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closest thing to Bitcoin was gold certificates not the tulip bubble that lasted 2 years. Gold certificates stopped circulating when the US government said so wi

by ojr 9y ago

closest thing to Bitcoin was gold certificates not the tulip bubble that lasted 2 years. Gold certificates stopped circulating when the US government said so with Executive Order 6102. Bitcoin is not gold to me, gold is a shiny rock, periodic element, and bitcoin is alternative to PayPal with less transaction fees and a better api. That's where I see the value. Programmable money without going through a too-big-to-fail central bank everytime is a valuable feature.

annabellish 9y ago
>with less transaction fees and a better api Bitcoin has significantly higher transaction fees than paypal and a much less mature, much harder to use API.
- popol12 9y ago
  Currently, fees are rock bottom, like 3 cents for typical transactions. And it should last, with Segwit's activation very soon.
- ojr 9y ago
  You can't send money to multiple people using paypal without being approved by PayPal and with KYC and other regulatory laws there's a lot of friction using paypal send api with bitcoin on the other hand, no permission is needed that is way I think bitcoin has an easier api, I'm not referring to the actual C++ bitcoin api but there are javascript api clients to Bitcoin that are dev friendly. Bitcoin transaction fees are high? (Around $1 per transaction at the moment) versus 2.9% of the total with paypal. It is even cheaper with Ethereum which fall under the bitcoin umbrella.
_fizz_buzz_ 9y ago
Do people really use bitcoin like they use PayPal though? It seems to me that the vast majority of people own bitcoin because they speculate that its value will go up and not to make actual transactions.
- ojr 9y ago
  19 trillion dollars are in the US stock market, and the total amount of US GDP in 2016 was 18 trillion. We have to stop pretending that the almighty US dollar and the federal reserve is so much better system than bitcoin and the developer community behind it. I bought plane tickets, food and beer with a bitcoin visa debit card and the merchants didn't know the difference but of course the majority of the bitcoin I owned is saved. Saving more than you spend is a good thing.
- rothbardrand 9y ago
  There is a certain amount of speculation and bitcoins value has gone up a lot more due to reasons that are worth speculating on (increased adoption) than based on usage in its primary applications (Remittances and convenient value transfer). However, simply holding bitcoin as a hedge against inflation and central bank currency risk is a legitimate use. One of the big rallies in bitcoin coincided very precisely with the Cyprus collapse where the government simply confiscated a percentage of everyone's money in the banks.. and in places like Venezuela bitcoin is literally a life saver. So remittances may be the biggest market, but hedging against incompetent government is not an illegitimate use of it... and I would separate that from "speculation" as a use case. Speculation tends to get a bad rap, but remember, speculators sell when prices are high and buy when prices are low-- they tend to moderate prices.

by ojr 9y ago

annabellish 9y ago

>with less transaction fees and a better api Bitcoin has significantly higher transaction fees than paypal and a much less mature, much harder to use API.

popol12 9y ago
Currently, fees are rock bottom, like 3 cents for typical transactions. And it should last, with Segwit's activation very soon.
ojr 9y ago
You can't send money to multiple people using paypal without being approved by PayPal and with KYC and other regulatory laws there's a lot of friction using paypal send api with bitcoin on the other hand, no permission is needed that is way I think bitcoin has an easier api, I'm not referring to the actual C++ bitcoin api but there are javascript api clients to Bitcoin that are dev friendly. Bitcoin transaction fees are high? (Around $1 per transaction at the moment) versus 2.9% of the total with paypal. It is even cheaper with Ethereum which fall under the bitcoin umbrella.

_fizz_buzz_ 9y ago

Do people really use bitcoin like they use PayPal though? It seems to me that the vast majority of people own bitcoin because they speculate that its value will go up and not to make actual transactions.

ojr 9y ago
19 trillion dollars are in the US stock market, and the total amount of US GDP in 2016 was 18 trillion. We have to stop pretending that the almighty US dollar and the federal reserve is so much better system than bitcoin and the developer community behind it. I bought plane tickets, food and beer with a bitcoin visa debit card and the merchants didn't know the difference but of course the majority of the bitcoin I owned is saved. Saving more than you spend is a good thing.
rothbardrand 9y ago
There is a certain amount of speculation and bitcoins value has gone up a lot more due to reasons that are worth speculating on (increased adoption) than based on usage in its primary applications (Remittances and convenient value transfer). However, simply holding bitcoin as a hedge against inflation and central bank currency risk is a legitimate use. One of the big rallies in bitcoin coincided very precisely with the Cyprus collapse where the government simply confiscated a percentage of everyone's money in the banks.. and in places like Venezuela bitcoin is literally a life saver. So remittances may be the biggest market, but hedging against incompetent government is not an illegitimate use of it... and I would separate that from "speculation" as a use case. Speculation tends to get a bad rap, but remember, speculators sell when prices are high and buy when prices are low-- they tend to moderate prices.