Transfer funds across borders without dealing with multi-business-day bank delays or capital controls in countries like China. Accept donations or other online transactions without relying on Visa/Mastercard.
And then you can either try and meet someone in an alley somewhere, or go to a gatekeeper exchange just like Visa/Mastercard to try and convert those transactions back to money that can actually be exchanged for food and shelter!
I mean, let's be serious here. In theory, blockchain could allow us to build a good online payment system -- and that is a problem worth solving.
But in practice, Bitcoin in particular is completely awful as an online payment system, and I don't understand how people can reasonably claim otherwise. If the goal of Bitcoin was actually to make online payments easier, we would be using a different coin other than Bitcoin. The community would have moved on to any of the far better alternatives.
The fact that Bitcoin is still the predominant coin proves that the technology and the convenience of online payment processing is not the end goal for most people getting into cryptocurrency.
If Bitcoin isn't a payment provider, then why should I care about it? It's more expensive and slower than ACH is. It's being converted into normal currencies and tracked by the same companies that are making payment providers today. What is it solving?
All of these payment providers that are being built on top of Bitcoin are going to have the same regulations, restrictions, and problems as the payment providers that exist today. If Bitcoin isn't capable of replacing them (and there's every indication that it is not), then it's not going to have a tangible impact on how and where I can spend money online.
If Bitcoin succeeds, I don't think it is likely the average person will ever touch Bitcoin: it is technically complex to handle it securely. However, many of the Venmos and Squares in this future would likely be using Bitcoin to settle flow disparities behind the scenes.
In terms of what it's solving:
- Bitcoin has a much lower barrier to entry. It is very expensive and slow to get direct access to the ACH system (vs having your bank make transactions on your behalf).
- Bitcoin is apolitical. Banking and finance is still very much an old-boys network of after hours handshake deals. Bitcoin lets you swim with the big fish without having to worry about kissing the right asses. Similarly to claimed noble benefits of public markets, Bitcoin has a democratizing effect by not having a mechanism to favor entrenched players.
- Bitcoin is insulated from US monetary policy. This tends to appeal to gold-bug types who believe inflation is being underaccounted and will get worse.
- Bitcoin is permissionlessly auditable. I wish there was more development in this space, but I think bitcoin could be very powerful for non-profits and other organizations which want to be as transparent as possible with their finances. If an organization wanted to prove holdings or transactions, Bitcoin is arguably better than bank-money because Bitcoin txns cannot be forged, while documents being alleged to be coming from a bank could. (Similarly, I think it would be really cool for a bank to make an option for fiat accounts to have their balances and transaction history published publicly online)
* I am certainly not speaking for all Bitcoin advocates
It creates a separation of concerns: If the layer 2 service providers you are using today become abusive/untrustworthy, it would be easy to switch to different ones.
As for bank transfers, at my previous company we had to send hundreds of international payments each year and all of the transfers were finished within minutes of initiation.
And Paypal and other companies have made it possible to donate to charities without a credit card for almost 2 decades.
When I was still in consulting, I had dozens of clients whose projects were killed when their Chinese investors could no longer get their money out of China to invest. A billion building sits unfinished across the street from Staples Center in LA (and has, for 3 years) because the developer can't get its money out of China to finish the building.
Thousands of local buyers are able to buy houses and condos in LA these past 3 years because they don't have to compete with all-cash foreign buyers any longer.
Big claim. Source?
Its non-Chinese foreigners getting deals in LA now that China is sandbagged. If you don't see all the other foreign money buying LA then I am not surprised you are no longer a consultant.
Lastly what do you think of US capital controls such as OFAC?
I sure as hell wouldn't want to be associated with a cryptocurrency that has a public ledger then if that's the type of punishment I am trying to avoid. You're just one exchange leak or hack away from being imprisoned.