4 ms·

Why would an ordinary consumer ever want to pay for retail goods in a currency other than the one that their salary comes in? Amazon is happy to eat credit car

by chis 9y ago

Why would an ordinary consumer ever want to pay for retail goods in a currency other than the one that their salary comes in? Amazon is happy to eat credit card fees, and if they really wanted to avoid that they could let customers link their bank account directly to Amazon.

justboxing 9y ago
> Why would an ordinary consumer ever want to pay for retail goods in a currency other than the one that their salary comes in? You are thinking of Consumers in the West, almost all of who have Bank Accounts, Credit Cards and in these cases, your statement makes sense. However, a large majority of the developing world still works on Cash economy. And in rural areas in these regions, most people don't have bank accounts, credit cards with with to shop on Amazon. They do have mobile phones with internet. So it would make sense for Amazon to use crypto-currency to allow such people to make purchases on it's site. Do you know that Amazon in India has a COD feature (Cash on Delivery), so the dude delivers your package and takes cash from you for your purchase from Amazon.in.
- hkmurakami 9y ago
  Honest question -- how do you buy crypto with cash? Wouldn't it be simpler to partner with various retail outlets to let cash based consumers load their amazon accounts with cash (via gift cards or other means), or even issue Amazon branded debit cards that these people can top up in store? I mean cash on delivery and cash on delivery to a convenience store are both real and very popular options in Japan (the former with pretty rampant delivery fraud issues, but that's another can of worms), an affluent country where many consumer can get credit cards, but one where culturally people are skeptical of financial products and prefer to deal in cash.
  - justboxing 9y ago
    > how do you buy crypto with cash? Right now, you have to open an account with 1 of the exchanges, like Kraken, or Bitstamp, or GDAX, or wallets like Coinbase, link your Bank account and wire money in. This is like the Wild West these days, with horror stories of wire transfers not getting credited for weeks and some not getting any response from customer support (all do email only, no phone). I think they are also having a hard time with the insane spike in interest. Kraken CEO is claiming that they are seeing 50,000 Account openings per day[1] and are not able to handle it and hence the 5XX HTTP errors that people are seeing on their site. > This blaze is on fire. > The recent, unexpected explosion in demand has been overwhelming. Each of the past few days has produced 50,000 new account registrations and 10,000 new support tickets — an order of magnitude above where we were just last quarter. Concurrent users, daily trades and volumes are also hitting new all-time highs. We are struggling to keep up. [1] Source: https://blog.kraken.com/post/1399/degraded-service-upgrade-next-week/ https://blog.kraken.com/post/1399/degraded-service-upgrade-n... One thing I'm still not able to wrap my head around is this. In order to 'BUY' Crypto currency, you have to pay plain old Paper currency like USD or JPY (referred to as FIAT currency in the crypto world). So how does this make Crypto like Bitcoin an independent currency? There are also some stories that 40% of Bitcoin is 'OWNED' by less than 1000 individuals / institutions around the world. That's not the case with paper money though.
    - hndamien 9y ago
      Local bitcoins allows you to use cash from your wallet.

by chis 9y ago

justboxing 9y ago

> Why would an ordinary consumer ever want to pay for retail goods in a currency other than the one that their salary comes in? You are thinking of Consumers in the West, almost all of who have Bank Accounts, Credit Cards and in these cases, your statement makes sense. However, a large majority of the developing world still works on Cash economy. And in rural areas in these regions, most people don't have bank accounts, credit cards with with to shop on Amazon. They do have mobile phones with internet. So it would make sense for Amazon to use crypto-currency to allow such people to make purchases on it's site. Do you know that Amazon in India has a COD feature (Cash on Delivery), so the dude delivers your package and takes cash from you for your purchase from Amazon.in.

hkmurakami 9y ago
Honest question -- how do you buy crypto with cash? Wouldn't it be simpler to partner with various retail outlets to let cash based consumers load their amazon accounts with cash (via gift cards or other means), or even issue Amazon branded debit cards that these people can top up in store? I mean cash on delivery and cash on delivery to a convenience store are both real and very popular options in Japan (the former with pretty rampant delivery fraud issues, but that's another can of worms), an affluent country where many consumer can get credit cards, but one where culturally people are skeptical of financial products and prefer to deal in cash.
- justboxing 9y ago
  > how do you buy crypto with cash? Right now, you have to open an account with 1 of the exchanges, like Kraken, or Bitstamp, or GDAX, or wallets like Coinbase, link your Bank account and wire money in. This is like the Wild West these days, with horror stories of wire transfers not getting credited for weeks and some not getting any response from customer support (all do email only, no phone). I think they are also having a hard time with the insane spike in interest. Kraken CEO is claiming that they are seeing 50,000 Account openings per day[1] and are not able to handle it and hence the 5XX HTTP errors that people are seeing on their site. > This blaze is on fire. > The recent, unexpected explosion in demand has been overwhelming. Each of the past few days has produced 50,000 new account registrations and 10,000 new support tickets — an order of magnitude above where we were just last quarter. Concurrent users, daily trades and volumes are also hitting new all-time highs. We are struggling to keep up. [1] Source: https://blog.kraken.com/post/1399/degraded-service-upgrade-next-week/ https://blog.kraken.com/post/1399/degraded-service-upgrade-n... One thing I'm still not able to wrap my head around is this. In order to 'BUY' Crypto currency, you have to pay plain old Paper currency like USD or JPY (referred to as FIAT currency in the crypto world). So how does this make Crypto like Bitcoin an independent currency? There are also some stories that 40% of Bitcoin is 'OWNED' by less than 1000 individuals / institutions around the world. That's not the case with paper money though.
  - hndamien 9y ago
    Local bitcoins allows you to use cash from your wallet.