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What's the use for Bitcoin?

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Re: What's the use for Bitcoin?

#161

Post by smokeyj »

walterbell wrote: post #155
smokeyj wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0032.mediawi... I think the main advantage to a blockchain solution is the cryptographic verifiability. Not only is the accounting accurate, but the funds cannot be forged or hidden. Also the rules for managing funds can be programmatically encoded using a series of technologies such as multi-sig keys, pay-to-script-hashes, and HD Keys.

Thanks for the explanation and wallet pointer.

No problem. Here's an open source implementation by bitpay https://copay.io using their open source framework http://bitcore.io

This isn't pie in the sky tech. It's real and accessible from your mobile browser today. Pretty exciting times I think.

Re: What's the use for Bitcoin?

#162

Post by mikeyouse »

AlexMuir wrote: post #11

I just wrote a post at lunch about this. Right now for most people Bitcoin is the only way to leave your wallet at home and pay for things with your mobile phone. http://alexmuir.com/bitcoins-practical-use

I can guarantee the following;

1. More people have Applepay than have a Bitcoin wallet 2. More stores and restaurants accept Applepay than Bitcoin

12.2M people had used Applepay at least once between launch and the end of February -- Some significant portion more than once. There were only 12.263M bitcoin transactions in the same time period -- many of which were basically dust / micro-transactions of a few pennies worth of BTC.

There are only 1.5M bitcoin addresses with more than $2.50 in them.. 97% of addresses have less than .001 bitcoin.

Re: What's the use for Bitcoin?

#163

Post by swswsw »

Bitcoin network is the first truly-open financial/transaction/value network that allows developer to innovate on top of it.

What if you think it this way?

I also want to point out that bitcoin might have a shot at being a global currency.

Re: What's the use for Bitcoin?

#164

Post by mpyne »

smokeyj wrote: post #137
tptacek wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article we're discussing might be wrong, but it's fairly level-headed. Responses like this, with breathless invocations of the world-changing implications of Bitcoin and heroes-and-villains narratives about governments and banks, sap credibility from Bitcoin. They suggest that very simple arguments with Bitcoin critics can't be addressed without stipulating that Bitcoin is going to rewrite all of commerce and per…

If the IRS is going to work out in the long run, it will need arguments that work even if the blockchain retains its ability to maintain a globally distributed ledger. Are you surprised bitcoin still exists considering the white paper unapologetically spoke heresy against government and bank collusion? That must be frustrating. Seeing the NYSE invest in a bitcoin company must have been a poke in the eye for you!

Give it 10 years and I guarantee "the white paper" will be treated as reverently as the Qu'ran or the Holy Bible in some circles.

Re: What's the use for Bitcoin?

#165

Post by reganrob »

paulsutter wrote: post #8

> Bitcoin is great for illegal goods/services > Tax evasion and escaping capital controls are also possible with Bitcoin Bitcoin is about as useful as lucky sunglasses for illegal transactions. Just ask Ross William Ulbricht. I don't engage in illegal transactions. But if I did, I wouldn't use a mechanism that leaves a permanent, publicly available record just waiting to be de-anonymized. > Bitcoin is powerful becaus…

Uhhhh, you haven't heard of mixing? I mean, not Blockchain.info mixing, that one doesn't work. But there's even a push for CoinJoin (by gmaxwell, one of the maintainers of the Bitcoin source code).

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=279249.0

Also, regulation is about as useful as enforcement. If you ain't in the US, enforcement is pretty weak and therefore you can get away with it MANY times.

Re: What's the use for Bitcoin?

#166

Post by swswsw »

Frondo wrote: post #31
chisleu wrote: post #17

Bitcoin has many benefits for the average man, provided it is in wide use. Currently it isn't, so the advantages are not yet substantive. For one thing, the government doesn't control the inflation of bitcoin like it does with dollars. The fed aims for ~2.5-3% "inflation" every year, however this is inflation beyond the massive deflation that occurs year over year due to technology and efficiency increases... The sup…

"the government doesn't control the inflation of bitcoin like it does with dollars"-- This is exactly the thing about Bitcoin that concerns me most; it has economic implications baked into its design and operation, but We, the People, have no voice in deciding those implications. What if We, the People, want to change the inflationary/deflationary properties of the money? If we're on bitcoin, someone else made that c…

I think you might be confused about how bitcoin actually works.

If you want to change bitcoin's economics properties, you can. You just have to get all the nodes to agree with it. That is obviously very very difficult.

Bitcoin runs on a decentralized consensus system and uses this consensus as the truth. You can change that truth if everyone agrees with you.

In that sense, this is actually the true democracy.

Re: What's the use for Bitcoin?

#167

Post by reganrob »

njharman wrote: post #55

This is a miss-guided question. We can't predict the future, therefor we can't imagine the uses for new tech/thing. In fact disruptive new tech creates it's own uses. Asking what the use of Arpanet back in the day totally misses what the Internet has become.

How can you be optimistic about the future if no one thinks about it or builds for it?

This guy has obviously thought about it and listed it in the "Internet of things protocol" using the blockchain. I don't agree necessarily though because IEEE already working on something.

Re: What's the use for Bitcoin?

#168

Post by ostikk »

CyberDildonics wrote: post #156

Surely people here are not so short sited that they actually think these 'not useful' cases are really not useful or that these are the only use cases. Right now you could travel around Thailand and bring only your phone and passport. There is a service that allows you to give btc and get a code that can be used at any ATM of a major bank and get cash. You can cut down the 8% spread of changing money at the airport t…

With your Thailand example, the author made the point that it's actually cheaper through P2P model (like Hawala) without the need to eat the exchange spread/fees by changing BTC.

And yeah, fraud is still a huge problem for e-commerce, but how does Bitcoin solve that? As stated in the article, it just pushes more responsibility to the user. Multi-sig doesn't solve that either, you still need a 3rd party escrow provider, who will charge a fee.

Re: What's the use for Bitcoin?

#169

Post by swswsw »

georgyo wrote: post #15
cporios wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problems Bitcoin claims to be trying to solve were already solved by the banks a while back. Bitcoin (according to its website) claims to provide instant P2P transactions and very low processing fees. International bank transactions take days or weeks and have very high fees. But even more importantly, bitcoins do not require a bank account. All it requires is internet or text messaging access. This is very imp…

It still requires a bank account, just a difference sense of the word. If someone only has a phone, they need to store their bitcoin somewhere, and its unlikely to be their phone. So whoever is holding their bitcoin is acting as their bank.

It does not require a bank account in that sense.

What you need is to hold your private key. You could, for example, holds your private key somewhere else, and inject that private key to your phone when you need to use it.

Re: What's the use for Bitcoin?

#170

Post by mod_alec »

kordless wrote: post #72

"These make up a significant portion of transactions." That's a bullshit statement. Prove it, or shut up.

It can be inferred from SilkRoad's revenue. Plus, about ~50% of blockchain transactions were gambling related before they all moved offchain. You could tell because all the gambling addresses were labeled on blockchain.info

Hard to get gambling numbers now because it's all private and offchain.

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