121–130 of 237 posts
The value of fiat currency is that the issuing entity assures it's worth, ensures it's security, it's validity and facilitates flow. The benefits of cryptocurrency may look appealing, however, as a store of wealth it's a long way from 'mainstream' and I believe entropy will prevail, in the fiat system entropy is handled, the supply of money is flexible, in a system with entropy, everyone's wealth will tend towards ze…
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But with Google your Mom can find out when the store is open and where it is. Facebook lets grandparents see photos of grandchildren. Reading a blog replaces reading the gossip column in the daily paper. You could finally buy plane tickets without driving somewhere. And so on. The early web was really fucking useful as it started to mature. It solved a lot of real problems. What is cryptocurrency going to help these…
" What is cryptocurrency going to help these people do that they can't do already today? " International payments confirmed and spendable in minutes not days. Escaping inflation in Venezuela/Argentina/whoeverisnext. Sending remittance to family overseas without 10% wasted in fees. Receiving monetary donations for organizations that might be victim of oppressive censorship. Participating in modern e-commerce for the u…
So cryptocurrency is a niche app for crashing economies in the developing world and those needing to do international payments through unofficial channels?
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But with Google your Mom can find out when the store is open and where it is. Facebook lets grandparents see photos of grandchildren. Reading a blog replaces reading the gossip column in the daily paper. You could finally buy plane tickets without driving somewhere. And so on. The early web was really fucking useful as it started to mature. It solved a lot of real problems. What is cryptocurrency going to help these…
" What is cryptocurrency going to help these people do that they can't do already today? " International payments confirmed and spendable in minutes not days. Escaping inflation in Venezuela/Argentina/whoeverisnext. Sending remittance to family overseas without 10% wasted in fees. Receiving monetary donations for organizations that might be victim of oppressive censorship. Participating in modern e-commerce for the u…
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> International payments When was the last time you made an international payment? I never made a payment outside of the EU and inside the EU I already have free wire transfers. For most people this is not interesting. > unbanked/underbanked You have the right to a bank account in the EU. > Allowing merchants to save 2% in credit card fees Currently Bitcoin is more expensive for typical transactions. And there's dire…
" When was the last time you made an international payment? " I love that you asked this question! The very reason it doesn't happen often is because of friction inherent to legacy payment systems. Cryptocurrencies remove this friction in cross-border trade, hence are making such transactions more commonplace. It's like you saying in 1890 "Why buy cars? People don't travel that much." But the invention of cars is pre…
This argument presupposes what it tries to prove: the utility of cryptocurrencies.
There's no argument in there on why, if it was trivially possible due to cryptocurrency, the desire/need for international payments would increase.
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The web was mainstream when I was like 10 on AOL doing who knows what with all my classmates. My grandparents even got into it and sent me emails and chatrooms. Geocities was more or less main stream and kinda like pre-social media. Those communities were a little different. I can also remember using Altavista and Lycos before I ever heard of a Google. My mom introduced me to google to help me research papers for sch…
Your mom is an outlier.
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But with Google your Mom can find out when the store is open and where it is. Facebook lets grandparents see photos of grandchildren. Reading a blog replaces reading the gossip column in the daily paper. You could finally buy plane tickets without driving somewhere. And so on. The early web was really fucking useful as it started to mature. It solved a lot of real problems. What is cryptocurrency going to help these…
" What is cryptocurrency going to help these people do that they can't do already today? " International payments confirmed and spendable in minutes not days. Escaping inflation in Venezuela/Argentina/whoeverisnext. Sending remittance to family overseas without 10% wasted in fees. Receiving monetary donations for organizations that might be victim of oppressive censorship. Participating in modern e-commerce for the u…
> Allowing merchants to save 2% in credit card fees (which doubles their profit margin if it was 2% to begin with).
In the EU those fees are capped at 0.2% for debit cards, 0.3% for credit cards [1]. It'll be helpful if the crypto currency fees gets even lower than those, but 0.2% starts to get pretty low.
[1] http://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2015/...
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According to Wikipedia, remittances were in excess of $560 billion last year, faciliated by 250 million migrant workers[1]. You and I are not the user demographic ;) 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remittance
That's his point though, the early internet had many useful applications that where appealing to the mainstream. International money transfers are not a mainstream activity.
That strikes me as an appealing use case.
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If everyone wants to take their $2000 out at once, can they? In most countries that's highly unlikely, so is it really $2000? Or something entirely different?
It's debt, they're not storing money for you unless you get a safe deposit box and leave it in that. Deposits are loans you make to the bank. The interest rate is crap because you want the ability to call in that debt whenever you feel like. But like loaning anyone else money, they might not have it on them when you come to collect.
A long, long, long time from now they'll call that exploitation in the name of convenience and the status quo.
Bitcoin seems quite straightforward and easy to understand, compared to our current banking system. A lot of comments mention the difficulty of explaining what is bitcoin and how it works, and that mainstream people cannot get enough understanding to start using it. What about the actual banking system? There are so much mainstream ignorance about our current banking system. What does it even mean that I own $2000 at…