It’s easier and cheaper to use bank wires than Bitcoin • Hacker News Board

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

#221

Post by smokeyj » Sat, Oct 01, 2016, 12:57 AM UTC

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #219

smokeyj wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 buyer…

But why you mad bro? This isn't a personal attack on your trading account. Some people here were just talking about technology stuff, don't sweat it!

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

#222

Post by smokeyj » Sat, Oct 01, 2016, 3:38 AM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #220

smokeyj wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It might be difficult to imagine but there's countries where the official government issued currency leads to the exact situation you're describing. Unpredictable buying power and economic uncertainty. That was the whole point of my comment - check the original.

There's places in this world where the idea of an apolitical central bank is unimaginable. If you don't have an imagination I can't help you there. Or maybe you don't car about humans from non-western countries. Either way, this innovation clearly isn't for you.

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

#223

Post by mikeash » Sat, Oct 01, 2016, 3:48 AM UTC

smokeyj wrote: post #222

mikeash wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It might be difficult to imagine but there's countries where the official government issued currency leads to the exact situation you're describing. Unpredictable buying power and economic uncertainty. That was the whole point of my comment - check the original. There's places in this world where the idea of an apolitical central bank is unimaginable. If you don't have an imagination I can't help you there. Or maybe…

I specifically said "stable currencies." If you were talking about unstable currencies then this whole subthread is just pointless....

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

#224

Post by EdHominem » Thu, Oct 06, 2016, 6:07 PM UTC

zajd wrote: post #108

rhino369 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin is made at will out of thin air. It's just an arbitrary amount created every day. The creation rate was just picked by whoever created it. I think it can actually be changed by concensus. I see no reason why an arbitrary rate is better than a rate chosen to minimize inflation and deflation. Bitcoin basically is a fiat currency, except no government forces people to use it.

The irony being if something like Fusion power happened bitcoin hyperinflation would be guaranteed.

No, the difficulty would rise but the number of "coins" created would be constant and they'd cost the same because the same dollar-value of electricity was spent generating them.

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

#225

Post by andirk » Fri, Oct 07, 2016, 6:03 PM UTC

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…

As Satoshi's whitepaper harps on, and, in my opinion, the biggest difference between fiat and BTC is that BTC doesn't answer to a government. That may have a premium or a discount attached to it. But if that's not an attractive reason for someone to use BTC, then yeah, we need to look at fees like you are talking about.