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Comment by emteycz | Hacker News Reader

What does that have to do with the promise of crypto? Does it really matter if you're paying your pizza with 1 BTC or 1 satoshi? Crypto never promised to make everyone rich. It promised a decentralized trustless internet monetary system, and that is already delivered.

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That infrastructure came with a lot of new 3rd parties and it's a shark tank for regular people. Centralized currencies are stable. Regulatory Stability counts for something and watching BTC jump around don't make anyone want to jump on board. Just my guess for the future.

I wouldn't go long on crypto as is. Eventually it'll just be another complex trading instrument owned by the banks.

Who forces you to use the 3rd parties with BTC? And what choices do you have with the traditional system other than use 3rd parties?

Crypto promised to revolutionize payments with cheap, fast and secure transactions without relying on 3rd parties.

And it's exactly that - yeah perhaps it's not as cheap as EU wire transfers which are sponsored by the banks as loss leaders for mortgages and insurance, but international transfers certainly are much cheaper, quicker and reliable/safer with BTC, and you are never forced to use a 3rd party, it's optional - as opposed to the traditional system. I'm happy with what I got.

No, crypto has not revolutionised payments.

Payments are still dominated by credit / debit cards. In some markets app based mobile payments are starting to take off, but it really doesn't look like BTC is gaining any market share.

Maybe I'm missing something, but as far as I can tell I can't buy a single thing that I would want to buy with BTC.

It's actually getting worse. Some years ago I bought something with BTC. Now fees are so high that it is practically impossible to buy stuff with BTC.

And even if you just use BTC for transferring money, you need 3rd parties to buy/sell bitcoins (and they will charge a fee). You can't keep your money in BTC, because as I stated above you can't buy anything with BTC.

Crypto has not revolutionized payments for you. It's a revolution for me and other people making cross-border (EU-Ukraine, EU-USA, EU-Africa...) transfers. It's really problematic to make these transfers even today, when in theory everything should go smooth - but it almost never does. Bitcoin works reliably every time, quickly and cheaply. What's $15 network fee when I'm saving $135 compared to bank wire and never lose my money and the other side gets it the same day? And I'm not even talking about the currency conversion cost savings and reduction of exposure to currency moves - 5 days is enough to see small currencies crash to 10% of original value. Bitcoin usually won't crash to 10% in a day or two.

What you're listing as a downside is actually a upside - both sides are happy to cut out the 3rd party and replace it with two 2nd parties - the sender/recipient and the cryptocurrency exchange. It's less hard and cheaper than finding a common third party (also, finding a common party is impossible in some cases) and much more reliable/trustable in summary.

Yeah micro-payments and in-store payments are not revolutionized by BTC, but that does not mean BTC is useless.

You've never seen it as a checkout option? I mostly agree with you (nothing's been revolutionised) but I've seen plenty of web shop checkouts where I'm just buying something normal/not because they accept crypto (which I didn't know beforehand) and it happens to be an option. I assume the payment provider just converts and gives them whatever currency they want, just as they do for global currencies already if they don't want my Great British Pounds for some reason.

It does, nano is super cheap and fast

It does matter, i'd be pretty upset if Pizza now costs 1 BTC.

decentralized?? bro what are you talking about

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