Let's face it - we're all geeky idealists here. We love the mathematical beauty of bitcoin and its concept of true financial freedom and we try to promote it that way. But masses don't really care about any currency's fundamentals, they just want to go to a store and buy things. Wheter it's for greenback, btc or some loyalty program points, they don't care. Majority of people will never understand bitcoin, or fiat; most of them don't even know what inflation is.
Why do I write all this? I found promoting bitcoin quite hard and I think it's because my explanation of it always starts from what I personaly like about it (no central banking, cryptography). Fail. The story must be told from listener's perspective. So what would impress these people? That they can go to a store and actually buy things with btc in a simple way, like with cash.
So I would like to create a real-life scenario, step by step, to make sure this is possible. It starts with customer entering a store and ends with him leaving with the stuff he bought. I want to only include technologies that already exist or are in a final stage of development, so this scenario would be feasible lets say bu teh end of mid 2013. We can then use this story when introducing bitcoin to non-geeky people.
I'm kicking off: It's June 2013, Adam enters a store, picks up some snacks and takes it to the counter. What happens next?
If he's in the USA he pays with USD in some form. Fiat money works very well as a medium of exchange and as a unit of account. I think the main function that BTC can do better than fiat currencies is that it can, and hopefully will, serve as a better store of value than fiat currencies which lose value due to the increase in supply of fiat currency created by central banks and their fractional reserve banking systems.