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

151–160 of 225 posts

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

#151

Post by kelnos »

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.

I get what you're saying with Ryanair (a sub-standard product sold cheaply), but I don't see the link with Uber. It's cheaper than taxis, and is a much much much better product. I consider Uber/Lyft "the full thing" these days, and taxis are archaic. Unclear if Uber's pricing is long-term sustainable, but even at higher prices I'd choose it every time over a taxi.

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

#153

Post by Animats »

ascorbic wrote: post #138
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.

That doesn't mean that financial institutions that won't deal with US persons are legitimate. They don't deal with Bahama persons either, even though they are licensed to do so. That might get them in trouble with local regulators.

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

#154

Post by coryfklein »

aidenn0 wrote: post #83
adrusi wrote: post #38

Transferring bitcoin when all relevant parties are using bitcoin is more efficient than transferring USD when all relevant parties are using USD. If people are presenting bitcoin as a good alternative to wire transfers then they are being misleading.

If bitcoins can't compete with wire transfers, then how will bitcoin ever become mainstream? The world isn't going to switch to bitcoin overnight, so there will be a period of time in which bitcoin will need to be converted to other currency at one or both ends.

> how will bitcoin ever become mainstream?

I doubt it ever will become mainstream, but one path to "mainstream" is when merchants, banks, companies, and payment providers just accept Bitcoin rather than:

1) Pretend to accept bitcoin 2) Pay a sub-par service with high fees to convert any received BTC into USD immediately 3) Encourage customers that don't already hold BTC to pay in BTC, adding another conversion step from USD -> BTC

If 90% of the people I give money to just accept Bitcoin as payment, then it makes sense for me to have a "Bitcoin account", as payment fees could be lower.

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

#155

Post by runeks »

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.

But the goal is to transfer USD across international borders...

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

#157

Post by dragontamer »

smokeyj wrote: post #141
dragontamer wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sh…

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

What? Do you change all of your savings into stocks or bonds each month?

Currency is the best short-term store of value. And "short term" means anything I plan to use in the next 6 months (My emergency fund will last 6 months without me being forced to touch my bonds or stocks, giving me breathing room for when to liquidate my long-term savings.)

I trust cash to be stable in the short term, even if it loses value long-term. I can't trust BTC as either long-term or even short-term storage.

BTC utterly fails at "6-month" storage due to its volatility. BTC has no history for growing (stocks are based on company profits. So as long as companies are profitable, they'll grow). Bonds are strong guarantees for growing: only bankruptcy can prevent me from getting me money promised through a bond.

What guarantees do I have for long-term BTC storage? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Short term? Well, again, stability is more important than gains in the short term (which is why my short-term is cash... not stocks).

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

#158

Post by aianus »

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 doesn't lose in every category, OP just chose a specific situation in which it was very expensive and then wrote a blog post showcasing his poor planning.

As a counter-anecdote I saved hundreds of dollars transferring USD10,000 in the US to THB cash in Thailand via Bitcoin.

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

#159

Post by mikeash »

smokeyj wrote: post #141
dragontamer wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sh…

Stable currencies are a good short to medium term store of value. If I withdraw $100 from the ATM, I can spend it a week or a month later and be fairly confident that it'll be worth essentially the same. I'm not rushing to the stores on payday to buy all of my supplies before fluctuations wreck my money.

This is not the case for BTC or AAPL. If I get 1BTC today, some new MtGox story might wreck its value before I buy groceries with it tomorrow. AAPL is unlikely to move as much, but it moves around by several percent on a fairly regular basis, and some huge negative news could send it plunging.

I could imagine your scenario of pricing in AAPL and paying in oil and GOOG in a technological sense, but I have a hard time imagining anyone actually doing it.

Post reply on HN