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Comment by blahblah123456 | Hacker News Reader

Yes, but in real life blame doesn't matter. What matters is the alternative (a hardwired credit card terminal or cash) would've worked, and this didn't.

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I mean, if the wifi didn't work the credit card terminal likely might not have either. I've had issues tons of times in remote places with credit card readers.

And cash is cash, but I don't think crypto is really competing with cash, more with cash-alternatives (like credit cards, venmo etc.)

> credit card terminal likely might not have either

There's a process for taking the details for an offline credit card payment[0] which is settled later.

[0] https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/8322/how-are-cr...

Bitcoin also lets you sign transactions offline, which the recipient can broadcast next time they have an internet connection.

A wire transfer is really a more apt comparison when discussing sending money from Coinbase.

If you were going to talk about the beginning of the movement, and then compare it to a credit card. . Consider his this would have worked at the beginning of the credit card movement. You would have pulled out your triplicate form and your credit card imprinter and basically made your IOUs that way... And then mailed them in!

You can build a transaction and sign it in Bitcoin without sending it though. It just that they weren't ready for that, and probably were not interested in doing it that way either.

That's essentially saying the same thing as if the cell phones didn't work a hardwired landline would have.

It's true, but it's also missing the point.

A real cryptocurrency wallet also would have worked.

90% of people won't use their own wallets.

I think 90% is a massive underestimate.

EDITED to correct autocorrect.

Then 90% of people don't get crypto or don't care. Which seems to be true. They just keep it in their coinbase or robinhood account and wait for the price to go (back) up until they sell.

I wonder what percentage of the crypto population has wallets compared to having all their crypto on an exchange. I don’t know anyone with a wallet.

having all of your currency on an exchange, regardless of the currency, has never been a good idea.

(signed a MtGox victim.)

The problem with that is, these networks are rather convoluted and are basically unusable for most people without relying on exchanges or other similar services.

It's no different than doing it over an exchange... The same fields are available on an application wallets and on an exchange. There's nothing convoluted there.

> if the people in the vanguard of this movement can't figure this out

the people “in the vanguard of [the cryptocurrency] movement” absolutely use non-custodial wallets (SW or HW). the part of this story where “the vanguard” is using custodial wallets is the least believable.

the average speculator, sure — they’ll go with whatever’s easiest for them, which is probably to keep their crypto on the exchange. “vanguard” users? lmao.

How would it have worked without the ability to communicate with the blockchain. I could double and triple spend to my heart's content.

Not disagreeing with any of you but a blockchain payment terminal that’s itself connected to the internet could technically receive your signed transaction from your (offline) phone and then submit it to the network on your behalf. The balance on your phone wouldn’t update until it itself gets back onto the network and resyncs its state with the blockchain.

I think commenter is suggesting a non custodial wallet with internet access would work fine, which is true. The problem seemed to be cell signal, not internet, as they were able to use the coinbase app or website.

Credit card payments have the same problem.

Aren’t bank transfers the obvious alternative to Coinbase payments? That wouldn’t have worked.

Regular bitcoin transaction OTOH would presumably have worked just as well as credit cards.

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