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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

#141

Post by Nursie »

kbody wrote: post #56
Nursie wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has routing problems that are unsolvable.

Unsolvable like internet/BGP routing? I guess internet doesn't work either. Tech evolves, most teams working on LN are working on getting the basic cases to a rock-solid state before doing more R&D on different routing strategies although there are already proposed alternatives on the mailing list. Layered-strategies are the way to go.

No, unsolvable like routing payments from A to B requires finding routes from A to B that are well enough funded to allow the payment to go through, but with no knowledge of the funding states of the channels (as this would be a privacy leak)

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

#142

Post by GreenJelloShot »

mikeash wrote: post #98
beatgammit wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could be easier for tourism, online transactions, and person to person transactions. However, it's not, largely because of a chicken and egg problem similar to that which plagues Linux. People don't use Bitcoin because it's complicated and unstable. It's complicated and unstable because the types of people that use it want to speculate with it or use it for illegal purposes. Just making it more approachable won't…

How can it get any easier than one of the 87 different mobile apps that let you send money to another person with a few taps?

The fact alone that are 87 different mobile apps makes it difficult. Which one do you use? Is there a difference?

Having one single, well-branded app is easier to use than 87 random no-name apps.

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

#143

Post by [deleted] »

acabal wrote: post #139

At Scribophile, I set up an option to pay for a membership upgrade directly with Bitcoin, i.e., without an intermediary to USD like Coinbase. Customers would be given a Bitcoin address to send a certain amount of Bitcoin to for a 1-year upgrade purchase, and once the transaction was verified, their account would be upgraded. In the ~5 years we had the option, I think we had about 3 purchases with Bitcoin. I kept it a…

[deleted]

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

#144

Post by Nursie »

cal5k wrote: post #69
short_sells_poo wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most of the issues with "international banking" are infact just issues with North American banks. This. Whenever someone says that Cryptocurrencies solve money transfer problems, I look where they are based and 99% of the cases it is the US. In Europe, transferring money is the same internationally as it is nationally. Type in the IBAN and the name of the recipient and they get it the same day, or latest the next d…

So? There's a huge amount of currency flowing to and from North America to Europe, Asia, etc. Just because the euro zone has standardized their banking system doesn't mean a) that America will ever do the same ( cough the metric system cough ), or b) that all movement of money across borders should be strictly the purview of banks. In Canada alone people send $23.3B/year back to their country of origin in the form of…

Cryptocurrencies have failed to make any inroads in this because A) People trust the existing services, and B) They're nowhere near as expensive as you say.

At this point it's just yet another talking point for enthusiasts, enthusiasts who have no idea about real-world use-cases.

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

#145

Post by Nursie »

GreenJelloShot wrote: post #142
mikeash wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can it get any easier than one of the 87 different mobile apps that let you send money to another person with a few taps?

The fact alone that are 87 different mobile apps makes it difficult. Which one do you use? Is there a difference? Having one single, well-branded app is easier to use than 87 random no-name apps.

> Having one single, well-branded app is easier to use than 87 random no-name apps.

But there's no need for this to be a cryptocurrency app, that's the point.

These amazing things that cryptocurrency enthusiasts tell us could be made possible using their magic beans - millions of people are already doing them just fine.

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

#146

Post by amenod »

gvb wrote: post #70
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"

Since that day over four years ago and the time of writing, we have not had one customer ask to pay in Bitcoin, Dash or any other cryptocurrency. I viewed it as a useful summary of the article, quoting from the article, not editorializing.

> Should my small business accept Bitcoin?

> We think accepting Bitcoin is a positive move for your small business. While you may not get anyone paying in it now, it does come with other added benefits

The change of title clearly misrepresents author's message by picking a single fact without context. It doesn't matter if you agree with the author, the message conveyed in modified title is very different from what the article talks about. Don't like the message? Write your own blog post. But don't misrepresent others' intentions.

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

#147

Post by LiquidSky »

root_axis wrote: post #40
spectramax wrote: post #8

Bitcoin has the same sort of issues that plague Linux Desktop and why Linux never took off as the defacto standard for PC OS. It’s the lack of user focus. Setting up a bitcoin account, understanding the security implications, hardware wallet, secret keys, the whole enchilada is too big for an average consumer to digest. Somewhere in Jobs’ biography by Walter Isaacson, there is a snippet about how products often fail…

It's worse than that; there is no compelling reason to use it for the vast majority of people. It's a strictly worse experience in nearly all respects compared to centralized options except in the case of dark net commerce where it's the only option.

>centralized options

This seems to be the crux of all of these discussions and why they inevitably go nowhere.

For a small but passionate core of libertarian-minded crypto/Bitcoin boosters, decentralization is a good unto itself. All other issues caused by it are irrelevant.

Hard for normal people to use? But it's decentralized! Not useful for anything normal people want to do? But it's decentralized! Massive price fluctuations render it largely unusable? But it's decentralized! Rife with scams and fraud? But it's decentralized!

This makes it impossible to discuss because this small group's focus is so different from everyone else's. Unfortunately, this small group also has outsize influence in the crypto scene so the concerns of users will probably never get addressed, since they don't matter from that POV.

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

#148

Post by appsonify »

kbody wrote: post #118
appsonify wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> It misrepresents the point of the actual author

It doesn't? The moral of the story is bitcoin hasn't been adopted as much as the bitcoin fanboys will scream.

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

#149

Post by Proven »

Bitcoin has failed and succeeded.

It's main success is that it started both blockchain and cryptocurrency evolution.

Other than that, it's failed. It's fairly useless as either a currency or store of value. I've seen comments that state how Bitcoin or Lighting Network works. It does, but for the tiny fraction of people who can't use fiat, other top cryptocurrencies work even better (cheaper, faster, no Layer 2 complexity).

I always find it curious how some assume Layer 2 is inevitable on any currency that scales and therefore Bitcoin, having early lead in LN, can only increase its dominance. But no one can force us to do that and we don't have to use just one made up currency. We can use an unlimited number of coins, each without Layer 2. Bitcoiners have been saying other coins will die off; not only that hasn't happened, but even tiny coins haven't died off.

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

#150

Post by bostik »

notamerican wrote: post #81
cal5k wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So? There's a huge amount of currency flowing to and from North America to Europe, Asia, etc. Just because the euro zone has standardized their banking system doesn't mean a) that America will ever do the same ( cough the metric system cough ), or b) that all movement of money across borders should be strictly the purview of banks. In Canada alone people send $23.3B/year back to their country of origin in the form of…

Nobody mentioned the Euro Zone before you did; they're talking about Europe "as a continent", for the most part. Living in the UK, national payments are instant , with very few exceptions. And having lived in both Switzerland (where they use CHF), and Germany (Euros), I can say it's much the same across Europe. International payments within Europe are fast too; a couple of days if you're changing currencies, and fast…

> Living in the UK, national payments are instant, with very few exceptions.

Well, anything within the same bank is instant. There is a commonly used mechanism in business accounts called "Faster Payments" which tend to settle even across banks in the UK within 2h.

Very recently - as in, in the last 4-6 weeks - a system called "SMS" was rolled out. Despite the name, it has nothing to do with text messaging. It's a new cross-bank settlement mechanism which promises to settle the transfer in 20 minutes within UK.

The reality is that SMS transfers don't work reliably across all the banks. Our payments and customer service teams had a bad week after we enabled SMS payments. When a supposedly faster transfer takes 5-6 days and you have to chase the bank(s) about payment states, there's clearly a fault somewhere.

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