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Comment by EliasWatson | Hacker News Reader

This is the kind of problem that Bitcoin was designed to solve.

Isn't Bitcoin impractical for these sorts of transactions (slow, high fees, no privacy, etc)? People always say Bitcoin was designed to solve this sort of thing but whenever I've looked into it it's been fairly impractical for use in most day-to-day transactions.

Bitcoin is so much faster than a credit card transaction that it's not even close. A lightning transaction is near instant, regular bitcoin transfers take in the order of 10 minutes. Credit card transactions take weeks before you get the money, and after that the money can be yoinked back for a multitude of reasons beyond your control as a merchant. The fees are often lower, too. Bitcoiners are for some reason opposed to solving that last issue (no privacy) despite the technology existing in monero. NIH syndrome, I guess.

The real unsolved issue for cryptocurrency is between chair and keyboard. People make mistakes, people are afraid of being robbed. Your average person does not want to be their own bank. You can have a bank or payment processor manage your money for you, but then we're back to the regulated world where Visa and Mastercard can determine what games you're allowed to buy.

I'll have to look at the lightning transactions. My problems with crypto are generally less philosophical (I've known people who ran legal businesses that had trouble getting access to banks so I'm sympathetic to having ways around traditional banks/payment processors) but more practical, the times I've tried it in the past the experience just hasn't been good.

"Credit card transactions take weeks before you get the money" Where is this the case?

The only time I have experienced this being true is refunds, they usually take a bit longer to clear.

When I pay for something online or in person the payment is cleared within seconds, and I get a notification from my back that it has went through.

You will want to look into Lightning which fixes that issue.

Yes. Thankfully 15 years later we do have crypto solutions addressing previous crypto problems

Honestly buying a digital game is perfect. Steam can just give it to you right away, and if the transaction doesn't clear they can just revoke the game later.

That's only addressing one issue with Bitcoin but the issues abound. I don't know all the issues that would happen but even my rudimentary understanding of payments can see that the high transaction costs are a problem when most of the games I buy are less than 5$.

There are ways to design around these glaring issues but Bitcoin is just a worse product for many transactions (and it's not like payment processors are a particularly good product to begin with).

Only in the presence of DRM—an evil I'd prefer to do without when possible.

It might have been but it is very much not. It's non fungible and transparent resulting in coins, wallets and transactions getting easily traced and blacklisted meaning they can be put into a limbo where nobody is willing to accept them anymore burning there value.

The actual solution would be a fungible and private coin like monero where any of that is impossible by design.

Yes, I agree that Monero is likely a better option. I am also a big fan of Nano because of its instant transactions and zero transaction fees. However it has the same privacy problem as Bitcoin. It would be interesting to see a hybrid of Nano and Monero.

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