Bitcoin and Thoughts from Bill Gates • Hacker News Board

Re: Bitcoin and Thoughts from Bill Gates

#71

Post by dllthomas » Tue, Mar 18, 2014, 3:09 AM UTC

Retric wrote: post #70

dllthomas wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of that changes the fact that there is substantially more need to ship around physical stores of value with USD than with BTC. It's not just banks, it's every merchant accepting cash.

The inability for cryptocurrencies to do a transaction without an internet connection is a bug not a feature. Still, plenty of people go years without touching physical cash which makes up around 7% of the actual cash in the US. So it's not like Amazon.com or IBM have to use forklifts to move pallets of cash around. Better yet they can write a check for 100 million and the only transaction fee is the wait until the c…

"The inability for cryptocurrencies to do a transaction without an internet connection is a bug not a feature."

I agree, and never claimed otherwise. But the ability to complete any transfer electronically (even if you were given something physical) is a feature. I've never claimed that cryptocurrencies have no disadvantages - nor would I, that's crazy.

Re: Bitcoin and Thoughts from Bill Gates

#72

Post by clienthunter » Tue, Mar 18, 2014, 10:25 AM UTC

hft_throwaway wrote: post #48

clienthunter wrote: post #35

The absurdity of this kind of thought is just profound. Thinking like this may be useful as a means of encouraging hope when all hope is lost, but Bitcoin is nowhere near there yet. Most of all this kind of talk smacks of deep desperation - "why won't people love me?" I understand fully why one might feel so desperate. Bitcoin may have the potential to be truly revolutionary. Bitcoin solves the problem of orchestrati…

I think the issue is that bitcoin fanatics assume something is deeply wrong with our current system, or that banks are parasitic and not providing any value. Sure there are places it can be improved, but the current system works well for many people. Before credit cards we had to rely on informal credit. Sure, I could open a bar tab at a local place where I'm a regular, or the man at the corner store might let me run…

You're absolutely correct.

I agree with both you and the fanboys on this point, however. Our current system is better than the old, for sure, but at the end of the day it is true that an insane amount of money is paid to these oligopolous firms as fees for doing a very simple job. Payment processing really is a case of moving database rows around, albeit in a highly available manner, yet they demand huge percentages. My bank goes down about as often as my Gmail, and the latter's free and deals with more information than my bank.

The present is better than the old, but very bad compared to what could be.

Re: Bitcoin and Thoughts from Bill Gates

#73

Post by krrrh » Thu, Mar 20, 2014, 12:47 PM UTC

mahyarm wrote: post #64

hft_throwaway wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The average consumer can do far better than 30 bps on currency trades, even on something like an Interactive Brokers account. Retail guys probably see tighter prices than HFTs do, to be honest, since FX is an OTC market and generally speaking, broker-dealers will give tighter pricing to uninformed traders than informed speculators. Anyway, let's say we're at a dollar amount where fees and rates really add up to somet…

I'm talking about the average person who wont get an IB account with it's reams of paperwork, professionals only attitude, and $10+/month minimum fees to maybe do a bunch of currency exchange for a one time or occasional thing. Also using IB as an actual currency exchanger where I get cash from US account A to CAD account B is actually pretty hard to do, they charge fees to do it, and there are long delays in the pro…

XETrade seems to work quite well for transfers from US to CA banks. Certainly much better spreads than paypal, and in practice much quicker and cheaper than BTC.