Quote from: cdhowie on April 07, 2011, 01:29:14 PM

Quote from: eMansipater on April 07, 2011, 01:25:28 PM

No more coins would be awarded. We're the ones who create the coins by using the bitcoin protocol--they were all hardwired in as soon as the code was finalised as, essentially, an agreement between the people who use it.

To someone who already understands BitCoin this might seem like a head-game, but it's a critical difference for newcomers. I think we need to intentionally reframe this in our terminology. All these different ways of explaining the math are just abstractions, but we should be using an abstraction that leads to as little confusion as possible. For a newcomer, if computers can just generate coins, then they're worthless. Saying that they do is literally like going back in time and trying to sell people on paper money by saying that printing presses create dollar bills. It's the restrictions on them and the community valuation of them that makes them bitcoins instead of just meaningless numbers.

+1. The people I try to explain Bitcoin to have the same initial objection -- "but anyone can create coins." It's only after I explain how the block chain works with respect to "generation" and fees that they understand.

Dude if you can explain to the average computer user how the block chain and have them understand it you'd be da man of English usage and clear communication..