201–210 of 225 posts
The only people really interested in BitCoin are only interested in the "untraceability" of it. Consequently, nobody really cares about the fees as it's all about the ability to move your money around while avoiding government scrutiny. And these fees are what they are willing to pay to accomplish that.
People in places without functioning banking systems may also appreciate it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Uber is selling unorganized, uninsured, unchecked drivers. I believe no legal taxi company can do that since they're liable would anything happen to you. If Uber had to form, insure, optimize, thus manage, they'd require additional workforce, time, costs, and wouldn't give it to you for free. The customer interface is (was? I don't know if taxi companies competes on the app side) way above and that's the value here.…
Uber came in and was very clearly illegal here, but they offered significantly better service and had more drivers available. A couple years on after fighting the government for a long time, Uber finally came to an agreement with the government and new regulation was passed. Rides sharing vehicles will now require nearly all the same regulations as a taxi, but the larger affect is more competition to traditional all taxis.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> 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. In Kenya people trade in cell phone minutes (MPESA). It's not a huge stretch to imagine trading in units of energy or other commodities. It seems to me that having an instant settlement layer challenges the need for currency as an intermediary.
1 cell phone minute today is 1 cell phone minute tomorrow - it's a real thing with real utility. Not so with BTC.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Uber is selling unorganized, uninsured, unchecked drivers. I believe no legal taxi company can do that since they're liable would anything happen to you. If Uber had to form, insure, optimize, thus manage, they'd require additional workforce, time, costs, and wouldn't give it to you for free. The customer interface is (was? I don't know if taxi companies competes on the app side) way above and that's the value here.…
In Montreal there has recently been a giant upheaval of the taxi system as a result of Uber. The taxi industry here was incredibly broken and dysfunctional. They were n unchallenged monopoly, with not enough taxis to go around as the the population began growing again. Uber came in and was very clearly illegal here, but they offered significantly better service and had more drivers available. A couple years on after…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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. In Kenya people trade in cell phone minutes (MPESA). It's not a huge stretch to imagine trading in units of energy or other commodities. It seems to me that having an instant settlement layer challenges the need for currency as an intermediary.
Which reinforces @mikeash's point. 1 cell phone minute today is 1 cell phone minute tomorrow - it's a real thing with real utility. Not so with BTC.
Now the kicker is, the bitcoin transaction fee is increasing rapidly due to (self-induced, political and totally fixable) bottlenecks in the network. I foresee an alternative taking over bitcoin if this isn't resolved soon.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 f…
That's not a path to becoming mainstream, that is mainstream.
Bitcoin was never intended to reduce the cost of Banks, but rather supply an alternative.
Hands up everyone here with a memory longer than that of a goldfish who remembers the Bitcoin promise "no fees!" The one they don't seem to make any more.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
AIUI, it's because the expensive part is not basically updating an internal database when money changes hands (no sending of BTC required), the expensive part is, to take WU as an example, operating half a million brick and mortar locations in 200+ countries.
Well what I'm saying is that it doesn't have to be the internal database. It can be a completely decentralised system. I send you $50 and you open an app and just walk up to the first money guy that you see on the street. Why do we need physical banks?