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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

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.
- notahacker 8y ago
  Setting up a Bitcoin node in a remote village doesn't "bring banking capability to the entire village". The node doesn't offer a badly-needed credit facility or the ability to turn remittances into local banknotes (at least not without an actual bank account...), the stuff that can be bought with Bitcoins can't be shipped to the village anyway, a foreign language software program that doesn't run on dumbphones certainly isn't an improvement on their existing cash, mobile and IOU payment systems and is an unimaginably awful way for a technically and financially unsophisticated population to store their life savings. It does offer hope to wealthy Westerners who bought Bitcoin in December that they might recover their losses by dumping on the global poor, I guess.
- umanwizard 8y ago
  What does bitcoin have to do with banking? Banking would have to be built on top of Bitcoin, as it was already for gold in the past.
tluyben2 8y ago
I was more referring to crypto in general ; some are very fast and low fees, but yes I see what you mean. Are you in Berlin or Copenhagen?

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.

notahacker 8y ago
Setting up a Bitcoin node in a remote village doesn't "bring banking capability to the entire village". The node doesn't offer a badly-needed credit facility or the ability to turn remittances into local banknotes (at least not without an actual bank account...), the stuff that can be bought with Bitcoins can't be shipped to the village anyway, a foreign language software program that doesn't run on dumbphones certainly isn't an improvement on their existing cash, mobile and IOU payment systems and is an unimaginably awful way for a technically and financially unsophisticated population to store their life savings. It does offer hope to wealthy Westerners who bought Bitcoin in December that they might recover their losses by dumping on the global poor, I guess.
umanwizard 8y ago
What does bitcoin have to do with banking? Banking would have to be built on top of Bitcoin, as it was already for gold in the past.

tluyben2 8y ago

I was more referring to crypto in general ; some are very fast and low fees, but yes I see what you mean. Are you in Berlin or Copenhagen?