash 8y ago
  How can it get any easier than one of the 87 different mobile apps that let you send money to another person with a few taps?

asdgionbionio 8y ago

Bitcoin has a lot of problems which are individually fatal to the whole enterprise. It would be a terrible idea even if it were so intuitive a goldfish could use it.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago

While I can agree about the lack of user focus, I disagree with the precise way in which lack of user focus is the failure point for both Linux Desktop and Bitcoin. See, neither of these things can be presented to a user as a tool that can make their lives better, which is what users actually want. Strip away all the hype and math and crypto jargon and what is Bitcoin to someone? An inconvenient currency they can't pay taxes with and have to jump through hoops to use for nebulous benefit. Where did Bitcoin actually find traction amongst users? As a way of transferring money overseas, because it could do it with a lot less hassle than traditional methods.

spectramax 8y ago
> See, neither of these things can be presented to a user as a tool that can make their lives better Did you read the article? Quoting: "In 2014 a large school of thought suggested that the main breakthrough use case for Bitcoin would be peer to peer transactions. That being customers and businesses paying for goods and services directly between one another without having to rely on payment networks such as Visa." The use case is certainly for consumers. Direct consumers. Same with Linux Desktop. Just go to Ubuntu.com - what are they pitching? In my view, there is no question whether there is a lack of user focus. It is one of the major reasons (if not the top reason) for lack of traction.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
  > That being customers and businesses paying for goods and services directly between one another without having to rely on payment networks such as Visa. We already have cash for that! It completely ignores the reasons why people use payment networks like Visa instead of just exchanging cash. There are fraud protections, credit, reward points, etc. What bitcoin brings to the table is simply not something very many people actually want for the tradeoffs involved.
  - spectramax 8y ago
    I’m with you. They’re not designed for consumer use. The core of the argument of this thread is - these technologies are being marketed and pitched towards consumers despite of what you’re highlighting.

bastawhiz 8y ago

> It’s the lack of user focus. Setting up a bitcoin account, understanding the security implications, hardware wallet, secret keys, the whole enchilada is too big for an average consumer to digest. I respectfully disagree. Bitcoin solves problems that the average consumer didn't care about, plus it introduces new problems. I would never make an everyday purchase with Bitcoin. If I don't get the product I was promised, I can file a dispute with my credit card company. If the product I purchased breaks, it may be covered by a warranty from my card company. If my card number is stolen, I get reimbursed for the fraudulent charges and get a new card in the mail. None of these conveniences come with cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency solved a problem with moving money ~anonymously with no interference from authorities. Most average folks want the exact opposite of that.

aeternus 8y ago
>I would never make an everyday purchase with Bitcoin. I used to think the same, but there is a coffee / snack shop nearby that accepts bitcoin/bcash/ethereum, and offers $1 off if you pay with it. A surprising number of people pay via cryptocurrency. For a small purchase like that, cryptocurrency is perfect. Amounts are small enough that you don't need to wait for blockchain confirmations, risk is low. Credit card fees are high in-part because they are providing that fraud protection. For a purchase like this, both the merchant and I save money by not having to worry about transaction reversals and fraud.

TomMckenny 8y ago

The other issue which kills wide adoption is price fluctuation. People using it as a regular currency need their account value to remain what they expect it to be. High viability strongly repels regular users and attracts high risk speculators. And maybe that is a fun outcome but it does make it unusable as currency. It's still worth accepting on principle of course.

Smokinator 8y ago

No-coiner who has never used Bitcoin spotted. You don't need an "account" to use Bitcoin. It's kind of the whole point. If I want to send you Bitcoin, you can download an app, we tap phones, and that's it. It's way easier to use than any other payment method. Bitcoin's price doesn't matter. Its value will become apparent when your bank cards stop working. Money without banks. In fact, money that is better in every conceivable way than bank money. Isn't that the dream?