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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

#171

Post by vsipuli »

gst wrote: post #132
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…

An ACH transaction between two North American banks usually arrives on the next business day (if you place it before the cut-off time). In fact, ACH supports multiple settlements per day now so if that feature is supported by your bank ACH transfers can even arrive on the same business day. There are a few banks that are slower, but that's not the fault of ACH - don't use slow banks and you're not running into that i…

But you cannot deposit money into any arbitrary U.S. bank account using ACH. For every account that you want to make transfers to, you first need to sign a bunch of forms. With the European IBAN system, no permissions or forms are needed to make deposits to a new arbitrary account.

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

#172

Post by sparkie »

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?

It's easier because it doesn't require any sign-up. You simply download some compatible software and you're ready to run. Every other of the 87 services requires sign-up, which means filling out forms and uploading photos of ID. If you're lucky to be in a well-developed country with proper ID, you might be able to get an account!

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

#173

Post by observer12 »

joshstrange wrote: post #10

It's about time we admit the emperor has no clothes. BTC/ETH/XYY/123 can store value (I don't care to get into the fluctuations right now) and moving it around can be a lot easier than outdated systems like ACH but they are terrible for paying for things. Maybe something like the lightning network or similar will be able to solve part of that but accepting BTC has always been more of a fad/PR-move than an actual busi…

ACH is slow by design. It could take milliseconds if desired.

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

#174

Post by root_axis »

beatgammit wrote: post #65
root_axis wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

There is no chicken-egg problem. There is no chicken. There is no reason for anyone to use bitcoin except for a tiny niche.

The comparison to Linux Desktop is correct but for the wrong reasons. Like with bitcoin, nobody has any reason to switch to a Linux Desktop since the existing solutions already do everything people want. If you're non-technical and are already comfortable with Windows or Mac, you gain nothing by switching to a linux desktop.

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

#175

Post by mikeash »

sparkie wrote: post #172
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?

It's easier because it doesn't require any sign-up. You simply download some compatible software and you're ready to run. Every other of the 87 services requires sign-up, which means filling out forms and uploading photos of ID. If you're lucky to be in a well-developed country with proper ID, you might be able to get an account!

It takes about a minute to sign up with these apps. No ID needed.

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

#176

Post by root_axis »

sparkie wrote: post #172
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?

It's easier because it doesn't require any sign-up. You simply download some compatible software and you're ready to run. Every other of the 87 services requires sign-up, which means filling out forms and uploading photos of ID. If you're lucky to be in a well-developed country with proper ID, you might be able to get an account!

You need to sign up for a bank account if you want to use bitcoin in practice. Meeting up with random people in the streets to trade money for digital currency is definitely not easier than signing up for Venmo.

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

#177

Post by AgentME »

LiquidSky wrote: post #147
root_axis wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 f…

>This makes it impossible to discuss because this small group's focus is so different from everyone else's.

Well, if people don't value decentralization, there's not much need for them to use Bitcoin. There's a lot of problems that come with decentralization.

I feel this is like comparing car seating to couches. Car seat fans only seem to care about going places! Car seats are small and don't let you lie down? But it gets places! They need a seat buckle and don't let you sit freely? But it gets places! They shake a bit and are usually surrounded by noise? But it gets places!

Some of the complaints can have some incremental improvements, but they're unlikely to be solvable and the fact that someone might rate the complaints highly relative to the goal implies that they're not in the target market for the thing and its large trade-offs.

/overly general point. Some specific responses:

Some of the goals you mention (not useful, massive price fluctuations) are generally only solvable with more people using it. If there were easier more direct solutions, people would've done them.

>Hard for normal people to use?

Most wallet software I've used was super easy. If you want to receive money, you give someone one of your addresses. If you want to send some money, you put in their address. (A billion times easier than figuring out what banking numbers you have to put in to your bank's website to send someone money, and then them worrying about whether that lets you withdraw from their account too.) The main problem is that some wallet clients are full clients that need to download the whole blockchain first, but being patient or switching to a lightweight client solves that.

It was a bit hard to first get bitcoin, but that's because of the hoops companies have to jump through to deal with the banking system. I'm not sure how an open decentralized system can make this part easier. That's up to the exchanges and banks. It doesn't make much sense to blame crypto-enthusiasts for being close-minded and ignoring issues they could work on.

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

#178

Post by pjkundert »

paulgb wrote: post #166
pjkundert wrote: post #158

"Why does no one want to pay their local locksmith with Bitcoin?" The reasons given (few customers have it in a hot wallet ready to use, slow and expensive for small payments) are not the reasons! Even if many people had it, and the expense was lower -- few people would use it. The real reason? Gresham's law: a monetary principle stating that "bad money drives out good". Given 2 forms of commodity money in circulatio…

You're mixing up two things. Gresham's law applies when the conversation rate is fixed, not when it is set by the market. It's not the same as a currency being deflationary. Hayek wrote about the confusion: https://fee.org/resources/denationalization-of-money/#VI.%20...

Its original application was to coinage with a fixed face value and a fluctuating inherent (market) value, of course.

The "spirit" of Gresham's law applies to any money that is (or is likely) to become more valuable in the future than it currently it. The same mental process applies in the holder of the money: "why would I spend this potentially more valuable money, when I have this other less valuable money to spend?"

edit: the article mentions the German Weimar inflation as a counterexample; in fact, it is a prime example of this concept: if a vendor accepts either the Weimar Papiermark or the US Dollar as payment, who in their right mind would pay that vendor with US Dollars? That vendor would probably never see a single US Dollar in payment! Bad money would have totally chased out good, from their perspective.

The real issue is not fixed exchange; in a free market, where vendors accept multiple forms of payment: unless forced, payors will always pay with "bad" money, and will keep the "good" money for themselves.

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

#179

Post by sparkie »

pjc50 wrote: post #79
vortico wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great analogy, I'll remember that one. BTC is only really useful to me when other payment methods surpass ~$100 of effort. For example, when paying contractors tens of thousands of $ internationally, it's impossible to avoid $50-300 fees from bank wires, TransferWise, or Xoom. So if both parties are fine with sitting down and figuring out how to send/receive BTC on their computer, only then it is worth my time.

I'm reminded of the guy who lost $400k by trying to do an international transfer of his own money through Quadriga at the point they collapsed.

If only he was using a trustless cryptocurrency rather than a "trusted" custodial entity, he would never have had that problem.

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

#180

Post by classicsnoot »

Back in early 2016 I told myself that if BTC dropped below $200 I would buy one. The lowest I saw was $203. When it went meteor a few years later, I felt Fold remorse. Perhaps it is sour grapes, but every time I walk by the BTC machine at my corner store, I relish in seeing how low it has gone, though still well higher than $200. :/

More on topic, the only action the corner store BTC machine gets, apart from drug addicts, is scams. That I can attest to, twice some tech ignorant soul has walked in, dumped their savings, then asked the cashier for a receipt.

Unless crypto currency can be inoculated from speculation (impossible IMO) it will be some time, if ever, before it becomes a viable mechanism for general economic exchange.

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