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How much do you think banks pay those other middlemen? Sure there is I already gave it. It's difficult(though not impossible) and very risky to withdraw large

How much do you think banks pay those other middlemen? Sure there is I already gave it. It's difficult(though not impossible) and very risky to withdraw large amounts of cash from skimmed cards and that's to chip and pin that's getting even harder. It's easy to make an irreversible Bitcoin transfer from someone who you have hacked. And you can do it from anywhere in the world. The banks aren't going to save money with Bitcoin because they make a ton with credit cards. Yes I saw you listed almost every killer app that's failed to find a footing in the Bitcoin world because it pin doesn't do anything but DNMs better.

aianus 11y ago
> 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 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.
- sanswork 11y ago
  If you think visa,MasterCard and PayPal do shit all you are probably super ignorant of the payments space. Again you thinking banks don't make much from credit cards reenforces that you are just ignorant of the space. Remittance only saves money with Bitcoin if almost no one does it because the end country can absorb the inflow of Bitcoin without needing to worry about selling it back the other way. If it ever got popular the costs would go back to where they are with traditional services only with the addition of an extra currency exchange in the middle. That said it doesn't matter though because they aren't popular and don't have traction. As for the discounts same thing it only works while it's rarely used and it continues to work because it is.
  - aianus 11y ago
    > If you think visa,MasterCard and PayPal do shit all you are probably super ignorant of the payments space. I'd love to hear what incredible value Visa adds to my purchases over Bitcoin (remember, rewards and fraud protection are offered by the issuer, not the card network) > If it ever got popular the costs would go back to where they are with traditional services only with the addition of an extra currency exchange in the middle. No, if it ever got popular Citi and Goldman would have arbitrage bots running on every exchange and they don't pay retail for fiat FX or transfers. Joe Blow exchanging $10 would finally get a better rate than BigCo exchanging $1 million, just as simple economics would have you expect (the smaller the order, the smaller the slippage). > As for the discounts same thing it only works while it's rarely used and it continues to work because it is. The merchant is just passing on his payment processing savings so there's no reason this wouldn't work indefinitely (there's already evidence consumers like it judging by the number of gas stations in the US with cash discounts)
    - sanswork 11y ago
      Visa runs a network that today can support 15,000-45,000 times as many transactions per second as Bitcoin. So the first answer would be a network that can handle success. Secondly they do the fraud management and detection. It doesn't matter since even arb bots require the movement of non-Bitcoin resources. Going from cash in hand to cash in hand with Bitcoin is almost never cheaper than traditional remittance today anyhow. We have lots of Bitcoin merchants now and except for the ones supporting the carding industry like fold and purse almost one offer discounts for using Bitcoin.
      - aianus 11y ago
        > Visa runs a network that today can support 15,000-45,000 times as many transactions per second as Bitcoin. Visa says it's capable of 24,000 tps. I could write a centralized system to handle that by myself in a couple of days; it's not impressive and certainly not a $10B/year value. I don't know if Bitcoin itself will ever scale that high but it's irrelevant because I'm not advocating anyone buy their morning Starbucks or related penny-ante stuff on the blockchain. > even arb bots require the movement of non-Bitcoin resources Yes, and Goldman can do it $10m at a time for peanuts. Hell, any VC-funded startup with just a few tens of millions could do it too. > almost no-one offer discounts for using Bitcoin. That's true today, but no reason that can't or won't change in the future.

aianus 11y ago

> 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 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.

sanswork 11y ago
If you think visa,MasterCard and PayPal do shit all you are probably super ignorant of the payments space. Again you thinking banks don't make much from credit cards reenforces that you are just ignorant of the space. Remittance only saves money with Bitcoin if almost no one does it because the end country can absorb the inflow of Bitcoin without needing to worry about selling it back the other way. If it ever got popular the costs would go back to where they are with traditional services only with the addition of an extra currency exchange in the middle. That said it doesn't matter though because they aren't popular and don't have traction. As for the discounts same thing it only works while it's rarely used and it continues to work because it is.
- aianus 11y ago
  > If you think visa,MasterCard and PayPal do shit all you are probably super ignorant of the payments space. I'd love to hear what incredible value Visa adds to my purchases over Bitcoin (remember, rewards and fraud protection are offered by the issuer, not the card network) > If it ever got popular the costs would go back to where they are with traditional services only with the addition of an extra currency exchange in the middle. No, if it ever got popular Citi and Goldman would have arbitrage bots running on every exchange and they don't pay retail for fiat FX or transfers. Joe Blow exchanging $10 would finally get a better rate than BigCo exchanging $1 million, just as simple economics would have you expect (the smaller the order, the smaller the slippage). > As for the discounts same thing it only works while it's rarely used and it continues to work because it is. The merchant is just passing on his payment processing savings so there's no reason this wouldn't work indefinitely (there's already evidence consumers like it judging by the number of gas stations in the US with cash discounts)
  - sanswork 11y ago
    Visa runs a network that today can support 15,000-45,000 times as many transactions per second as Bitcoin. So the first answer would be a network that can handle success. Secondly they do the fraud management and detection. It doesn't matter since even arb bots require the movement of non-Bitcoin resources. Going from cash in hand to cash in hand with Bitcoin is almost never cheaper than traditional remittance today anyhow. We have lots of Bitcoin merchants now and except for the ones supporting the carding industry like fold and purse almost one offer discounts for using Bitcoin.
    - aianus 11y ago
      > Visa runs a network that today can support 15,000-45,000 times as many transactions per second as Bitcoin. Visa says it's capable of 24,000 tps. I could write a centralized system to handle that by myself in a couple of days; it's not impressive and certainly not a $10B/year value. I don't know if Bitcoin itself will ever scale that high but it's irrelevant because I'm not advocating anyone buy their morning Starbucks or related penny-ante stuff on the blockchain. > even arb bots require the movement of non-Bitcoin resources Yes, and Goldman can do it $10m at a time for peanuts. Hell, any VC-funded startup with just a few tens of millions could do it too. > almost no-one offer discounts for using Bitcoin. That's true today, but no reason that can't or won't change in the future.