Bitcoin transaction costs are very high so I’m assuming all these payment processor transactions will be off-chain. Do you think that having so many off-chain transactions that are essentially converting USD reduces the perceived value of BTC or raises it?
It's just on-chain layer 1 transactions that are somewhat expensive. The lightning network solves this and works great, can do thousands of transactions per second and has close to 0 fees. Feels like magic to use it :)
Visa Plans to Enable Bitcoin Payments at 70M Merchants
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Re: Visa Plans to Enable Bitcoin Payments at 70M Merchants
#432Earlier quoted context omitted.
You may have been downvoted for a snarky tone, but this is the first time I've seen it mentioned here - bitcoin is taxed as a commodity in the US, each exchange is a capital gain or loss.
This is the poison pill for BTC in my opinion. I have a very small amount of BTC and this is the primary reason I don't have a larger investment, don't make more of an attempt to use it as currency, etc. The central banks/governments aren't going to give up their power so easily. They may have low-key destroyed crypto by considering them commodities. The only way crypto can win* is if a plurality of people just choos…
That's impossible if you spend your Bitcoin via Visa.
Re: Visa Plans to Enable Bitcoin Payments at 70M Merchants
#433Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do you eventually repay that loan (or at least pay interest)?
Guessing: you can sync up once a year (or even once every 5 or 10 years) and pay taxes on that transaction at that day's price.
Re: Visa Plans to Enable Bitcoin Payments at 70M Merchants
#434Earlier quoted context omitted.
That doesn't solve anything, it still has to be synced with the chain so that the balance can be useful to anyone else. The average transaction is around $20 USD and has been around this much for a while. Opening and closing second layer channels is even more expensive than an average transaction. There is no universe where 1.5KB/s in transactions makes sense. Any other cryptocurrency works better, ethereum and bitco…
I'm not an expert on lightning network, but couldn't Visa position themselves as a central hub for lightning network transactions, so that most people can open a channel to Visa and they act as the clearing house for keeping all of those channels balanced? I'd never want to send large BTC amounts through visa, but I would trust them enough to facilitate Or heck, maybe consumers don't need an actual channel, just let…
The reason why crypto people love crypto is also the same reason why companies hate it. If you give people control then companies lose control.
Think of a WoW cash shop on Ethereum. Blizzard would have much less control over it than a central cash shop.
Re: Visa Plans to Enable Bitcoin Payments at 70M Merchants
#435The number of people commenting who completely misunderstand Bitcoin and crypto is astounding. Bitcoin will never be used directly for payments, it's a value store. Immutable deflationary digital gold. I wrote it off for years too because it was too slow and the fees were too expensive. That was the dream they had, but they couldn't realize it at the base layer. I was still walking around last year believing that's t…
I agree that Bitcoin is never going to be used for payments again. But I still don't know about value store. Its hard to convert back to fiat (without paying taxes) unless you're going completely P2P with cash, which likely isn't feasible for large scale transactions. Is bitcoin's value negatively affected by difficulty cashing out, or am I overthinking it?
If people can't sell isn't that positive for the price? The whole 'hodl' thing is to stop people cashing out. Since crypto has no inherent value, the price is reliant on more people cashing in than out.
Re: Visa Plans to Enable Bitcoin Payments at 70M Merchants
#436If BTC does catch up, the current inequality of the world will look like an anthill in comparison to the inequality that BTC will create. I can't imagine the world letting that happen..
The truth is complete opposite. Fiat currencies have created insane amount of wealth inequality, because they benefit those who have the power to borrow cash and own assets. With bitcoin, people can maintain their purchasing power and wealth. Bitcoin isn't pegged to CPI which means that it increases in value when economic productivity increases. CPI pegged currencies move purchasing power from labor to capital.
Assets like Bitcoin?
> Bitcoin isn't pegged to CPI which means that it increases in value when economic productivity increases.
Bitcoin increases much faster than CPI, that's a sign of a bubble. The mystery is that Bitcoin survived consecutive bubbles. I can't explain it, it's what it is. The vast majority of alternative cryptocurrencies had one bubble and died after that exactly as one would expect.
>CPI pegged currencies move purchasing power from labor to capital.
This is the first time I have heard "CPI pegged currency"
I assume that you are talking about inflation. Mild inflation is actually a wealth transfer from capital to labor because inflation is in its essence a wealth tax. Labor is paid in current year salaries as long as you switch employers. You don't get paid 1930 salaries, you get paid more to compensate for the loss of purchasing power, you just have to ask for a raise or switch employers and that is the entire point of inflation. If anyone steals from you it's your boss. You know who doesn't get paid more? Capital owners, they have to invest productively and earn enough to beat inflation.
Your next job will pay more than your last so you should switch as soon as possible. If you were paid in Bitcoin then employers would have to pay you less and less Bitcoin per year because they simply cannot afford the Bitcoin since it keeps going up in value. So your best bet is to stay with your current employer until the employer fires you because they cannot afford you anymore. Ultimately you lose anyway.
Let's also talk about why high inflation is bad. Basically, at some point you have to switch jobs so frequently that you never actually end up doing any work, most of your day is spent finding a new job. Important work like food production gets neglected.
Re: Visa Plans to Enable Bitcoin Payments at 70M Merchants
#437Earlier quoted context omitted.
People are paying good money for owning a serial number with no connection whatever to anything in the physical or in the virtual world. Don't be surprised if they also gladly pay a ridiculous fee to buy a coffee.
This take on Bitcoin -- not backed by anything in the physical or virtual world -- is misinformed. You're correct that coin isn't specifically backed by anything in the sense that you can't trade it in for a an equivalent asset like gold. But neither is the US dollar. BTC's value is backed at least by the billions that have been spent on mining architecture by companies like MARA and RIOT, large mining pools, produce…
Miners are in it for the money. If the money dries up they just move onto something else. Your logic could be applied to the gold rush as well. A huge industry was created, it won't let gold fall in price as if there was a huge cartel capable of doing so.
>But neither is the US dollar.
I can exchange it for things I want to buy. That's plenty of backing for the average consumer. If one day it has become worthless because I cannot buy anything with it anymore then I will declare it worthless and so will everyone else. Meanwhile with Bitcoin this logic is the same and when it does finally become worthless, people will still insist that it isn't.
Re: Visa Plans to Enable Bitcoin Payments at 70M Merchants
#438Earlier quoted context omitted.
The USD is backed by "the full faith and confidence of the US Government" since leaving the gold standard. Bitcoin is backed by collective faith and confidence in the security and utility of the underlying blockchain. The utility of a country, it's people/resources/military/economy/etc, is pretty obvious. What is the utility of the blockchain outside of the value of Bitcoin itself?
For example, "the collective lack of full faith and confidence of the people that the US Government will always act in their best interest"
Re: Visa Plans to Enable Bitcoin Payments at 70M Merchants
#439Why? Nobody's going to spend the transaction fee, currently about $US16, to buy a coffee. For big items maybe?
High Bitcoin transaction fees are exactly what's good for Visa. Visa most likely wants to get your Bitcoin first and settle in the merchant's currency. They then sell Bitcoin from different purchases in large on-chain transactions. Visa can essentially make the fee of a Bitcoin-to-merchant transaction $16 and still be on par with Bitcoin's own transaction fees. Only that you can buy stuff easily.
Re: Visa Plans to Enable Bitcoin Payments at 70M Merchants
#440One of the reasons I'm bullish on Bitcoin over the next decade is precisely because of the anti-BTC sentiment on this board.
What sold me on Bitcoin wasn't the strength of bitcoin itself, but the weakness of gold. Bitcoin is an incredible store of value (albeit volatile). Being able to store a huge amount of assets in an inflation resilient trust-free resource that can't be faked is incredibly useful. The other thing that sells me on it is the institutional buy in. At this point, nough rich people are going to lose big if bitcoin doesn't s…