71–80 of 107 posts
the problem is getting BTC in the US. You have to a P2P sale which most likely at some point will lead to you getting scammed. The banks need to offer a currency exchange from USD to BTC. And then bitcoins are going to really take off.
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> Seems no different than if the buyer had sold her Bitcoin and paid Virgin Galactic in cash. I'm not sure if this differs for six-figure transactions, but transacting fiat currency generally costs a vendor ~3%. Receiving bitcoins and immediately converting them back to USD/GBP can be done for less than one percent of the amount of the transaction.
> transacting fiat currency generally costs a vendor ~3% 1. Bitcoin is no less a fiat currency than the U.S. dollar or Japanese yen. 2. For small retail transactions, yes, 3% seems right. Larger transactions, however, are generally done by wire. These transfers carry a fixed fee and are generally a very small percentage of the transaction value.
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Then you will miss the moment when "Bitcoin has arrived". You see, if anything the last 5 years has taught us, is that Bitcoin's adoption can continue to dramatically increase despite wild volatility. (Data point: Bitpay signed up 10,000 merchants through a period when 1 BTC was sometimes losing 50% of its value intra-day!) Volatility is unfortunate, that's for sure, and it is expected to decline over time as trading…
Actual adoption as a currency requires pricing in that currency, that requires stability.
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The TSX Composite Index: https://www.google.com/finance?cid=9291235 There are others if you have a more specific interest: http://web.tmxmoney.com/indices.php?locale=EN
I meant into Bitcoin.
Drop that qualifier and we can talk Bitcoin.
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Agree. All these companies "accepting" bitcoin are actually just accepting USD and "converting" bitcoin.
Totally agreed -- they pretend to support the platform for the hipster cred & expanded market, but I'm sure the corporate policy is "Bitcoin arrives. Bitcoin is immediately placed on exchange". I'd be surprised if corporations would gamble so dangerously by keeping a Bitcoin store. As long as they price against USD and convert immediately, they can only suffer limited losses from price swings.
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I don't see pricing as significant goal with Bitcoin. Other currencies can be used for pricing. I use bitcoin myself, and never by from stores which price the goods in Bitcoin, because they are most certainly rip-off prices. The good way is to price in fiat, then use something like bitpay exchange rate at checkout.
I don't see pricing as significant goal with Bitcoin. If that's the case, it's not a currency. I do think this is something Bitcoin needs to address if it is to be taken seriously as a medium of exchange.
It seems that with every passing day, another prominent institution or business starts accepting Bitcoin for payment, Virgin Galactic being the latest example. In just a few years, Bitcoin has gone from experiment to global phenomenon. I wouldn't be surprised if in coming years at least some bitcoin users start measuring their wealth in bitcoins, and therefore also evaluating exchange rates, not in terms of how many…
> Looking at exchange rates in this manner changes one's perspective on volatility. For example, since the beginning of this year, the price of a US dollar has declined by more than 98%, from BTC 0.074 to just over BTC 0.001, which makes the dollar look like an extremely volatile currency! Sorry, that's clearly nonsense given that the dollar wasn't similarly volatile against other currencies. Would you slam on your b…
"she paid in bitcoin, which was transferred into actual dollars "so there's a fixed price ... [and] we can actually pay her money back, if she changes her mind" Seems no different than if the buyer had sold her Bitcoin and paid Virgin Galactic in cash. The real trick will be when they can accept Bitcoin, keep the Bitcoin, and make any refunds and adjustments in Bitcoin.
I don't see any other way to bootstrap a new currency.
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Agree. All these companies "accepting" bitcoin are actually just accepting USD and "converting" bitcoin.
Totally agreed -- they pretend to support the platform for the hipster cred & expanded market, but I'm sure the corporate policy is "Bitcoin arrives. Bitcoin is immediately placed on exchange". I'd be surprised if corporations would gamble so dangerously by keeping a Bitcoin store. As long as they price against USD and convert immediately, they can only suffer limited losses from price swings.
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Totally agreed -- they pretend to support the platform for the hipster cred & expanded market, but I'm sure the corporate policy is "Bitcoin arrives. Bitcoin is immediately placed on exchange". I'd be surprised if corporations would gamble so dangerously by keeping a Bitcoin store. As long as they price against USD and convert immediately, they can only suffer limited losses from price swings.
They don't suffer any losses from price swings. Pretty much everyone uses a third party payment processor that guarantees that when the retailer charges a bitcoin customer $100 they get $100 less fees directly into their bank account.