51–60 of 139 posts
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
I don't think bitcoin won yet. I haven't heard of paypal allowing people to pay for bitcoins yet. (as in transfers of funds to exchanges) They accept it for their service, but noone else can.
Serious question: If one is engaged in entirely legal activities - no money laundering, no drugs, no illegal weapons, no tax evasion, no slipping around international monetary controls - why would one want to use Bitcoin? With the volatility of Bitcoin's price, transfer costs of traditional payment methods (1-3%) are totally dwarfed by the risk of holding Bitcoins for even a short period of time. Maybe there is some…
> why would anyone want to exchange a reasonable stable national currency for bitcoin? Name me 10 currencies you'd be comfortable holding. It'll probably be very difficult. Fact is, billions use currencies with high inflation rates and with relatively short lifespans. And it's not just places like Zimbabwe that have many problems besides insane inflation the past decade. It's also relatively developed countries like…
Fraud is as applicable to credit cards as to bitcoin. You store bitcoin with a third party service means you rely on them to keep their servers secure and hope that hackers don't obtain your credentials/identity information to log in and steal your bitcoin. I would argue it's even worse with BTC because their is no fraud protection.
Chargebacks are an issue for merchants, but a huge advantage for consumers. Ultimately the economic demand comes from the consumer and not the merchant, that is why chargebacks are still omnipresent in ecommerce today.
Two areas bitcoin could have addressed are remittances and smart contracts, yet better systems are emerging to solve those problems (Ripple, Stellar, Ether).
Your arguments could be valid in a world where everyone uses bitcoin and doesn't touch fiat. This is not the case. Bitcoin is a great technology in theory but its practical applications are quite limited.
Serious question: If one is engaged in entirely legal activities - no money laundering, no drugs, no illegal weapons, no tax evasion, no slipping around international monetary controls - why would one want to use Bitcoin? With the volatility of Bitcoin's price, transfer costs of traditional payment methods (1-3%) are totally dwarfed by the risk of holding Bitcoins for even a short period of time. Maybe there is some…
A serious question in return: What's wrong with speculation and evading government interference?
ps. The argument that we don't have democracy today in the western world, holds true to an extend but it is as close to democracy as we can get.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Using PayPal is a really bad way to sell bitcoins, because PayPal lets the buyer dispute the transaction, reversing payment. If you sell bitcoins via PayPal, you're taking a big counterparty risk (not to mention the 3rd party, PayPal itself).
> PayPal lets the buyer dispute the transaction, reversing payment. What would be the alternative? CC, ACH, and most other payment systems also have a mechanism for chargebacks.
Seriously, this is precisely the kind of thing common law and the court system is for. Just the same as your recourse with cash. As for international trade, buyer beware.
Serious question: If one is engaged in entirely legal activities - no money laundering, no drugs, no illegal weapons, no tax evasion, no slipping around international monetary controls - why would one want to use Bitcoin? With the volatility of Bitcoin's price, transfer costs of traditional payment methods (1-3%) are totally dwarfed by the risk of holding Bitcoins for even a short period of time. Maybe there is some…
Why use Bitcoin? 1. As a consumer, it's fast and cheap. My dad in France can send money, instantly, to me who live in the US. No waiting days for wire transfers. No trip to a local Western Union branch necessary. No exhorbitant fee (worldwide remittance fees average 9%!) I don't even have to bother exchanging the coins with dollars to spend them, because more and more merchants begin to accept Bitcoin. 2. For consume…
2. Is a volatile virtual currency powered by market speculation the best alternative for inflation-ridden currencies? I facepalm every time I hear this argument.
3. and 4. Agreed. Bitcoin is great for merchants. Unfortunately economic demand comes from consumers. More merchants accepting bitcoin does not imply more consumers adopting it, in particular because those same merchants accept traditional payment methods in parallel (credit cards). That's a big red flag for me.
Serious question: If one is engaged in entirely legal activities - no money laundering, no drugs, no illegal weapons, no tax evasion, no slipping around international monetary controls - why would one want to use Bitcoin? With the volatility of Bitcoin's price, transfer costs of traditional payment methods (1-3%) are totally dwarfed by the risk of holding Bitcoins for even a short period of time. Maybe there is some…
> why would anyone want to exchange a reasonable stable national currency for bitcoin? Name me 10 currencies you'd be comfortable holding. It'll probably be very difficult. Fact is, billions use currencies with high inflation rates and with relatively short lifespans. And it's not just places like Zimbabwe that have many problems besides insane inflation the past decade. It's also relatively developed countries like…
Cash has no fees and debit has negligible fees (a few cents plus up to 0.05% in the US). Most B2B transactions aren't done with credit cards either.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We'll see. In the near term, merchants can accept Bitcoin for 0%. Customers can send Bitcoin for five cents, and some wallets pay that for you.
We'll see? There is no refuting argument in there. Please provide an example of how you expect bitcoin to remain "free" going forward based on arguments already providing showing how it can't be free.
Serious question: If one is engaged in entirely legal activities - no money laundering, no drugs, no illegal weapons, no tax evasion, no slipping around international monetary controls - why would one want to use Bitcoin? With the volatility of Bitcoin's price, transfer costs of traditional payment methods (1-3%) are totally dwarfed by the risk of holding Bitcoins for even a short period of time. Maybe there is some…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A serious question in return: What's wrong with speculation and evading government interference?
Depends, do you believe in 'democracy'? If not, then nothing is wrong with that. If you do, then there's a whole lot of things that can go wrong. ps. The argument that we don't have democracy today in the western world, holds true to an extend but it is as close to democracy as we can get.
I think it's a very weak argument to say "this is the closest we can currently get to X, therefore it can be said we have X". What we have now, as I said above, can be said to be closer to other things than it is closer to democracy. We should then pick the thing we're closest to, out of all the things we're close to. And that is not democracy.