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Of course it depends on what you intend to do with your money, but for living and operating, local currency is usually most important. Cryptocurrencies serve m
by blunte 9y ago
Of course it depends on what you intend to do with your money, but for living and operating, local currency is usually most important.
Cryptocurrencies serve many specialized needs, particularly in global transfers, but they have little use in day to day, local transactions.
Anything that can be traded for value can be considered a currency, so you could theoretically trade equities with other people for goods and services. But usually, that is much less practical than exchanging local fiat currency.
Same goes for virtual currencies. Instead, you'll perhaps use virtual currencies as an intermediate currency for simplified financial transfers, or perhaps for storing some of your investments, or for utility reasons (such as tokens which are the utility fee tokens for some exchanges), or perhaps as a form of startup investment (as with ICOs).
I do wonder if the effectiveness of bitcoin as a transfer currency was any motivation behind the recent improvement in EU bank to bank transfers. What previously took one or maybe two business days for SEPA transfers has recently been improved to be near instant (so I've read; I haven't paid attention lately). Maybe the banks felt pressure to keep up?
Meanwhile, US banking customers are still passing handwritten pieces of paper around. Once US customers get verified accounts with some of the cryptocurrency money exchangers, quick USD->bitcoin->bitcoin->USD transfers are nice and fast and relatively inexpensive (with the recent dramatic drop in bitcoin mining fees).
- ghthor 9y agoDay to day transactions are actually the most likely to be disrupted by crypto when the UX & education hit the right point. The reason for this is crypto can trade with almost zero fees, which compared to card transaction fees make paying in crypto better for merchants, like taking cash.
- dmitriid 9y agoSo that’s why most crypto currencies have exhorbitant (compared to credit card transactions) fees?
- blunte 9y agoWhich ones do you include in your "most" category? Bitcoin fees, for example, are based partly on the amount of data in the transaction. It's not really a percent of amount sent factor. Whether you send 100 BTC (which is a lot of money) or 0.001 BTC, you'll pay about the same fee assuming the same number of input and output addresses. Also, while bitcoin fees had gotten quite high toward the end of 2017 and early 2018, lately they have reset back down to a very low level. I routinely send batch payments from a dozen input addresses to some output addresses with a value total of a few thousand dollars, paying less than $1 in fees. And anyway, you can't send people money to their credit card. UPDATE: It appears bitcoin fees are back on the rise..., 10x what they were a day ago.
- dmitriid 9y agoExactly. Soooo... Where’s the promise of ”zero fees compared to credit cards, especially for merchants”? A real merchant example: Steam had to stop accepting bitcoins because: - transactions took too long o complete - (main reson) fees were unpredictable and sometimes higher than the cost if the game
- blunte 9y agoOne major benefit is that the transactions are non-reversible. I suppose if you're a crooked merchant, that's not good for people. But credit card companies have made it so easy for users to press one button to chargeback that some less than ethical consumers do this on a regular basis and get away with it. Another thing to keep in mind is that if you operate a business and accept bitcoin as one form of payment, nobody can cut off your means to accept payment. If the kind of product or service you provide is something banks don't want to touch (even though they are legal), then you're left with few options unless you consider cryptocurrency payments. Even if you get a credit card merchant agreement, the ccard companies will routinely shut you down until you have a conversation with them, reminding them that their senior risk department has already verified you multiple times. Trust me, that gets old.
- 9y ago
- lalaland1125 9y agoIf fees are close to zero, then how do miners get paid?
- blunte 9y agoIn the bitcoin world, they earn a mining reward of 12.5 BTC.
- lalaland1125 9y agoThe mining reward will eventually drop to 0 BTC though.
- solotronics 9y agothe idea is that by that time there will be so many transactions that the fees will fill that. also, if users are also miners they have an incentive to continue the BTC network for their own self benefit even if the fees were less.
- lalaland1125 9y ago> the idea is that by that time there will be so many transactions that the fees will fill that This comes with its own scalability issues which are currently unsolved (and might well be unsolvable) > also, if users are also miners they have an incentive to continue the BTC network for their own self benefit even if the fees were less. This is equivalent to the users themselves paying fees, but much less secure, stable, and decentralized.
- short_sells_poo 9y agoI live in Switzerland and domestic payments are near instantaneous and free. EU based payments are also free and settle within a day. Saying crypto can trade with low fees as some sort of unique benefit is either naive or disingenuous. There is literally zero need for cryptos in this regard, because the problem can be solved in context of the existing systems too. At best, one could argue that the threat of cryptos can force shoddy banks and payment orocessors to up their game.
- occamrazor 9y agoDebit cards already have essentially zero fees (free for customer, 0.1-0.2%) for merchants.