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Any data to back that up ? I know anecdotal, but I can buy beers, taxi & coffee with crypto which I could not 9 years ago and I see quite a lot of ATMs appearin

Any data to back that up ? I know anecdotal, but I can buy beers, taxi & coffee with crypto which I could not 9 years ago and I see quite a lot of ATMs appearing; NL/UK/JP/HK. I think the main point is that I can get a coffee with crypto, which is an important milestone.

eksemplar 8y ago
Maybe it’s because I’m European, but 8 years ago I could buy coffee with crypto in both Copenhagen and Berlin and today I can’t.
- SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
  Because it’s not a currency anymore it’s a commodity. That first time you had to explain to your mom or aunt what Bitcoin is becsuse they saw it on TV news or radio - that’s the time it became too risky for retailers to trust it.
- tluyben2 8y ago
  Did they ban it in Copenhagen and Berlin? In general? Or just not enough demand so they threw it out?
  - eksemplar 8y ago
    It’s not illegal, it’s just really inconvenient. Today we’ve linked instant payment methods to our credit cards, if the card isn’t rfid enabled on its own. So you just swipe your payment method and you’re done. We even have a banking app that lets you instantly transfer funds between you, between banks as well, for free. Called mobile pay. So smaller stores that can’t afford to have a credit card system, use that. So that’s on the payment side. It’s also extremely tedious, and expensive, to turn the bitcoin into actual cash + taxation makes selling a coffee with crypto a bad business case. Honestly though, I think it’s mostly down to a complete lack of demand.
    - sparkie 8y ago
      I'm guessing it's more to do with transaction times than anything. A merchant needs to wait 10, 20 or 30 minutes to get a confirmation in Bitcoin, because he can't be sure there will not be a double-spend of the money until it is confirmed. Technically, this has always been the case, but there was a false belief that 0conf transactions were secure, because Bitcoin clients rejected double-spend attempts by default (as a DoS protection). This prevention of double-spending unconfirmed transactions was never part of the protocol though, and it was made clear when Replace-by-fee was added, which shows how clients can easily replace existing transactions with new ones, without changing the Bitcoin protocol. There's still a crowd who believe that 0conf transactions are fine, and RBF should be removed (eg, the Bitcoin Cash developers), but it's really just ignoring the reality that RBF is not an enforcible protocol rule, but a client-side policy in the software. It's probably fine to use 0conf for small transactions because it is manageable risk, similar to accepting credit cards where payments can be reversed. Another possible solution to faster payments is with payment channels, where the risk of double-spending is mitigated by hashed time-locked contracts which are transmitted between parties and not broadcast over the Bitcoin network until one of the parties wants to reclaim their funds onto the Bitcoin network. Since the parties are just exchanging HTLCs over a TCP connection, they're practically instant, the fees are low or nil, and there is a potential privacy improvement by not revealing every transaction into the Bitcoin ledger. This is in development (minimally working on Lightning Network now), but proceeding quite slowly. If Bitcoin is going to have widespread global usage, these problems need to be overcome so that it is as simple, or simpler to use than credit cards for the average user. It possibly is simpler to set up for merchants already, if they're technical enough, because they don't have to involve 3rd party payment processors. The other side to it is that we take credit cards for granted in the developed world, and often miss that there are a billion or more people without banks in the developing world. These are the people who have the real use-case for Bitcoin. A single user can set up a Bitcoin node on a smartphone in some remote village, and suddenly bring banking capability to their entire village. I think that's a very strong use case. People are also using it to hedge against their national currencies which are being hyper-inflated by their own governments - as is happening in Venezuela right now.
      - 8y ago
- phobosdeimos 8y ago
  This, retailers don't even want to support Apple Pay because of its transaction fees. If there is already a almost free and efficient payment system that everyone is happy with and is used by 99% of the population why bother with anything new that IS NOT SUPERIOR TO WHAT YOU ALREADY HAVE? I simply don't know what problem BTC was supposed to solve.
  - MBCook 8y ago
    What Apple Pay transaction fees? They’re exactly the same standard credit card transaction fees because they ARE standard credit card transaction fees. Apple doesn’t take a cut.
    - phobosdeimos 8y ago
      "they ARE standard credit card transaction fees" Creditcards are robbery, they are not very populair and cost retailers money. Why does everyone want to make money from transactions? We are talking about a basic service that costs less than a cent.
      - mikeash 8y ago
        Not very popular? They seem extremely popular to me.
      - isostatic 8y ago
        > they are not very populair and cost retailers money Citation needed. Well on the popular claim. Yes they cost retailers money, so do debit cards, so does cash. In the UK debit cards are the most popular means to do a retail transaction - in terms of numbers of transactions (it's been plastic in terms of value for years). Credit card transactions from 9% in 2013 to 11.5% in 2016. Debit card from 32% to 43%. Cash decreased from 52% to 42%. 'Plastic' has never been more popular. Average cost of taking sash has remained fairly stable, but the cost of taking debit and credit cards has plummeted in recent years, in line with their increased popularity. In 2016, credit cards cost 0.5%, Debit 0.25%, Cash 0.15%. Non card costs (including things like paypal) is at 1.7%. Figures from https://brc.org.uk/media/179489/payment-survey-2016_final.pdf https://brc.org.uk/media/179489/payment-survey-2016_final.pd...
Nursie 8y ago
I don't know where you live, but the only place I know of in my city that takes it is CEX, a place to buy and sell second hand movies, games and computer equipment. And I don't imagine the staff would know what to do if someone actually tried to use it.

eksemplar 8y ago

Maybe it’s because I’m European, but 8 years ago I could buy coffee with crypto in both Copenhagen and Berlin and today I can’t.

SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
Because it’s not a currency anymore it’s a commodity. That first time you had to explain to your mom or aunt what Bitcoin is becsuse they saw it on TV news or radio - that’s the time it became too risky for retailers to trust it.
tluyben2 8y ago
Did they ban it in Copenhagen and Berlin? In general? Or just not enough demand so they threw it out?
- eksemplar 8y ago
  It’s not illegal, it’s just really inconvenient. Today we’ve linked instant payment methods to our credit cards, if the card isn’t rfid enabled on its own. So you just swipe your payment method and you’re done. We even have a banking app that lets you instantly transfer funds between you, between banks as well, for free. Called mobile pay. So smaller stores that can’t afford to have a credit card system, use that. So that’s on the payment side. It’s also extremely tedious, and expensive, to turn the bitcoin into actual cash + taxation makes selling a coffee with crypto a bad business case. Honestly though, I think it’s mostly down to a complete lack of demand.
  - sparkie 8y ago
    I'm guessing it's more to do with transaction times than anything. A merchant needs to wait 10, 20 or 30 minutes to get a confirmation in Bitcoin, because he can't be sure there will not be a double-spend of the money until it is confirmed. Technically, this has always been the case, but there was a false belief that 0conf transactions were secure, because Bitcoin clients rejected double-spend attempts by default (as a DoS protection). This prevention of double-spending unconfirmed transactions was never part of the protocol though, and it was made clear when Replace-by-fee was added, which shows how clients can easily replace existing transactions with new ones, without changing the Bitcoin protocol. There's still a crowd who believe that 0conf transactions are fine, and RBF should be removed (eg, the Bitcoin Cash developers), but it's really just ignoring the reality that RBF is not an enforcible protocol rule, but a client-side policy in the software. It's probably fine to use 0conf for small transactions because it is manageable risk, similar to accepting credit cards where payments can be reversed. Another possible solution to faster payments is with payment channels, where the risk of double-spending is mitigated by hashed time-locked contracts which are transmitted between parties and not broadcast over the Bitcoin network until one of the parties wants to reclaim their funds onto the Bitcoin network. Since the parties are just exchanging HTLCs over a TCP connection, they're practically instant, the fees are low or nil, and there is a potential privacy improvement by not revealing every transaction into the Bitcoin ledger. This is in development (minimally working on Lightning Network now), but proceeding quite slowly. If Bitcoin is going to have widespread global usage, these problems need to be overcome so that it is as simple, or simpler to use than credit cards for the average user. It possibly is simpler to set up for merchants already, if they're technical enough, because they don't have to involve 3rd party payment processors. The other side to it is that we take credit cards for granted in the developed world, and often miss that there are a billion or more people without banks in the developing world. These are the people who have the real use-case for Bitcoin. A single user can set up a Bitcoin node on a smartphone in some remote village, and suddenly bring banking capability to their entire village. I think that's a very strong use case. People are also using it to hedge against their national currencies which are being hyper-inflated by their own governments - as is happening in Venezuela right now.
    - 8y ago
phobosdeimos 8y ago
This, retailers don't even want to support Apple Pay because of its transaction fees. If there is already a almost free and efficient payment system that everyone is happy with and is used by 99% of the population why bother with anything new that IS NOT SUPERIOR TO WHAT YOU ALREADY HAVE? I simply don't know what problem BTC was supposed to solve.
- MBCook 8y ago
  What Apple Pay transaction fees? They’re exactly the same standard credit card transaction fees because they ARE standard credit card transaction fees. Apple doesn’t take a cut.
  - phobosdeimos 8y ago
    "they ARE standard credit card transaction fees" Creditcards are robbery, they are not very populair and cost retailers money. Why does everyone want to make money from transactions? We are talking about a basic service that costs less than a cent.
    - mikeash 8y ago
      Not very popular? They seem extremely popular to me.
    - isostatic 8y ago
      > they are not very populair and cost retailers money Citation needed. Well on the popular claim. Yes they cost retailers money, so do debit cards, so does cash. In the UK debit cards are the most popular means to do a retail transaction - in terms of numbers of transactions (it's been plastic in terms of value for years). Credit card transactions from 9% in 2013 to 11.5% in 2016. Debit card from 32% to 43%. Cash decreased from 52% to 42%. 'Plastic' has never been more popular. Average cost of taking sash has remained fairly stable, but the cost of taking debit and credit cards has plummeted in recent years, in line with their increased popularity. In 2016, credit cards cost 0.5%, Debit 0.25%, Cash 0.15%. Non card costs (including things like paypal) is at 1.7%. Figures from https://brc.org.uk/media/179489/payment-survey-2016_final.pdf https://brc.org.uk/media/179489/payment-survey-2016_final.pd...

Nursie 8y ago

I don't know where you live, but the only place I know of in my city that takes it is CEX, a place to buy and sell second hand movies, games and computer equipment. And I don't imagine the staff would know what to do if someone actually tried to use it.