3 ms·

Everyone should be worried about that, and if your suggestion is to use exchanges, that just makes them de-facto banks. Now you have a traditional banking syste

Everyone should be worried about that, and if your suggestion is to use exchanges, that just makes them de-facto banks. Now you have a traditional banking system on top of a slow and expensive settlement layer.

sroussey 5y ago
Slow and expensive is relative… try transferring money internationally.
- antognini 5y ago
  Even within the US, ACH settlement times are 3 business days. The settlement period for stock trades is 2 business days and there's a big push to reduce it to 1. Relative to that, bitcoin's 10 minute settlement time isn't so long.
  - astrange 5y ago
    ACH settlement is same day if you know the sender won't reverse it - that's why banks have been depositing paychecks 2 days early starting this year. It'll be faster next year with FedWire.
- BoppreH 5y ago
  I do, regularly, and it takes a few dollars and a few days to arrive. That sucks. But this comes from following regulations, and fees for the useful service (e.g. protection). Right now international cryptocurrency transfers are a legally gray area, and have the aforementioned lack of protections. So the expensive and slow, but legal and safe, international transfers are a service that cryptocurrencies don't offer at all. No reason to think it'll be faster and cheaper when it's offered.
- jcrawfordor 5y ago
  Is that really that true any more? From my podunk credit union I have used SWIFT to send overseas and it took under a minute and cost me $20. That's both faster and cheaper than Ethereum transactions. It's costlier than Bitcoin but not that much, and still faster. And that's wire transfer, the expensive bank to bank option... Western Union has been faster than Bitcoin for decades and cheaper for probably a decade now. The huge popularity of crypto is really eroding the tx capacity advantage. And even in the backwards US, ACH can now settle later same day and it's free. That makes BTC a lot less attractive.
  - surfingdino 5y ago
    Try transferring money to a legitimate business in another country (in the EU) that got blacklisted by the payment operators. Such as a regulated crypto exchange. They are regulated, you have money you paid tax on, but your bank decides whether or not you are allowed that payment and will not give you legal reasons for stopping/reverting payment. May even choose to close your account if you argue with them. With crypto, all you need is funds in your wallet and the recipient's address. Can you see the difference now?
  - kyruzic 5y ago
    An ethereum transaction takes under a minute and costs a few dollars. Transferring funds uses an extremely small amount of gas. You clearly have never used the chain so stop making things up. Here I sent 11K USD to another wallet for a fee of $10. It was confirmed within 5 minutes. There is no other service outside of crypto that is that fast and that cheap. https://etherscan.io/tx/0x3edc74a15742f65d166dfc9ddb567afabf37a6f8b3023af3bc1f38badf04b348 https://etherscan.io/tx/0x3edc74a15742f65d166dfc9ddb567afabf...
    - jcrawfordor 5y ago
      I'm definitely not that familiar with Ethereum, my thesis research was on Bitcoin but I have been fairly tuned out since then. But wouldn't confirmations take, as you said, five minutes on a good day? I see people saying 5-20 minutes typical for Ethereum to reach 30 confirmations. And sure you can accept fewer but 30 seems a pretty widely accepted convention. That's still slower than wire transfers which are functionally instantaneous (in practice of course it takes a minute or so). And right when I looked now the base TX fee is $19.10, which is a few dollars lower than I thought, but I see that it fluctuates by a few dollars pretty quickly so it would depend on the moment. I don't know the Ethereum situation with regards to EIP-1559 in very much depth so if I misunderstand how fees currently work please correct me. This seems to put Ethereum basically right on par with what my credit union charges for wire transfers. Now $20 is on the lower end for wire transfers on a consumer account (I think $25 is common), but you can also get lower on commercial accounts. It just seems like they're fairly on par with each other from a fee perspective, and Ethereum is at least a few minutes slower.
- YetAnotherNick 5y ago
  Have you heard of Paypal?

sroussey 5y ago

Slow and expensive is relative… try transferring money internationally.

antognini 5y ago
Even within the US, ACH settlement times are 3 business days. The settlement period for stock trades is 2 business days and there's a big push to reduce it to 1. Relative to that, bitcoin's 10 minute settlement time isn't so long.
- astrange 5y ago
  ACH settlement is same day if you know the sender won't reverse it - that's why banks have been depositing paychecks 2 days early starting this year. It'll be faster next year with FedWire.
BoppreH 5y ago
I do, regularly, and it takes a few dollars and a few days to arrive. That sucks. But this comes from following regulations, and fees for the useful service (e.g. protection). Right now international cryptocurrency transfers are a legally gray area, and have the aforementioned lack of protections. So the expensive and slow, but legal and safe, international transfers are a service that cryptocurrencies don't offer at all. No reason to think it'll be faster and cheaper when it's offered.
jcrawfordor 5y ago
Is that really that true any more? From my podunk credit union I have used SWIFT to send overseas and it took under a minute and cost me $20. That's both faster and cheaper than Ethereum transactions. It's costlier than Bitcoin but not that much, and still faster. And that's wire transfer, the expensive bank to bank option... Western Union has been faster than Bitcoin for decades and cheaper for probably a decade now. The huge popularity of crypto is really eroding the tx capacity advantage. And even in the backwards US, ACH can now settle later same day and it's free. That makes BTC a lot less attractive.
- surfingdino 5y ago
  Try transferring money to a legitimate business in another country (in the EU) that got blacklisted by the payment operators. Such as a regulated crypto exchange. They are regulated, you have money you paid tax on, but your bank decides whether or not you are allowed that payment and will not give you legal reasons for stopping/reverting payment. May even choose to close your account if you argue with them. With crypto, all you need is funds in your wallet and the recipient's address. Can you see the difference now?
- kyruzic 5y ago
  An ethereum transaction takes under a minute and costs a few dollars. Transferring funds uses an extremely small amount of gas. You clearly have never used the chain so stop making things up. Here I sent 11K USD to another wallet for a fee of $10. It was confirmed within 5 minutes. There is no other service outside of crypto that is that fast and that cheap. https://etherscan.io/tx/0x3edc74a15742f65d166dfc9ddb567afabf37a6f8b3023af3bc1f38badf04b348 https://etherscan.io/tx/0x3edc74a15742f65d166dfc9ddb567afabf...
  - jcrawfordor 5y ago
    I'm definitely not that familiar with Ethereum, my thesis research was on Bitcoin but I have been fairly tuned out since then. But wouldn't confirmations take, as you said, five minutes on a good day? I see people saying 5-20 minutes typical for Ethereum to reach 30 confirmations. And sure you can accept fewer but 30 seems a pretty widely accepted convention. That's still slower than wire transfers which are functionally instantaneous (in practice of course it takes a minute or so). And right when I looked now the base TX fee is $19.10, which is a few dollars lower than I thought, but I see that it fluctuates by a few dollars pretty quickly so it would depend on the moment. I don't know the Ethereum situation with regards to EIP-1559 in very much depth so if I misunderstand how fees currently work please correct me. This seems to put Ethereum basically right on par with what my credit union charges for wire transfers. Now $20 is on the lower end for wire transfers on a consumer account (I think $25 is common), but you can also get lower on commercial accounts. It just seems like they're fairly on par with each other from a fee perspective, and Ethereum is at least a few minutes slower.
YetAnotherNick 5y ago
Have you heard of Paypal?