Again, I don't see what the innovation here is, except the technical aspects (the blockchain as a distributed system is very clever).
If you go to a third world country, it's even less convenient to pay for stuff. For example, you can't get a hotel room last-minute with a credit card in Vietnam, where I checked, because they need to verify your ownership/control of your credit card with a pair of small debits, probably because of the fraud/chargeback situation.
Another example, you want to donate to Wikileaks from the US. Not so easy.
Sometimes you really want digital cash you can take and spend anywhere for any reason, and US credit cards or debit cards or other mainstream bank accounts can't do that.
(There still is the problem of needing to use much more secure computers/devices to manage your digital cash than consumers are accustomed to having and using today.)
[1] An opportunity made possible by the ability (created by Bitcoin) to profitably and efficiently collect micropayments in poor regions of the world
As far as cash, try collecting cash payments for your grid of micro-generators recharging cellphones in the Amazon, see how well that works out for you. Let me guess, you're gunna fly some drones in to pick up the payments...
>As far as cash, try collecting cash payments for your grid of micro-generators recharging cellphones in the Amazon, see how well that works out for you. Let me guess, you're gunna fly some drones in to pick up the payments...
Try removing your micro generator from the community after you've installed it when they stop paying your rent. See how that works out for you.
I'd collect the payments when I delivered the fuel btw.
Maybe the "entrepreneurs" will in fact "smell the opportunity" and move in and save the day, but for what? What's the gain? Why design critical infrastructure so that its survival is based on a hypothetical market scenario, when it can be done right in the first place?
You also have to give your name and address to the recipient bank to somehow prove you're not laundering money or funding terrorism.
The quick-transfer system is only available for certain transactions. Most payments still take a while, and anything that involves a paper cheque still takes at least a week.
As for money laundering and terrorism - it's been proven over and over that it's easier to get a bank account for both than it is to get a bank account as an average Joe.
Not a few banks are knowingly involved in illegal transactions of one kind or another. So giving Bitcoin a hard time for the same thing is hypocritical.
Banks are certainly going to be killed by a global digital currency sooner or later, but it's going to need some kind of independent OpenMoney initiative.
BC is not that initiative, because the creators seemed to believe that starting a digital goldrush was more important than creating a rock-solid and secure peer to peer infrastructure for all transactions.
I doubt banks will still be around fifty years from now. In an all-digital economy they're not just parasitic, they're irrelevant.
This problem is soluble (as sibling points out, it's been solved in the UK). Conversely Bitcoin always takes about half an hour to settle transfers, for fundamental design reasons. Bitcoin qua Bitcoin is never going to be an effective way to pay for your shopping, and if you're using "Bitcoin" via a Visa-like entity, the benefits over just using Visa are questionable.
> Another example, you want to donate to Wikileaks from the US. Not so easy.
I suspect for most people (that is, non-anarchists) that's actually an advantage. Bitcoin is the equivalent of paying in used notes; it inherently carries a whiff of, at minimum, tax avoidance or socially-disapproved earning sources, because the big places where Bitcoin is more useful than conventional currency are tax evasion and socially unpopular activity. Whereas someone paying with amex likely has a proper job.
Sure, but it doesn't matter what benefits Bitcoin offers to banks (although I do think you are overlooking a few). If banks ever were to support BTC denominated accounts, it would be because of consumer demand, not because Bitcoin is more efficient for them to store/transfer. So, what really matters is what benefits Bitcoin offers to consumers versus other currencies.
I'd say the two main benefits some people see in Bitcoin are: 1) it gives you the option to bypass the banking system when you want to or have to (e.g. if you have limited access to the banking system). Of course it's also possible with cash but a lot more inconvenient. 2) its predictable monetary supply.
I will give you that today, the price fluctuation and immature ecosystem makes USD and other national currencies a more viable choice for the average consumer.
In the best case scenario, Bitcoin will continue to experience unstable boom-bust cycles as prices will rise when people start hoarding their coins, then crash again when people dump their Bitcoin en masse once prices hit a high enough peak. This is great for speculators, terrible for everyone else.
In the worst case scenario, Bitcoin prices drop to $0 when everyone gives up using it. Which leads to the second problem: Bitcoin never really solved the chicken-and-egg problem. Not enough merchants accept Bitcoin for customers to bother with yet another currency, and not enough customers use bitcoins for merchants to deal with yet another currency. Services like Coinbase are merely abstractions over the USD - too few merchants deal solely in Bitcoin, and for good reason.
Pure bitcoins dealing will start getting adopted by the average folk first once the availability and ease of use problem is solved.
It may not be much of a currency at the moment since banks are attempting hard to prevent its use but the freedom it gives you outweighs the risk of it being stolen if you are not careful.
Bitcoin would hurt Visa and Master Card very badly if it were adopted since it obsoletes their entire business practice.
It would also be potentially beneficial for the user since if you could purchase things with bitcoin at your local store the owner wouldn't have to pay the bank or Visa a small fee to make a transaction. That saving could be passed along to you as a reduction in price.
Now if there were any decently run services out there that could secure the average users wallets the market would pick up very fast. The biggest problem bitcoin has at the moment is all the hackers stealing the bitcoins and giving it a bad reputation in the news.
How do I do a chargeback on a purchase paid for via Bitcoin?
1) You can choose your arbitrage provider independent of your payment channel (whereas with Visa/Mastercard you are locked into the arbitrage facility of the payment channel) -> splitting off a feature into a modular component -> more competition among providers -> better products.
2) The arbitrage provider only holds a m-of-n key to confirm your transaction, so they don't hold your funds, so they cannot steal them (directly, obviously they could collude with the intended recipient of the funds, but that's by and by).
3) You can set arbitrary values for how many m-of-n signatures you want and for checklocktime. So you can customise the arbitrage arrangement to suit the transaction far more than any offering from V/MC.
Finally, let's not forget that if you really are desperate to keep that classic chargeback commerce experience, there is nothing to stop V/MC rebuilding their system on top of BTC and offering the same package. The current "chargeback" system isn't really a "chargeback" anyway, it's more of a "failure to pay funds that your bank provider agreed to display as pending."
What's the problem?
Cases where they just don't want to refund you.
Cases where they are scammers/criminals.
Cases where your coins are stolen and spent at a store(the equivalent of having your card stolen to buy a tv at walmart).
Um, and with VISA they will just happily ignore you taking back what they consider their money and wish you a good day?
Cases where they just don't want to refund you.
Same as above?
Cases where they are scammers/criminals.
Why would you send money to those? Since you know there is no Chargeback mechanism wouldn't it be wise to demand product/service first or use an escrow service?
Cases where your coins are stolen and spent at a store(the equivalent of having your card stolen to buy a tv at walmart).
Oh, I think there we are getting to the point. You are mistaking Bitcoin for a credit card. Well... It is not.
It works very differently and if you treat it like "just another CC" you're in for quite a bad time.
VISA doesn't consider it their money. So ya they will do that. You not knowing that suggests a huge gap in your knowledge of how credit cards work/how charge backs work.
>Why would you send money to those? Since you know there is no Chargeback mechanism wouldn't it be wise to demand product/service first or use an escrow service?
How would I know? A company can seem fine and turn into a scam quickly. I could use an escrow service but then I'd have to arrange that for every purchase when currently I can have it handled for me automatically.
>Oh, I think there we are getting to the point. You are mistaking Bitcoin for a credit card. Well... It is not. It works very differently and if you treat it like "just another CC" you're in for quite a bad time.
I'm not confusing it at all. I was giving an example that closely maps to the security concern with a credit card.
So if you agree that Bitcoin is not a credit card then what relevance does an example have that maps to the security concerns of a credit card?
If you want to ignore that is fine with me. But there is still a lot of my comment left up there.
I'm not confusing it [Bitcoin vs CC] at all. I was giving an example that closely maps to the security concern with a credit card.
First you say you agree that Bitcoin and Credit Cards are not the same - and then you proceed to complain about problems that only occur if you treat Bitcoin like a Credit Card.
You said that you can not worry about charge backs because you can just ask for the money back. Problem solved.
I gave you a list of occasions where no you couldn't just ask for the money back. You have ignored this and focused on this irrelevant argument to avoid having to face the main discussion.
Just because you're avoiding looking at the problem doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Since you know there is no Chargeback mechanism wouldn't it be wise to demand product/service first or use an escrow service?
What part of "Bitcoin is not a credit card, do not treat it like a credit card" is so hard to understand?
Yes, if you send coins to some address which might belong to a scammer then those coins might be lost. Duh.
You can now complain all day about Bitcoin not having a chargeback mechanism. Or you can just accept it as fact and refrain from sending your coins to random bitcoin addresses...
"How would I know? A company can seem fine and turn into a scam quickly. I could use an escrow service but then I'd have to arrange that for every purchase when currently I can have it handled for me automatically."
>You can now complain all day about Bitcoin not having a chargeback mechanism. Or you can just accept it as fact and refrain from sending your coins to random bitcoin addresses...
The point is though you either reimplement the security manually for each transaction or you only shop at a handful of companies and hope there isn't a mistake that they can't track on their side. Look at all the complaints about Tiger direct not refunding bitcoin payments early on for an example of a non-scamming company screwing people over not by maliciousness but by incompetence.
So yes. I could just hope I won't run into one of those problems while shopping or I could manually setup escrow for every purchase and hope the escrow solution I choose is legitimate. Or I could just keep using my credit card and not have to worry.
And people wonder why bitcoin isn't gaining traction?
It's starting to get hilarious...
Yes. If you want to use a credit card then please, by all means, use a credit card.
And in addition you may use Bitcoin in scenarios where it works well (e.g. to transfer money to people you know), for ecommerce through services like Bitpay, or just retain it as your favorite strawman... ;-)
Offloading the issue of converting it to something usable to them? This only makes sense if you already have a bunch of bitcoin and makes no sense for the receiver.
>for ecommerce through services like Bitpay
Which doesn't fix the charge back or scam problems. Scammers can use Bitpay too.
Have a nice day! :-)
Someone said the Bitcoin obsoletes the entire business practice of Visa and MC. I pointed out chargebacks as something Visa and MC do that is not reasonably supported by Bitcoin, with the implication that chargeback support is a feature of Visa and MC that consumers find attractive, and hence Bitcoin does not obsolete credit cards.
So yes, you are right...Bitcoin is not a credit card. And that means those who want credit card features will continue using Visa and MC, and hence they are not going to be obsoleted by Bitcoin.
http://www.icanbarelydraw.com/comic/comics/2014-01-27-40-mil...
>It would also be potentially beneficial for the user since if you could purchase things with bitcoin at your local store the owner wouldn't have to pay the bank or Visa a small fee to make a transaction.
I don't pay them when I make a purchase the store does. That saving could be passed along but it wouldn't be.
>The biggest problem bitcoin has at the moment is all the hackers stealing the bitcoins and giving it a bad reputation in the news.
The biggest problem bitcoin has at the moment is that it isn't really better than existing systems for 99% of the people in the world with money. And with that comes complexity, security risks and volatility.
If Bitcoin ever gets to a stage where it even looks like it has a chance to hurt Visa or Mastercards current business model then they will simply change their business model and use their massive current infrastructure and global network to become the biggest players in the new bitcoin market. I would be extremely surprised if Visa and Mastercard didn't have people wargaming these scenarios as we speak.
Now if there were any decently run services out there that could secure the average users wallets the market would pick up very fast.
A service provided by Visa or Mastercard perhaps...