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Comment by xiphias2 | Hacker News Reader

Ethereum no, but Bitcoin sure, I'm travelling a lot, and I have a lot of payment problems (for example my bank disabled my credit card just because they said that it's not working with some types of contactless recievers, but they can't send a new one to my hotel, just to my home address). Bitcoin always works, although it's not real-time (still faster than sending money to my Revolut account, which takes days).

If a person thinks that fiat payments work well, he hasn't really travelled yet to different cultures.

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I've been traveling all over the world for the last ten years. I've never had any serious problems paying for anything with good old fashioned credit/debit cards. Even getting cash in the local currency is trivial with ATMs.

I ton't mean to sound rude (really) but this sounds exactly like the argument 'I've never had any serious problems traveling around on my horse, why do I need some new-fangled carriage which does nothing better than before?'.

This is the genesis of a new crypto universe. It's hugely hyped, and a lot of it is clearly BS. But underlying the hype and hysteria there's a kernel of a new paradigm emerging.

Crypto applications promise to provide disintermediation on a scale not seen before. Direct peer to peer transactions, conducted transparently, without a need to verify trust and happening simultaneously anywhere in the world.

Not only that but smart contracts bring with them the potential to do stuff that simply is not possible right now. For example, providing instant conditional transactions (if my fave rental car is available book it, otherwise search for another solution, but only from these sources at this price) etc etc etc. We don't know what this means, but it could be a revolution. Or not. :)

ETH is so cool. But only really if you are into that kind of thing.

Smart contracts, and all the other buzz words turn regular folk away. I'm hedging my bets on the coin with a dog on it for mass adoption. Even the word "Ethereum" (and "Eth") is less user-friendly to "Doge".

For me, all this ETH stuff is just hype (very few ETH owners actually care about the currency side of things and its already gone too far into pyramid scheme territory to ever recover imo). The dog coin works just great as it is right now for the amount of users it has. Any upgrades should be manageable before they are ever necessary.

> Crypto applications promise to provide disintermediation on a scale not seen before.

They don't. All of "disentermidation" immediately turns around and restores all the institutions based on, you know, trust.

> Direct peer to peer transactions, conducted transparently, without a need to verify trust

Yup. Until you pay for something, and that something never arrives.

> (if my fave rental car is available book it, otherwise search for another solution, but only from these sources at this price)

Literally nothing prevents you from doing it right now, with existing technologies... Oh, wait. All rental car companies are closed to any integrations of any kind. Smart contracts will do literally nothing in this scenario.

Besides. If I go and rent a car from, say, Hertz, I get a contract written in plain language. It may be a little obtuse, but I can read and understand it. Smart contracts on the other hand are written in obscure esoteric programmming languages. Good luck telling people "don't worry, you won't be scammed out of your money because it has 'smart' and 'crypto' in it".

> my bank disabled my credit card just …

Yes, this can be a real problem when traveling.

> Bitcoin always works …

This is obviously a completely bullshit statement. Bitcoin almost never works in places where credit cards or ‘fiat’ are accepted.

> If a person thinks that fiat payments work well, he hasn't really travelled yet to different cultures.

‘Fiat payments’ covers everything from the ATM network to cash to western union to Hawala. All aspects of fiat payments indeed have problems.

However the idea that today, Bitcoin solves these problems outside of a tiny fraction of contrived cases is a delusional fantasy.

Almost nobody in the world trades in Bitcoin. Almost everybody in the world trades in ‘fiat’.

> If a person thinks that fiat payments work well, he hasn't really travelled yet to different cultures.

Count me among the people who have travelled and never encountered problems. I always bring two cards in case something weird happens, but I’ve never had to use the backup.

If established banking cards aren’t working in a country, it seems unlikely that relatively recent cryptocurrency would be working any better at their banking institutions. If their banks can’t take your bank card in exchange for cash, I doubt they’re going to be set up to take your Bitcoin.

I've never had problems withdrawing cash, even in relatively repressive countries. Your credit card was probably blocked to prevent fraud because you didn't tell your bank you are planning to travel rather than your bank trying to censor your money.

I've travelled extensively, and actually found it quite common to be unable to withdraw funds from the ATMs of some banks.

In practice it has never been more that a nuisance, as I've just gone to a different bank's ATM and it's been fine.

I have traveled to different countries.

Fiat works, and works well. You're advised to keep some cash on hand, but it works multiple orders of ↑↑↑ [1] better than bitcoin

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham%27s_number

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