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Countries like Canada have done exactly this, extending anti-money laundering and terrorist financing disclosure rules to BTC. http://www.coindesk.com/federal-b

Countries like Canada have done exactly this, extending anti-money laundering and terrorist financing disclosure rules to BTC. http://www.coindesk.com/federal-bitcoin-law-canada/ http://www.coindesk.com/federal-bitcoin-law-canada/ The real benefit is time of transfer. ACH is infuriatingly slow. If you'd like a payroll run to arrive in employee accounts on a Friday, it must be initiated almost a week prior. BTC could (theoretically) make daily payroll possible. The net benefit to society could be substantial. Payday loan activity would drop considerably. Some, but not all, credit card use would drop. All of the instruments that help "time shift" money could become far less necessary, along with the substantial fees associated with it.

nmrm 12y ago
> ACH is infuriatingly slow. Tell me about it. > If you'd like a payroll run to arrive in employee accounts on a Friday, it must be initiated almost a week prior. Right. It'd love to see BC companies do well and then die off, so that we get reforms in banking without the unnecessary cruft of an intermediate currency intended for nothing except standing in-between fiat transactions. OR the inherent risk to consumers which comes with lack of regulation. > The real benefit is time of transfer. To what extent does this benefit come from not being subject to regulation? (edit: not rhetorical; I've no idea) > If you'd like a payroll run to arrive in employee accounts on a Friday, it must be initiated almost a week prior. But the check still arrives on Friday, so the benefit is really to the business rather than the employee. This negates the employee-centric benefits you mention in the next paragraph (pay day loans, credit cards, etc.) That is, unless the business is giving advances on payroll. But I think that's something companies don't do for reasons unrelated to choice of currency and transfer time. (edit: I suppose another alternative is that you could pay your employees more often because the process is cheaper and faster. That would be a big win. But I think other cash flows would in some cases prevent this from happening unless everything is done in BTC.) edit: Die off is a bit harsh? I don't want fiat->btc->fiat because it's just silly, but of course if btc causes reforms in the banking industry I sincerely hope btc companies make a huge amount of money in the process :-) edit2: Also, thanks for the link!
- opinologo 12y ago
  >> It'd love to see BC companies do well and then die off, so that we get reforms in banking Do you realize that your beloved banks caused the GFC and many huge financial scandals like the Libor in Europe or the HSBC money laundering in USA? There is no reason why banks cannot use BTC or any other cryptocurrency but the real issue here is who controls the money.
  - nmrm 12y ago
    Strawman. I'm not advocating for large banks, and even specifically mention non-bank fiat->fiat cash transfer companies as a viable and even more likely alternative to BTC. > There is no reason why banks cannot use BTC Yes! Exactly! Bad Things Done By Banks is only an accidental benefit of BTC. If BTC becomes regulated and banks are the better equipped to deal with these regulations, then BTC becomes dominated by banks or de jure criminals. Financial scandals and banking reform are primarily a social and legal problem, and cannot be solved by technology.
    - opinologo 12y ago
      >>Financial scandals and banking reform are primarily a social and legal problem, and cannot be solved by technology. Disagreed, it should be solved/prevented by regulations / laws but it wasn't. BTC don't need regulations.
      - nmrm 12y ago
        > BTC don't need regulations. Yes, it does. For the same reason that any other mechanism for transferring arbitrary sums of money across international borders needs regulation. (It's also worth mentioning that I "bank", even international, with a small local credit union. So your choice between huge abusive banks and BTC is false.)
- FatalLogic 12y ago
  >It'd love to see BC companies do well and then die off, so that we get reforms in banking without the unnecessary cruft of an intermediate currency intended for nothing except standing in-between fiat transactions. >If I just want to transfer some cash to someone, I'd much rather go directly through my bank (quickly and without fees) than route through another currency just for the hell of it. You've made that point twice in different comments, and I feel it has to be addressed. Firstly, the inefficiencies you've alluded to here are inefficiencies of the traditional banking system. Secondly, and most important, bitcoin IS money, it does not always have to be converted to something else. Bitcoin is not necessarily an 'intermediate' currency. For example, if a person receives bitcoin and a store they want to use accepts bitcoin, then there is no need for an additional wasteful conversion step. And what if the store's suppliers also accept bitcoin or some of their staff are paid partly in bitcoin? What if these people are in different countries? Goodbye foreign currency exchange fees, remittance fees, bank charges. This goal may be unattainable, and the current situation is certainly far from it, but each time a company like Dell or Newegg announces it accepts bitcoin payments or a company like Bitwage builds some other part of the ecosystem, bitcoin becomes a little more useful. I don't think being paid 100% in bitcoin will be a good idea for most people any time soon, because they would just have to convert the bulk of it back to fiat currency. However, receiving a small percentage in bitcoin is quite practical in some places. A person who receives Bitcoin in the US actually already has a huge variety of products and services available, without converting to fiat. For example, have a look at https://spendabit.co https://spendabit.co and try searching for random products.
Gotperl 12y ago
> The real benefit is time of transfer. ACH is infuriatingly slow. If you'd like a payroll run to arrive in employee accounts on a Friday, it must be initiated almost a week prior. Ya, this isn't true. the ACH spec does say 3 business days, but 2 of those days are for redundancy. In all normal cases a transaction submitted today can and will post tomorrow. Your bank may not allow this for individual transactions, but it isn't because ACH can't accommodate it. Source: I run a payroll company doing $1B annually in ACH transactions.
teh_klev 12y ago
>The real benefit is time of transfer. ACH is infuriatingly slow. If you'd like a payroll run to arrive in employee accounts on a Friday, it must be initiated almost a week prior. In the UK we have a thing called the Faster Payments Service [0]. It has (for now) ten participating banks which cover probably 95% of PAYE UK employees - all the big high street banks are on the scheme. I see my salary in my account in sometimes less than 30 minutes after the company payroll has been run. I realise there will be edge cases such as employees who work offshore as I did for three or so years, but I kept my UK bank account and that bank's Visa Debit card pretty much works everywhere in Europe (it certainly wasn't a problem in the Republic of Ireland). The only other caveat to the above is that I work for a SME (Small to Medium sized Enterprise) and SME's do tend to be a bit more agile and run their payroll in-house. Realistically, you probably wouldn't expect to see large enterprises such as BT or Vodafone choosing BitCoin. I'm not dissing the idea of Bitwage, but in the UK it'd be solving an edge case problem. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster_Payments_Service#Participating_members https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster_Payments_Service#Partic...

nmrm 12y ago

> ACH is infuriatingly slow. Tell me about it. > If you'd like a payroll run to arrive in employee accounts on a Friday, it must be initiated almost a week prior. Right. It'd love to see BC companies do well and then die off, so that we get reforms in banking without the unnecessary cruft of an intermediate currency intended for nothing except standing in-between fiat transactions. OR the inherent risk to consumers which comes with lack of regulation. > The real benefit is time of transfer. To what extent does this benefit come from not being subject to regulation? (edit: not rhetorical; I've no idea) > If you'd like a payroll run to arrive in employee accounts on a Friday, it must be initiated almost a week prior. But the check still arrives on Friday, so the benefit is really to the business rather than the employee. This negates the employee-centric benefits you mention in the next paragraph (pay day loans, credit cards, etc.) That is, unless the business is giving advances on payroll. But I think that's something companies don't do for reasons unrelated to choice of currency and transfer time. (edit: I suppose another alternative is that you could pay your employees more often because the process is cheaper and faster. That would be a big win. But I think other cash flows would in some cases prevent this from happening unless everything is done in BTC.) edit: Die off is a bit harsh? I don't want fiat->btc->fiat because it's just silly, but of course if btc causes reforms in the banking industry I sincerely hope btc companies make a huge amount of money in the process :-) edit2: Also, thanks for the link!

opinologo 12y ago
>> It'd love to see BC companies do well and then die off, so that we get reforms in banking Do you realize that your beloved banks caused the GFC and many huge financial scandals like the Libor in Europe or the HSBC money laundering in USA? There is no reason why banks cannot use BTC or any other cryptocurrency but the real issue here is who controls the money.
- nmrm 12y ago
  Strawman. I'm not advocating for large banks, and even specifically mention non-bank fiat->fiat cash transfer companies as a viable and even more likely alternative to BTC. > There is no reason why banks cannot use BTC Yes! Exactly! Bad Things Done By Banks is only an accidental benefit of BTC. If BTC becomes regulated and banks are the better equipped to deal with these regulations, then BTC becomes dominated by banks or de jure criminals. Financial scandals and banking reform are primarily a social and legal problem, and cannot be solved by technology.
  - opinologo 12y ago
    >>Financial scandals and banking reform are primarily a social and legal problem, and cannot be solved by technology. Disagreed, it should be solved/prevented by regulations / laws but it wasn't. BTC don't need regulations.
    - nmrm 12y ago
      > BTC don't need regulations. Yes, it does. For the same reason that any other mechanism for transferring arbitrary sums of money across international borders needs regulation. (It's also worth mentioning that I "bank", even international, with a small local credit union. So your choice between huge abusive banks and BTC is false.)
FatalLogic 12y ago
>It'd love to see BC companies do well and then die off, so that we get reforms in banking without the unnecessary cruft of an intermediate currency intended for nothing except standing in-between fiat transactions. >If I just want to transfer some cash to someone, I'd much rather go directly through my bank (quickly and without fees) than route through another currency just for the hell of it. You've made that point twice in different comments, and I feel it has to be addressed. Firstly, the inefficiencies you've alluded to here are inefficiencies of the traditional banking system. Secondly, and most important, bitcoin IS money, it does not always have to be converted to something else. Bitcoin is not necessarily an 'intermediate' currency. For example, if a person receives bitcoin and a store they want to use accepts bitcoin, then there is no need for an additional wasteful conversion step. And what if the store's suppliers also accept bitcoin or some of their staff are paid partly in bitcoin? What if these people are in different countries? Goodbye foreign currency exchange fees, remittance fees, bank charges. This goal may be unattainable, and the current situation is certainly far from it, but each time a company like Dell or Newegg announces it accepts bitcoin payments or a company like Bitwage builds some other part of the ecosystem, bitcoin becomes a little more useful. I don't think being paid 100% in bitcoin will be a good idea for most people any time soon, because they would just have to convert the bulk of it back to fiat currency. However, receiving a small percentage in bitcoin is quite practical in some places. A person who receives Bitcoin in the US actually already has a huge variety of products and services available, without converting to fiat. For example, have a look at https://spendabit.co https://spendabit.co and try searching for random products.

Gotperl 12y ago

> The real benefit is time of transfer. ACH is infuriatingly slow. If you'd like a payroll run to arrive in employee accounts on a Friday, it must be initiated almost a week prior. Ya, this isn't true. the ACH spec does say 3 business days, but 2 of those days are for redundancy. In all normal cases a transaction submitted today can and will post tomorrow. Your bank may not allow this for individual transactions, but it isn't because ACH can't accommodate it. Source: I run a payroll company doing $1B annually in ACH transactions.

teh_klev 12y ago

>The real benefit is time of transfer. ACH is infuriatingly slow. If you'd like a payroll run to arrive in employee accounts on a Friday, it must be initiated almost a week prior. In the UK we have a thing called the Faster Payments Service [0]. It has (for now) ten participating banks which cover probably 95% of PAYE UK employees - all the big high street banks are on the scheme. I see my salary in my account in sometimes less than 30 minutes after the company payroll has been run. I realise there will be edge cases such as employees who work offshore as I did for three or so years, but I kept my UK bank account and that bank's Visa Debit card pretty much works everywhere in Europe (it certainly wasn't a problem in the Republic of Ireland). The only other caveat to the above is that I work for a SME (Small to Medium sized Enterprise) and SME's do tend to be a bit more agile and run their payroll in-house. Realistically, you probably wouldn't expect to see large enterprises such as BT or Vodafone choosing BitCoin. I'm not dissing the idea of Bitwage, but in the UK it'd be solving an edge case problem. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster_Payments_Service#Participating_members https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster_Payments_Service#Partic...