71–80 of 125 posts
> The service is the first of its kind in Japan, where Bitcoin is still a novelty in daily consumer life. Where is Bitcoin not a novelty in daily consumer life?
Wasn't there an article a few weeks ago that said bitcoin was on its last legs? Did I imagine that or did that happen?
> The service is the first of its kind in Japan, where Bitcoin is still a novelty in daily consumer life. Where is Bitcoin not a novelty in daily consumer life?
Wasn't there an article a few weeks ago that said bitcoin was on its last legs? Did I imagine that or did that happen?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why wouldn't I just use some trustful centralized solution for a cup of coffee? In fact, I myself prefer to use credit card for these, where I don't actually have to trust the payment method provider, but the payment method provider trusts me to pay the bill one month later. I don't see how bitcoin can compete on this sector, except for privacy issues.
You really do have to trust your payment method provider to protect you against fraud. You have to trust it not to committing fraud. Your payment method provider does not 'trust' you to pay the bill. They trust that they have the bigger stick and better lawyers.
Any major credit card provider in the US provides this with no hassle. I've had people steal my number with 4 different credit card providers and the only thing I've had to do is call them and identify the bad charges. The only inconvenience is the 3 minute phone call and waiting a week for a new card.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So the originators name Satoshi Nakamoto hasn't inspired more bitcoin adoption in Japan than elsewhere?
Nope. Even if there's adoption due to a possible central bank induced currency collapse, it'll be a small small minority for some time.
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It would be convenient if you have an income or savings in Bitcoin. Some people are attracted to using Bitcoin as a day to day currency and payments system, to reduce their dependence on mainstream banking. The "be your own bank" philosophy. Admittedly right now Bitcoin seems like a novelty, but it will never reach wider use without small "pointless" steps like this.
It would be convenient if you have an income [...] in Bitcoin. Miners, drug dealers, and who else exactly?
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I have yet to find a restaurant where the ticket would be over ¥1500 per person that does not take cards. Acceptance signs are not everywhere, but nearly everywhere takes cards. Yes, tourist attractions do not, but in many cases you can use an IC card for those. The "Japan is only a cash society" canard should die - do you need cash? Yes, but there is a thriving credit card (and basically ubiquitous IC card) payment…
As a completely random sample the Italian restaurant I'm in right now is going to cost about 4000¥ each and doesn't take card payments ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I keep hearing about Bitcoin being used to pay for commodities, but will this actually ever scale? With a maximum transaction rate of ~3.5 transactions per second, won't any practical application of Bitcoin for the masses eventually have to be implemented by a bunch of trusted third parties operating off the blockchain and bundling transactions? At that point, we seem to be back to using credit card companies who jus…
I keep hearing about Bitcoin being used to pay for commodities, but will this actually ever scale? With a maximum transaction rate of ~3.5 transactions per second, won't any practical application of Bitcoin for the masses eventually have to be implemented by a bunch of trusted third parties operating off the blockchain and bundling transactions? At that point, we seem to be back to using credit card companies who jus…
Higher transfer rates, faster resolution. Only do "real" bitcoin transactions a couple times a day between players. Basically how all other high-frequency markets work.
I keep hearing about Bitcoin being used to pay for commodities, but will this actually ever scale? With a maximum transaction rate of ~3.5 transactions per second, won't any practical application of Bitcoin for the masses eventually have to be implemented by a bunch of trusted third parties operating off the blockchain and bundling transactions? At that point, we seem to be back to using credit card companies who jus…
In my view it's very simple: credit is extremely cheap to produce. If a retail merchant is willing to accept Bitcoin credit in exchange for his products, the consumer surely isn't going to insist on paying the higher Blockchain fee, and widespread bitcoin credit will become a thing. And credit (a promise) will always be cheaper than trustless systems (a guarantee), so I don't think the question is "either/or", but "how much do you want to pay per transaction?".
If you're willing to pay ~$0.15 there's no reason to not use the Blockchain right now. If, however, you would like to send bitcoins to someone and pay, say, 1/100th of a cent in fees, the only solution that works right now is credit (issuing digital Bitcoin IOUs in exchange for payment channel payments).
In short: it's extremely important to have cost in mind. Sure, if we could do everything trustlessly at the same cost as using a trusted third party, why not choose trustlessness? But this is not reality. Storing a public key and an IOU in a levelDB database (we don't even need SQL!) is many orders of magnitude cheaper than any trustless solution invented so far. I expect efficiency to improve for trustless solutions, but never enough to beat a trusted third party on cost.
If you're buying a cup of coffee using Bitcoin and paying $0.15 in Blockchain fees, you've spent more in fees than if you used VISA! Is it truly a necessity that we embed your coffee purchase in a global ledger and store it on 10,000 independant nodes spread out across the globe? Or could less suffice in this particular case?
It's also important to point out that an IOU clearing system on top of bitcoin would only introduce merchants to credit risk, not consumers. Consumers send real bitcoins to issuers (transferred trustlessly via payment channels), and get back an IOU with the merchant's public key on it. The consumer receives the product after handing over this IOU to the merchant, and will not (and should not) suffer if the issuer is unable to fulfill his obligation.
So, without a doubt, it is necessary that merchants be vigilant in assessing the credit quality of their accepted issuers. But if you're a merchant, you're most likely involved in multiple credit relations already, and adding a new one - in exchange for extremely low fees - may be a risk worth the profit. After all, these IOUs are instantly redeemable, so as a merchant, you choose how often you want to ensure your income, by redeeming IOUs into bitcoins on the Blockchain.