Everyone on this thread seems to be missing the point that they’ll be working with stablecoins on Ethereum and other smart contracts chains, and not Bitcoin.
MasterCard to open up network to cryptocurrencies
121–130 of 910 posts
Re: MasterCard to open up network to cryptocurrencies
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
If it’s in your best interest to buy and never sell, why would anyone want to use it for exchange? Bitcoin’s deflationary nature discourages spending and selling, by definition. The high transaction costs discourage it even further.
How is bitcoin deflationary when it (currently) has a fixed inflation?
When people say it's deflationary, they mean "in the long run". Bitcoin has a fixed, predetermined inflation schedule which approaches zero over time. So, considering the inflation schedule alone, it's "eventually" deflationary.
When you start to account for other things like lost and unrecoverable coins, it becomes severely deflationary and much sooner. Things like grandpa taking his encrypted wallet to the grave or in the case of bitcoin BTC, small coins that can't be moved because the fee is higher than the coin's value.
At the time of writing this, coins worth less than ~ $6.15 (USD) aren't able to be spent*. That means if you bought a $4 coffee with BTC and paid with a tenner (a coin [input] worth $10) , you'd lose the change. It would remain unspendable until the network starts unclogging.
* By "arent able to be spent" I mean, reasonable fee estimations for getting the transaction into a block within an amount of time that you can be sure the transaction won't get dropped from the mempool. I used https://bitcoiner.live to estimate the fee which was the most generous of the three I looked at.
Re: MasterCard to open up network to cryptocurrencies
#123I am not big on cryptocurrency. Look how the price of these "currencies" fluctuate like crazy, because people buy and treat it like an investment. What is the actual current practical utility of cryptocurrency except for buying/selling illegal things online? People are so horny to get in on the next computer/iphone/etc that they forget that new ideas can fail.
Re: MasterCard to open up network to cryptocurrencies
#124Unclear what this actually means. Can I pay my credit card bill using crypto? That's a taxable event and a pain in the butt to track. Can I buy stuff from merchants using crypto, and they receive crypto? Useful, but most merchants will want fiat currency, so someone on the chain will have to convert it to dollars, which again would be a taxable event.
I think the point is that you can hold crypto but your credit card will automatically convert some of it to fiat whenever you pay for something.
>Consumers can instantly convert their cryptocurrencies into traditional fiat currency, which can be spent everywhere Mastercard is accepted around the world. Currency will always enter Mastercard’s network as traditional fiat currency.
Re: MasterCard to open up network to cryptocurrencies
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's the point of an unstable, volatile, frantically manipulated currency that is susceptible to social media pump and dump schemes (Elon + Doge)? Currency and its exchange rate needs to be relatively stable for the world to put trust into it. Saying that BTC is stable, but the rest of the world's fiat currency is fluctuating makes no sense. US dollar provides stability and security, I feel confident that a cappucc…
If you live in a situation where the only local fiat currency is even worse, then the “volatility fee” of cryptocurrency may be well worth the money to decouple yourself from that bad fiat currency risk. Maybe you can purchase things directly with the cryptocurrency, or maybe you just wait until you can drive across the border to a place with more stable fiat currency, sell cryptocurrency for that currency, and buy m…
If someone is in a country with a collapsing local currency, they still have to transfer that money to a Bitcoin exchange before they can transfer the Bitcoin.
If the currency is collapsing, who’s going to trade Bitcoin for the collapsing currency? That’s the necessary first step in this process.
If I’m just trying to cross the border with Bitcoin in my mind wallet so I can convert it back to cash on the other side, why does it matter if 1 BTC is $10 or $10,000,000? It doesn’t, because moving money round-trip through a currency is a matched pair of buy and sell trades in a short period. Net zero, long term.
This narrative that Bitcoin is somehow going to save refugees from oppressive governments is possible, but deeply flawed in practice. Either way, it’s not a long term driver of demand.
Frankly, it’s far more likely that the dictators of such countries would use Bitcoin to flee the country with their citizen’s money and avoid prosecution than the other way around.
Re: MasterCard to open up network to cryptocurrencies
#126These stories usually spur more enthusiasm for buying cryptocurrency, but ironically those buyers aren’t interested in spending cryptocurrency using their MasterCard. They’re hoping other people will buy cryptocurrency from these announcements, driving the price up. Or, more likely, they’re just hoping other people will buy cryptocurrency and not use it in these spending systems. Spending cryptocurrency would result…
There's many ways to value cryptocurrency. One of them is largely driven by network effect, except it's directed edges of accepts and pays in.
This is a huge addition to the network with a giant amount of accepts edges.
Re: MasterCard to open up network to cryptocurrencies
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's the point of an unstable, volatile, frantically manipulated currency that is susceptible to social media pump and dump schemes (Elon + Doge)? Currency and its exchange rate needs to be relatively stable for the world to put trust into it. Saying that BTC is stable, but the rest of the world's fiat currency is fluctuating makes no sense. US dollar provides stability and security, I feel confident that a cappucc…
But did you ever wonder where the stability of USD comes from? It all comes down to how big the transaction volume of your currency is. Things like "Petrodollar" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrodollar_recycling#Petrodol... increase the volume and provide additional stability. As "market cap" of bitcoin increases, so does the stability. All things considered, bitcoin still is very bad because of the transaction thr…
Did you mean "market share" (as in, notional share of all transactions) as opposed to "market cap" (as in, the sum of all bitcoin supply, multiplied by the current price)?
Re: MasterCard to open up network to cryptocurrencies
#128The game Paypal currently plays with Crypto is the closest thing to printing money I have ever seen: Their users can "buy and sell Bitcoin" and pay "no fees". How does Paypal make money? "From the spread". The difference between bid and ask. And who sets the spread? Drumroll ... Paypal! Since you cannot transfer your bitcoins out, when you sell your bitcoins, Paypal pays you whatever they like. So far, Paypal only of…
That's how all currency trading works. Why do you think this is unique to Bitcoin or crypto? More than 95% of "money" in circulation was created in the private banking sector. That's the closest thing to printing money because that's actually what it is. Paypal is just taking a cut for providing a service. Don't like it? Don't use it.
You can show up at a bank and demand your balance in central bank money aka cash.
The equivalent for Bitcoin would be that Paypal has to send your balance to you on the blockchain. But they do not do that. They will pay you in dollars. How much dollars? However much they like.
Re: MasterCard to open up network to cryptocurrencies
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bitcoin is used as a speculative investment today only because it is so underpriced. Once its value stabilizes, its use in day to day transactions will grow. > Should also note that MasterCard crypto transactions almost certainly won’t be settled on the blockchain. And neither are USD transactions. In fact, USD doesn't even have a blockchain! The great thing with Bitcoin is once you want to cash out your Bitcoin, you…
"Once its value stabilizes, its use in day to day transactions will grow." and how will it grow when it's a fixed amount of currency with a fixed amount of transactions per second?
You can divide it over and over. The source code is a living document and transaction speed can be implemented either off chain, in the code base itself, or otherwise.
It’s weird to see so many opinions on this website that think BTC is a static thing that can’t or won’t adopt useful pull requests that miners agree are useful.
It’s like if it were the mid-90’s and everyone was just as skeptical of e-commerce of the web in general.
Useful things get better.
Re: MasterCard to open up network to cryptocurrencies
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
A friend of mine basically put it this way: bitcoin can't become medium of exchange before it becomes medium of value. You can read this as: if you are holding btc, it's in your best interest to hold more without selling.
How do you apply this logic to USD? You either want to hold it or want to use it? Since everybody need to use USD, so nobody should hold USD?
> How do you apply this logic to USD? You either want to hold it or want to use it?
Of course it applies. Holding lots of dollars (e.g. as hard cash or in a checking account) is stupid. That is the purpose and benefit of (mild) inflation: to incentivise consuming or investing them.