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How about “I want to buy a house without needing a bank as the middle man” or “I want to transact online without needing a credit card company intermediary taki

How about “I want to buy a house without needing a bank as the middle man” or “I want to transact online without needing a credit card company intermediary taking fees” or “I want to cheaply send money to my family across the globe” or “I want to diversify with an asset that is truly global and not easily printable by some central government” or “my country’s currency is inflating like crazy and there arent enough usd accessible to safely convert”?

madeofpalk 8y ago
You have the cash to buy a house without a bank? Go ahead. You don't need blockchain for that. Online transactions without fees? Bitcoin still has fees. I send money overseas cheaply, easily and instantly all the time. Without Blockchain.
- bramjans 8y ago
  What service do you use if I may ask?
- dmix 8y ago
  > I send money overseas cheaply, easily and instantly all the time. Without Blockchain. Really? I live in Canada and bill US customers for 6yrs and I've yet to find a solution for this that isnt awful. It's either slow, not practical for large amounts, very expensive, or requires tons of paperwork and special bank accounts not easily attained. So by all means please share your solution for this. It'd be a massive industry if you found one...
- Jommi 8y ago
  Which service do you use? What are the fees? Between what countries?
  - dmix 8y ago
    It doesn't exist apparently. No reply to 3 people. He probably Venmo'd $5 to someone and thought it was a solved problem. Not a real solution to real significant cross-border money transfers.
    - wpietri 8y ago
      There are a bunch of options out there: https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/banking/best-ways-to-wire-money-internationally/ https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/banking/best-ways-to-wire-mo... And more all the time; it's a hot area for startups: https://www.wsj.com/articles/fintech-startups-seek-to-shake-up-money-transfer-industry-1513679401 https://www.wsj.com/articles/fintech-startups-seek-to-shake-... So it's entirely plausible there's a solution that works well for him already.
wpietri 8y ago
So all of these are basically Bitcoin. Bitcoin's been going for a decade with minimal use for any of those things. That suggests none of them are significant user needs for most people. (Or, at least, Bitcoin is a terrible match for any need that does exist.) Some of those aren't real needs. E.g., "without needing a bank" is not a real problem. The "diversify with an asset that is truly global" is similarly an ideological statement, not a financial one. The "without taking fees" thing is slightly more plausible, but in practice most people are happy to pay 2-3%, or have merchants pay that, and payment networks aren't free to run, so I'm not sure how plausible it is. Sending money to family can be solved much better with non-blockchain methods, which is why Bitcoin has approximately zero foothold there. The "inflating like crazy" thing is similarly mostly a fantasy. How many countries are falling apart financially but where rule of law, power service, and internet service are stable enough to run blockchain nodes? How much better would a barely-accessible digital currency be than scarce USD? Why not just buy some directly useful inflation hedge, like medicine or canned goods? Even if it were good for the "financial collapse" use case, that doesn't mean much in the rest of the world. The US dollar and the Euro are useful in unstable financial environments because they have value elsewhere. But the reverse isn't true; nobody in the US holds USD because it's the black market currency of choice in Caracas. So that use case isn't anything to build a real system on.
- spunker540 8y ago
  Just how in the 90s there was a lot of things that people could do on the internet but didn’t due to the immaturity of the ecosystem so it is with bitcoin today. Back in 1995 you could order most things online but it wasn’t easy or convenient or trustworthy and most people didnt do it despite the availability. The lightning network is just getting started which (once mainstream) is going to dramatically lower fees and transaction speeds for a ton of bitcoin use cases. And even if some of the most compelling use cases are niche- (collapsing economies, illegal activities) those alone will keep the currency value afloat and if eventually it matures and offers lower fees than credit card companies and developing nations where many people don’t have bank accounts can leap frog our legacy payment systems then I think the tech will be here to stay.
  - 8y ago
simonebrunozzi 8y ago
> How about “I want to buy a house without needing a bank as the middle man” We are building this, using a Blockchain. No, there's no bullshit. Actually, we already did, few days ago (sold a property (a small lot of land) in California for ~$7.5k, paid in ETH): https://etherscan.io/address/0x190d022d7e4913fee5533cfdba79fff17dbd87a1 https://etherscan.io/address/0x190d022d7e4913fee5533cfdba79f...
B1FF_PSUVM 8y ago
> “I want to buy a house without needing a bank as the middle man” That's illegal in some places - transactions above a certain value must be done by bank transfer, not cash or whatever. The number of places with those laws is probably not going down.

madeofpalk 8y ago

You have the cash to buy a house without a bank? Go ahead. You don't need blockchain for that. Online transactions without fees? Bitcoin still has fees. I send money overseas cheaply, easily and instantly all the time. Without Blockchain.

bramjans 8y ago
What service do you use if I may ask?
dmix 8y ago
> I send money overseas cheaply, easily and instantly all the time. Without Blockchain. Really? I live in Canada and bill US customers for 6yrs and I've yet to find a solution for this that isnt awful. It's either slow, not practical for large amounts, very expensive, or requires tons of paperwork and special bank accounts not easily attained. So by all means please share your solution for this. It'd be a massive industry if you found one...
Jommi 8y ago
Which service do you use? What are the fees? Between what countries?
- dmix 8y ago
  It doesn't exist apparently. No reply to 3 people. He probably Venmo'd $5 to someone and thought it was a solved problem. Not a real solution to real significant cross-border money transfers.
  - wpietri 8y ago
    There are a bunch of options out there: https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/banking/best-ways-to-wire-money-internationally/ https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/banking/best-ways-to-wire-mo... And more all the time; it's a hot area for startups: https://www.wsj.com/articles/fintech-startups-seek-to-shake-up-money-transfer-industry-1513679401 https://www.wsj.com/articles/fintech-startups-seek-to-shake-... So it's entirely plausible there's a solution that works well for him already.

wpietri 8y ago

So all of these are basically Bitcoin. Bitcoin's been going for a decade with minimal use for any of those things. That suggests none of them are significant user needs for most people. (Or, at least, Bitcoin is a terrible match for any need that does exist.) Some of those aren't real needs. E.g., "without needing a bank" is not a real problem. The "diversify with an asset that is truly global" is similarly an ideological statement, not a financial one. The "without taking fees" thing is slightly more plausible, but in practice most people are happy to pay 2-3%, or have merchants pay that, and payment networks aren't free to run, so I'm not sure how plausible it is. Sending money to family can be solved much better with non-blockchain methods, which is why Bitcoin has approximately zero foothold there. The "inflating like crazy" thing is similarly mostly a fantasy. How many countries are falling apart financially but where rule of law, power service, and internet service are stable enough to run blockchain nodes? How much better would a barely-accessible digital currency be than scarce USD? Why not just buy some directly useful inflation hedge, like medicine or canned goods? Even if it were good for the "financial collapse" use case, that doesn't mean much in the rest of the world. The US dollar and the Euro are useful in unstable financial environments because they have value elsewhere. But the reverse isn't true; nobody in the US holds USD because it's the black market currency of choice in Caracas. So that use case isn't anything to build a real system on.

spunker540 8y ago
Just how in the 90s there was a lot of things that people could do on the internet but didn’t due to the immaturity of the ecosystem so it is with bitcoin today. Back in 1995 you could order most things online but it wasn’t easy or convenient or trustworthy and most people didnt do it despite the availability. The lightning network is just getting started which (once mainstream) is going to dramatically lower fees and transaction speeds for a ton of bitcoin use cases. And even if some of the most compelling use cases are niche- (collapsing economies, illegal activities) those alone will keep the currency value afloat and if eventually it matures and offers lower fees than credit card companies and developing nations where many people don’t have bank accounts can leap frog our legacy payment systems then I think the tech will be here to stay.
- 8y ago

simonebrunozzi 8y ago

> How about “I want to buy a house without needing a bank as the middle man” We are building this, using a Blockchain. No, there's no bullshit. Actually, we already did, few days ago (sold a property (a small lot of land) in California for ~$7.5k, paid in ETH): https://etherscan.io/address/0x190d022d7e4913fee5533cfdba79fff17dbd87a1 https://etherscan.io/address/0x190d022d7e4913fee5533cfdba79f...

B1FF_PSUVM 8y ago

> “I want to buy a house without needing a bank as the middle man” That's illegal in some places - transactions above a certain value must be done by bank transfer, not cash or whatever. The number of places with those laws is probably not going down.