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"How much is used by all banks and armored trucks put together" is kind of meaningless unless you factor in the immense transaction volumes those banks handle e

"How much is used by all banks and armored trucks put together" is kind of meaningless unless you factor in the immense transaction volumes those banks handle every day. Just consider the number of wire transactions that happen every day in a single country, or internationally. The amount of money handled by those transactions might even be smaller than the total BTC transacted daily, but the number of individual wires is enormous, and each one forms the basis of business transactions or charitable donations or government operations.

visarga 9y ago
> Just consider the number of wire transactions that happen every day in a single country, or internationally. It's only interesting to compare price per transaction.
- RobertoG 9y ago
  Not really. What is the point of cheaper price per transaction if, for some reason, nobody it's using it?
- kevingadd 9y ago
  If (random made-up numbers here) 90% of bitcoin transactions are BTC being shuffled between exchanges and 'washed' through mixers, but 90% of wire transactions are people paying for rent, food, and hospital expenses, would you really say that the distinction isn't meaningful? The societal implications of those two groups of transactions are very, very different. I would argue that the latter group's importance is much higher than the former's.
  - JetSpiegel 9y ago
    And yet, much less of 90% of current fiat money transactions are "people paying for rent, food, and hospital expenses". Bitcoin doesn't really solve capitalism.
PeterisP 9y ago
Looking at BTC stats it seems that we're talking about an order of magnitude of 300k transactions per day with a total volume of roughly 2 billion USD per day. Mastercard transacts roughly 200m transactions per day with a total volume of roughly 10 billion USD per day; so 600 times more deals than bitcoin, but with a lot of quite small transactions. USA fedwire has about 400k transactions per day (because in USA wire transfers aren't much used by ordinary people) with a total volume of roughly 2 trillion USD per day, so 1000 times more than bitcoin in terms of worth. EU retail payment systems ("wire transfers" in US terms but for consumers, not the very large settlements) have about 14 million transactions per day with a total volume of 100 billion, so something like 50 times more than bitcoin in both number and volume. So while Bitcoin is a serious factor, it still comprises a small (<0.1%) amount of the global transaction numbers and amounts; and we'd need at least a thousandfold growth in volume if bitcoin is to replace our current infrastructure.

visarga 9y ago

> Just consider the number of wire transactions that happen every day in a single country, or internationally. It's only interesting to compare price per transaction.

RobertoG 9y ago
Not really. What is the point of cheaper price per transaction if, for some reason, nobody it's using it?
kevingadd 9y ago
If (random made-up numbers here) 90% of bitcoin transactions are BTC being shuffled between exchanges and 'washed' through mixers, but 90% of wire transactions are people paying for rent, food, and hospital expenses, would you really say that the distinction isn't meaningful? The societal implications of those two groups of transactions are very, very different. I would argue that the latter group's importance is much higher than the former's.
- JetSpiegel 9y ago
  And yet, much less of 90% of current fiat money transactions are "people paying for rent, food, and hospital expenses". Bitcoin doesn't really solve capitalism.

PeterisP 9y ago

Looking at BTC stats it seems that we're talking about an order of magnitude of 300k transactions per day with a total volume of roughly 2 billion USD per day. Mastercard transacts roughly 200m transactions per day with a total volume of roughly 10 billion USD per day; so 600 times more deals than bitcoin, but with a lot of quite small transactions. USA fedwire has about 400k transactions per day (because in USA wire transfers aren't much used by ordinary people) with a total volume of roughly 2 trillion USD per day, so 1000 times more than bitcoin in terms of worth. EU retail payment systems ("wire transfers" in US terms but for consumers, not the very large settlements) have about 14 million transactions per day with a total volume of 100 billion, so something like 50 times more than bitcoin in both number and volume. So while Bitcoin is a serious factor, it still comprises a small (<0.1%) amount of the global transaction numbers and amounts; and we'd need at least a thousandfold growth in volume if bitcoin is to replace our current infrastructure.