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Actual coins? That I can use at the store and in vending machines? That I can use at the restaurant to buy food?
by chris_mahan 13y ago
Actual coins? That I can use at the store and in vending machines? That I can use at the restaurant to buy food?
- dublinben 13y agoI think a BTC-denominated debit/credit card would actually be the real sign of its mainstream viability. The transaction speed is an issue for physical purchases too. Only checks take longer to clear, and they're pretty marginal.
- ufmace 13y agoThat would kind of defeat the purpose of Bitcoin. The main advantage is the transaction system, rather than the store of value. The transaction speed isn't really much of an issue as long as the block reward is much higher than the value of your transaction. For most modest transactions, like food and consumer goods, just seeing the transaction come across the network is good enough. It's possible to beat this, but doing so requires a large enough effort that nobody would bother doing it to get lunch when they could be getting dozens of block rewards worth thousands of times more instead. Waiting for one confirmation takes around 10 minutes and is likely to be good enough for anything of less value than buying houses and cars and other things that are 5+ figures in USD.
- Groxx 13y agoIt would defeat the purpose of Bitcoin if it replaced Bitcoin. Since it would be built on top, it's just a service on a cryptocurrency foundation instead of whatever your government prints. In that case a credit/debit card could basically be an immediate guarantee of payment (3rd party guarantees, collects small % to cover abuse/running costs. basically credit cards now, minus chargebacks), as opposed to what Bitcoin provides.