18 ms·
It won't and even BTC enthusiasts have given up on that. They narrative is now that BTC is a "store of value".
by AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
It won't and even BTC enthusiasts have given up on that. They narrative is now that BTC is a "store of value".
- onion2k 6y agoIt won't It won't for small transactions. Buying a car or a house with BTC could still be viable in the future.
- gambiting 6y agoI still don't see how. When we bought our house in the UK I sent the entire transfer from my phone, paid 0 fee, and it arrived 30 seconds later. Why would I use bitcoin for it?
- leesalminen 6y agoI’m currently buying a house internationally. International wire transfers take multiple days and I have to produce all sorts of documents for the receiving country’s government showing the source of the money. It’s an annoying and lengthy process. I’d much rather send BTC to a wallet than this.
- Hamuko 6y agoAre you saying that if you were buying a house with Bitcoin that the government wouldn't want to see where the money is sourced from?
- alisonkisk 6y agoBitcoin is useful for evading the law, but of course there had a host of other issues and risks.
- Twisell 6y agoLike finding out that the house is actually not yours after landing in a foreign country and having spend you life saving on a BTC transaction. Big issues, big risks, but maybe you have big balls too... I personally don't feel so self assured about myself.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- nannal 6y agoIt would be easier, this TX came from my work's hotwallet & this one was part of my inheritance, you can see these TXs where that address sent to the tax authority assuring all tax has been paid as opposed to being passed around a call centre to talk to "Bob" so the bank can provide those details.
- gambiting 6y agoSo......exactly the same way it works with a bank nowadays? When I did it it was just a printed statement from my bank(that I printed myself), showing money arriving from X account, Y amount paid for tax, document from solicitor confirming inheritence, 3 copies of my payslip, done. How exactly is that easier with bitcoin?
- jcranmer 6y agoThe main reason for a lot of that documentation is know your customer/anti-money-laundering laws. Even if you were sending BTC, you would still have to provide that documentation to not break the law.
- gambiting 6y agoNo they don't? I frequently send large(about £50k/month) amounts of money between one EU country and UK, we always pay extra(50 euro) to have the transfer done as an express transfer and the money arrives within 60 minutes in the UK bank. Or if you don't mind doing a SEPA transfer then it's 15 minutes. And no, I was never asked to prove any source of anything, it's an invoice payment, it goes straight through. Maybe by "international" you mean something else, but at least in the EU(and EEA and UK) transfers can be incredibly quick.
- sneak 6y ago14x more people live outside of SEPA than live within it.
- gambiting 6y agoAnd it's the biggest(by operating revenue) market in the world, what's your point?
- sneak 6y agoApologies, I thought I was being clear. A payment system that lets people transfer unlimited amounts of value to 14x more people than SEPA (presuming internet access), without censorship, irreversibly, and effectively for free, has, it seems to me, substantial value. Even if it's less useful than, say, access to SEPA, it'd have to be 14x less valuable to break even (again, presuming internet access available to everyone, which isn't a thing yet).
- corford 6y ago>International wire transfers take multiple days Not in the EU they don't. A SEPA transfer takes max 1 business day and is usually free. More info: https://www.gbm.hsbc.com/solutions/global-liquidity-and-cash-management/global-payables/-/media/gbm/solutions/attachments/sepa/your-guide-to-sepa https://www.gbm.hsbc.com/solutions/global-liquidity-and-cash...
- picks_at_nits 6y agoIf you are buying and selling real estate in a functioning jurisdiction, hiding your identity by making the payment opaque is not going to do much for you. There are title deeds and tax rolls. In many jurisdictions you have obligations like building codes that need to be inspected and an owner needs to be held to account. If you need privacy, you have to set up shell companies to act as the legal owner, not hide the payment from your bank or government. Speaking of showing the source of the money, if you bought my house from me with bitcoin, I would have to speak to a lawyer about not running afoul of money-laundering regulations. And no, I won’t take the internet’s word for it that somehow, those laws only pertain to fiat currency. Something tells me that the cost of fighting my government in court would far exceed the value of my home regardless of whether I was technically in the right not to fill out all those same forms.
- JackFr 6y agoUmmm, I've seen a lot of movies and international wire transfers are not like that at all. Basically one click and they're instantaneous. Well, almost -- they do always feature cool progress bars as the money is transferred.
- gsich 6y agoMaybe you don't want your bank to know.
- Hamuko 6y agoFor what reason?
- rvx80 6y agoYou can't just buy a house with a suitcase full of cash these days, it's not possible. The gov will be asking where that money came from, to prevent money laundering and to ensure it's not proceeds of crime. Whether not you agree with that, this is the situation. The idea that somehow they'll let you buy something with Bitcoin without requiring the same level of disclosure is a complete fantasy.
- gambiting 6y agoWhile I think technically there isn't anything stopping you from buying a house with hard cash in the UK, I very much doubt that either side's solicitor would agree to it without extensive documentation as to where how and when you got that cash.
- lkbm 6y agoMeanwhile, if I want to donate over $25,000 to charity in the US, I have to go into the bank (in person even during the pandemic) spend half an hour while they fill out forms, pay a $12 fee (still negligible, granted), and they'll process it within 12 hours. Bitcoin might not be as good as the UK, but you have to understand that the consumer US financial system remains stuck in the 1980s.
- jefftk 6y ago> if I want to donate over $25,000 to charity in the US, I have to go into the bank (in person even during the pandemic) spend half an hour while they fill out forms, pay a $12 fee (still negligible, granted), and they'll process it within 12 hours. You can do it from home for a negligible fee ($0-$3) if you're ok with ACH instead. (Same-day ACH has a max of $100k, though it used to be $25k. Next-day ACH is something like $100M, though your bank likely has a lower limit.)
- inter_netuser 6y agobanks in the UK are operating a charity? someone pays for all those skyscrapers.
- gambiting 6y agoWell I mean, clearly they make their money elsewhere. I don't pay anything for having an account, debit card for it, or for making any transfers - that's with barclays. So their entire money making process is elsewhere.
- mschip 6y agoIn what way? As in financiers will pay with BTC? I don't know many people who pay for their cars or houses in one payment. Or is the suggestion that scheduled recurring monthly payments are viable?
- rjsw 6y agoPaying for cars with one payment is fairly common, I just used my debit card for my current one.
- alisonkisk 6y agoPoor people don't. Many rich people do.
- bob33212 6y agoI want Banks and Regulators involved when I buy a house. I understand that these 3rd parties can make things take longer or add extra fees, but that gives me legal protections I don't get with bitcoin.
- HashBasher 6y agoIt will. Via second and third layers. It'll scale just fine. An example second layer that you can use right now is the lightning network https://lightning.network/ https://lightning.network/
- Nursie 6y agoLightning is a joke, with insoluble routing problems, a need for always-on nodes, the requirement to lock funds in channels, and the requirement for on-chain transactions to start and close channels. The BTC network can't process enough transactions to make even that viable.
- gruez 6y ago>with insoluble routing problems can you elaborate on this? >a need for always-on nodes AFAIK if you're not a payment hub (ie. you want to route other people's payments) you don't need to be always online.
- Nursie 6y ago> can you elaborate on this? Haviong trouble finding it now, but google "lightning network routing problems" and you'll get a lot of results. IIRC the fundamental issue boils down to a hard mathematical problem about node traversal that is not yet solved. I am having trouble recalling the name right now, apologies. > AFAIK if you're not a payment hub (ie. you want to route other people's payments) you don't need to be always online. There have been ways that a counterparty can close a channel in their favour if you aren't online. Perhaps this has been fixed by now.
- gruez 6y ago>There have been ways that a counterparty can close a channel in their favour if you aren't online. Perhaps this has been fixed by now. AFAIK the fix is to have a service (or multiple) stay online for you, and I believe it could be done without requiring access to your private keys. If your counterparty broadcasts a stale transaction that's in their favor, your service will broadcast a newer transaction that reverts it.
- wpietri 6y agoExactly. Here's VC and prominent cryptocurrency enthusiast Fred Wilson saying exactly that: https://avc.com/2017/08/store-of-value-vs-payment-system/ https://avc.com/2017/08/store-of-value-vs-payment-system/ While I agree with him that Bitcoin is a terrible currency, I think the "store of value" thing is nonsense as well. Stores of value need to have relatively stable value. Bitcoin is hugely volatile. That's great for speculation, but nobody with any sense would use it as the equivalent of a savings account.
- mj4m1n 6y agoWhen in doubt, zoom out. On larger timescales, this isn't really that much of an issue. Volatility is also trending downwards. The bigger it gets, the more stable it becomes.
- MereInterest 6y agoYou're appealing to future data that are not available yet. Bitcoin has never been stable in its existence. You are positing without evidence that it will become stable in the future.
- _alex_ 6y agoMany assets start volatile and become more stable over time. As more money comes into bitcoin and the market cap goes up, it's reasonable to assume that volatility will go down.
- mcosta 6y agoMany assets start volatile and end up in a stable 0.
- mj4m1n 6y agohttps://charts.woobull.com/bitcoin-volatility/ https://charts.woobull.com/bitcoin-volatility/
- beefield 6y ago
- maclured 6y agoIt's going to take some pretty big balls to dump your money into bitcoin instead of gold or cash the next time the stock market crashes. Then we'll see how good a store of value it is.
- nickysielicki 6y agoBig balls, surely, but are we waiting to see that happen, or haven't we seen that happen? The stock market has settled around ATHs, not pushing too far down or up. Meanwhile, 40% of all US currency ever minted has been printed in the last 365 days [1], and Bitcoin is worth nearly $50k. Maybe it's just me, but it's clear to me that markets crashed, the shockwave just hasn't been felt by everyone yet. [1]: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M1 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M1
- maclured 6y agoNo, I mean a depression. What we've seen is investors scrambling to find returns in riskier assets due to low interest rates, but the bubble hasn't burst yet. Once it does, we're likely to see a depression at some point [1]. Since Bitcoin is famously volatile I'd bet that once there's a scare, people who've pumped the price up to the current highs will abandon it in droves. After all, there's a huge difference in risk between buying in <$5k vs ~$30-50k [1] https://economicprinciples.org/ https://economicprinciples.org/
- sub7 6y agoWe know exactly what happens in a rush to liquidity. BTC/other non income producing "assets" are the first to go.
- iexplainbtc 6y agoI'd rather invest into something that is highly volatile but almost certainly appreciates over time rather than something that depreciates at a predictable yet increasing rate. We could discuss the fact that BTC might be overpriced or underpriced, nobody really knows. But that it's going to go up in value (in terms of purchasing power) in the long term is, black swan events aside, almost a certainty because of its engineered stock to flow. Scarcity is real whether it's physical or digital (as we've seen with art, collectibles or more recently NFTs). Gold is a good store of value because of historically predictable scarcity but it's not predictable with certainty. Bitcoin is. We'll know exactly how many bitcoins are in circulation 10 minutes, 10 days, 10 or even 100 years from now. If anything many will be lost, which will contribute to its scarcity. Will Bitcoin be replaced by something else in the future? Almost certainly. But let's not forget that unbacked cash has been around for just half a century. Even if Bitcoin is replaced by something 50, 100 years from now that's plenty of time for a couple of generations to use it as a store of value (and payment system).
- auggierose 6y agoBut it doesn't have any value. Except that some people think it has. In times of truly global trouble, nobody will accept bitcoins as payment for bread.
- samfisher83 6y agoThat is true of a lot of things. Would diamonds or gold be as valuable if people didn't think it was a store of value?
- auggierose 6y agoYou can use diamonds to cut things. As for store of value, nobody sees it as a store of value. If you think it has value, go and buy a large diamond from a jewellery store, and then try to sell it somewhere for the same price.
- RC_ITR 6y agoDiamonds are mostly consumption. Used diamonds always sell for WAY less than new, unless there’s some other factor.
- ragnese 6y agoRight. It's all mass psychology. Gold, the stock market, bitcoin, whatever. It only has value as long as people believe it has value. The caveat of course is that all of the things I listed have SOME more inherent value, but that is NOT the major contributor to their actual trading prices. Gold is not THAT useful. Neither is owning a billionth of a company.
- Grustaf 6y agoObviously this is much less true for gold than for bitcoin, and the value of the stock market is very real. If you own a piece of Apple or the local hot dog stand, you own a piece of something that is continuously producing value for people.
- 6y ago
- mj4m1n 6y agoFor many BTC enthusiasts the store of value narrative has been in place for a very long time. “I see Bitcoin as ultimately becoming a reserve currency for banks, playing much the same role as gold did in the early days of banking. Banks could issue digital cash with greater anonymity and lighter weight, more efficient transactions.” - Hal Finney (2010)
- Igelau 6y ago> Banks could issue digital cash with greater anonymity Why would (a) my bank want to do this, and (b) why would I want my bank to do this?
- inter_netuser 6y agojust post all your financial statements on the web for everyone to see. you've got nothing to hide, right?
- mj4m1n 6y agoThe point here is that bitcoin is incredibly transparent, which on one level one may welcome, but on another certainly not. (a) providing cash level privacy to customers, which (b) they should probably value more than they do.
- PeterisP 6y agoWhat "cash level privacy"? Banks have to report all significant cash transactions and ensure that customers can't deal large quantities of cash anonymously; and in the exact same manner they would also have to report all significant e-cash transactions and ensure that every customer with whom they deal large quantities of e-cash can't be anonymous.
- Grustaf 6y agoNow I'm confused. Bitcoin is not lighter weight than existing digital cash. It's not really lighter weight than anything. Well, possibly the large hadron collider consumes more, I don't know.
- neilwilson 6y agoI'd rather use Whisky as my store of value. With that you can still have a party when the power goes off.
- twaybtclong 6y agoMy bitcoin bought my airplanes, wine cellar, and whiskey collection. It's comparatively very difficult to hold as it's price increases.
- harikb 6y agoI think both of you agree on this one - once it is too expensive to transact, it will be a permanent store of value ;p
- lottin 6y agoYes, the only question is what amount of value it will store. N.B.: Zero is an amount.
- tal8d 6y agoI haven't received my official enthusiast talking points memo, but the obvious solution was proposed years ago: off chain transaction that use smart contracts for settlement on the public ledger. I vaguely remember "store of value" being used for what would more accurately be described as "trust anchor" or "root authority".
- MichaelApproved 6y agoAs you've said, it's been years since that was proposed but it's still not helping because none of the off chain networks have gotten any traction. Admittedly, my experience with BTC is limited so please enlighten me if I have this wrong. That’s not a sarcastic request. I’m being genuine.
- bob33212 6y agoOff Chain transactions look so much like a credit card that as soon as you begin to build the off chain transaction system you see that Amex/Visa/MC could just allow customers to settle payment in BTC and get the same value.
- tal8d 6y agoI'm trying to imagine how you think that'd work without them also running an exchange and eating slippage, or maintaining a massive hot wallet.
- bob33212 6y agoYou could make it a debit card and require people to deposit BTC. But in general the USD is a better settlement currency. That is why BTC isn't being used in transactions. BTC is a pump and dump play.
- tal8d 6y agolol, so nothing even close to an off chain network - but somehow the "same value". Well, except for the real time cryptographically secure stuff - but nobody wanted those values anyway. 10+ years is a pretty long con, that satoshi is one patient fraudster.
- snarfy 6y agoThe irony is we place a lot of value on energy. The current economic system reflects this with oil being a proxy for energy.