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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

#71

Post by vonmoltke »

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.

> If you don't know enough to stock pick, buy the index.

While I am in general agreement with your position, I see statements like this frequently when stock trading comes up. References to the market or the index. There isn't one, monolithic tradable "market". Rather there are dozens of different index views of the broader market, some of which are better than others. If you know so little about stock trading that you think a service like Robinhood is a good idea you probably don't know enough to choose a good index either.

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

#72

Post by empath75 »

revel wrote: post #67
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.

The point of the article is really that using bitcoin means using a lot of wildly dysfunctional intermediaries. USD to bitcoin and back again is, almost certainly, the most liquid market there is. It's a scalding indictment of bitcoin when part of the promise of bitcoin was that it would be quick, easy and cheap to perform these kind of transactions

to be fair to bitcoin, the primary point of bitcoin is that it's a decentralized ledger not under the control of a government or bank. Ease-of-use was an afterthought.

(but then again, it ended up not being very decentralized, either)

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

#73

Post by dlp211 »

AsyncAwait wrote: post #61
zajd wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting article. But none of the problems described are actually with fiat currency. I see criticisms of the Fed, Banks, Credit Card Companies, Credit Unions. All the problems were due to issues with exchanges and intermediaries and with handling USD. It seems the actual fiat currency part worked fine.

> It seems the actual fiat currency part worked fine. I don't think Bitcoin is made at will out of thin air like flat currency routinely is. You can still argue that this is not a problem with flat currency itself, but the problem is, unlike Bitcoin, the laws regarding printing and production of flat currency are not governed by hard-to-break math.

> I don't think Bitcoin is made at will out of thin air like flat currency routinely is.

This is a gross oversimplification of how the vast majority of central banks(ie: the ones that matter) handle their fiat currency. In theory, yes, they could just print money, in practice, they don't "just print money".

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

#74

Post by hackcasual »

AsyncAwait wrote: post #61
zajd wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting article. But none of the problems described are actually with fiat currency. I see criticisms of the Fed, Banks, Credit Card Companies, Credit Unions. All the problems were due to issues with exchanges and intermediaries and with handling USD. It seems the actual fiat currency part worked fine.

> It seems the actual fiat currency part worked fine. I don't think Bitcoin is made at will out of thin air like flat currency routinely is. You can still argue that this is not a problem with flat currency itself, but the problem is, unlike Bitcoin, the laws regarding printing and production of flat currency are not governed by hard-to-break math.

But it's not really based on math. A majority of miners could decide, say after the next halvening that future block rewards should be held as is. Sure, it would split the network, but a majority of miners may decide it's in their economic interest to do so.

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

#76

Post by dlp211 »

kozak wrote: post #60
zajd wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Where "it" is Bitcoin and not USD.

But bitcoin needs to be transformed back into a currency at some point to use it. There is no point in a wire transfer if the person at the other end isn't going to use it.

Yes, some retailers accept bitcoin, most don't.

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

#77

Post by smokeyj »

shawnb576 wrote: post #42

You can't separate the currency from the ecosystem for anything but academic purposes. The ecosystem is a mess. A commonly cited benefit of crypto-currencies is that they'll eliminate friction and fees in the system, and I think this is only because the systems don't exist. People want security, verifiability, and reversibility when dealing with money. There has to exist companies to do this whether they are Citibank…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation#Notable_hyperin...

It's a big world out there, most of which has no easy way of integrating with modern systems of credit, lending and other financial instruments. I see blockchain technology as a promising way for distributed groups to organize, create operating agreements, and execute contracts for market rate on a global setting.

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

#78

Post by brassic »

He is missing 55 cents because WB21 appear to be miscalculating the fee. They add 1% to the transfer amount ($5500) to get a total ($5555), and then take 1% from that ($55.55) as their fee.

In other words, their fee is really 1.01%. If the author can be bothered he should explain this to them and ask for his 55 cents back.

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

#79

Post by daptaq »

zajd wrote: post #51
nicky0 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Could you elaborate ob your last point?

Regarding the first point: To my understating, as a Ex-Bitcoiner, the whole point is a massive distrust in financial institutions + the idea that the whole hierarchy of banks and clients seems superfluous, and could be done away with. Insted of giving up your responsibilities that you get by having money, you take them into your own hand, leaving banks and the similar with nothing left to do.

Now it will obviously make no sense to use bitcoin like Dollar/Pound/Euro+bank, because it isn't made for that. Currently (as far as I know) there are some internal struggles between the "core developers" because of this fact. For-Profit companies like CoinBase and BitPay would like to expand their market at the cost of the distributed network, while others say the whole point of the network would be lost by giving in to them.

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

#80

Post by mywittyname »

dlp211 wrote: post #76
kozak wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where "it" is Bitcoin and not USD.

But bitcoin needs to be transformed back into a currency at some point to use it . There is no point in a wire transfer if the person at the other end isn't going to use it. Yes, some retailers accept bitcoin, most don't.

Even those that do price in their local currency.
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