Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin

I can do all these things on my own without having some third party potentially fucking me over or charging me a monthly fee. I consider all these things great advantages.

It also doesn't mean I need to abandon credit cards or other forms of value transfer. But in those cases I now have an alternative I did not have had BTC not existed. It's a weird black and white kind of logic that HN has where it seems for Bitcoin to succeed it must replace everything currently in use. That's a false dichotomy. They can mutually coexist. Right tool for the job.

2) What is a way that I can transfer value to somebody in a far away place that is easier (if both parties already accept coins) than bitcoin?

bitcoin is at a stage where it's not trivial to secure if you are not a technical person. There are companies that are working at making this easier by providing the security and even insuring the bitcoins if something happens. When services like this are out we will see a huge turning point IMO.

2) Agreed. There are no guarantees, however strong indicators it will improve. Remember e-commerce didn't make sense either back in the day (no salesperson, can't touch goods, security - all “rational” reasons) -- but all solved.

On that point I don't even view BTC as currency actually (my personal view).

It is first of it's kind with no precedent (is it currency, asset, ledger, protocol…?). Is it all of above? Or something else? Reminds me of when first iPad came out and people just viewed it as a “large iPhone” (true, in some ways - but it’s definitely not defined that way anymore. It’s own unique category now. Public aware of nuances). No precedent. Still defining by analogy to old paradigms.

BTC is similarly nuanced. I actually view it as more buying a stock in protocol. Yup sounds crazy/doesn't make sense using old paradigms. But I’ll leave that for another post (the gist of the idea is here: http://btcgeek.com/dawn-of-autonomous-corporations/).

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Paper_wallet

Given that it's designed as a digital replacement for cash (not savings and checking accounts - cash), keeping more than a few hundred dollars around at a time would seem to be as advisable as storing the equivalent $100 bills, with the same level of extraordinary security measures needed.

Notice bitpay stopped reporting 7 months ago?

Coinbase has also been called out on posting contradictory numbers on their blog posts in the past which lead to them deleting most of their posts related to numbers.

I don't see any growth. Also, 70k transactions/day - one average shopping mall.

this looks like a typical exponential curve to me

Now, Bitcoin also has its own security challenges (eg. how to secure a wallet), but there are solutions (hardware wallets) making it a fundamentally more secure way of transacting online.

In the UK part of your protection is the fact that there is a third party involved (your credit card issuer) who has a variety of responsibilities to the consumer over and above the responsibilities of the retailer. In practice this means you get better protection as the money can be taken back from the retailer by a third party with a big stick.

Of course, I have been passively protected by consumer protection laws, and yes, I would receive the same passive protections when paying via cash or bitcoin.... but when those laws are violated, it's almost never worth it to bring up a legal case. If I pay cash, and I get screwed, I complain to the vendor. However, if the vendor does not give me satisfaction, it's usually just not worth paying a lawyer.

It /is/ however, often worth it for me to call my credit card and get them to take the charge off.

While the credit card might not get me many (or any) more legal rights, it certainly gives me rather a lot more practical power if I have a dispute with a retailer (vs. using cash or bitcoin)

2) True, but now once you've spent them does it make sense to buy them back and do it again?

Because most companies are afraid of chargebacks and will take steps to avoid them. Bitcoin payments don't but any minor lapse in personal computer security likely will.

Companies who don't care about brand and companies who have not yet established a brand are, however, somewhat indistinguishable.

The chargeback facility (among others) provides a cushion and safety net to allow consumers to transact in cases where they are less than 100% certain who they are dealing with.

Removing it would kill the ability of smaller businesses to transact as people like me would never give them any cash, and I would advise my non-technical friends and family to behave similarly.

I know this disagrees with your view on the world, sorry.

Additionally, I've been to one or two stores that will actually give a small discount on cash purchases. I hope that trend continues.

Until one day it all goes wrong, or management change and don't care about service so much.

And that also acts as a barrier for new entrants into the market, stifling competition. When you have to just trust that a new market entrant won't run off with your cash, why would you ever risk it?

There's a hell of a lot that consumer protections and existing payment instruments give us.

And if Coinbase goes bankrupt, all their users lose all their money.

I've written about this extensively several times before, so I won't rehash the old points. But the summary is, if you trust your money to an entity that doesn't have insurance, you're being very, very brave. Coinbase can go bankrupt for a multitude of reasons, some of which aren't fair.

One could counter this with, "Don't store very much money in Coinbase." Sure, but then consumers don't have much money on hand to buy things on a whim, which reduces consumer adoption. That's why I've been saying: Make bitcoin safe, and adoption will follow.

> https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Contracts#Theory

It is because you don't understand the nature of bitcoin or it's colorful history with third party services like Coinbase. The question is a good one and not at all unreasonable if you understand bitcoin. The system is supposed to be trustless, and one aspect of this is that you don't need a trusted third party to conduct safe and fast transactions with another individual. Another aspect is that you don't have to trust someone else to hold your money, but then of course the security is up to you, which has so far been something of a problem.

As others have mentioned, multi-sig addresses are one part of the solution (doesn't BitGo support these now?), and another is potentially a hardware solution. But the current Coinbase offerings are inadequate, and those types of solutions will eventually be replaced or people will continue to lose their money when they trust someone else with their private keys.

There is no insurance for stolen, hacked, or otherwise lost keys. In the banking system, when money is "lost", the loss is spread out among everyone, which is nice if you were the affected party but is a pretty raw deal for everyone else (cf. banking crisis of the past 5+ years). When bitcoins are lost, there is no recourse.