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Cryptocurrencies: looking beyond the hype

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Re: Cryptocurrencies: looking beyond the hype

#71

Post by brandonsometig »

phobosdeimos wrote: post #52
aeternus wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the Bitcoin community gets lightning network off the ground (it's very close), it solves the problem of micropayments. This is a problem many people likely have that they are not aware of. Ability to pay a fraction of a cent for each article you read online could eliminate the need for both annoying paywalls & ads. Traditional payment systems are actually quite expensive, you just don't see it since the merchant p…

Well I wasn't talking about CC, those are daylight robbery. €0,056 flat transaction fee is the target that I challenge crypto to beat. Thats what my employer pays to banks.

You can make 1 Satoshi payments on the Lightning network already at a cost of $0.00007.

Re: Cryptocurrencies: looking beyond the hype

#72

Post by sincerely »

tootie wrote: post #38
viach wrote: post #13

> it is hard to identify a specific economic problem which they currently solve It is hard to identify such a problem till you believe you can withdraw your money from a bank anytime. Visiting a bank and getting an answer "please come tomorrow" for several weeks changes a person's view on cryptocurrencies and problems they could solve, imo.

Imagine trying to pay for something with crypto and having the seller deride it as fake money that they refuse to accept. That is illegal with officially minted currency.

That's not true either as a universal statement (as laws vary from country to country regarding accepting officially minted currency) or in the US specifically (stores are free to not accept cash, for instance).

Re: Cryptocurrencies: looking beyond the hype

#73

Post by [deleted] »

segmondy wrote: post #62

I hate to be the one, but the reason I can't embrace crypto? The wealth distribution is even worse than fiat currency. It's horrible. it's no long about the 1% it's more about the .0001%. How many women have crypto? How many colored folks have crypto? How many people in all of Africa have crypto? I've had conversations where some don't believe this is a problem. I'm not convinced. You can come up with a new XYZ crypt…

[deleted]

Re: Cryptocurrencies: looking beyond the hype

#74

Post by anjc »

segmondy wrote: post #62

I hate to be the one, but the reason I can't embrace crypto? The wealth distribution is even worse than fiat currency. It's horrible. it's no long about the 1% it's more about the .0001%. How many women have crypto? How many colored folks have crypto? How many people in all of Africa have crypto? I've had conversations where some don't believe this is a problem. I'm not convinced. You can come up with a new XYZ crypt…

Absolutely bizarre.

Re: Cryptocurrencies: looking beyond the hype

#75

Post by Sir_Substance »

brokensegue wrote: post #65
Sir_Substance wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Transferring money internationally without additional costs. >nope It costs between $70 and $90 to send $1AUD from Australia to Iceland. Bitcoin transaction fees have _never_ been that high, and they're currently somewhere around $1AUD. $50-$70 of that fee is taken out of the transaction instead of charged seperately, which means it may be impossible to pay a bill accurately via SWIFT. I tried to pay for a tent vi…

Sending money between countries is two things. Changing currencies and moving the cash. Bitcoin maybe saves you some money on the latter but you are going to need to do the former to do something useful no matter what and it doesn't save you anything there. Plus if you're an American suddenly this transaction has tax consequences. Plus I don't know where you got that quote but most transfers are much cheaper than tha…

>Why didn't you pay via a CC? Free foreign transaction fees is a common perk?

Credit cards generally don't allow bank-to-bank transfers.

If you're referring to the tent, the credit card processor choked on my Icelandic address and rejected it address as "not the address of the cardholder". It's a relatively common problem.

Re: Cryptocurrencies: looking beyond the hype

#76

Post by anjc »

viach wrote: post #13

> it is hard to identify a specific economic problem which they currently solve It is hard to identify such a problem till you believe you can withdraw your money from a bank anytime. Visiting a bank and getting an answer "please come tomorrow" for several weeks changes a person's view on cryptocurrencies and problems they could solve, imo.

Just try and send a transaction that a bank doesn't expect, like an international transfer, or a Western Union transaction and see what happens to your account. And this is in a modern, wealthy country. You're spot on, this gives you a new perspective on the benefits of crypto.

Re: Cryptocurrencies: looking beyond the hype

#77

Post by drdeca »

bena wrote: post #29
CiPHPerCoder wrote: post #17

> Yet, looking beyond the hype, it is hard to identify a specific economic problem which they currently solve. People seem to forget that cryptocurrencies emerged from a culture of cryptoanarchy, not from economists or governments. Anarchists generally don't want to help the government solve problems, they view the government as the very problem to solve. (I'm speaking very broadly here.)

I find that most extreme ideologies simply boil down to people not wanting someone to have any control over them. They don't care for certain aspects of the social contract and want to be able to flaunt it at will with no repercussions. Or they don't want to pay taxes or some other thing. Whatever, they feel that society at large is what's holding them back, not simply a lack of ability or drive. At least with religi…

I wonder whether some substantial portion of cryptoanarchism isn't really meant to be anarchism in the fullest sense, but more anarchism-but-only-within-a-particular-domain?

Like, less "make the government not exist", and more "make it so goverments are unable to control things like communication, and some sorts of commerce"?

I don't know that self-described cryptoanarchists almost always have much opposition to the requirement of a drivers license in order to drive on the public roads.

I suspect that a non-negligible portion does really object to that requirement, but I'm not confident that the majority of them do.

Re: Cryptocurrencies: looking beyond the hype

#78

Post by Sir_Substance »

Lazlo_Nibble wrote: post #63
Sir_Substance wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Transferring money internationally without additional costs. >nope It costs between $70 and $90 to send $1AUD from Australia to Iceland. Bitcoin transaction fees have _never_ been that high, and they're currently somewhere around $1AUD. $50-$70 of that fee is taken out of the transaction instead of charged seperately, which means it may be impossible to pay a bill accurately via SWIFT. I tried to pay for a tent vi…

SWIFT charges pennies (well, eurocents) per message. The fees you’re referring to are imposed by the institutions on either end of the transaction.

Actually, it's imposed by the institutions in the middle of the transaction as well.

Australian banks don't handle Icelandic krona, and Icelandic banks don't handle Australian dollars. As a result, they pick a third bank that handles both to be the middle man. If there's no one bank that handle both then it becomes a 4-player game. Every bank involved charges fees. I don't know how many banks get involved in AU->IS, but since the fee per bank seems to be about $15-$20AU as a standard, I'm guessing at least 4.

Re: Cryptocurrencies: looking beyond the hype

#79

Post by cjhopman »

stale2002 wrote: post #60
soVeryTired wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Receiving money without being exposed to the danger of fraud. Receiving money via Credit Card is surprisingly risky for the merchant. I'm pretty sure cryptocurrencies just move the risks around, rather than eliminating them. Currently, the vendor is on the hook for stolen credit cards. With cryptocurrencies, the currency owner is on the hook. You could accomplish the same shift in the burden of risks with a legisla…

Being able to move the trust around is still valuable. IE, if the merchant is more trustworthy, then we want that trust to be with the merchant, and on with the customer. When the merchant is less trustworthy, well that's what credit cards are for.

> Being able to move the trust around is still valuable.

Right. And the current system handles that just fine. It would be trivial to make a credit card system where charges were irreversible. There hasn't been enough demand for that (possibly because it's not actually useful in a non-ideal world).

Re: Cryptocurrencies: looking beyond the hype

#80

Post by cjhopman »

CrazyInNewYork wrote: post #5
banachtarski wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Receiving money without being exposed to the danger of fraud. Receiving money via Credit Card is surprisingly risky for the merchant. We have this well established thing called a credit score which is handled by the credit card agency and resolves trust issues for the merchant entirely. If a person suspects identity theft, they can put a hold on a card, preventing further use. Cards have expiration dates and period…

Then why do merchants (especially startups) suffer so much from the credit card fraud problem? https://hn.algolia.com/?query=credit%20card%20fraud&sort=byP...

Because that is how we've decided to allocate the risk. There was a time when that allocation was different (and that users could be more liable for fraudulent use of their cards), but, at least in the U.S, we decided we didn't like that and legislated it away.
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