As a consumer, why would I choose Bitcoin when it gives me less protection than Visa/MC?
one practical reason could end up being cost. with the ubiquity of credit cards, most businesses need to bake in the credit card fee and chargebacks into the cost of their goods. its possible that some buyers would be willing to forgo the buyer protection in exchange for a discount on some purchases (assuming the credit card industry doesn't lobby to make offering these types of discounts illegal...)
Also, savvy buyers can already make back most or all of the processing fees that are baked into prices without giving up the convenience or protection of credit cards. Lots of credit cards give cash back or other rewards that are worth ~2% of the purchase price.
This is false in most jurisdictions.
The international decentralized non-government issued aspects of cryptocurrencies are cool though.
As many scams as are in the space, there really is a seed of a neat idea.
Also, another way to look at it, is that your Bitcoin will be worth exactly the same in Bitcoin in three years. The bitcoin you own as a proportion of the total supply is fixed. Compared to fiat markets, the proportion you own to what is printed is declining year on year.
Bitcoin will eventually become not less volatile, but involatile. This is because you won't be measuring its value in USD, but you will be measuring the value of USD in Bitcoins.
Accepting a hypothetical future where other currencies are generally compared against bitcoins, bitcoins would still not be "involatile." While markets tend to use one currency as a reference point for another, there are other reference points available. Economists often use a basket of staple goods, like milk and eggs, to get a sense of how much the dollar has fluctuated in value. As you're aware Bitcoin was designed to be deflationary. If we expect human population to rise, and bitcoins to be stagnant in number while remaining a cornerstone of the economy, our hypothetical future should see the value of bitcoins continuing to grow in the long term.
Do you know who is willing to sell a cash equivalent for a 15% discount to face value? A carder. The 15% is their payment for services rendered.
- Uncensorability. I can pay whoever I want whatever I want, with no third party able to insert themselves between me and the recipient (or dictate who can send or receive money) for any purpose.
- Irreversibility. Yes, often held up as a weakness, but has its uses. Not all transactions are physical merchandise where a third party enforcing refunds is useful.
An address could be kept anonymous with good op-sec. If you know that your actions are going to attract the ire of some people with guns, you will practise op-sec.
-Privacy: See the recent example where the state sponsored espionage involving sophisticated hackers had their activity traced though Bitcoin's blocktchain transaction log.
Even Monero's XMR is prone to statistical analysis to unmask users:
https://content.sciendo.com/view/journals/popets/2018/3/arti...
https://www.wired.com/story/monero-privacy/
A more serious question will be what happens when the laws catch up with users using a system designed for money laundering, tax evasion, and enabling black markets?
-Uncensorability
The software which enables blockchains and proof of work is susceptible to attacks by motivated state level attackers, so far only smaller blockchains have been targeted (presumably by rival groups with expendable mining resources).
A much easier censorship attack occurs at lower network levels.
One important point: if we actually include all 7 billion
people on the earth, most of whom have zero BTC or
Ethereum, the Gini coefficient is essentially 0.99+. And
if we just include all balances, we include many dust
balances which would again put the Gini coefficient at
0.99+. Thus, we need some kind of threshold here. The
imperfect threshold we picked was the Gini coefficient
among accounts with ≥185 BTC per address, and ≥2477 ETH
per address. So this is the distribution of ownership
among the Bitcoin and Ethereum rich with $500k as of July
2017.
In what kind of situation would a thresholded metric like
this be interesting? Perhaps in a scenario similar to the
ongoing IRS Coinbase issue, where the IRS is seeking
information on all holders with balances >$20,000.
Conceptualized in terms of an attack, a high Gini
coefficient would mean that a government would only need
to round up a few large holders in order to acquire a
large percentage of outstanding cryptocurrency — and with
it the ability to tank the price.
With that said, two points. First, while one would not
want a Gini coefficient of exactly 1.0 for BTC or ETH (as
then only one person would have all of the digital
currency, and no one would have an incentive to help boost
the network), in practice it appears that a very high
level of wealth centralization is still compatible with
the operation of a decentralized protocol. Second, as we
show below, we think the Nakamoto coefficient is a better
metric than the Gini coefficient for measuring holder
concentration in particular as it obviates the issue of
arbitrarily choosing a threshold.
...However, the maximum Gini coefficient has one obvious
issue: while a high value tracks with our intuitive notion
of a “more centralized” system, the fact that each Gini
coefficient is restricted to a 0–1 scale means that it
does not directly measure the number of individuals or
entities required to compromise a system.
Specifically, for a given blockchain suppose you have a
subsystem of exchanges with 1000 actors with a Gini
coefficient of 0.8, and another subsystem of 10 miners
with a Gini coefficient of 0.7. It may turn out that
compromising only 3 miners rather than 57 exchanges may be
sufficient to compromise this system, which would mean the
maximum Gini coefficient would have pointed to exchanges
rather than miners as the decentralization bottleneck.
Conversely, if one considers “number of distinct countries
with substantial mining capacity” an essential subsystem,
then the minimum Nakamoto coefficient for Bitcoin would
again be 1, as the compromise of China (in the sense of a
Chinese government crackdown on mining) would result in
>51% of mining being compromised.
Again, PoW is not immune to "Irreversibility" it actually constantly has a known attack surface for reversing transactions and double spending. The only thing preventing it is so far no only a limited amount of attacks on smaller blockchains have taken place.
Well, what's wrong with cash?
- Uncensorability
Well, what's wrong with cash?
- Irreversibility
Well, what's wrong with cash?
Except for the fact that cash is issued by the "evil" government your points provide zero reasons why I should prefer crypto "currencies" over cash.
And that's a purely ideological stance.
Saving is a perfectly viable choice. If someone wants to save, it is not for you or your cronies to tell them they can't, or that you must shave your cut off their savings each year.
It's a myth that people won't spend. People will save the good money and spend bad money. The bad money is still getting spent, but of course, it's constantly losing its value.
The difference is the perspective on how money should be spent. Savers are low time preference people. They would rather spend their money on the future, on things that last. High time preference proponents on the other hand, only care about the next quarter, will cut corners to maximize their short term profit, and will spend their profit on cars and other depreciating assets to avoid paying the tax on their profits. They also build products which are intended to fail, so that the consumer has to buy the upgrade in a few years.
After all if deflationary currency is worth more tomorrow, one wants to make sure an investment in the future is sustainable.
Notably one is especially interested to invest in a deflationary economy because the gains are multiplicative.
Bitcoin inflation rate per annum: 3.87%
USD Current inflation rate for the United States is 2.7%.
Aprox 4.11% of Bitcoin users (addresses) control 96.53% of all bitcoins in circulation.
What is that called? It's not deflation.
The spirit of your comment is totally true, but I have a pendatic (though vitally important!) objection.
Governments in most countries don't create money and government policy in general neither controls nor influences money creation; instead, money is created by private companies (aka "banks") or a consortium of private companies (aka the owners of "central banks.")
That has yet to be seen. Except for true believers I yet have to find a serious economist who suggests crypto currencies as a store of value due to its volatility.