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Coinbase Peer to Peer using email is free and instant. Shift card had like a 10$ fee for printing the card, but its free and instant. The only time I did an o

Coinbase Peer to Peer using email is free and instant. Shift card had like a 10$ fee for printing the card, but its free and instant. The only time I did an on-chain transaction in the last 3 years was moving money to another exchange to buy alt-coins.

spookthesunset 8y ago
> The only time I did an on-chain transaction in the last 3 years was moving money to another exchange to buy alt-coins. So you used a "totally not a bank, but really a bank" bank, eh?
- mkirklions 8y ago
  Why are payment processors/banks bad again? 2FA > a piece of paper under my bed. But also I keep my bitcoin in lots of places, a few bucks in coinbase for free transactions is like keeping cash in my wallet.
  - chriswarbo 8y ago
    > Why are payment processors/banks bad again? It's a matter of opinion. However, the only reason for bitcoin to exist is to avoid banks and payment processors. Hence it's illogical to make heavy use of coinbase/etc. regardless of what opinion you have. Bitcoin has many downsides (volatility, no recourse, vast energy usage, paranoid wallet security, high fees, long confirmation time, etc.) and one upside (no need to trust processors/banks). If you think that processors/banks are bad, then you might find that the upside outweighs the downsides, and make many on-chain bitcoin transactions. Yet you shouldn't use coinbase/etc. in this case, since they're a bank/processor, hence you'd be removing the only upside that bitcoin has. On the other hand, if you don't think that processors/banks are bad, then the upside of bitcoin isn't worth all of the downsides. You might as well use regular currency, with all of its advantages over bitcoin (instant payments, lower fees, lower volatility, recourse, less paranoid security, etc.). In this case there's no need to use coinbase/etc. because there's no need to use bitcoin. Those intermediaries do serve a role in converting between traditional currencies and cryptocurrencies, but it only makes sense to use them occasionally, e.g. buying a stash of bitcoins and immediately 'withdrawing' them to your private, on-chain-only wallet. If you're regularly converting back and forth, or maintaining a non-zero balance on their systems, you would always be better off doing something else (either sticking to fiat, or sticking to crypto).
    - ericb 8y ago
      > However, the only reason for bitcoin to exist is to avoid banks and payment processors. Not true. If your purpose is holding inflation-resistant money, payment processors and bitcoin banks may be perfectly ok.
TeMPOraL 8y ago
So correct me if I'm wrong, but the way you're using Bitcoin gives you no magical crypto guarantees the currency is supposed to offer? I increasingly feel that pro-crypto arguments are mostly motte and bailey. So Bitcoin is better than fiat because it's decentralized and censorship-resistant, with everything forever stored in the blockchain. It's also more convenient and efficient than fiat in daily use - when we discard all the decentralization and anti-censorship guarantees, skip the blockchain and use it as a private-issued, unregulated fiat.
- mkirklions 8y ago
  > when we discard all the decentralization and anti-censorship guarantees, skip the blockchain and use it as a private-issued, unregulated fiat. That is an option. I dont care about 'trust' when I spend 2 dollars at taco bell on my shift card. I dont care about 'trust' when I give my friend 200 dollars with coinbase email. 5 bitcoin? Yeah I'll take that out of coinbase. But this is a payment platform IMO. I use paypal and venmo too. They dont charge fees and I dont really care about decentralization magic.
- maehwasu 8y ago
  He gets the "magical crypto guarantees" for 99% of his money, and only waives them for a small part that is "in-flight." This isn't at all different from the way many people separate their investments and savings accounts from their checking accounts, except that in this case, the investment/savings accounts get "magical crypto guarantees." This isn't rocket science.

spookthesunset 8y ago

> The only time I did an on-chain transaction in the last 3 years was moving money to another exchange to buy alt-coins. So you used a "totally not a bank, but really a bank" bank, eh?

mkirklions 8y ago
Why are payment processors/banks bad again? 2FA > a piece of paper under my bed. But also I keep my bitcoin in lots of places, a few bucks in coinbase for free transactions is like keeping cash in my wallet.
- chriswarbo 8y ago
  > Why are payment processors/banks bad again? It's a matter of opinion. However, the only reason for bitcoin to exist is to avoid banks and payment processors. Hence it's illogical to make heavy use of coinbase/etc. regardless of what opinion you have. Bitcoin has many downsides (volatility, no recourse, vast energy usage, paranoid wallet security, high fees, long confirmation time, etc.) and one upside (no need to trust processors/banks). If you think that processors/banks are bad, then you might find that the upside outweighs the downsides, and make many on-chain bitcoin transactions. Yet you shouldn't use coinbase/etc. in this case, since they're a bank/processor, hence you'd be removing the only upside that bitcoin has. On the other hand, if you don't think that processors/banks are bad, then the upside of bitcoin isn't worth all of the downsides. You might as well use regular currency, with all of its advantages over bitcoin (instant payments, lower fees, lower volatility, recourse, less paranoid security, etc.). In this case there's no need to use coinbase/etc. because there's no need to use bitcoin. Those intermediaries do serve a role in converting between traditional currencies and cryptocurrencies, but it only makes sense to use them occasionally, e.g. buying a stash of bitcoins and immediately 'withdrawing' them to your private, on-chain-only wallet. If you're regularly converting back and forth, or maintaining a non-zero balance on their systems, you would always be better off doing something else (either sticking to fiat, or sticking to crypto).
  - ericb 8y ago
    > However, the only reason for bitcoin to exist is to avoid banks and payment processors. Not true. If your purpose is holding inflation-resistant money, payment processors and bitcoin banks may be perfectly ok.

TeMPOraL 8y ago

So correct me if I'm wrong, but the way you're using Bitcoin gives you no magical crypto guarantees the currency is supposed to offer? I increasingly feel that pro-crypto arguments are mostly motte and bailey. So Bitcoin is better than fiat because it's decentralized and censorship-resistant, with everything forever stored in the blockchain. It's also more convenient and efficient than fiat in daily use - when we discard all the decentralization and anti-censorship guarantees, skip the blockchain and use it as a private-issued, unregulated fiat.

mkirklions 8y ago
> when we discard all the decentralization and anti-censorship guarantees, skip the blockchain and use it as a private-issued, unregulated fiat. That is an option. I dont care about 'trust' when I spend 2 dollars at taco bell on my shift card. I dont care about 'trust' when I give my friend 200 dollars with coinbase email. 5 bitcoin? Yeah I'll take that out of coinbase. But this is a payment platform IMO. I use paypal and venmo too. They dont charge fees and I dont really care about decentralization magic.
maehwasu 8y ago
He gets the "magical crypto guarantees" for 99% of his money, and only waives them for a small part that is "in-flight." This isn't at all different from the way many people separate their investments and savings accounts from their checking accounts, except that in this case, the investment/savings accounts get "magical crypto guarantees." This isn't rocket science.