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In Sweden, cash is king no more

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Re: In Sweden, cash is king no more

#31

Post by dfc »

mindslight wrote: post #27
dcosson wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's kind of the whole point of Bitcoin. Free to use, not tied to any government or organization, and it can be completely anonymous. With that comes the downsides that you have to be technical and know what you're doing to use it, as does the person you're buying from, and bitcoins are basically as easy to steal as cash.

What is the 'anonymity' property of bitcoin I keep hearing about? Has there been a fundamental overhaul of the protocol since Satoshi's initial paper?

The parent means pseudonymous. Bitcoin is certainly not anonymous.

Re: In Sweden, cash is king no more

#32

Post by dfc »

Why can't a thief force you to transfer money electronically just like the money was transfered for the church donation? (I am not saying that the church donation was coerced.)

Re: In Sweden, cash is king no more

#33

Post by jacobr »

Swede here, and as paranoid as the next person. I moved from Gmail due to privacy concerns. I block a lot of tracking domains at DNS level.

However, those are trade-offs with very little negative impact in my daily routines. A slightly worse UI for my email is nothing like moving from cards back to cash. It would be like moving from the Internet back to snail mail because email is insecure, or perhaps to Stallman type email/wget web browsing. Simply not worth it.

Speaking of snail mail, I send a handful of those a year and barely know where to put the stamp. I handle my taxes, student loans, banking, social insurance (for my kid), etc, online.

I would love better regulations for usage of consumer data, but cash? No way.

Re: In Sweden, cash is king no more

#34

Post by _delirium »

jacobr wrote: post #33

Swede here, and as paranoid as the next person. I moved from Gmail due to privacy concerns. I block a lot of tracking domains at DNS level. However, those are trade-offs with very little negative impact in my daily routines. A slightly worse UI for my email is nothing like moving from cards back to cash. It would be like moving from the Internet back to snail mail because email is insecure, or perhaps to Stallman typ…

I get the convenience for things like paying rent, taxes, etc., but the main reason I don't use credit cards for small things is how much less convenient it is. Much easier to hand over 50 Kr than go through the routine of: gesture to indicate I'm paying with card / make way over to machine at the end of the bar (waiting if someone else is using it) / insert card / enter pin / pause to confirm it went through. Even if I have to wait to receive change, it's usually still faster.

Re: In Sweden, cash is king no more

#35

Post by lflux »

mattmiller wrote: post #19

Do the Visas and Mastercards of Sweden still get their cut of every transaction? What a great way for these companies to solidify their corner of the market. Here is what I want: a way to do electronic transactions anonymously and cheaper that the current options. How do you do this while combating fraud?

Yes, Visa, MC and Amex take a cut. This infuriated shopowners to no end when they raised their tariffs, prompting a wave of "no charges under 50kr" or "3kr extra if you're paying with card (under x kr)"

Re: In Sweden, cash is king no more

#36

Post by lflux »

tjoff wrote: post #6
Chrono wrote: post #3

As a Swede I am used to always being able to pay with my card; Heading to the bar? No need to withdraw cash. Grabbing a taxi home late at night? No need to worry if you have enough cash, they accept cards. To add to this is that electronic transfer of money to both businesses and private citizens is quick and easy. If you transfer within the same bank it is instant and takes up to a day, depending on the hour, to tra…

As a Swede, I always bring cash. Heading to the bar? Already have cash in the wallet. Grabbing a taxi home late at night? No need to worry that I don't have enough cash on me. Store temporarily only accept cash due to some error? Replace panic with nonexistent queue. Regardless of whether you always pay cash or always pay with a card and regardless of whether you value privacy or not - you should always, in my opnion…

All grocery stores around me use a sealed cash system. I've been more often stuck behind people wanting to pay with cash when the cash scanner breaks down compared to the card machine being down.

Re: In Sweden, cash is king no more

#37

Post by tjoff »

dfc wrote: post #31
mindslight wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the 'anonymity' property of bitcoin I keep hearing about? Has there been a fundamental overhaul of the protocol since Satoshi's initial paper?

The parent means pseudonymous. Bitcoin is certainly not anonymous.

And with the transaction history included, and most transactions, by necessity, tell something about you (at least the merchant probably needs to know where to send your item or whatever) it seems to me that it would be utterly trivial to get a hold of the real identity of the vast majority of the users after even his/hers first transactions. And this is valuable information and it will, as today, be bought and sold freely - maintaining a database of who is who seems like childs play. Not only that, but also who bought what (or at least from who), making it the least anonymous way to make a purchase imaginable (almost as bad as saying what you bought on twitter).

For anyone hoping of using bitcoins for their everyday transactions, would that be any more anonymous than a credit card is today? Or even worse, it might give you the sense that you are anonymous when you are not.

Re: In Sweden, cash is king no more

#38

Post by greenyoda »

Cash is remarkably resistant to all the potential problems that could disable credit card transactions. For example, in 2003, much of the northeastern U.S. was affected by a power blackout that lasted over a day in some places, and of course credit card readers require power to operate. The servers that support credit card transactions have backup power (although only for a limited amount of time), but they're also vulnerable to network outages, software failures and deliberate attacks (we've seen how bad some of our major banks are at security). Having cash as a backup seems to be a prudent choice.

Re: In Sweden, cash is king no more

#39

Post by ars »

_delirium wrote: post #34
jacobr wrote: post #33

Swede here, and as paranoid as the next person. I moved from Gmail due to privacy concerns. I block a lot of tracking domains at DNS level. However, those are trade-offs with very little negative impact in my daily routines. A slightly worse UI for my email is nothing like moving from cards back to cash. It would be like moving from the Internet back to snail mail because email is insecure, or perhaps to Stallman typ…

I get the convenience for things like paying rent, taxes, etc., but the main reason I don't use credit cards for small things is how much less convenient it is. Much easier to hand over 50 Kr than go through the routine of: gesture to indicate I'm paying with card / make way over to machine at the end of the bar (waiting if someone else is using it) / insert card / enter pin / pause to confirm it went through. Even i…

The main reason I use credit cards for everything including small things is that it's so much faster and more convenient.

Also, I don't carry coins anymore, and I rarely carry bills either (I'm in the US).

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