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Digital coins may be on the verge of going mainstream

nytimes.com

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Re: Digital coins may be on the verge of going mainstream

#61

Post by saurik »

mrb wrote: post #42
WoodenChair wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are transaction fees with some cryptocurrencies (for example Bitcoin) – for a small purchase they can be much more than 2%.

Fees are always optional. Right now $0.25 will make a tx confirm in under 70 minutes (typical 225-byte tx, 40 sat/B: https://bitcoinfees.21.co ). Solutions are being developed left & right to further reduce this: alts, segwit, block size increases (segwit2x, BCH 8MB blocks), payment channels, etc. (Answer edited. Yes merchants care indirectly about fees.)

> Merchants don't care as fees are paid by the sender.

As a merchant I absolutely disagree: the cost of my product is how much it costs the user, which includes the complete costs to the user, not just my price.

Re: Digital coins may be on the verge of going mainstream

#62

Post by dogruck »

This is dangerous!

When everyday folks go bust on their crypto holdings, there will be pain, suffering and retribution. Or, perhaps you agree that we don't need any of these pesky financial and gambling regulations and safeguards.

If this article was about Beanie Babies or penny stocks, would you be clapping?

Re: Digital coins may be on the verge of going mainstream

#63

Post by josiahtullis »

dogruck wrote: post #62

This is dangerous! When everyday folks go bust on their crypto holdings, there will be pain, suffering and retribution. Or, perhaps you agree that we don't need any of these pesky financial and gambling regulations and safeguards. If this article was about Beanie Babies or penny stocks, would you be clapping?

It's not about Beanie Babies or penny stocks.

Re: Digital coins may be on the verge of going mainstream

#64

Post by zhoujianfu »

deelowe wrote: post #60
AlphaWeaver wrote: post #59

I tend to believe this is being upvoted because people want to believe this, not because it's actually true.

There's also probably quite a few influential people who have a vested interest in digital currency increasing in value.

Myself, for example!

Re: Digital coins may be on the verge of going mainstream

#65

Post by repomies6999 »

CPLX wrote: post #22
dcw303 wrote: post #7

We're a long way off mainstream. Take the Web as an example: When my university lab computer got trumpet winsock and Netscape installed, it wasn't mainstream. When Hotbot was launched and could actually search with some degree of efficiency it wasn't mainstream. When I learned html and javascript from reading Webmonkey posts it wasn't mainstream. When I switched to this new upstart called Google it wasn't mainstream.…

But with Google your Mom can find out when the store is open and where it is. Facebook lets grandparents see photos of grandchildren. Reading a blog replaces reading the gossip column in the daily paper. You could finally buy plane tickets without driving somewhere. And so on. The early web was really fucking useful as it started to mature. It solved a lot of real problems. What is cryptocurrency going to help these…

Gain purchasing power without the central bank constantly taking it away.

Re: Digital coins may be on the verge of going mainstream

#66

Post by mathgenius »

dcw303 wrote: post #7

We're a long way off mainstream. Take the Web as an example: When my university lab computer got trumpet winsock and Netscape installed, it wasn't mainstream. When Hotbot was launched and could actually search with some degree of efficiency it wasn't mainstream. When I learned html and javascript from reading Webmonkey posts it wasn't mainstream. When I switched to this new upstart called Google it wasn't mainstream.…

Perhaps the comparison should be to linux. Barely anyone knows what this is and yet it runs on most of the phones of the world & is behind most websites aswell. Linux had a long runway to get there.

Rusty Russell has a nice talk about this: https://medium.com/@rusty_lightning/transcript-my-20-year-jo...

Re: Digital coins may be on the verge of going mainstream

#67

Post by jstanley »

Jasper_ wrote: post #16
dcw303 wrote: post #7

We're a long way off mainstream. Take the Web as an example: When my university lab computer got trumpet winsock and Netscape installed, it wasn't mainstream. When Hotbot was launched and could actually search with some degree of efficiency it wasn't mainstream. When I learned html and javascript from reading Webmonkey posts it wasn't mainstream. When I switched to this new upstart called Google it wasn't mainstream.…

Even taking your (IMO incorrect) assumption that the web only became mainstream when Facebook launched at face value... > When Hotbot was launched and could actually search with some degree of efficiency it wasn't mainstream. That was 1996. > When I could post on Twitter and Facebook it was starting to feel like it was mainstream. That was 2004. So roughly a gap of 8 years. Bitcoin started in 2009. It's now 2017. A g…

Do you think hotbot launched on day 1 of the web?

Re: Digital coins may be on the verge of going mainstream

#68

Post by jknz »

Bitcoin seems quite straightforward and easy to understand, compared to our current banking system.

A lot of comments mention the difficulty of explaining what is bitcoin and how it works, and that mainstream people cannot get enough understanding to start using it.

What about the actual banking system? There are so much mainstream ignorance about our current banking system.

What does it even mean that I own $2000 at a bank? Ok I understand that I can withdraw this cash, but other than that it is a very abstract concept, built into the opaque IT system of my bank.

If I transfer money from bank A to bank B, what does that mean? Did the banks exchange an envelope of cash? Do mainstream users really understand the details of a bank transaction? I personal have no clue about the inner workings of this banking IT systems. Bitcoin seems very easy to grasp.

Understanding quantitative easing? In the bitcoin world this is transparent and easy to grasp. For my national currency I have no clue of how quantitative easing is done, by how much, etc.

The more I think of our national banking/currency systems, the more I believe bitcoin is way simpler to explain and understand.

Re: Digital coins may be on the verge of going mainstream

#70

Post by 392c91e8165b »

dboreham wrote: post #44
godzillabrennus wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The web was developed for a long time before 1996. I'd wager cryptocurrency has another 8 years before it's mainstream.

I thought the Internet had gone mainstream in 1992 when I was passed by a UPS truck with their URL painted on the side..

Are you sure it was 1992?

Wikipedia says that there were only 50 web servers in the world in January 1993, and my recollection is that were all at educational and research institutions. I don't think for example that any of the major computer companies, e.g., Microsoft or Apple, had web site that early. (They had internet connectivity, domain names, mail servers, ftp servers -- but back then, ftp servers did not have URLs.) Maybe one or 2 had web servers, but if they did, they were probably the personal projects of one or two employees.

Most of the world's web pages were about computers and the internet.

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