Comment by briatx | Hacker News Reader

Comment by briatx | Hacker News Reader

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> * Cheaper than credit cards (who take 1-3% fees).

Not always. It would be more expensive than a 3% credit card charge on anything < $20 at current levels (0.62 USD). And if if the network actually gets busy, like it would if bitcoin actually went mainstream, then your max fees per transaction top out around $55.

https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-transactionfees...

> * Safer for merchants as it avoids credit charge back fraud.

Less safe for consumers as this simply transfers risk to the buyer, who incidentally is the ones choosing how to transact. Why would they prefer Bitcoin over protected credit card transactions that, depending on terms, give a 1-2% cash kickback to the consumer.

You're only looking at Bitcoin where the devs celebrated when the fees got up to $50. [0]

It could have easily been prevented by focusing on on-chain scaling instead of waiting for off-chain solutions which aren't ready yet and possibly never will. This is what Bitcoin Cash does and the goal is to never have high fees again. During the latest stress test they processed multiple more transactions than Bitcoin could ever do and fees were still $0.0017. [1]

Credit cards also has a small fixed fee which can hurt merchants you need to take into account when comparing. It's not easy to compare though since there are many different possible contracts.

> Less safe for consumers as this simply transfers risk to the buyer

You're right, that's a negative.

> Why would they prefer Bitcoin over protected credit card transactions that, depending on terms, give a 1-2% cash kickback to the consumer.

Because it might be the only payment method possible. Because the merchants now avoid the credit card fees and can instead pass on the savings to the customer. They are incentivized to do this to avoid credit charge back fraud (which they otherwise eat).

[0]: https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2017... [1]: https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-cash-stress-test-resu...

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