Comment by hudon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hudon | Hacker News Reader

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While it has speculative value [0], you can use it to buy stuff, but while doing so you will spend on exchange fees to convert in and out of crypto, you will use as much electricity for your transaction as 33 US households use in a day, you will subject yourself to liquidity risk and volatility risk [1] and you will have to wait for anywhere from ten minutes to a couple hours [2].

Calling this complicated, risky and expensive process a "use case" is like calling a Rube Goldberg machine that opens a door "useful for opening doors". It's like no, not really. It can do it, sure, but there are significantly better ways of achieving the same thing.

[0] When there are no more greater fools entering the market, the price will tank and you will not be able use it to transfer value.

[1] It's possible that right after your purchase, the price of the token shoots up or down 50%, making rational purchasing decisions difficult.

[2] transactions on Visa, Apple Pay, or PayPal all get complete within seconds.

Or you use Ethereum, get confirmation in seconds, using far less electricity.

The only complaint valid in that case is the changing price, but it has been stable for months, and it has grown a lot more during the last year than the same investment in a savings account.

So what you say is essentially correct about Bitcoin, but if you add cost of opportunity to the equation, you have lost a lot more than people using criptocurrencies.

And the criptocurrency of the future can be different to Bitcoin. All bets are off.

You may not like it but dismissing an actual use case is just ignorant after the parent comment specifically asked for one.

> but there are significantly better ways of achieving the same thing.

There are no ways of accepting payments digitally without a third party. There is no "better way".

> transactions on Visa, Apple Pay, or PayPal all get complete within seconds.

0-conf can be accepted within seconds. Also credit card transactions are reversible after many weeks. Credit card chargeback fraud is a big problem for businesses.

> There are no ways of accepting payments digitally without a third party.

1- I agree. Bitcoin is no exception here: I must buy Bitcoin through GDAX. Then my transaction must be confirmed by Bitmain. And they're all running software by Blockstream. That's 3 third parties that were trusted for my purchase.

2- 0-conf transactions are very risky for recipients, hence why exchanges require confirmations.

3- Credit card chargebacks is how the real world solved the fraud problem in the featured article. Can you please provide an equivalent article showing how businesses are suffering due to chargebacks?

> I must buy Bitcoin through GDAX.

Or many other outlets including decentralized exchanges or localbitcoins.

> Then my transaction must be confirmed by Bitmain.

Or by the other miners.

> And they're all running software by Blockstream.

Or you could use Bitcoin Cash which have several development teams or use another cryptocurrency if Blockstream is your worry.

Also Bitcoin Core was mostly written before Blockstream came to be. It's also open source and you can bet that faults will be abused if they exist.

> That's 3 third parties that were trusted for my purchase.

No 3rd party is trusted when you send coins to someone else. That's the point.

> 0-conf transactions are very risky for recipients, hence why exchanges require confirmations.

They are actually quite safe if done on sane networks like Bitcoin Cash, not Bitcoin.

That's why several merchants accept 0-conf for small to medium purchases. See xmr.to as an example.

> Can you please provide an equivalent article showing how businesses are suffering due to chargebacks?

Just google "credit card chargeback fraud" or "friendly fraud" for tons of examples.

We don’t have the stats on the number of households the payment processing industry and banking industry could power. Not saying that it’s more or less, just something I considered.

It’s like you’ve never dealt with chargebacks.

Chargebacks protect users from fraudsters, which is exactly what the featured article is saying is a major problem in the cryptocurrency space. Millions of people getting scammed with no legal recourse is a problem. Retailers dealing with chargebacks less so... I've never heard of the "Merchants are thinking of no longer selling anything due to chargebacks" problem.

Either I ask customers to send me loads of PII, or I ask them to make their first payments in bitcoin.

I’ll always choose the latter.

It's like you've never been ripped off by someone selling you a watch on an internet forum.

Infinitely easier to vet sellers than buyers.

False. Random sellers on internet forums are not easy to vet at all. The whole point of chargebacks is you don't have to vet the seller.

Sure, that’s the point of chargebacks. Everybody knows this.

What is the point you are trying to make? That you’re too dumb to not buy from “random sellers”?

So you think people who get defrauded on the Internet are "dumb". I can see why you like cryptocurrency.

I’ve been scammed on the internet, but %-wise it’s comparable to credit card fees.

Because you "vet" sellers. Somehow. Infinitely easily. For the rest of us mere mortals, the consumer protections offered by cards are an essential foundation of Internet commerce.

Again, is there a point you’re trying to make here?

Can you read? Good! Then you can read reviews.

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