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> we tap our Visa card to pay instantly with no fees I guess it's businesses, who pay high enough fees on your transactions.

geofft 9y ago
The current Bitcoin transaction fee is $20+. Credit card processors charge you under 3%. If you're doing transactions of under about $700 USD, credit card fees are cheaper than Bitcoin fees.
- vkou 9y ago
  Credit card processors also pay the user of the CC a cashback on a significant portion of that fee... And are also liable for fraud. Who do I chargeback when an online merchant takes my BTC, and doesn't ship the goods I bought? BitPay will tell me to pound sand. VISA will process a chargeback, no questions asked.
  - a_tractor 9y ago
    Good problems to solve in this space.
    - vkou 9y ago
      By creating an off-chain payment processor called BISA, and we're back to charging merchants fees for cashback + fraud losses, except now we're for some stupid reason doing it on a blockchain.
      - a_tractor 9y ago
        Wow. Its like you have no imagination at all and your thinking is confined to a prison of pessimism and failure. Thanks for sharing! The best thing I could say to you is that you need to do less talking about stuff you clearly know nothing about, and far more research. No offense.
- a_tractor 9y ago
  I moved $1800 worth of LTC (Litecoin, one of the subjects of this thread) last night. The Tx fee was $0.01 and the funds were received in less than 1 minute. No more processing, no waiting for the next business day (or 3)... For 1 cent and 1 minute later the receiver can do whatever they want with it immediately. That is cheaper than CC, faster than Venmo, or whatever.
  - geofft 9y ago
    Why are Litecoin's transaction fees multiple orders of magnitude smaller than Bitcoin's? Is this a result of genuinely better technical decisions than in Litecoin (mining is cheaper because it's less hardware-friendly, blocks are generated more quickly) or just lower transaction volume / demand for transactions because it's less well-known? That is, if Bitcoin somehow implodes tomorrow and everyone moves to Litecoin, would you still expect similarly low Litecoin fees? Was this an on-chain transaction or a Lightning transaction?
    - Frogolocalypse 9y ago
      > Why are Litecoin's transaction fees multiple orders of magnitude smaller than Bitcoin's? Supply and demand. People pay more to transact in bitcoin, because it is more secure, because it is more decentralized.
    - zik 9y ago
      Bitcoin's pretty broken at the moment due to some bad decisions by the development team. All other cryptocurrencies have very low fees.
      - Frogolocalypse 9y ago
        The price of bitcoin disagrees with your assessment.
        a_tractor 9y ago
        >The price of bitcoin disagrees with your assessment. What does the price of bitcoin have to do with an objective assessment of how well the Bitcoin network is currently functioning?

geofft 9y ago

The current Bitcoin transaction fee is $20+. Credit card processors charge you under 3%. If you're doing transactions of under about $700 USD, credit card fees are cheaper than Bitcoin fees.

vkou 9y ago
Credit card processors also pay the user of the CC a cashback on a significant portion of that fee... And are also liable for fraud. Who do I chargeback when an online merchant takes my BTC, and doesn't ship the goods I bought? BitPay will tell me to pound sand. VISA will process a chargeback, no questions asked.
- a_tractor 9y ago
  Good problems to solve in this space.
  - vkou 9y ago
    By creating an off-chain payment processor called BISA, and we're back to charging merchants fees for cashback + fraud losses, except now we're for some stupid reason doing it on a blockchain.
    - a_tractor 9y ago
      Wow. Its like you have no imagination at all and your thinking is confined to a prison of pessimism and failure. Thanks for sharing! The best thing I could say to you is that you need to do less talking about stuff you clearly know nothing about, and far more research. No offense.
a_tractor 9y ago
I moved $1800 worth of LTC (Litecoin, one of the subjects of this thread) last night. The Tx fee was $0.01 and the funds were received in less than 1 minute. No more processing, no waiting for the next business day (or 3)... For 1 cent and 1 minute later the receiver can do whatever they want with it immediately. That is cheaper than CC, faster than Venmo, or whatever.
- geofft 9y ago
  Why are Litecoin's transaction fees multiple orders of magnitude smaller than Bitcoin's? Is this a result of genuinely better technical decisions than in Litecoin (mining is cheaper because it's less hardware-friendly, blocks are generated more quickly) or just lower transaction volume / demand for transactions because it's less well-known? That is, if Bitcoin somehow implodes tomorrow and everyone moves to Litecoin, would you still expect similarly low Litecoin fees? Was this an on-chain transaction or a Lightning transaction?
  - Frogolocalypse 9y ago
    > Why are Litecoin's transaction fees multiple orders of magnitude smaller than Bitcoin's? Supply and demand. People pay more to transact in bitcoin, because it is more secure, because it is more decentralized.
  - zik 9y ago
    Bitcoin's pretty broken at the moment due to some bad decisions by the development team. All other cryptocurrencies have very low fees.
    - Frogolocalypse 9y ago
      The price of bitcoin disagrees with your assessment.
      - a_tractor 9y ago
        >The price of bitcoin disagrees with your assessment. What does the price of bitcoin have to do with an objective assessment of how well the Bitcoin network is currently functioning?