Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 225 posts

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

#141

Post by smokeyj »

dragontamer wrote: post #133
smokeyj wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"

Is currency ever a good store of value? If you're a billionaire you're certainly not storing it in fiat.

Bitcoin being a globally distributed ledger has the ability to represent shares of commodities and equities. It's why Delaware is considering incorporating blockchain tech.

You could imagine merchants pricing in shares of Apple - and customers paying in shares of oil and Google - to be settled at PoS. Check out shapeshift.io to see how fluid crypto-to-crypto trades can be.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/delaware-considers-using-blockch...

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

#142

Post by agumonkey »

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…

This reminds me of Uber and Ryanair. They scrape out of sight properties and claim lower prices when it's just playing on words. Later when people realize they quite wanted the full thing, the magic disappear. A decade of memory loss disguised as innovation. Not even a new error.

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

#143

Post by imagist »

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…

Your analogy between Citibank and Coinbase is telling.

Citibank is, well, a bank. Coinbase is a currency exchange, and more analogous to those Forex booths you see in airports.

There are Bitcoin banks, but putting your Bitcoin into a bank loses the decentralization benefits. Admittedly holding onto your own BTC requires more security than many people are capable of implementing, but better and better solutions are being created to solve this problem.

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

#144

Post by Mickydtron »

delegate wrote: post #98

$236 is small change compared to how much bitcoin I've personally lost in the various hacks - MtGox and others. Even so, I still think bitcoin is a brilliant tech and valuable experiment. It is wrong to think of bitcoin as a direct competitor to fiat. Just like mp3 / bittorent did not destroy the music / movie industry, bitcoin isn't going to replace fiat currency. Not now and not in it's current form. But it's going…

In order for it to be a legitimate alternative, as opposed to only being of interest to ideologues and academics, shouldn't it actually be competitive with existing technologies in areas like fees, user experience, or speed? If it was better at some and worse at others, it would provide a legitimate alternative with a different set of trade-offs, but for it to lose in every category doesn't really make it seem like it can be an alternative to the centralized banking system in a real and useful way.

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

#145

Post by smokeyj »

turc1656 wrote: post #140
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 co…

> 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.

This is historically and factually inaccurate. Currencies typically originated as highly marketable commodities that are naturally scarce and fungible - salt, gold, silver, cigarettes in jail, etc.

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

#146

Post by coryfklein »

dragontamer wrote: post #56
NoNotTheDuo wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are able to receive BTC and pay for your costs with BTC, it's cheaper by quite a bit. The last transaction I sent using BTC cost me $.09. If you have to exchange BTC to USD to pay for your costs, then sure, it's going to cost more than PayPal.

> The last transaction I sent using BTC cost me $.09. And you denominated that in $$ instead of BTC why? Because the value of BTC fluctuates so much that its worthless to denominate goods in terms of BTC. Only USD is stable enough to actually denominate the value of goods with. And its not like USD is rock solid: we've got an inflation-based government pushing the value of USD down ~2% each year. But that's a lot mor…

Another plausible reason why he used the USD amount instead of 0.15 mBits, is because the Hacker News readership has had years to associate an internal "feeling" for what $0.09 is worth.

The Swiss Franc is also very stable and has similar qualities to USD. Would you not have complained if he cited the figure in Swiss Francs?

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

#147

Post by thenewwazoo »

agumonkey wrote: post #142
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…

This reminds me of Uber and Ryanair. They scrape out of sight properties and claim lower prices when it's just playing on words. Later when people realize they quite wanted the full thing, the magic disappear. A decade of memory loss disguised as innovation. Not even a new error.

"Much like how cryptocurrency is a high-speed re-enactment of how and why we developed modern financial institutions and regulations, Airbnb is a high-speed re-enactment of how and why we developed regulations on and protections for transient lodging establishments." (sorry, no attribution)

See also: taxis

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

#148

Post by coryfklein »

Mickydtron wrote: post #144
delegate wrote: post #98

$236 is small change compared to how much bitcoin I've personally lost in the various hacks - MtGox and others. Even so, I still think bitcoin is a brilliant tech and valuable experiment. It is wrong to think of bitcoin as a direct competitor to fiat. Just like mp3 / bittorent did not destroy the music / movie industry, bitcoin isn't going to replace fiat currency. Not now and not in it's current form. But it's going…

In order for it to be a legitimate alternative, as opposed to only being of interest to ideologues and academics, shouldn't it actually be competitive with existing technologies in areas like fees, user experience, or speed? If it was better at some and worse at others, it would provide a legitimate alternative with a different set of trade-offs, but for it to lose in every category doesn't really make it seem like i…

It is competitive in fees. Sending $1M of bitcoin can be done for less than a dollar. Try doing that with USD.

Of course, fees for converting USD -> BTC -> USD are not that cheap, but neither are the fees for converting USD -> YEN -> USD.

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

#150

Post by coryfklein »

daveloyall wrote: post #85

I'm interested in seeing a step-by-step explanation of how he should have done it.

If he's trying to deposit USD into an account, he should have just wired it rather than converting USD -> BTC -> USD.

If, on the other hand, he already had $5-6k worth of Bitcoin somewhere, he could have eliminated one of those conversions and it would have cost about the same. Alternatively, he may have been able to find an exchange that accepts Bitcoin directly rather than through some intermediary with a conversion fee, in which case his total deposit fee would have been < $1.

Post reply on HN