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Bitcoin's Use in Commerce Keeps Falling

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Re: Bitcoin's Use in Commerce Keeps Falling

#291

Post by adiusmus »

adiusmus wrote: post #123
sgeisler wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Another fork of bitcoin. That's factually wrong. Lightning is a protocol on top of Bitcoin (like HTTP is built on TCP) and not a fork. It has a different set of trade offs: transactions on it are instant, but one should only store small amounts on it (like what you would carry in your purse) since your money on it can be stolen if you are offline for too long (and you did not pay someone to monitor the network for…

Different Lightning. So have a look at this: https://chat.lbtc.io/topic/37-faq/

Lighting as a bitcoin fork is at: http://lightningbitcoin.io/

Re: Bitcoin's Use in Commerce Keeps Falling

#292

Post by dragontamer »

willio58 wrote: post #244
cc439 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why it makes senss to only buy gold cast in a thin shape (like a coin). It's much harder to cast in any meaningfully large tungsten core and it significantly raises the likelihood of that fake core being discovered as one can verify the authenticity of the gold piece by scraping away a millimeter or two of gold using basic hand tools. Considering how expensive gold is per ounce, it's not like any of us will be…

Maybe not those massive bars, but if we’re talking about being in a country where you can’t trust the government at all with the currency, wouldn’t you want to store most of your savings in gold or something similar? So just thousands of coins I guess? Arr me matey

> where you can’t trust the government at all with the currency

Executive Order 6102.

If you're in a country where you can't trust the government, you lost. The government can take away your gold, your government can take away your bitcoins.

If "the government has become the enemy" is a problem, then you've got bigger problems at hand.

Re: Bitcoin's Use in Commerce Keeps Falling

#293

Post by dragontamer »

cc439 wrote: post #191
bobthepanda wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can literally go to a gold dealer shop; it's like forex for gold. Even in my moderately sized American city there are twenty that show up in Google Maps within a twenty minute drive. And you buy gold and it's physically in your possession; verifying it is easy, and the best part is you can verify it at some other gold dealer if you're super paranoid. With BTC, you have to find a trusted exchange and a trusted wal…

Do you have any first hand experience with buying gold from local dealers? I've never really looked into it but the vast majority of gold dealers in my city are also pawn shops geared toward purchasing gold rather than selling it. While I'm unsure as to their exact pricing model for selling gold, the way in which pawn shops are known to buy precious metals leads me to believe I'd be paying significantly more than wha…

American Eagle Gold coins are US-Government issued, serial-number stamped official Gold coins of the US Government.

Created by the US Mint, you have strong assurances that you are recieving in fact, 91.67% gold / 22 karat (an alloy, because pure gold is too soft for the typical consumer).

If you do want 99.99% Gold / 24 karat, the US Mint also makes the Buffalo coin. But that's usually harder to store.

American Eagle coins are super easy to obtain and trade. Just go to any gold shop and ask for an American Eagle gold coin.

Re: Bitcoin's Use in Commerce Keeps Falling

#294

Post by jcranmer »

zaarn wrote: post #278
lisper wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> verifying it is easy Actually, it's not. It's nearly impossible to non-destructively distinguish gold from tungsten wrapped in gold.

Actually , not that hard. The speed of sound in tungsten is easily twice that of gold, hitting it with a hammer and analyzing the response on the other hand will easily tell you that it's tungsten or gold. In theory, a smartphone app could do it. You can also test shear forces on the bar, a test you can perform easily at the bank itself (or any of the other material forces tests really). Those do usually require a bi…

> Lastly, you can measure electric resistance. A gold bar will have a different resistance than a tungsten bar, especially if you compare a frequency sweep AC resistance vs DC resistance (if there is a difference, which should be about 20nOhm/m vs 50nOhm/m for Gold/Tungsten, you know the material has a core that is different from the outside).

Electric current mostly travels on the surface of a material. Gold-plated tungsten might not have sufficiently different resistance from pure gold, if the plating is thick enough.

Re: Bitcoin's Use in Commerce Keeps Falling

#295

Post by api »

keymone wrote: post #270
WJW wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and the key is that it cant be changed, which is very appealing This is only very appealing if: - It is never necessary to change monetary policy. - The same monetary policy is appropriate for all nations. - The monetary policy that was chosen by the bitcoin dev team is exactly the right one.

> The same monetary policy is appropriate for all nations you're conflating. the concept of nation has nothing to do with the concept of money.

Sure it is. Hard money advocates see the Fed as some kind of parasitic liability on America, but it's quite the opposite. It's a weapon of war. A sovereign currency that can be manipulated is an instrument of empire. Eliminating it in a world where everyone has one would be akin to unilateral disarmament.

Generally speaking libertarian idealism is unthinkable until we have had at least 50 years with no war. It won't work in a violent, power-hungry world ruled by warlords and sociopaths. Getting rid of our warlords sounds great until you realize there are others.

Re: Bitcoin's Use in Commerce Keeps Falling

#296

Post by dboreham »

keymone wrote: post #276
cromulent wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the maximum transaction rate is 7 per second, so en masse is impossible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin_scalability_problem

no longer the case since payment channels and routing between them are the option. p2p channel payments is only limited by network bandwidth and cpu power between participants. routed channel payments are limited by routing network connectivity and capacity, which is not amazing yet but far better than 7tps.

It would be helpful if you could cite one payment channel service that is up and running today and has there properties.

Re: Bitcoin's Use in Commerce Keeps Falling

#297

Post by lawn »

briatx wrote: post #10

It has been clear for a while now that Bitcoin is an inferior payment system for the consumer: * The fees are higher. * The risk to the consumer is higher. * The difficulty of use is higher. * It is accepted at an extremely low amount of vendors and even that is falling. So you really how to wonder why people ever thought consumers would use it en masse.

Fees are only higher in Bitcoin which the developers have crippled. Look at Bitcoin Cash or other cryptocurrencies for much lower fees.

Here are some reasons why cryptocurrencies is a superior payment system, even for the consumer:

* The fees are lower (VISA and PayPal fees are priced into the cost, and they are much higher)

* It's anonymous (see Monero for example)

* You can send money easily to anywhere in the world (lookup EatBCH which is a charity providing food in Venezuela)

* You don't need a bank's permission. There are many unbanked people in the world.

Here are some reasons why it's a superior payment system for the merchant:

* Eliminates credit charge back fraud, which is a very big problem

* The fees are lower, especially important for low margin businesses

* Nobody can freeze your accounts, like PayPal has done on numerous occasions

* Any business can accept money digitally, for example porn sites and marijuana businesses have had a lot of problems accepting credit cards

A permissionless and trustless digital payment system has so obvious benefits I really wonder why people have trouble seeing them.

Is it ready yet? No. Are there problems? Yes. But the benefits are there.

Re: Bitcoin's Use in Commerce Keeps Falling

#298

Post by dragontamer »

keymone wrote: post #272
qeternity wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bitcoin advantage: easily and instantly divisible. Gold not so much. Not so important for a store of value. > Bitcoin advantage: weighs nothing, highly transportable. Gold not so much. Yet requires an order of magnitude more skill and overhead to handle.

(bangs head on the wall) > what advantage does it have over gold? can you point me to words "store", "of" and "value" in the above question? > order of magnitude more skill and overhead to handle only if you assume handling gold means dropping the gold bar in your basement and never touching it again?

> can you point me to words "store", "of" and "value" in the above question?

Bitcoin is up the past couple of weeks. So inevitably, the BTC community will be calling it a store of value.

I think the general community is just reacting to the moving goalposts. When BTC's value is up, its a store of value. When its value is down, BTC's value is its transactions.

Re: Bitcoin's Use in Commerce Keeps Falling

#299

Post by nebolo »

keymone wrote: post #277
smsm42 wrote: post #238

I am not surprised. I am a programmer with decades of experience under my belt, and I have no idea how to install bitcoin in a way that would allow me convenient use of it. No, I can install the apps, and I can spend a month or two waiting until it downloads the whole 40+G of current blockchain, or I can trust some site that says it'd fix it for me, or I can open an account on any of the exchanges and pray to cryptog…

exaggerating a bit? bitcoin syncs within couple hours unless you run it on the computer you'd gain your decades of experience on :) every mobile bitcoin app is a lightweight client - it only syncs block headers, much faster but not great for large sums of money. so for a person that can't tell "browser" from "internet" there's no difference between introducing them to paypal or to bitcoin - it's just an app on your p…

Yes, but for that person the all advantages of Bitcoin that are typically mentioned (trust-less, secure, etc.) go out of the window.

Re: Bitcoin's Use in Commerce Keeps Falling

#300

Post by keymone »

dboreham wrote: post #296
keymone wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no longer the case since payment channels and routing between them are the option. p2p channel payments is only limited by network bandwidth and cpu power between participants. routed channel payments are limited by routing network connectivity and capacity, which is not amazing yet but far better than 7tps.

It would be helpful if you could cite one payment channel service that is up and running today and has there properties.

Lightning Network.
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