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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

#51

Post by zajd »

nicky0 wrote: post #43
zajd wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it amusing that you consider the internet "on your own" like there isn't a gigantic investment being made into that infrastructure that even enables bitcoin in the first place. Do people who are in to Bitcoin think intermediaries solely exist to extract value from transactions? There's actually a service being provided.

The internet (at least theoretically) a neutral infrastructure though. Bitcoin is just an application like email, the web or IM.

Well let me be the first to invite bitcoiners to rejoin us back in reality where the internet isn't. If the entire argument of the bitcoin community is "providing an alternative to fiat currency" and they can't, what's even the point?

The internet IS NOT neutral. Never has been, never will be.

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

#52

Post by tarancato »

nicky0 wrote: post #10
eriknstr wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What good is Bitcoin if the ecosystem is bad?

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.

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

#53

Post by tommynicholas »

The things that will determine whether Bitcoin "wins" or not will not be the use cases where Bitcoin is supplementing existing infrastructure, but rather whether or not it can sustain and grow use cases where it replaces it. Even if those are fringe or even sketchy, that is what matters.

"Blockchain" initiatives at banks are just about implementing cryptography as part of solving larger technical challenges they have. Using Bitcoin as "rails" isn't there yet. Using Bitcoin in places where only Bitcoin makes sense will make it a cockroach, and open protocols that survive tend to become important.

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

#54

Post by hueving »

nicky0 wrote: post #10
eriknstr wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What good is Bitcoin if the ecosystem is bad?

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

People can't use bitcoin for everything, the network can't support enough transactions per second for even a small city of people to use it for everything.

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

#55

Post by shawnb576 »

juliangoldsmith wrote: post #19
nicky0 wrote: post #3

Interesting article. But none of the problems described are actually with bitcoin. I see criticisms of CoinBase, WB21, TradeZero, Bitpay. All the problems were due to issues with exchanges & intermediaries and with handling USD. It seems the actual bitcoin part worked fine.

Seems like this guy should have had some idea what he was doing before he trusted $6k to it. He's also bitching about an overall 4% fee, which isn't a whole lot.

yes, 4% is huge.

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

#56

Post by dragontamer »

NoNotTheDuo wrote: post #44
dragontamer wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The number of people saying BTC is cheaper than Paypal continues to be huge.

If you are able to receive BTC and pay for your costs with BTC, it's cheaper by quite a bit. The last transaction I sent using BTC cost me $.09. If you have to exchange BTC to USD to pay for your costs, then sure, it's going to cost more than PayPal.

> The last transaction I sent using BTC cost me $.09.

And you denominated that in $$ instead of BTC why?

Because the value of BTC fluctuates so much that its worthless to denominate goods in terms of BTC. Only USD is stable enough to actually denominate the value of goods with.

And its not like USD is rock solid: we've got an inflation-based government pushing the value of USD down ~2% each year. But that's a lot more stable than BTC.

As long as BTC remains more volatile than my freaking stock portfolio, it is worthless to trade goods with it directly. Everything will need to be converted to and from USD if I'm actually to run a business. BTC could double in price (or half in price) in the next year and no one would be surprised.

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

#57

Post by youdontknowtho »

Sounds like someone hasn't tried to buy a pound of meth with a bank wire!

No seriously, though. Who knew that the libertarian cyberpunk dystopian future would be full of people trying to scam a nickel off you every couple of seconds...oh wait, everyone ever. That's the market, man. Don't taunt the market. Don't even look at it funny. It's sentient and can hear your insults.

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

#58

Post by sonkol »

I found this article after the author argued against my post How to Pay Freelancers in Upwork with Bitcoin, Ethereum, or any other Altcoin [1]. The problem with his argument is that it is based on his very tiny vision of the world based on the country where he lives. This is not the "user experience" the rest of the world currently have and that's why cryptocurrencies offer an alternative, even with a lot of limitations.

[1] https://medium.com/@sondre.kolaautomat/how-to-pay-freelancer...

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

#59

Post by _xhok »

loeg wrote: post #49
_xhok wrote: post #41

Incidentally, if you're like me, and know nothing about stocks, but still want to get rich off companies you believe will succeed, I highly recommend Robinhood. It's like stock trading for chimpanzees. Install an app, fill out a brief profile, click a big shiny button to deposit money, select your stock, and click another big shiny button to buy. I don't have any affiliation with them. I just always thought trading s…

And if you love the simplicity and lack of informed investment Robinhood represents, you'll love slot machines too. Put money in, pull lever, boom. If you don't know enough to stock pick, buy the index.

By simplicity I was talking about the fact that I don't need to fill out paperwork. Filling out paperwork is unrelated to the forecasting which companies will succeed. The point is, if it were 2005 and I wanted to buy Apple stock, without Robinhood I probably wouldn't have bothered.

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

#60

Post by kozak »

zajd wrote: post #22
uobytx wrote: post #12

I don't think USD -> Bitcoin -> USD is really the way to go on this. If you are trading in USD, why would you move it into bitcoin and back again? You already had it in USD. If you need to buy some groceries in the US, you wouldn't trade your USD for CAD (Canada money), then bring CAD to a grocery store that also accepts USD. You would only bring CAD if you already had CAD.

Because one of the espoused values of Bitcoin is the ease of transferring it across international borders.

Where "it" is Bitcoin and not USD.
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