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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

#211

Post by CalRobert »

CalRobert wrote: post #193
agumonkey wrote: post #142

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.

What's that about Ryanair? People do enjoy complaining but I quite like being able to fly cheap without paying for stuff I don't need. Admittedly it was more appalling when you couldn't even pay for your ticket without paying a fee (unless you had one particular laser card) but the most onerous ones have been phased out.

Although, I should add that it feels bad giving money to Michael O'Leary when he is an outspoken opponent of safer cycling infrastructure in my home.

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

#212

Post by nicky0 »

tarancato wrote: post #52
nicky0 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If everybody used bitcoin for everything, then there would be no need for exchanges, payment gateways and the like. This stuff is added cruft.

If my granny had wheels, she'd be a bicycle.

You could add some ham and it would be a sort of British carbonara.

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

#213

Post by nicky0 »

zajd wrote: post #87
daptaq wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate ob your last point? Regarding the first point: To my understating, as a Ex-Bitcoiner, the whole point is a massive distrust in financial institutions + the idea that the whole hierarchy of banks and clients seems superfluous, and could be done away with. Insted of giving up your responsibilities that you get by having money, you take them into your own hand, leaving banks and the similar with noth…

It's more or less that all value created from Bitcoin only exists because of the fiat currency systems in place today. It's not like banks hold your money for days when transferring for no reason. Trust is a social problem and simply cannot be solved via technology because the infrastructure that technology is built on cannot be neutral... we live on a planet with limited resources. If your master plan includes chopp…

Because fiat currency is never used for anything illegal.

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

#214

Post by makomk »

dragontamer wrote: post #157
smokeyj wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

For billionaires or even mere millionaires, currency isn't some fungible thing anymore. Remember that bank deposit insurance is capped at a few hundred thousand.

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

#215

Post by mrb »

3pt14159 wrote: post #180
imagist wrote: post #134

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…

My question is why aren't there transfer companies that just use Bitcoin as an alternative to Swift? Like, you want to send $50 USD to me. You give person A $50, he sends person B $50 worth of Bitcoin, and person B gives me $50 worth of USD. Why do you even need to know about Bitcoin at all? Why isn't it just a cheap(ish) financial resolution layer?

You described exactly what SCI does: they use Bitcoin internally (customers don't typically even know it) and they managed to have captured ~20% of the remittance corridor between South Korea-Philippines. Here is SCI's cofounder talking about their company: https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/53lxkt/is_it_really_so...

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

#216

Post by zajd »

nicky0 wrote: post #213
zajd wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more or less that all value created from Bitcoin only exists because of the fiat currency systems in place today. It's not like banks hold your money for days when transferring for no reason. Trust is a social problem and simply cannot be solved via technology because the infrastructure that technology is built on cannot be neutral... we live on a planet with limited resources. If your master plan includes chopp…

Because fiat currency is never used for anything illegal.

Spoiler alert, that's why they track how it's spent and where it's sent to. Turns out that "anonymous transactions" thing opens up a whole giant can of black market worms.

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

#217

Post by mikeash »

smokeyj wrote: post #206
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Each bitcoin is divisible up to 8 digits and can be used to represent certificates - potentially representing cell phone minutes, or certificates to equity or commodities - for the cost of .000000001 satoshi. 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 re…

The other kicker is that if 0.00001 (whatever the actual number would be) buys one cell phone minute today, it might buy two tomorrow, or one half. Short-term volatility makes it difficult to use as currency.

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

#218

Post by smokeyj »

mikeash wrote: post #217
smokeyj wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Each bitcoin is divisible up to 8 digits and can be used to represent certificates - potentially representing cell phone minutes, or certificates to equity or commodities - for the cost of .000000001 satoshi. 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 re…

The other kicker is that if 0.00001 (whatever the actual number would be) buys one cell phone minute today, it might buy two tomorrow, or one half. Short-term volatility makes it difficult to use as currency.

You're missing my point. You don't ever have to use bitcoin as a currency. Instead of holding say - 1 bitcoin - you could own a certificate for oil (or a diversified basket) - represented on the blockchain (still .000000001 satoshi).

So when you want to buy cell phone minutes, you simply convert your oil certificate to cell minute certificates through a settlement layer. This means merchants can denominate prices in whatever they'd like - and buyers can pay in whatever currency/asset they'd like.

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

#219

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

smokeyj wrote: post #218
mikeash wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other kicker is that if 0.00001 (whatever the actual number would be) buys one cell phone minute today, it might buy two tomorrow, or one half. Short-term volatility makes it difficult to use as currency.

You're missing my point. You don't ever have to use bitcoin as a currency. Instead of holding say - 1 bitcoin - you could own a certificate for oil (or a diversified basket) - represented on the blockchain (still .000000001 satoshi). So when you want to buy cell phone minutes, you simply convert your oil certificate to cell minute certificates through a settlement layer. This means merchants can denominate prices in…

I think we do understand your point, and it reduces to "blockchain blockchain blockchain blockchain because blockchain blockchain".

But then fails to be better or even different to what we have now:

This means merchants can denominate prices in whatever they'd like - and buyers can pay in whatever currency/asset they'd like.

Indeed! We have that now. Where I live we use the Australian Dollar because that's what buyers and pays like. When I want to convert stock to cell phone minutes I do that through a settlement layer: log on to stock trading platform, sell shares, wait two days, buy cell phone minutes - it's sufficiently instant for my needs, and appears to be meeting everyone else's needs as evidenced by the continual churn of economic activity.

One issue I see with your proposal is I'm not convinced I know how to rationally price an oil certificate vis-à-vis a cell phone minute. That's why we need markets, I guess.

Blockchain is a solution looking for a problem. The problem of converting stock certificates to cell phone minutes is largely solved for most people who own stock. The problem of purchasing cell phone minutes is largely solved, and for those places where it isn't slapping a blockchain on it won't help any more than slapping whatever database is popular this week on it.

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

#220

Post by mikeash »

smokeyj wrote: post #218
mikeash wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other kicker is that if 0.00001 (whatever the actual number would be) buys one cell phone minute today, it might buy two tomorrow, or one half. Short-term volatility makes it difficult to use as currency.

You're missing my point. You don't ever have to use bitcoin as a currency. Instead of holding say - 1 bitcoin - you could own a certificate for oil (or a diversified basket) - represented on the blockchain (still .000000001 satoshi). So when you want to buy cell phone minutes, you simply convert your oil certificate to cell minute certificates through a settlement layer. This means merchants can denominate prices in…

I understand that perfectly. You seem to be missing my point that using volatile assets as currency makes things really complicated because you can't easily plan based on their value.

It doesn't matter if I hold a bitcoin or an oil certificate or a share of AAPL or a futures contract for polar bear fur, I don't want to use stuff as currency where I don't know how much groceries it'll buy next week.

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