251–260 of 293 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My 70 year old dad can use bitcoin. I'm sure your friends can learn.
Your 70 year old dad is an exception in a sea of people that don't want to learn.
Point being: Learning is a lifelong pursuit, and if you don't want to learn then you will be left behind using Facebook Messenger to send money. Kidding, but you hopefully get the gist.
I skimmed through the comments and thought "What is Venmo and how terrible am I for not knowing about it sooner?" I then searched for the term on the page and noticed that the term is largely clustered around two threads; one of which the users both drop the name so much I had to check if they worked for the company. No offense to those who enjoy Venmo and its services, but this thread is a great example of HN commen…
Among the disjoint groups of my own friends and my girlfriends' friends (none of whom code or are tech savvy at all), everyone I know in NYC uses Venmo. I learned about it from non-tech people. It could be because Venmo advertised very heavily in NYC mass transit a long time ago. My friends in the Bay Area, in contrast, are far less likely to know about Venmo and either use none of these options or are pretty fragmen…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just because you haven't experienced something doesn't mean it's a myth. http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/246mlg/bitstamp_blo... http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/25jyf1/bitstamp_ive... http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/26c1y6/buying_bitco... http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2renc7/why_dont_peo... I could go on, all I did was search /r/bitcoin for the word "passport" and I was overflowin…
You brought up having to present a passport as if it were a requirement to using bitcoin, which it is not. Again, you were spreading FUD.
I'm not sure how you read, "a passport is required to use bitcoin" from "I've never had a bank ask me for a passport when opening a bank account". My point, which I substantiated with those /r/bitcoin posts, is that it's not unusual for a bitcoin exchange to ask for a copy of a customer's passport as part of their KYC procedures.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You brought up having to present a passport as if it were a requirement to using bitcoin, which it is not. Again, you were spreading FUD.
> You brought up having to present a passport as if it were a requirement to using bitcoin I'm not sure how you read, "a passport is required to use bitcoin" from "I've never had a bank ask me for a passport when opening a bank account". My point, which I substantiated with those /r/bitcoin posts, is that it's not unusual for a bitcoin exchange to ask for a copy of a customer's passport as part of their KYC procedure…
One can deduce from the context that a passport is required to use bitcoin. It's FUD and incorrect.
What do banks require in order to open an account?
From the 1st result on google:
your name, your date of birth, your current address and phone number, Social Security number (in most cases) and your email address.
You don't need any of those to use bitcoin. You don't need any of those to buy or sell bitcoin.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, I haven't read the list of locations where bitcoin is accepted. The reason for this is, like most people, I have a bank account and don't need to double check that I can actually pay for dinner and a movie before I patronize an establishment.
Except you weren't patronizing an establishment. You were spreading FUD.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Banks are the ones taking those losses, and it comes out of the CC fees paid by merchants. Yes, this probably results in price increases, which is like buying insurance - I will pay 2% more for pretty much every good I buy, and in return I will never be defrauded out of my entire life's savings at once. Seems like a good deal to me?
You don't see the problem here do you? 13.1 million people were defrauded because they used a credit card. $18 Billion were lost as a result. Losses due to bitcoin are peanuts in comparison.
Over the course of a year, $18 billion were lost to CC fraud. Meanwhile, CC transactions totaled about $6 trillion [0] (that was 2010, the most recent I could come up with, but it's been increasing every year for a long time so I'll be generous and use it). That's .3% - clearly affordable on the 2-3% merchants typically pay.
Meanwhile, Mt. Gox defrauded users out of about 650,000 bitcoins [1]. This was a single instance of fraud, remember - I'm trying to be generous. Eyeballing this chart [2], I'm going to give bitcoin a clearly-exaggerated 200,000 BTC in daily transactions, or 73 million BTC in a year. This comes out to .9%, or about 3 times higher than CC fraud.
But remember what I said earlier - CC companies essentially insure you against loss by paying out the fraud themselves and then forcing merchants to raise prices a bit to make up for it. In bitcoin, a given person can easily lose thousands, tens of thousands, millions of dollars, all at once. No recompense. So not only is the rate 3 times higher, the outcome is _way_ worse per dollar lost fraudulently.
[0] http://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/credit-card-data/credit-card-... [1] https://coinreport.net/99-of-mt-gox-bitcoin-losses-likely-fr... [2] https://blockchain.info/charts/estimated-transaction-volume
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You brought up having to present a passport as if it were a requirement to using bitcoin I'm not sure how you read, "a passport is required to use bitcoin" from "I've never had a bank ask me for a passport when opening a bank account". My point, which I substantiated with those /r/bitcoin posts, is that it's not unusual for a bitcoin exchange to ask for a copy of a customer's passport as part of their KYC procedure…
>>This all assumes the exchange will even do business with them following their extensive KYC checks....I've never had a bank require...a passport.. One can deduce from the context that a passport is required to use bitcoin. It's FUD and incorrect. What do banks require in order to open an account? From the 1st result on google: your name, your date of birth, your current address and phone number, Social Security num…
You deduced incorrectly. I'm saying that if the KYC system flags the recipient, for whatever reason, then they will likely be required to produce a passport.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>>This all assumes the exchange will even do business with them following their extensive KYC checks....I've never had a bank require...a passport.. One can deduce from the context that a passport is required to use bitcoin. It's FUD and incorrect. What do banks require in order to open an account? From the 1st result on google: your name, your date of birth, your current address and phone number, Social Security num…
> One can deduce from the context that a passport is required to use bitcoin. You deduced incorrectly. I'm saying that if the KYC system flags the recipient, for whatever reason, then they will likely be required to produce a passport.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Except you weren't patronizing an establishment. You were spreading FUD.
What you call "FUD", the rest of the world calls "reality". Bitcoin is currently impractical as money, that's just a fact. The few businesses that accept bitcoin aren't even close to enough to make bitcoin practical for every day needs.
Besides that, bitcoin is so profoundly different than traditional money systems it can't possibly be practical as money so soon. It shouldn't be practical as money so soon, but it is making progress.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> One can deduce from the context that a passport is required to use bitcoin. You deduced incorrectly. I'm saying that if the KYC system flags the recipient, for whatever reason, then they will likely be required to produce a passport.
The KYC system is the exchange's, not bitcoin's. It's similar to blaming TCP/IP because a website requires you to use a password to log in.
This is obvious. What is your point? Nobody is arguing that KYC is a requirement of bitcoin. Let me break down exactly what I'm saying:
1. For the vast majority of people, bitcoin is impractical as a method of payment for every day needs.
2. As a result of this, most people don't want bitcoins, and instead prefer legal tender that is usable wherever they might need to spend it.
3. The most practical and least stressful method for converting bitcoins into legal tender is through an exchange.
4. Exchanges have KYC procedures.
Very simple.