> in which case bitcoin is just a middleman doing no work
So you're saying that, pessimistically, all Bitcoin could do is disrupt the credit/debit card companies? That's very pessimistic, and still a very big deal.
> The only advantage is guarantee's that credit card companies offer. But what tells you a company can't introduce the same for Bitcoin?
Unlikely in a system where transactions are irreversible by design. If a credit card transaction is suspicious, the banks will hold the funds, or refuse the transfer. The only way to have this work with bitcoin would be if you paid the bank rather than paying the seller - in which case you're just reproducing the existing credit card system with extra complexity.
> Isn't it kind of the same as a debit card? If you put your monthly allowance, or weekly allowance in your pay wallet, what's the problem? If you have a huge amount of bitcoins in 1 address that's made for paying people & isn't in cold storage, you are doing it wrong. Same with regular cash.
Sure; my point was that there's no advantage for bitcoin here, not that it's any worse than the other options.
> Bitcoin wasn't designed for criminals only. Sure, it has certain advantages for criminals. But it has a lot of other pros too. International transactions take days compared to bitcoin transactions, and are a hell of a lot cheaper too.
That's the judgement we have to make. My view is that the advantages for criminals are much bigger than the advantages for non-criminals, and so a world with a thriving bitcoin economy is, on the whole, worse than a world without one.
> Say what you want about Bitcoin, but it does solve credit card theft for good
Bitcoin is very similar to cash in many respects, especially when compared to credit cards.
I doubt anyone would say this:
> Say what you want about cash, but it does solve credit card theft for good. If I could use my cash wallet to pay Sonic, I wouldn't be affected by this security breach
It's obviously true, but it's also trivial and pointless. Saying Bitcoin instead of cash doesn't change any of that.
> Not at all? You obviously don't understand what a bitcoin debit card is
I don't really know if that kind of condescension is called for. I know enough about BTC and general credit/debit card mechanics. I know, for one, that credit cards have very low margins as a percentage of volume processed. I figured that the mechanics of a BTC transaction would be similar to a standard forex conversion, which I would not expect to be 1:1 with actual transactions, but from a hedged reserve (which I assume would be very very difficult to accomplish with BTC volatility, but also possibly inevitable given BTC network transaction rate limitations, as card transaction rates scaled up). Also, though debit and credit differ, wouldn't you have to take some degree of fraud and chargeback risk into account on both sides of the transaction? It's not that these are technically insurmountable, but - back to my original point - it seems like a bad business given the overhead and peoples' expectations around transaction fee rates.
> how volatility and rapidly deflating currency would effect their cash flow.
Not at all? You obviously don't understand what a bitcoin debit card is. It's just like a normal debit card, but you fund it with bitcoin. The company you get the card from sells your bitcoin for fiat currency at the time you make a purchase (or at the time you top up the card, depending on how they do it).
The properties of bitcoin are completely irrelevant to the mechanics of the card.
> actually using bitcoin (that you already have) to buy things is a better experience than using credit cards
It's just not. It's not easier than swiping a magnetic strip and signing something, or typing in sixteen digits (or using autofill or the site's previously saved CC info) and pressing buy.
It's not good that I can't demand a return or have recourse in the event of fraud. And it's not a benefit that with bitcoin I have to spend the money first (to buy bitcoin) and wonder if it will hold its value, versus just buying stuff when I feel like it on credit and covering the transaction within 30 days at no interest cost.
I know there are a lot of people who really want your above quoted statement to be true. But, for now and the forseeable future, it isn't.
> Bitcoin's total potential transaction volume is about 3 orders of magnitude less than the Visa network.
Why are you comparing it to visa? I have no intention of getting rid of my cc. My bank account on the other hand...
> There is absolutely no inherent value
Clearly the people who have assigned value by acquiring it would disagree with this, yes?
> and no transaction is denominated in bitcoins
That's just false. Almost all other cryptos are priced in bitcoin, which i think is the subject matter of this thread.
> nobody operating a real business wants a number of bitcoins for a good or service
Oh dear. No. If you think that service providers that are paid in bitcoin aren't keeping their bitcoin holdings you're kidding yourself. That may have been the case a few years ago, but today? There are services today that do exactly the opposite : take a wage and immediately convert into bitcoin and place it in your wallet.
> The most obvious use of bitcoin is to enable peer to peer exchanges of currency without banks, that's its purpose.
Well, yes. But in general, we as a society like banks. They're big, reputable entities. They're easy to sue if things go wrong, deposits are insured if they go missing, and they're subject to extensive regulation. I'm old enough to remember when ordering stuff online seeemd weird and strange; these days it's routine. And in large part that's because of standards like PCI.
> Setting up a website that accepts payments just became vastly easier without the need for PCI compliance
I know. But PCI isn't a wandering monster that ambushes parties of brave coders; it emerged to solve a very real problem, and it does a pretty good job of it. As a consumer, "look, no PCI compliance" isn't a feature, it's a nightmare. I only want to pay for something with Bitcoins if the process is easier, cheaper, and/or safer than doing so with my credit card. And right now, that's not the case; it's not enem close to the case. Paying for things with my credit card is very easy, quite cheap, and very safe. Today, in the real world, Bitcoin is none of these.
In short, you've identified what Bitcoin is good at, but what we need to do is identify what Bitcoin is better than existing payment systems at. And I don't think "startups too small or lazy to sign up for a Stripe or Paypal account" is an actual niche. Accepting Bitcoins isn't that easy.
TL;DR: You say the obvious use isn't evading currency controls, it's peer to peer exchanges of currency without banks. But evading currency controls is one of the only reasons why you'd want peer to peer exchanges of currency without banks. ;)
> The real world demand for decentralized digital currency is still questionable in my mind.
My feeling is that the interesting thing about Bitcoin as a currency is the pressure it puts on centralized payment systems to compete with it. The problem with banking is that it's so hard to innovate, primarily because of the regulatory burden both making it very expensive for anyone to enter the market and severely constraining what can be improved if they do.
For example, with credit cards the burden of fraud is put on the credit card company. That turns out to be one of their major costs, even though the credit card company is hardly the lowest cost avoider for credit card fraud (they're just a convenient deep pocket), which requires them to charge high transaction fees to cover the liability. Hence no micropayments; fees too high.
Now suppose that Bitcoin disabuses people of the notion that the payment processor should be the one who takes the hit for fraud. If you don't secure your secrets then you lose your money; you can buy insurance if you like. Suppose regulations get passed to allow this for Bitcoin. Now non-Bitcoin payment processors can make the argument that they should be able to offer a centralized service with the same rules, and we can finally have micropayments.
> A lot of small tech-related web shops do take Bitcoin though- so if I think I can trust them (and if Bitcoin is an option) I will use that instead.
So you will replace a payment method that has a method for recourse when you get fucked with one that is completely irreversible? That doesn't make any sense at all.
Even if Paypal or your CC isn't perfect, at least you have some form of recourse. With bitcoin, when you get fucked over, you are completely shit out of luck.
It's a matter of opinion. However, the only reason for bitcoin to exist is to avoid banks and payment processors. Hence it's illogical to make heavy use of coinbase/etc. regardless of what opinion you have.
Bitcoin has many downsides (volatility, no recourse, vast energy usage, paranoid wallet security, high fees, long confirmation time, etc.) and one upside (no need to trust processors/banks).
If you think that processors/banks are bad, then you might find that the upside outweighs the downsides, and make many on-chain bitcoin transactions. Yet you shouldn't use coinbase/etc. in this case, since they're a bank/processor, hence you'd be removing the only upside that bitcoin has.
On the other hand, if you don't think that processors/banks are bad, then the upside of bitcoin isn't worth all of the downsides. You might as well use regular currency, with all of its advantages over bitcoin (instant payments, lower fees, lower volatility, recourse, less paranoid security, etc.). In this case there's no need to use coinbase/etc. because there's no need to use bitcoin.
Those intermediaries do serve a role in converting between traditional currencies and cryptocurrencies, but it only makes sense to use them occasionally, e.g. buying a stash of bitcoins and immediately 'withdrawing' them to your private, on-chain-only wallet. If you're regularly converting back and forth, or maintaining a non-zero balance on their systems, you would always be better off doing something else (either sticking to fiat, or sticking to crypto).
> It has failed to become much other than a bullshit investment vehicle.
I disagree, and think there is some observation bias going on here. I've been using a Bitcoin-linked debit card for a couple of years now, and take payment in Bitcoin for odd jobs I do for people online. I also always list that I accept Bitcoin when I post things for sale on Craigslist and other "classifieds" sites, and probably 10% of people use it for payment now. I've had several people buy things from me on Craigslist from across the country and the world that I wouldn't have accepted otherwise due to payments fraud. I'm happy to ship a $400 fountain pen to a buyer in Lagos (which I've done!) if they pay in Bitcoin, but I'd never consider doing so if they used any other payment method for fear of fraud.
I don't see anyone posting about everyday uses, but they do seem to be happening.
> People only worried about how high it can go
The only time I really think about the current price of Bitcoin is when it's in a period of volatility. Otherwise it seems to be consistently slightly deflationary, which is exactly what I expect it will be long-term.
Because some people insist on waiting for the payment to settle before actually providing the services, although it's not nearly as common as it used to be.
This is just completely unrealistic with credit cards where settlement times are far longer than with bitcoin, days or months.
>Wherever you want to lay the blame (anywhere but bitcoin) it's a problem for anyone using bitcoin, making it more useless than (not "immensely superior" to, as claimed) using a credit card or Paypal, which makes it a problem for bitcoin.
I don't know, I use bitcoins to pay for things regularly and pretty much everyone accepts zero-confirmation transactions nowadays (which is pretty much the same as accepting credit card payments, except the settlement will most likely take less than an hour).
> Accepting bitcoin as payment isn't beneficial right now. There's no benefit for merchants, because it's instantly converted back to traditional currency.
I see another benefit. Merchants benefit from lower transaction fee vs credit card.
> Well, Bitcoin saves you money by making transactions irreversible
How does it do that? Irreversible transactions allow the currency to be decentralised, but I don't think they were even intended to be a means of saving money.
> So ... if I get scammed, I got scammed? There's nothing I can do about it?
> How much do you think banks pay those other middlemen?
Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal alone rake in $28 billion a year in net revenues. That's $90 a year for every man, woman, and child in the US for doing, as far as I can tell, basically shit-all.
> The banks aren't going to save money with Bitcoin because they make a ton with credit cards.
They make a lot from the lending aspect, they don't make much at all from the transaction fees after rewards schemes, paying off all the middlemen, and fighting fraud.
> Yes I saw you listed almost every killer app that's failed to find a footing in the Bitcoin world
I've personally used Bitcoin for all of those use cases except the cross-border billing/shipping transaction example (in which the merchant didn't accept Bitcoin so I was simply unable to complete the transaction). It significantly outperformed my other options, especially remittance where I've saved thousands of dollars in fees and exchange rate markups.
Edit:
I just noticed you're in Thailand too. Thai ATMs charge $6 a pop plus ~1.3% FX markup so I wrote a script that polls the price on the biggest Thai Bitcoin broker and alerts you when the price is beneficial: https://github.com/aianus/coinscoth-notifier
Saved ~$200 just from that script; more than all the credit card rewards and chargebacks I've ever made in my life.
So you're saying that, pessimistically, all Bitcoin could do is disrupt the credit/debit card companies? That's very pessimistic, and still a very big deal.
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