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well over 90% of illicit purchases are done in fiat and you've really not been paying attention if you think those are the only benefits of crypto. There's an

by toolz 5y ago

well over 90% of illicit purchases are done in fiat and you've really not been paying attention if you think those are the only benefits of crypto. There's an entire country that uses crypto as legal tender. I could stop there, but there's more. Fees are lower than credit cards charge, there are businesses saving money by utilizing crypto. Sending money overseas is cheaper and more accessible with crypto. The list goes on. I'm not sure how you've arrived at your position, but it is not an educated position.

shakna 5y ago
> Sending money overseas is cheaper and more accessible with crypto. Not in any of the countries that have implemented PayID. (Most of Europe, Aus/NZ, and South America, with the US finally beginning to get on board this year). It's a case of sending to a mobile phone, with instant-3days timeline, with a cost in 20-50c range for anything less than $10k.
- toolz 5y ago
  I can send many orders of magnitudes more in crypto (XLM in case you're wanting a reference, but there are more) faster and cheaper than that. and payID holds first time transactions for 24 hours...this isn't even marginally reasonable for many use-cases
  - shakna 5y ago
    It's not more accessible - and instant (10-30ms) is sort of hard to beat in terms of speed. (Instant is guaranteed for PayID if you have one transaction to that address ever).
    - toolz 5y ago
      so payID, something not all countries have today can match the speed of crypto, can't match the fees and have a huge block on 1st time transactions. crypto wins there - payID sounds like it's been something that should've existed decades ago, but crypto has solved this problem and done a better job and yes it absolutely is more accessible - everywhere except maybe countries that make buying crypto illegal
      - shakna 5y ago
        You can signup to PayID and transfer in the time it takes a waitress to get to your table in around 80% of the known world. How does crypto beat that accessibility? (And it's been around since '02. The US was the last major hold out.)
        toolz 5y ago
        payID has KYC just the same as crypto but crypto is globally accessible, cheaper and just as fast to receive crypto you don't even need KYC actually, just to on-ramp from fiat...and if you mine crypto you don't even need KYC - so again there is no category in which crypto loses and categories where crypto clearly wins
        shakna 5y ago
        Flat fee of 20c/10k sounds cheaper than crypto to me. No on-ramp, because payID works for any fiat account that can be linked to Mastercard or Visa sounds more accessible to me. No specific KYC as its backed by existing banking infrastructure. I do not see how crypto possibly wins this one.
        easrng 5y ago
        You can locate, download, install, and set up a crypto wallet and be ready to accept payments in under 2 minutes. (I just did.) Setting up a bank account is far more involved.
        shakna 5y ago
        But most people _already_ have a bank account. Which means they don't have to set up to use payID. They already can.
        perl4ever 5y ago
        >You can locate, download, install, and set up a crypto wallet I was under the impression you had to download the blockchain for e.g. bitcoin before you could engage in transactions. Which is something like 350 GB at this point. And then do some processing that takes a while. Surely this takes a lot more than two minutes. If you didn't do that, do you really have a crypto wallet?
Sebb767 5y ago
> Fees are lower than credit cards charge, there are businesses saving money by utilizing crypto. That's news to me. Is this true for any of the major coins or just for some obscure one?
- toolz 5y ago
  lightening network for bitcoin (and many many many other coins/layer2 solutions) are practically free whereas credit cards charge sellers something like 2% _minimum_ on charges.
tyre 5y ago
> There's an entire country that uses crypto as legal tender. El Salvador is a case in point of why crypto is a terrible currency. The first day that they went live, Bitcoin dropped 10%. > Sending money overseas is cheaper Right now it's about $2.50 per transaction which is not the cheapest option. Earlier this year we saw transactions fees for BTC hit like $60. Add to that the risk of it dropping 10% in a not-uncommon event…that's not good. Let's talk about businesses. First, cost. Let's say you have Stripe's base fee: 30¢ per transaction + 2.9%. For that $2.50 transaction to be cheaper, your purchase would have to be over $75. Is that typical for most businesses? No. And again, that $2.50 is what it is now. It could be $3 in a minute or $20 tomorrow. No one knows. You think small business owners want that kind of uncertainty? Taking a (???) cut from every monthly SaaS charge does not make sense—not to mention that as you scale Stripe will negotiate prices downwards while BTC will not. Let's turn to scalability. BTC clocks in at seven transactions per second. Seven. Transactions can take 10 minutes or longer to process. Imagine a supermarket checkout line where each person blocks for 10 minutes. Or a gas station, subway, restaurant, corner store, coffee shop, or anything else. Note that I said widespread uses. I am aware that some places are experimenting with bitcoin. I am also aware that crypto has shown to be woefully inadequate for all but a few narrow use-cases.
- toolz 5y ago
  This is incredibly uneducated. If I were to talk about fiat with this level of ignorance I would say things like "transferring money takes weeks!" in reference to ACH. Any cursory google search will show you that you are wrong about fees, max tx per second and tx time to finality. As for bitcoins value, in 12 years it is valued high enough to be in the top 10 market cap stocks. It took apple 71 years to hit 1T market cap - it took bitcoin 12 years.

by toolz 5y ago

shakna 5y ago

> Sending money overseas is cheaper and more accessible with crypto. Not in any of the countries that have implemented PayID. (Most of Europe, Aus/NZ, and South America, with the US finally beginning to get on board this year). It's a case of sending to a mobile phone, with instant-3days timeline, with a cost in 20-50c range for anything less than $10k.

toolz 5y ago
I can send many orders of magnitudes more in crypto (XLM in case you're wanting a reference, but there are more) faster and cheaper than that. and payID holds first time transactions for 24 hours...this isn't even marginally reasonable for many use-cases
- shakna 5y ago
  It's not more accessible - and instant (10-30ms) is sort of hard to beat in terms of speed. (Instant is guaranteed for PayID if you have one transaction to that address ever).
  - toolz 5y ago
    so payID, something not all countries have today can match the speed of crypto, can't match the fees and have a huge block on 1st time transactions. crypto wins there - payID sounds like it's been something that should've existed decades ago, but crypto has solved this problem and done a better job and yes it absolutely is more accessible - everywhere except maybe countries that make buying crypto illegal
    - shakna 5y ago
      You can signup to PayID and transfer in the time it takes a waitress to get to your table in around 80% of the known world. How does crypto beat that accessibility? (And it's been around since '02. The US was the last major hold out.)
      - toolz 5y ago
        payID has KYC just the same as crypto but crypto is globally accessible, cheaper and just as fast to receive crypto you don't even need KYC actually, just to on-ramp from fiat...and if you mine crypto you don't even need KYC - so again there is no category in which crypto loses and categories where crypto clearly wins
        shakna 5y ago
        Flat fee of 20c/10k sounds cheaper than crypto to me. No on-ramp, because payID works for any fiat account that can be linked to Mastercard or Visa sounds more accessible to me. No specific KYC as its backed by existing banking infrastructure. I do not see how crypto possibly wins this one.
        easrng 5y ago
        You can locate, download, install, and set up a crypto wallet and be ready to accept payments in under 2 minutes. (I just did.) Setting up a bank account is far more involved.
        shakna 5y ago
        But most people _already_ have a bank account. Which means they don't have to set up to use payID. They already can.
        perl4ever 5y ago
        >You can locate, download, install, and set up a crypto wallet I was under the impression you had to download the blockchain for e.g. bitcoin before you could engage in transactions. Which is something like 350 GB at this point. And then do some processing that takes a while. Surely this takes a lot more than two minutes. If you didn't do that, do you really have a crypto wallet?

Sebb767 5y ago

> Fees are lower than credit cards charge, there are businesses saving money by utilizing crypto. That's news to me. Is this true for any of the major coins or just for some obscure one?

toolz 5y ago
lightening network for bitcoin (and many many many other coins/layer2 solutions) are practically free whereas credit cards charge sellers something like 2% _minimum_ on charges.

tyre 5y ago

> There's an entire country that uses crypto as legal tender. El Salvador is a case in point of why crypto is a terrible currency. The first day that they went live, Bitcoin dropped 10%. > Sending money overseas is cheaper Right now it's about $2.50 per transaction which is not the cheapest option. Earlier this year we saw transactions fees for BTC hit like $60. Add to that the risk of it dropping 10% in a not-uncommon event…that's not good. Let's talk about businesses. First, cost. Let's say you have Stripe's base fee: 30¢ per transaction + 2.9%. For that $2.50 transaction to be cheaper, your purchase would have to be over $75. Is that typical for most businesses? No. And again, that $2.50 is what it is now. It could be $3 in a minute or $20 tomorrow. No one knows. You think small business owners want that kind of uncertainty? Taking a (???) cut from every monthly SaaS charge does not make sense—not to mention that as you scale Stripe will negotiate prices downwards while BTC will not. Let's turn to scalability. BTC clocks in at seven transactions per second. Seven. Transactions can take 10 minutes or longer to process. Imagine a supermarket checkout line where each person blocks for 10 minutes. Or a gas station, subway, restaurant, corner store, coffee shop, or anything else. Note that I said widespread uses. I am aware that some places are experimenting with bitcoin. I am also aware that crypto has shown to be woefully inadequate for all but a few narrow use-cases.

toolz 5y ago
This is incredibly uneducated. If I were to talk about fiat with this level of ignorance I would say things like "transferring money takes weeks!" in reference to ACH. Any cursory google search will show you that you are wrong about fees, max tx per second and tx time to finality. As for bitcoins value, in 12 years it is valued high enough to be in the top 10 market cap stocks. It took apple 71 years to hit 1T market cap - it took bitcoin 12 years.