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It seems a bit off to assert that "people feel it is a price worth paying" when almost all purchases online are made with credit cards which have some protectio
by okintheory 4y ago
It seems a bit off to assert that "people feel it is a price worth paying" when almost all purchases online are made with credit cards which have some protections against fraud, and almost none are made with blockchains in comparison. It seems like so far, most people don't think it's a price worth paying?
- y4mi 4y agoI'd go one step further: the few legal purchases done with crypto currencies are mostly done by people unaware they're paying that price
- jychang 4y agoPurchases, perhaps. Money transfer, definitely not. Bitcoin is a pretty cheap way to transfer money across international borders. A person probably wouldn't use bitcoin at the grocery store to buy milk, but it works better for sending grandma (located in a third world country) a bunch of money.
- HWR_14 4y agoBitcoin is still more expensive than the banking system among first-world countries. How much can it be worth to send money to third-world countries of no banks are willing to set up there?
- Grustaf 4y agoYou could always use the crypto currency as the store of value there, just as people did with MPesa. You don't necessarily ever have to convert it to a local currency.
- dmurray 4y agoMPesa doesn't store your money in some kind of private currency with a fluctuating value. If you're thinking of it as storing "minutes" as some American cellphone providers would, that's not right. You deposit and withdraw Kenyan Shillings, or your local equivalent, just as if it were a shilling-denominated bank account.
- Grustaf 4y agoYes, and you could make this hypothetical Kenyan cryptocurrency work the same way. One KCoin is one shilling, redeemable for minutes.
- anonymoushn 4y agowhere are you getting these $1 international wire transfers? Sign me up!
- Grustaf 4y agoSEPA transfers cost €0, which (still) is less than $1.
- anonymoushn 4y agoOk, let me send dollars from the US to Japan via SEPA real quick.
- Grustaf 4y agoYou asked “where”, and the answer is “in the SEPA countries”, which at least includes most of Europe.
- anonymoushn 4y agoThen I apologize for my imprecision! I meant "what financial institution will provide me and my counterparty this service for the currency we currently use in our current countries of residence" rather than "what pair of countries can me and my counterparty relocate to to obtain this service in at least one currency."
- kybernetikos 4y agoBitcoin BTC is currently more expensive than the banking system in first world countries because of the specific technical choices they have made. When I first used bitcoin it was free to the user (i.e. it was paid for by issuance). Other cryptocurrency systems that have made different technical choices are much cheaper these days - bitcoin BTC is a bit of an outlier in that regard. I personally have been experimenting with USDC on Argent wallet (a zksync L2 on ethereum). It's easy to use, quick and the transaction fees are around 20c at the moment (and likely to reduce further), and I'm sending a stable coin that tracks dollar.
- buran77 4y agoI think you hit the nail on the head. Most people who genuinely want to use cryptocurrencies as a replacement for classic ones in legal day to day transactions don't realize the drawbacks. There's an implicit assumption that by being a "currency" crypto gives the same benefits as a classic one, plus the digital aspect and other advantages. But I like to think this is like buying medicine from a street dealer. Maybe it's faster or more convenient, maybe you get the same quality. But those "maybes" are clearer for people when buying medication from a back alley. It's not at all visible to people using crypto as a replacement for their classic currency. Every time there's an exchange hack, a massive fraud, a price crash, etc. more people start feeling the drawbacks and push for the kind of regulation, oversight, supervision that today are antithetical with cryptocurrencies and its associated parties.
- lrvick 4y agoI am one of those people that uses cash and bitcoin for privacy and reliability and for 100% legal use cases. I have experienced bank accounts of mine and those I know be frozen, emptied without warning due to identity theft, a false criminal accusation, forgotten debts, etc. I also know very well that banks have data sharing relationships with Visa, etc, that form a full map of where and when you spend money to aid data brokers in selling changes in your behavior to advertisers. Do you really want metadata on every purchase you make at a sex shop or a pharmacy stored in databases and sold to the highest bidder? Cash has limits though. It is impractical and unsafe to put cash in the mail when paying friends back for dinner after we all go our separate ways or if I am buying something online I wish to be anonymous like a VPN subscription. In those cases Bitcoin solves a problem and I have legitimately used it on a regular basis for many years. I never use venmo etc and friends and I regularly settle debts with Bitcoin. I would prefer not to have to carry around cash all the time so when possible to use Bitcoin in retail, I do. I have used bitcoin to buy drinks at bars in Germany, electronics at big box stores in Japan, meals at various restaurants, and coffee hundreds of times. I can also get cash from Bitcoin ATMs worldwide without having to deal with a bank denying me my own money because I am in an unexpected country. Bitcoin, when purchased with cash, gives me all the privacy of cash with all the portability of a visa card.
- newswasboring 4y agoHow are you purchasing bitcoin with cash? I know it happens but I don't know how it's happening. Is it safe?
- lrvick 4y agoBitcoin ATMs, and repayment from friends when I pay for things in cash. There are also p2p exchanges like LocalCoinSwap where you can meet people in person in public places to buy or sell an amount of BTC you are comfortable carrying. Some let you use escrow where you deposit cash to a bank account then you are sent BTC on receipt. None of these methods can be stopped no matter how much regulators demand KYC from the Coinbases of the world. Humans can always trade directly. Similarly I am also paid directly in Bitcoin by some of my clients I do consulting for so neither side needs to fuss with bank transfers. Lastly I can always buy on an exchanges, convert to Monero, then back to Bitcoin to de-associate the Bitcoin to me.
- Grustaf 4y agoI was referring to people in crypto. Obviously the general public prefers traditional payment systems because most people have no problem trusting that the banks will do the right thing.
- junofan 4y agoMillions of people work at banks… lots of middlemen that maybe don’t need to be there anymore…
- Grustaf 4y agoI mean you don't need people to manually make money transfers anymore, but I don't think many people do that. Banks have a lot of different jobs, very few of them are obsoleted by crypto, at least so far.
- junofan 4y agoThat’s the opportunity, right? Some code does the work.
- Grustaf 4y agoAs I said, little or no manual labour is involved when you pay your bills or transfer money. Bank employees meet customers, set up mortgages, program the payment infrastructure, make deals with other banks, help hide money in shady jurisdictions etc.
- knorker 4y agoThere's still a need for them though. Societies still want to do AML/KYC stuff, and tax audits. In fact bitcoin makes it harder[1], so we probably need MORE people doing these investigations. So we actually maybe need millions MORE people to work these things. [1] mostly. In some ways also easier. But probably on net harder.
- alkonaut 4y agoIf only we could invent a way of settling transactions that takes more money and energy than running traditional banks. It might sound like the worst idea ever, but with enough buzzwords and a sprinkle of Ponzi, I think it will be a hit.
- sakopov 4y agoBlockchain is just a decentralized ledger of transactions. A cryptocurrency is an implementation of digital currency using a blockchain. Blaming blockchain for not having fraud prevention tech is like blaming TCP/IP stack for delivering a scam email to your inbox. This is a problem to be solved in a higher layer, which we're seemingly nowhere near as we're still just trying to get blockchain to scale efficiently.
- Grustaf 4y agoThis is technically true, but crypto currency does make the most sense when there is no middle-man. If you merely replace the backend of the banking system with a blockchain, nobody would care.
- Veen 4y agoYes, and if it was promoted as a "decentralized ledger of transactions" it would be fine and almost no one would have heard of it. But it's often aggressively promoted as a replacement for traditional currencies and banking with many benefits over the old-fashioned models, ignoring the fact that those models account for many issues that blockchain does not. There's a reason banks and economies evolved in the way they did.
- coldtea 4y ago>Blockchain is just a decentralized ledger of transactions. A cryptocurrency is an implementation of digital currency using a blockchain. Blaming blockchain for not having fraud prevention tech is like blaming TCP/IP stack for delivering a scam email to your inbox. It's more like blaming a water utility company that doesn't give potable water, and its supporters tell you "but you can always buy a bottle of water from the store. Or maybe dig for water yourself!". Yes, one can build the "fraud prevention" and other measures on top of blockchain. But then you have a financial institution just like a bank, and you can drop the blockchain part - anything it "solves" can be solved much simpler and with 1000x less energy once you have the other trappings of a financial institution.
- gitfan86 4y agoCorrect, crypto is great when you need an append only database with no root password. Outside of that use case crypto is a speculative investment vehicle. Maybe BTC will replace gold as a store of value. But that is just speculation.
- anonymoushn 4y agoI think I'm defrauded a lot less than 1/20 of the time, so it may make more sense for me to stop paying Stripe and Visa 5% or whatever, if I ever have that option.
- scotty79 4y agoMaybe in US. In Europe people pay a lot with money transfer and payments are considered to be mostly irreversible. Banks don't take responsibility for your mistakes (like typos or getting scammed).
- cedilla 4y agoPrepayment fraud is somewhat prevelant, so most transactions are post paid or direct debit. Neither form has that problem. Even when fraud occurs, the recipient is a known actual person. Know your costumer rules successfully prevent these kinds of scams to a sufficient degree. Banks will also monitor transactions and will delay execution when there are signs of fraud. That's why so many scams rely on other methods of payment, especially gift cards, western union and... Crypto coins.
- scotty79 4y ago> Even when fraud occurs, the recipient is a known actual person. Not really. It's easy enough to set up fake identity that people who go and scam people on the internet usually do that. I mean crypto and gift cards are way worse than banks of course. I'm just saying that there's no expectation in Europe that most payments are reversible.
- mattwilsonn888 4y agoIf people used wire transfers for online payments the same issues would arise. Using Bitcoin natively on layer-1 for online payments is like using wire transfers. Semi-custodial or layer-2 options will compete with credit cards.