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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

#191

Post by LiquidSky »

AgentME wrote: post #177
LiquidSky wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

The problem with your analogy is that people understand car seats and couches are and do different things. Crypto enthusiasts seems to want Bitcoin (or something else) to become widely adopted and used but are highly resistant or indifferent to the myriad problems that prevent such adoptions on ideological grounds.

To use your analogy, it would be like someone believing that car seats should replace couches everywhere but ignoring all of the complaints you listed.

>Most wallet software I've used was super easy.

Do you have a technical background such that you are familiar and comfortable with using even complicated technology? I often find that since crypto boosters are developers or engineers, their ideas of simplicity and ease are wildly different from your average Joe.

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

#192

Post by Barrin92 »

blancheneige wrote: post #169
xd wrote: post #157

It shows your customers that you are a forward thinking company. Bit of a loaded assumption that; accepting bitcoin has nothing to do with being forward thinking. Bitcoin appeals to human greed, that's it. The comments comparing this to Linux and TCP/IP is apples and oranges. Why would I as a hard working member of my society with a house and kids invest money into a system completely unregulated. I'm all ears.

because it's not your society. it's that of your elites.

The distribution and concentration of bitcoin and its mining resources makes even decidedly unequal societies look like socialist utopias.

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

#193

Post by tim333 »

sparkie wrote: post #179
pjc50 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My friend lost trustless cryptocurrency that would be worth well over $400k today by forgetting about it and formatting his hard drive.

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

#194

Post by tim333 »

xd wrote: post #157

It shows your customers that you are a forward thinking company. Bit of a loaded assumption that; accepting bitcoin has nothing to do with being forward thinking. Bitcoin appeals to human greed, that's it. The comments comparing this to Linux and TCP/IP is apples and oranges. Why would I as a hard working member of my society with a house and kids invest money into a system completely unregulated. I'm all ears.

>Bitcoin appeals to human greed, that's it

Much of the motivation of the founders and enthusiasts was that governments and existing financial systems are flawed so it may be valuable to have a peer to peer financial system outside of that.

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

#195

Post by Ruphin »

scrumbledober wrote: post #135
Ruphin wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Users that already have a Bitcoin wallet don't have to jump through any hoops to spend BTC. It's just as easy as any kind of digital money transfer. Obviously using BTC to pay for anything is a huge hassle if you don't already have a wallet with some BTC in it. But that's like saying Apple Pay is inconvenient because your customers have to go to and buy an iPhone first.

except i don't need to wait for blockchain confirmations on apple pay, it's instant.

Most merchants I've dealt with accept a transaction in the mempool as enough confirmation of payment, which makes it nearly instant.

If you want more strict safety/guarantees, sidechain solutions are starting to reach viability: https://medium.com/gitcoin/burner-wallet-at-ethdenver-was-fa...

Technical solutions to problems like slow block times exist, but the engineering part is hard. Just like there's no technical reason why Linux can't be succesful for desktops, it takes time to implement all the details that make it a smooth experience. We'll get there eventually.

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

#196

Post by pfranz »

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…

> An ACH transaction between two North American banks usually arrives on the next business day (if you place it before the cut-off time).

I keep hearing this, but out of the many banks I've tried I've never once seen this happen. I just looked at a recent transaction; email shows I initiated it at 9:18am PST on Jan 30 (which could be past the cutoff if it was noon EST), the withdrawal account shows the money deducted on Jan 31, and the deposit account shows it landing on Jan 1--one business day, right? Nah, or at least I'm not informed of them on those days. I don't see them show up for another day or two. When the money does show up in the account, it's often "not available" for another day or two. I'm just one dude who happens to have a few different banks for savings and my wife's account and tries to pay bills on time. This was also a thing when I was pooling money for a mortgage downpayment. I can't imagine running a business.

It frustrates me that for a country that deifies financial markets and capitalism will ignore liquidity like this (even between accounts owned by the same entity). 1 business day (before the cutoff!) still isn't that great. The docs I found about same-day ACH said it was approved in 2015 and only rolled out last year...and it looks like they charge a fee per transaction[1][2]

[1] https://web.nacha.org/system/files/resource/2017-08/Same-Day...

[2] https://content.capitalone.com/TMgmt/images/Same_Day_ACH_%20...

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

#197

Post by microtherion »

Ruphin wrote: post #120

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,…

> For paying beers at a bar

So you order the beer, wait for an hour or so to get 6 confirmations, then drink the beer? Sounds like a great recipe to limit your alcohol intake.

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

#198

Post by Ruphin »

exit wrote: post #164
Ruphin wrote: post #120

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,…

> 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. you should have the root mnemonic of the wallet stored separately, in which case you would be able to regenerate the private keys and access your funds again. i can recommend the eclair wallet, by acinq, for android. as well as traditional on-chain transactions, it also supports spend-only…

It's exactly narratives like that, "you have to store this passphrase somewhere secure or you risk losing all your money", that makes anything in this space so much less accessible to normal people.

You can choose to ignore those complexities and just treat a wallet like a simple app that just sends and recieves money without understanding anything about how it works, and the UX is way better. You just have to live with the consequence that your money is gone if you lose the phone (which is the same as losing the cash in your physical wallet when you lose that). In my experience that narrative works much better for onboarding people, because it doesn't place any burden on them to do anything. They just have to choose their level of acceptable risk, which is something they are familiar with (carrying cash in their physical wallet).

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

#199

Post by skinnymuch »

classicsnoot wrote: post #180

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 add…

What’s a BTC machine? What happened to the money the poor souls dumped into it?

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

#200

Post by paulgb »

pjkundert wrote: post #178
paulgb wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If the vendor is free to set the conversation rate, and it is generally acknowledged that the value of the Papiermark is falling, they will require more of it for the equivalent of a dollar. The aggregate effect of everyone doing this may inflate the Papiermark out of existence, but it has nothing to do with Gresham's law. In fact, it's the opposite effect, since the dollar would remain in circulation.

If the vendor had to accept the Papiermark at a 1:1 rate, then nobody would pay with the dollar and then it would drive out the dollar. That would be Gresham's law.

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