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It doesn't benefit consumers for any transaction. Unless you consider the deed itself to be a benefit, outweighing all the negative. I don't. As a consumer, I

It doesn't benefit consumers for any transaction. Unless you consider the deed itself to be a benefit, outweighing all the negative. I don't. As a consumer, I don't like getting fucked by the spread on exchange rates on the buy AND sell sides when I try to pay in bitcoin. Want to buy some bitcoin? Unless you're doing it face-to-face you're going to get jacked a few percent. Want to spend them? Unless it's at a bitcoin-only merchant, jacked again. Add in the fact that I'm not getting whatever points my credit card would have given me, that I've got absolutely no recourse against the merchant, and that I have to worry about hackers stealing my money... there's no reason for me to use it.

driverdan 12y ago
Two words: money transfers. Bitcoin works very well for low friction P2P transfers. This may be considered a solved problem in Europe where bank transfers are easy and the norm but in the US and other parts of the world it's unsolved and a pain in the ass. There is no easy way for me to transfer money to a friend other than handing them cash. You might suggest an awful centralized service like PayPal but there are plenty of problems with them too. What if I want to send money to a friend who lives in another country? Even harder. Bitcoin solves this problem.
- smm2000 12y ago
  You can mail him a check - zero transaction fee and works every single time. No easy way to do it electronically though. Also you could not really do it with random strangers - risk of fraud is fairly high.