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It’s easier and cheaper to use bank wires than Bitcoin

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Re: It’s easier and cheaper to use bank wires than Bitcoin

#131

Post by SilasX »

zajd wrote: post #22
uobytx wrote: post #12

I don't think USD -> Bitcoin -> USD is really the way to go on this. If you are trading in USD, why would you move it into bitcoin and back again? You already had it in USD. If you need to buy some groceries in the US, you wouldn't trade your USD for CAD (Canada money), then bring CAD to a grocery store that also accepts USD. You would only bring CAD if you already had CAD.

Because one of the espoused values of Bitcoin is the ease of transferring it across international borders.

Then what about comparison to the cost of getting dollars into a country whose government is very hostile to them, like Venezuela?

Re: It’s easier and cheaper to use bank wires than Bitcoin

#132

Post by dragontamer »

justinzollars wrote: post #68

Turning anything to cash is an expensive proposition. Try selling a house.

> Turning anything to cash is an expensive proposition.

It costs me $7 to change my stocks into cash and vice versa. Frankly, turning BTC -> USD -> BTC is harder than turning Apple stock -> USD -> Apple stock.

Re: It’s easier and cheaper to use bank wires than Bitcoin

#133

Post by dragontamer »

smokeyj wrote: post #77
shawnb576 wrote: post #42

You can't separate the currency from the ecosystem for anything but academic purposes. The ecosystem is a mess. A commonly cited benefit of crypto-currencies is that they'll eliminate friction and fees in the system, and I think this is only because the systems don't exist. People want security, verifiability, and reversibility when dealing with money. There has to exist companies to do this whether they are Citibank…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation#Notable_hyperin... It's a big world out there, most of which has no easy way of integrating with modern systems of credit, lending and other financial instruments. I see blockchain technology as a promising way for distributed groups to organize, create operating agreements, and execute contracts for market rate on a global setting.

http://pricedingold.com/charts/BTC-2013.png

Erm... BTC is less stable than USD by every conceivable measure.

http://www.orchardplatform.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/bt...

Tell me: would you be surprised if BTC changed in price by 50% by the end of this month? I wouldn't be, I simply don't trust BTC to retain its value in any way. BTC goes up or down, and that's bad for "currencies"

Re: It’s easier and cheaper to use bank wires than Bitcoin

#134

Post by imagist »

The new title is worse than the first.

Sure, it's easier and cheaper to wire USD to another country than it is to exchange USD for BTC, send BTC, and then exchange BTC to USD. Just like it's cheaper to wire USD to another country than it is to exchange USD for literally anything, send that literally anything, and then exchange that literally anything to USD.

If you insist on using BTC as a transfer mechanism for USD, you're going to incur most of the fees and risk you would if you used GBP, CAD, AUD, Yen, or any other currency as a transfer mechanism for USD. I'm not sure why anyone would expect anything different.

However, if you compare apples to apples, transferring BTC which is denominated in BTC throughout the transaction is much easier and cheaper than transferring USD which started is denominated in USD throughout the transaction.

Re: It’s easier and cheaper to use bank wires than Bitcoin

#135

Post by turc1656 »

uobytx wrote: post #12

I don't think USD -> Bitcoin -> USD is really the way to go on this. If you are trading in USD, why would you move it into bitcoin and back again? You already had it in USD. If you need to buy some groceries in the US, you wouldn't trade your USD for CAD (Canada money), then bring CAD to a grocery store that also accepts USD. You would only bring CAD if you already had CAD.

totally agree. the author of that article completely doesn't even mention the fact that his bank wire is already in the proper currency and doesn't require a currency conversion. currency conversion from your bank will definitely cost you money - min is 1% fee for the bank, usually a bit more. So while the banking wire is a flat fee, a currency conversion would have cost him a fair amount.

if he already owned BTC he would have avoided the first two steps and saved himself $180.

Re: It’s easier and cheaper to use bank wires than Bitcoin

#137

Post by Mickydtron »

EdHominem wrote: post #125
zajd wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't trust the goodness of human nature, I trust the legal and financial system that we've collectively built over the past millennia. Which actually does (at least attempts to) enforce some level of fairness. Why should I sign up to have the future of the financial system be controlled by an "algorithm" that is built on a technology (non-quantum crypto) that could be dead in less than 50 years?

> I don't trust the goodness of human nature, I trust the legal and financial system that we've collectively built over the past millennia. I don't like X, I love X. Your distrust of human nature has caused you to double-down on trusting human nature. Those elaborate systems to counter human nature are built on, get this, more human nature. > the future of the financial system be controlled by an "algorithm" that is…

Regarding the trustworthiness of social institutions, there are mechanisms for creating more trustworthy systems on top of less trustworthy parts. A simple example is TCP. It is a leaky abstraction at times, yes, but it is more trustworthy in the face of adversity than UDP is.

This is not to say that our current batch of social institutions are even as trustworthy as TCP, just that it is possible to build institutions that are, and that we have a lot more experience as a civilization with debugging social institutions than we do debugging software. Thus, I do not think it is paradoxical to lean on social institutions to reign in raw human nature.

Re: It’s easier and cheaper to use bank wires than Bitcoin

#138

Post by ascorbic »

Animats wrote: post #97

All this to open a day trading account in the Bahamas with a company so flaky that they can't offer accounts to US persons or even to Bahamas persons. It's one of those "trade offshore with high leverage" companies. "High leverage" means high interest charges, which means the return on investment drops. (Their site is vague about interest charges. Not a good sign.) For day trading, the "house edge" is improved. This…

FATCA means plenty of legitimate financial institutions want nothing to do with US persons.

Re: It’s easier and cheaper to use bank wires than Bitcoin

#139

Post by Mickydtron »

AsyncAwait wrote: post #96
dlp211 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think Bitcoin is made at will out of thin air like flat currency routinely is. This is a gross oversimplification of how the vast majority of central banks(ie: the ones that matter) handle their fiat currency. In theory, yes, they could just print money, in practice, they don't "just print money".

I kind of assumed that is enough to get the point across, but my point was that a flat currency relies too much on the moral code of a few human actors, whereas in Bitcoin, the contract agreed upon by the majority of the network is not enforced by humans, but by a cryptographic protocol.

A well designed fiat currency system would not rely on the moral code of humans, but rather on having created an incentive structure such that the actors in power are pushed towards doing the correct thing. We have not fully accomplished this, but it is a state that we can strive towards. It is important to note that fiat currency is not based on the idea that we can reliably find and promote saints to run it (at least in theory).

Re: It’s easier and cheaper to use bank wires than Bitcoin

#140

Post by turc1656 »

shawnb576 wrote: post #42

You can't separate the currency from the ecosystem for anything but academic purposes. The ecosystem is a mess. A commonly cited benefit of crypto-currencies is that they'll eliminate friction and fees in the system, and I think this is only because the systems don't exist. People want security, verifiability, and reversibility when dealing with money. There has to exist companies to do this whether they are Citibank…

good points. something else to consider - money derives its value from 2 sources: 1) the actual goods and services (GDP) that it represents and 2) the fact that government demands taxes be paid in it. BTC fills neither of these because no government does business with it and no one knows what it represents because it's not linked to a specific country or region of people. that alone should disqualify it from being considered "real money". until that changes, that should be everyone's view of it.

one other thing - with regards to fiat, BTC does have one theoretical advantage - the ability to limit government spending because it cannot be created out of thin air to be created as credit and spent as debt. and that is why no government will ever use it. but we wouldn't want this anyway because we actually DO want government to be able to create money as needed. the reason is that because the stated goal of the fed is "stable prices and full employment" stable prices are simple - your monetary supply expands AND CONTRACTS with GDP, pure and simple. 100 bushels of wheat in your economy and $200 in money? that's $2 per bushel. if your economy doubles due to additional population or technological/productivity improvements and starts producing 150 bushels, you need to have $300 in your economy for stable prices. the issue is that our government increases its spending at a rate that far exceeds the growth of GDP.

want a great idea for a far superior monetary system? read this: https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=209282

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