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Comment by golergka | Hacker News Reader

Every time crypto is discussed on HN, I amazed how few mentions of drugs are there. Bitcoin is filling, first and foremost, one single human need: to buy drugs. It's not safe from dedicated investigators, but drug USERS (not dealers) almost never find themselves targets of such investigations.

Another piece of technology that is always used for the same need is Telegram. You got drug-selling bots, channels who aggregate your local dealers, secret chats... Everybody uses this messenger, exclusively, to communicate. It doesn't matter if it's really secure or if it's just good PR – it works.

So, back to Bitcoin: it's a pain in the ass. People constantly try alternatives, even if they're even less secure (like Qiwi). Now imagine that suddenly, you can pay someone straight through Telegram, which has a reputation (doesn't matter of deserved or not) of being secure. What do you think is going to happen?

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Uh, no? Maybe in 2013, but Bitcoin is used for substantially more than that today. It keeps people alive in Venezuela. A lot of African communities are finding it to be an excellent source of stability as well.

My company has done more than $10 million in hardware sales selling cryptocurrency miners for bitcoin. Bitcoin is really the only option for us, because there's so much fraud (check, credit, etc.) that we couldn't accept another form of payment without something like 30% markup. The instant finality (well, 1-2 hour finality) of Bitcoin makes that tractable.

Several startups that I know of have also gained a ton of traction and competitive edge by switching to bitcoin for payment rails. You won't know that they use Bitcoin based on their website or based on interacting with them, but when you send money to another country, they are on the back-end transferring bitcoin, and this allows them to shave days off of their process vs. competitors using other payment rails.

Cryptocurrency services a very wide range of niches, because it offers several very substantial features that no other currency or payment option can offer. Beyond all the hype and sillyness, there is a technology that is actively changing the world and is gaining real traction every day.

> Uh, no? Maybe in 2013, but Bitcoin is used for substantially more than that today. It keeps people alive in Venezuela. A lot of African communities are finding it to be an excellent source of stability as well.

There have been a lot of puff pieces written about this. Very little actual proof in numbers.

> My company has done more than $10 million in hardware sales selling cryptocurrency miners for bitcoin. Bitcoin is really the only option for us, because there's so much fraud (check, credit, etc.) that we couldn't accept another form of payment without something like 30% markup. The instant finality (well, 1-2 hour finality) of Bitcoin makes that tractable.

Can you not take payments through Visa? I thought the standard was 2-3% for fees.

> Several startups that I know of have also gained a ton of traction and competitive edge by switching to bitcoin for payment rails. You won't know that they use Bitcoin based on their website or based on interacting with them, but when you send money to another country, they are on the back-end transferring bitcoin, and this allows them to shave days off of their process vs. competitors using other payment rails.

There aren't many companies taking Bitcoin. The book 50 foot blockchain by David Gerard has more on this. The gist though is that often a payment processor is encourages by Bitcoin maximalists to accept Bitcoin. Months later they realize no one is using it and remove it as a payment option. Then the Bitcoin maximalists pounce and harass them.

> Cryptocurrency services a very wide range of niches, because it offers several very substantial features that no other currency or payment option can offer. Beyond all the hype and sillyness, there is a technology that is actively changing the world and is gaining real traction every day.

In the niche of get rich quick it offers many features.

You are responsible for the fraud yourself if you use Visa. They also just outright won't let us use them, we asked almost a dozen providers, including stripe, including paypal, including several other popular options that are generally cryptocurrency friendly.

> There aren't many companies taking Bitcoin. The book 50 foot blockchain by David Gerard has more on this. The gist though is that often a payment processor is encourages by Bitcoin maximalists to accept Bitcoin. Months later they realize no one is using it and remove it as a payment option. Then the Bitcoin maximalists pounce and harass them.

That's true for small time merchants like tshirt providers and restaurants. That's not true for more serious platforms like Circle, Abra, and a couple that facilitate large (6 figures or more) payments across borders. Those companies absolutely find value in the fast finality, in the low fees (a $10 transaction fee is less than 0.01% for a 6 figure USD transaction), and in the fact that there are bitcoin exchanges in almost every country in the world. Fiat payment rails provide other features, but for some use cases Bitcoin is by far the best option.

> Can you not take payments through Visa?

Sounds like the problem is that fraud/chargebacks are more common, which Visa won't protect from. And for that matter, if you have too much fraud Visa might just dump you as too risky.

Your disagreement with a post pointing out that criminal activity is a major driver of adoption of cryptocurrencies is "our cryptocurrency industry company can't accept any payment method other than Bitcoin due to rampant crime and fraud by cryptocurrency users"?

This level of fraud is experienced by all sellers of expensive hardware. The high-end audio equipment industry has the same problem that we do - high fraud, and chargebacks can hit as much as 90 days later. If you already shipped a $4,000 pair of speakers across the world, that chargeback has no recourse, and just represents a giant hit on your balance sheet.

It's a problem that Bitcoin readily solves.

> My company has done more than $10 million in hardware sales selling cryptocurrency miners for bitcoin.

Just because they cited it in the article -- I'm sure the people who manufactured greenhouses during Tulip Mania* also made a ton of cash (and probably accepted tulips in payment, dunno?) by riding the bubble.

*not that I think bitcoin is the same as tulips.

The point was that we wouldn't be in business if we were stuck using traditional payment methods.

No, the real use case for Bitcoin is getting money out of China despite China's exchange controls. That's much bigger than drugs.

> Bitcoin is filling, first and foremost, one single human need: to buy drugs.

I know no one who transacts with Bitcoin for drugs (I've been involved with Bitcoin since 2011). DNM is obviously big, but I think you overestimate drug transactions vs how many are merely speculating.

I've mined some in 2009-2010 (sold everything at about $20 sometime later), and then everyone around it was just a crypto enthusiast, yes. But none of these were "normal" people using Bitcoin for normal needs.

How many "normies" have you encountered using Bitcoin, and what do they use it for? The only case I see all the time around me is drugs. I doubt there's a single dealer in the whole city who's still accepting cash.

> How many "normies" have you encountered using Bitcoin, and what do they use it for? (edit: pasted wrong quote)

Most people I know (outside of my nerd circle) that are into Bitcoin buy and hold from places like Coinbase.

> The only case I see all the time around me is drugs. I doubt there's a single dealer in the whole city who's still accepting cash.

I presume you're not living in the poor side of town.

No disrespect intended, but I think this is a classic case of confirmation bias.

Dude, I love in Moscow, and people I know (I'm afraid that they are past recreational use and are deep into real addiction) who buy mephedrone, spice and amphetamines from darknet struggle to pay $400 monthly rent. Why would you some that using Bitcoin has any correlation to how well off you are?

Obviously it's different there. I promise you that in major cities in the US a large amount of drug dealing is done by the poverty class, and 99% of them deal in cash only.

> large amount of drug dealing is done by the poverty class

Same here, as I articulated earlier.

> and 99% of them deal in cash only

Curious, why haven't the dealers moved on from delivering the merchandise hand-to-hand? Isn't it significantly more dangerous than burying?

The prbolem is the drugs not the currency. Drugs dealer using dollar away before bitcoin exists, and sill using it until now. Should we worry about dollars too?

What are arguing against, exactly? I'm a pro-legalisation recreational user. Did my post look like I mean drugs as something bad?

Yeah my bad, I misinterpreted your post

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