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Ask HN: For Bitcoin to be ubiquitous, what must happen?
As a believer in the utility and potential of bitcoin, I wanted to poll HN for additional opinions.
In order for Bitcoin to be HUGE, ubiquitous and common among the world's citizens, what specific things must happen? [List]
- ekm2 13y agoIt needs to have a more intuitive user interface.
- markhall 13y agoThat will be inevitable with the growing attention and efforts of startups, developers and tech ecosystem, don't you think?
- maaku 13y agoIt needs to have secure-by-default consumer applications which are trivial to use.
- 27182818284 13y agoWell, I'm ready to declare that cryptocurrencies are here to stay, even if BTC itself loses. In that sense it is already pretty huge to me. For some other definition of HUGE, the first thing that comes to mind would be any top 20 GDP government accepting it as a way to pay taxes. Switzerland is #20, so if they started accepting it, that'd be a HUGE deal, and doesn't seem nearly as unrealistic as, say, Mexico accepting it.
- markhall 13y agoDo you think another cryptocurrency can come in and surpass BTC at this point? If so, how can the concept of cyrptocurrency be big if alternative options of the same core concept exist (relative to consumer adoption)?
- 27182818284 13y agoYes, because it is such an unproven area there is a lot of room for changes. For example something Litecoin is working on is verifying Litecoin nodes with as little as 200-300MB of disk storage. Now that's just an example, but I could see stuff like that making a currency in the future based on BTC more popular than BTC itself is all. The arena is too new I think for me or anyone else to say BTC is going to be it.
- PeterisP 13y agoWhy would any top 20 (or even bottom 20) government accept it as a way to pay taxes, ever? I mean, none of them[1] consider gold or US dollars as valid payment for taxes, either. [1] Barring some small states who in essence don't have their own currencies and use USD, they do accept USD in taxes. But not any random 'solid' currency.
- tomasien 13y agoQQ: when you say you're a believer in the potential of Bitcoin, do you mean BC itself, crypto-currency, or decentralized and fee-less ways to pay for things and exchange funds? Is it the extra-governmental aspect of BC that you like or what being extra-governmental has allowed it to be?
- markhall 13y agoI mean that I believe in the fundamental need of BTC, the potential for significant adoption and the reality that it can be simplified for all consumers. I think BTC will win out versus other crypto-currencies because its adoption thus far, which makes it hard for a secondary one to scale beyond BTC. I own and wish I doubled down earlier...
- tomasien 13y agoOk but what part of it makes you believe in it, not just over other crypto, but why it's needed in general?
- mkramlich 13y agoI think there are 2 major categories of risk: one political/legal, the latter technical/security. I have no realistic way of helping with the former. I've started trying to help with the latter. We'll see.
- markhall 13y agoWould you be interested in sharing how you are helping with the latter (technical/security)?
- mkramlich 13y agoGladly, in private conversations. Esp with people that could be key stakeholders or contributors. :-) Otherwise not ready enough to go very public. Emphasis on building and validating and iterating rather than too much talking or guessing. Though a little of the latter is good and necessary sometimes I think.
- freework 13y agoBitcoin needs to be understood before it can be used by someone. People's ability to understand bitcoin is the current bottleneck to bitcoin adoption.
- stevewilhelm 13y agoI understand Bitcoin, I just don't see any personal benefit verses my existing credit card, bank and investment accounts.
- floorlamp 13y agoCredit cards companies charge around 3% per transaction, and charges are susceptible to chargebacks. ACH transfers take around a week. Wire transfers cost $40. Bitcoin transactions costs a few cents each and are done in less than an hour.
- PeterisP 13y agoCredit cards pay me back around 1% per transaction, and if someone cheats me, I can chargeback. Isn't it far better than Bitcoin? :) Btw, why isn't ACH/wire transfers a solution? If done properly (unlike USA), they cost a few cents and can be transmitted in less than an hour (not 24/7 yet, though).
- mahyarm 13y agoPeople in developed countries with good credit scores and are not banned by chexsystems will get no value from bitcoin. For everyone else there's bitcoin(tm). Being glib aside, there is a vast population of poorer people who either live in countries with unstable banking systems or are just not profitable for banking. These people will get the most value out of bitcoin. It's like landline telephones. For people with established land line systems, the value of a cellphone isn't that much. For people who've never had a phone, and wont get land line service, a cell phone is amazing! ACH/Wire transfers are very slow for Americans, and too much inertia makes it seem like they're not going away soon.
- gmuslera 13y agoDevice security is a must, that looks like a showstopper, if at the very least rotten apples in the NSA can take your bitcoins anonymously you are in trouble, and most people don't have enough clue on how to be secure (i.e. average windows users) to put "real" money there. And of course, big adopters. For services and digital goods is a natural method of payment. But it should have some price stability for that.
- stevewilhelm 13y agoIt would need to be better than a credit card for the average consumer.
- markhall 13y agoDo you think it can be? Wallets on mobile devices an POS technology can make this happen
- Johnie 13y agoPrice stability is one major factor. Unstable currency is bad for both consumers and merchants. When the volatility is high, it is high risk for people that hold that currency. Consumers and merchants are not interested in hedging their currency risk and rather focus on using the currency. Let's say that the value of USD fluctuates 10% per day, most people would not hold USD; they would rather hold a currency that is stable or move to gold. Same thing is happening with BTC.
- erikpukinskis 13y agoBitcoin will only be unstable as long as there is disagreement about the economics of it. Once we get reasonably close to consensus about that, price will stabilize to where the consensus model says it should be. I suspect that won't happen until some time after the current crop of incoming economics PhDs are tenured.
- orasis 13y agoTrust.
- markhall 13y agoCurrent price at ~$500 means that a growing trust is evident. I believe that lack of awareness is a bigger hurdle than trust right now
- drazvan 13y agoCurrent price at $600 means people are speculating like crazy - it's not a measure of trust by any means, people are in it to make a quick (and easy) buck.
- genericacct 13y agohell must freeze over... twice
- markhall 13y agoAs a non-believer, what are your thoughts on its progress thus far?
- genericacct 13y agoI believe it's a pretty fine technological achievement and i would totally be buying into it if it was pegged to major currencies. As it is i can only see it as a globalized casino. As others have mentioned upthread, it's just not user friendly enough for widespread adoptance. I code ASM at times and i find it difficult -- cant see any 60 yrs old getting into it. And guess what? 60 yrs olds have the most money.. Also some things about it sound so fishy i cannot think i'd ever put any money into it. Like say, for example... what if quantum computers can find all hashing collisions in a split second? That's what they were designed for more or less. And really, what kind of message does it send when you realize that the creator(s) are unknown and anonymous? Great for a cypherpunk thriller, not so great for a supposed store of value.
- johnymontana 13y agoVolatility must be reduced. BTC's price fluctuations reduce its usefulness as a store of value. I'm curious if the Winklevis attempt to list a bitcoin ETF is a play for this: an exchange traded BTC security could make it easier to hedge currency risk.
- Element_ 13y agoA way needs to be found to scale the network to a size that can't be interfered with by a nation state(s) before a nation state(s) interferes with it. (e.g. if btc network gains serious traction yet is small enough a nation state can interfere/control the network, a nation state will eventually interfere/control the network)
- mkramlich 13y agoi've begun one technical effort to help mitigate against that
- PeterisP 13y agoFor most of 'money' users 'scaling the network' would mean liquidity and convertibility - it should be transparent, easy, safe and fast to interchange bitcoin with all other currencies. This implicitly requires cooperation with the nation states, not expecting no interference whatsoever. For the billions people in the world who use money, "can't be interfered with" is not even near the top of properties money must have. Above all, it should be liquid (i.e., accepted in most places w/o hassle) and at least somewhat stable in value. Heck, for most uses the old Zimbabwean dollar was a better currency than Bitcoin - sure, it was under full state control and falling in value like a lead weight, but millions of people could and did successfully use it for their daily money needs.
- mkramlich 13y agoIn the long run, it must become something "your mom" and "your grandfather" use. Notice the use of quotes, speaking in metaphors/stereotypes by intent. Essentially it needs to become understandable enough, and perceived as safe enough, for the least sophisticated and/or most conservative or more financially fragile.
- erikpukinskis 13y agoI don't think this is true. There's no reason why it couldn't be infrastructural like high tension power lines or crude oil. I have no idea how to use either of those things, but they underpin almost everything I do. Maybe you never use bitcoin but your landlord uses it to pay the mortgage, and your cousin uses it to send money to your grandmother in Iran for you. Even if it's only used by "pros" it can be huge.
- phyalow 13y agoFED/Fiat collapse. Which maybe sooner rather than later given their inability to ween QE and ZIRP.
- krapp 13y agoI think it would be a fundamental flaw in the philosophy of Bitcoin to require a global economic collapse for it to become relevant. If anything, I think that for Bitcoin to become ubiquitous, it need to work and be seen to work within the very system it seems designed to undermine.
- ljd 13y agoLiquidity is the most important thing. The thing that holds back bitcoin is that I can't buy my groceries with it. Once a currency can be used it is more valuable. To overcome this, a company like Amazon would need to accept bitcoin or make some kind of passthrough system, where merchants can accept Bitcoin and Amazon takes their cut in bitcoins. Once more companies accept it, it will be a prime candidate for the hold currency because no government can artificially inflate it's value. Right now the issue with having the USD, the Yuan or the Swiss Franc as the hold currency is that the currency becomes more valuable which makes items in that country more expensive for everyone outside of the country causing a decrease in exports. So no country really wants to be the hold currency, in fact it's why China is manipulating their currency and artificially bolstering the USD by buying up US Debt. It depresses the Yuan and keeps their export business alive. It's why a strong dollar killed US Exports. The stronger your currency is, the worse off it is for your exports. Bitcoin doesn't have this issue, you can create a contract in bitcoin and not have to worry if that country is going to inflate it because their exports are decreasing. This gives the currency even greater liquidity.
- edent 13y agoUsability. Primarily of payments. For something like PayPal, I can send money to an email address. For M-Pesa countries, I can send money to a phone number. If I'm in the UK, I can send money to a sort code (12-34-56) and account number (98765432). For international payments, I can send money to an IBAN (GB29 NWBK 6016 1331 9268 19) For BitCoin? I have to send payment to "FHTbTN7omGUchDpmuHumii" I can't read that out over the phone or easily copy type it - I certainly can't remember it. There are no checksums, and no routing information. So, for me, there's a high barrier to entry for doing something as simple as paying someone back for a meal.
- celticninja 13y agothere are first bits and they easily convert to a QR code which can be emailed or sent via sms.
- wcoenen 13y agoBitcoin addresses do have a checksum[1]. And for most payments in person, people will just scan a QR code[2]. [1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1026.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1026.0 [2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.schildbach.wallet https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.schildbach....
- jerguismi 13y agoThere are checksums, fairly good actually. If I remember right, about 4 bytes of checksum, so the change to mistype is fairly low. There have been some solution proposals to the problems you describe, firstbits comes to mind: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Firstbits https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Firstbits
- natrius 13y agoPayPal-style sending money to an email address can easily work with Bitcoin the same way it does with bank accounts, though sending payments would presumably require that web service to manage a Bitcoin wallet for you. Receiving should be easy.
- kbaker 13y agoI think a big driver of ubiquity would be a transaction processor / guarantor similar to how Mastercard or Visa work on top of USD; then using BTC would be as easy as using a credit card. Why is this not an option right now? - Volatility of BTC exchange rate - Endpoint security - Trust in a big organization like this to securely handle BTC - Uncertain political future of BTC - Need to roll out merchant point-of-sale solutions globally All these are being worked on though, and really there's nothing stopping anyone from making this a reality Real Soon Now with a lot of investment. The biggest risk might be a huge negative reaction from entrenched USD players such as banks, financial corporations, Wall Street, and the Fed. With the extent that they control the legislative branch, BTC might be excommunicated and fizzle out.
- codexon 13y agoIt needs to be faster than 1-2 hours for every transaction because the store is waiting for confirmations. When every other normal store only takes a minute to process, 1-2 hours is way too long.
- celticninja 13y agoif you only require 1 confirmation, and for a coffee or lunch this should be fine, which would take perhas 10 minutes at most.
- ceejayoz 13y agoWaiting 10 minutes for your coffee payment to go through? Pitch that to Starbucks and see how far you get.
- celticninja 13y agosorry i meant that for coffee you dont need to wait for a confirmation, a zero confirmation transaction for $5 is safe enough, no one is going to bother to double spend against that as the computational power required means it is not economical to do so. Zero conf transactions are almost instantaneous
- PeterisP 13y agoSome years ago I saw a comms infrastructure upgrade project for a small local retailer chain, connecting all their POS terminals to a proper network. Did they have any plans to implement a smart POS system? Nope, their only reason for quite sizeable investment was to reduce the time to swipe a creditcard by the 5-10 seconds that the old solution (in essence, modems on a phoneline) spent to estabilish the connection to the card processor. My point? The proper measurement unit for payment latency is seconds, no matter if you're shopping online or at a store. If it's in minutes or hours, then it might as well be batch-processing of bills with settlement on the next business day.
- danielharan 13y agoSilk road was one example of a use case that could drive adoption. Liquidity, usability and speed are important for mass adoption; for a niche, that's not necessarily as big a concern. Remittances and international transfers might be one niche where BTC could shine. The currency isn't ready to beat VISA when you're buying a coffee, but it could be a hell of a lot better than Western Union.
- kbaker 13y agoBut, remember that Visa doesn't transact immediately in cash-equivalent USD either. There's no reason why they couldn't settle accounts on the merchant and consumer side using BTC instead, with equivalent convenience at the point of sale.