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Accepting Bitcoin as a Small Business – 4 Years In, No Customers

seymour-locksmiths.co.uk

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Re: Accepting Bitcoin as a Small Business – 4 Years In, No Customers

#111

Post by CedarMadness »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #108
cal5k wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a distributed protocol with wide adoption and enough liquidity to be easily traded anywhere in the world. That makes it great as a medium of common exchange... I can easily convert from Canadian Dollars to BTC in Canada, then convert from BTC to Pesos in the Philippines so long as there's enough liquidity on either end. Both parties still have to act within their respective legal frameworks, but it sidesteps the…

I understood bitcoin transfers could take days. If so, that's not really very liquid?

It depends really. Transactions are usually processed based on the fee associated with them. If the network is exceptionally busy and you send a transaction with a low fee, yeah it'll take a while, but when creating the transaction you can adjust the fee (and most wallets will give you a few options) to make your transaction more valuable to miners, so it will be picked up more quickly.

Re: Accepting Bitcoin as a Small Business – 4 Years In, No Customers

#112

Post by v_lisivka »

wheelie_boy wrote: post #34
dnautics wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet today, half the world with computer access uses Linux, directly. And the entire world uses it indirectly.

He's specifically talking about Linux on the Desktop, which is hovering around 2% market share ( http://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide/... ) It might be that bitcoin is similar to linux - used as a backbone, but not customer friendly enough to ever be used directly by customers. Like maybe banks use it to transfer large amounts of money between each other or something.

Almost 3%, if combined with ChromeOS. IMHO, it is huge success, even if we forget about Linux domination in market of supercomputers, servers, smartphones, and large segment of market in IoT and robotics.

Bitcoin is far far away from such success.

Re: Accepting Bitcoin as a Small Business – 4 Years In, No Customers

#113

Post by kingaillas »

justaguyhere wrote: post #105
fyfy18 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the issues with "international banking" are infact just issues with North American banks. I can transfer large sums of money around Europe and it will arrive in few days at the very latest. Within the same country transfers mostly arrive the same day (often it's under 1 hour), and sometimes that happens internationally too. Oh and I don't need to pay anything for that. A few years ago I was working in the Mid…

* infact just issues with North American banks.* Yup, same experience here. It takes at least 10 days to send a paltry 1000 USD for me and yes, there is a fee. The bank is probably making money on the exchange rate too, not sure. At one point, I was asked all kinds of documentation - passport etc. All this to send very small amounts of money (I don't remember sending more than 3K, 50K Euros without questions is amazi…

There's a pretty good Planet Money episode on this issue:

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/01/10/576879734/epis...

Re: Accepting Bitcoin as a Small Business – 4 Years In, No Customers

#114

Post by mnort9 »

A shift in consumer habits require orders of magnitude in improvement over previous solutions to achieve mass adoption and become the new true "normal".

The reality is bitcoin and crypto are not much of an improvement (if any) for the avg consumer compared to cash/debit/credit card.

Re: Accepting Bitcoin as a Small Business – 4 Years In, No Customers

#115

Post by nybble41 »

lenticular wrote: post #9
Cypher wrote: post #2

Well bitcoin is better for store of value, just use a CC for spending - more protection.

That's the latest line since transaction costs of bitcoin have become out of this world. But it's more volatile than any non tin-pot dictatorship currency. It's vulnerable to hacking, hardware failure, or fraud by exchanges. I swear every 2 weeks a hear about another $100 million vanishing. How is this not just an utterly useless technology for anything except illegal transactions?

> That's the latest line since transaction costs of bitcoin have become out of this world.

You should update your FUD. The average cost to have your transaction accepted in the next block is currently about 31 cents. If 1-2 hours is acceptable (6 blocks) then you can reduce that to less than a quarter. There was a period when the transaction fees were much higher (because the network was undergoing DOS attacks) but that passed some time ago.

Bitcoin is vulnerable to hacking, hardware failure, or fraud by exchanges in much the same way the USD or EUR or any other currency is vulnerable to theft, physical destruction, or fraud by exchanges (or banks)—except that Bitcoin offers ways to protect yourself against theft or hardware failure which are not available for physical currencies, and there is no particular reason to maintain a balance at an exchange. People have no problem accepting that it's unsafe to carry around large amounts of physical currency but won't take simple measures like using a hardware wallet with a PIN to store their private keys. Don't blame the Bitcoin protocol for people failing to take obvious and recommended security precautions.

I'll grant that it's more volatile than most other currencies, but that's hardly unexpected for something new and experimental. It's less volatile now than it used to be, though, and that trend is likely to continue.

Re: Accepting Bitcoin as a Small Business – 4 Years In, No Customers

#116

Post by wcoenen »

argo_ wrote: post #99

Bitcoin on-chain transactions are almost on its historical peak again: https://www.blockchain.com/charts/n-transactions?timespan=al... This forum has been denying bitcoin since the first time someone posted about it: first time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=463793 second time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=599852

I'm not sure on-chain transaction rate approaching new highs is cause for celebration. Last time the rate of new transactions exceeded bitcoin's capacity, confirmation times became erratic and fees unpredictable. Why do you think this won't happen again?

Re: Accepting Bitcoin as a Small Business – 4 Years In, No Customers

#117

Post by dmitriid »

argo_ wrote: post #99

Bitcoin on-chain transactions are almost on its historical peak again: https://www.blockchain.com/charts/n-transactions?timespan=al... This forum has been denying bitcoin since the first time someone posted about it: first time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=463793 second time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=599852

Less than 10 transactions per second while spending more electricity than several medium-sized countries.

Yup. Technology of the future that we are fools to dismiss.

Re: Accepting Bitcoin as a Small Business – 4 Years In, No Customers

#118

Post by kbody »

appsonify wrote: post #95
kbody wrote: post #67

> Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Actual title is "Accepting Bitcoin as a Small Business – 4 Years In"

The actual title is link bait. On HN, people don't want to have to read through the whole article to reach a conclusion. In this case, it's perfectly valid to include the main point of the article - Bitcoin failed. Do I sense another ulterior motive for you to force the title to change? I've definitely seen this behavior on Reddit.

It misrepresents the point of the actual author, the author focuses on everything other than the lack of transactions with crypto. The focus on the number was given by the submitter.

If the case is valid for the rule, motives or biases like mine, yours or anyone's are irrelevant.

Re: Accepting Bitcoin as a Small Business – 4 Years In, No Customers

#119

Post by delecti »

cal5k wrote: post #75
CPLX wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a better analogy. Bitoin has the same issues as Flooz. It’s a more complicated and convoluted solution to a nonexistent problem. The only people who have problems with spending money the normal way that are serious enough to accept the horrible user experience and unreliability of bitcoin are those conducting illegal transactions or evading currency controls. The market has no reason to rise beyond that narrow…

That's just ill-informed. "If you don't accept the banking oligopoly you're clearly trying to launder money" is the kind of nonsense that tries to shut down legitimate concerns over self-determination. Money is an essential input to freedom. If you can't make an income, pay rent, buy food, pay for transportation, etc. you are not very free. I'd also go so far as to say that the right to transact anonymously should be…

You're arguing an is with an ought. People ought to be able to to transact anonymously and without any middle-men. In reality, most people are only willing to put up with the inconveniences of bitcoin because it lets them side-step the law.

Re: Accepting Bitcoin as a Small Business – 4 Years In, No Customers

#120

Post by Ruphin »

Many posts here about how Bitcoin is not user friendly, and how it can't compete with existing (digital) payment solutions in terms of UX. My experience with it is quite the opposite, and I prefer paying with Bitcoin/cryptocurrencies in most (but not all) situations.

My phone has a wallet app with some small amount of Bitcoin on it. If I have to pay for something, all it takes is opening the app, scanning a QR code, and clicking ok. For paying beers at a bar (which I have done) the setup is slightly less convenient than NFC touch-to-pay solutions but not significantly worse. But for things like purchasing digital goods or other items online, the process is sometimes significantly better than alternatives. If I purchase something from an online vendor it's the same process; QR code shows up, I scan it with my app, and press ok. For this scenario it is almost always more convenient than having to enter some payment information, or logging in to some payment processor like PayPal or whatever solution my bank has implemented.

The downsides are that my phone effectively has a bundle of cash strapped to it, and when I lose the phone my cash is gone too. Getting the money onto my phone is also not the most convenient process as I need some external service like an exchange to acquire the coins first.

Not all the problems have been solved, but things are slowly getting better. Just like Linux on the Desktop, people will keep repeating the same story that it's never going to happen, but the reality is that modern Linux distributions have nearly the same install-and-go ergonomics as Windows, with many happy users.

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