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Yes, almost all of the advantages of Bitcoin are because it currently has practically no regulatory oversight. If it was to get mainstream usage, regulation wou

by 07d046 11y ago

Yes, almost all of the advantages of Bitcoin are because it currently has practically no regulatory oversight. If it was to get mainstream usage, regulation would also grow, and at least if you want to play in licit channels, it would be almost exactly the same as what already exists. Being your own bank is much too hard and risky for the average consumer, and payment systems that provide useful consumer protections like chargebacks would be formed, so in the end, most people would be doing their banking at BitChase and using a BitVisa credit card.

yc1010 11y ago
I like how the reason for "chargebacks" is often touted as "consumer protection" when the real reason it to line the pockets of the credit card duopoly and ensure the merchant always gets screwed. In many developed countries there are consumer protection laws which entitle the buyer to Replacement, Repair, Refund (in that order usually), so a merchant not adhering to these laws could endup in serious legal trouble as is. Bitcoin at least gives a choice to both buyers and sellers just like plain old cash does Bitcoin, Cash and Traditional Banking (SEPA etc) provide an alternative for commerce where one is free from Visa/Mastecard stupidities and ensure that the Visa/Mastercard duopoly is actually forced to compete and not grow into a more dominant and more abusive entities than they already are. They provide an alternative to being tracked and data-mined and having personal information sold to god knows who :( People do not value their privacy until they lose it, and by then its too late. * Cash allows me to pay (quite anonymously and without fear of being an entry in some datamine) for things locally * SEPA bank transfer allows me to pay EUwide for goods and services reasonably quickly and for no fees (thank you EU! credit card duopoly must hate SEPA) * Bitcoin allows me to instantly pay world wide with ultralow fees, its basically electronic Cash (credit card duopoly do hate bitcoin with a passion, just yesterday they prevented neteller from bridging bitcoin and credit card worlds which IMHO is anticompetitive! http://blog.neteller.com/2015/04/new-deposit-option-bitcoin/ http://blog.neteller.com/2015/04/new-deposit-option-bitcoin/) I forgot the last time I had to use a credit card (or paypal and their "consumer protection") in the last year, and my life both personal and business is easier and better for it.
- chimeracoder 11y ago
  > to line the pockets of the credit card duopoly and ensure the merchant always gets screwed. First, in the US there are four companies, not two (or three, if you don't want to count Discover). And chargebacks aren't the reason that there are so few players - they're far from the biggest barrier to entry for an upstart, aspiring credit card provider. > In many developed countries there are consumer protection laws which entitle the buyer to Replacement, Repair, Refund (in that order usually), so a merchant not adhering to these laws could endup in serious legal trouble as is. That's not what chargebacks are generally for, and in fact using a chargeback for any of those three things is oftentimes considered misuse of the chargeback system. Chargebacks are for handling disputes regarding the actual goods or services promised or rendered. Furthermore, having laws in place means nothing if it's prohibitively expensive for consumers to actually get them to be enforced in all but the largest disputes. Chargebacks are a tool that consumers can (and do) use to ensure that merchants adhere to these agreements. No individual is going to go to court with a merchant over a few hundred dollars on a disputed credit card charge. The consumer delegates this authority to the credit card company, who is more than happy to aggregate this risk across multiple customers, in exchange for a cut[0]. This is not a problem; it is the system working as intended! I'm saying this both as a consumer and as a merchant who has gotten screwed over by one of the four (not two) major credit card companies[1] - chargebacks suck, but they provide an essential protection for consumers that the judicial system cannot. (All of this is separate from fraud, which is a different matter entirely.) > I forgot the last time I had to use a credit card (or paypal and their "consumer protection") in the last year, and my life both personal and business is easier and better for it. I've had to make a few chargebacks in my life. The largest was for almost $2000. Even though the vendor was clearly in the wrong (and I had the written contract to prove it), it would have been way too expensive to actually try and get our money back through the judicial system. Fortunately, my credit card company was more than happy to settle the matter for us. [0] The consumer doesn't pay for this service directly, but they do indirectly (which isn't fundamentally different from many other products and services, in which the actual cashflow is invisible to the end consumer - this can be problematic in its own right, but that's a separate matter of discussion). [1] I have plenty of chargeback horror stories as a merchant, but that's the topic of another post. And that doesn't mean I don't see the value in chargebacks in general.
IkmoIkmo 11y ago
Bitcoin companies in e.g. the US have quite a lot of regulatory oversight. Not sure where you're coming from. Chargebacks are a different topic, I know it's a cop out but I can't be bothered right now. I'll just say they're not as nice as people make them out to be, they're a big cost factor, they invite quite a bit of fraud, carry an awkward burden of proof, and socialise the costs (which I normally don't mind, but in this particular case it makes little sense). I agree it's not unlikely that we'll still use institutions with bitcoin. The difference is that unlike something silly like Swift, we can have an open money protocol that is global, works with currency-agnostic tokens (bitcoins) that can present any value given the right derivatives market. It's more global, cheaper, faster, but perhaps most importantly more open and democratic, even with regulations in play. It's a bit like the Internet, even if companies individually are regulated, an open network is massively important. Anyway I won't stretch that comparison too far, most people dislike comparisons of something that's still very small to something grand. In addition to that, an open money protocol that is not proprietary or regional is a lot easier to disintermediate with software solutions. Even if institutions will still play a role, they'll be more software companies than brick & mortar administrative financial companies.
- 07d046 11y ago
  There are plenty of people who recommend against using those US companies like Coinbase because of they follow the regulations. This is on the front page of /r/Bitcoin at the moment: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/335lqi/coinbase_flagged_transactions/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/335lqi/coinbase_fl...
  - IkmoIkmo 11y ago
    So, did you change your point and agree with me, or does this somehow refute what I said? I don't follow.

by 07d046 11y ago

yc1010 11y ago

I like how the reason for "chargebacks" is often touted as "consumer protection" when the real reason it to line the pockets of the credit card duopoly and ensure the merchant always gets screwed. In many developed countries there are consumer protection laws which entitle the buyer to Replacement, Repair, Refund (in that order usually), so a merchant not adhering to these laws could endup in serious legal trouble as is. Bitcoin at least gives a choice to both buyers and sellers just like plain old cash does Bitcoin, Cash and Traditional Banking (SEPA etc) provide an alternative for commerce where one is free from Visa/Mastecard stupidities and ensure that the Visa/Mastercard duopoly is actually forced to compete and not grow into a more dominant and more abusive entities than they already are. They provide an alternative to being tracked and data-mined and having personal information sold to god knows who :( People do not value their privacy until they lose it, and by then its too late. * Cash allows me to pay (quite anonymously and without fear of being an entry in some datamine) for things locally * SEPA bank transfer allows me to pay EUwide for goods and services reasonably quickly and for no fees (thank you EU! credit card duopoly must hate SEPA) * Bitcoin allows me to instantly pay world wide with ultralow fees, its basically electronic Cash (credit card duopoly do hate bitcoin with a passion, just yesterday they prevented neteller from bridging bitcoin and credit card worlds which IMHO is anticompetitive! http://blog.neteller.com/2015/04/new-deposit-option-bitcoin/ http://blog.neteller.com/2015/04/new-deposit-option-bitcoin/) I forgot the last time I had to use a credit card (or paypal and their "consumer protection") in the last year, and my life both personal and business is easier and better for it.

chimeracoder 11y ago
> to line the pockets of the credit card duopoly and ensure the merchant always gets screwed. First, in the US there are four companies, not two (or three, if you don't want to count Discover). And chargebacks aren't the reason that there are so few players - they're far from the biggest barrier to entry for an upstart, aspiring credit card provider. > In many developed countries there are consumer protection laws which entitle the buyer to Replacement, Repair, Refund (in that order usually), so a merchant not adhering to these laws could endup in serious legal trouble as is. That's not what chargebacks are generally for, and in fact using a chargeback for any of those three things is oftentimes considered misuse of the chargeback system. Chargebacks are for handling disputes regarding the actual goods or services promised or rendered. Furthermore, having laws in place means nothing if it's prohibitively expensive for consumers to actually get them to be enforced in all but the largest disputes. Chargebacks are a tool that consumers can (and do) use to ensure that merchants adhere to these agreements. No individual is going to go to court with a merchant over a few hundred dollars on a disputed credit card charge. The consumer delegates this authority to the credit card company, who is more than happy to aggregate this risk across multiple customers, in exchange for a cut[0]. This is not a problem; it is the system working as intended! I'm saying this both as a consumer and as a merchant who has gotten screwed over by one of the four (not two) major credit card companies[1] - chargebacks suck, but they provide an essential protection for consumers that the judicial system cannot. (All of this is separate from fraud, which is a different matter entirely.) > I forgot the last time I had to use a credit card (or paypal and their "consumer protection") in the last year, and my life both personal and business is easier and better for it. I've had to make a few chargebacks in my life. The largest was for almost $2000. Even though the vendor was clearly in the wrong (and I had the written contract to prove it), it would have been way too expensive to actually try and get our money back through the judicial system. Fortunately, my credit card company was more than happy to settle the matter for us. [0] The consumer doesn't pay for this service directly, but they do indirectly (which isn't fundamentally different from many other products and services, in which the actual cashflow is invisible to the end consumer - this can be problematic in its own right, but that's a separate matter of discussion). [1] I have plenty of chargeback horror stories as a merchant, but that's the topic of another post. And that doesn't mean I don't see the value in chargebacks in general.

IkmoIkmo 11y ago

Bitcoin companies in e.g. the US have quite a lot of regulatory oversight. Not sure where you're coming from. Chargebacks are a different topic, I know it's a cop out but I can't be bothered right now. I'll just say they're not as nice as people make them out to be, they're a big cost factor, they invite quite a bit of fraud, carry an awkward burden of proof, and socialise the costs (which I normally don't mind, but in this particular case it makes little sense). I agree it's not unlikely that we'll still use institutions with bitcoin. The difference is that unlike something silly like Swift, we can have an open money protocol that is global, works with currency-agnostic tokens (bitcoins) that can present any value given the right derivatives market. It's more global, cheaper, faster, but perhaps most importantly more open and democratic, even with regulations in play. It's a bit like the Internet, even if companies individually are regulated, an open network is massively important. Anyway I won't stretch that comparison too far, most people dislike comparisons of something that's still very small to something grand. In addition to that, an open money protocol that is not proprietary or regional is a lot easier to disintermediate with software solutions. Even if institutions will still play a role, they'll be more software companies than brick & mortar administrative financial companies.

07d046 11y ago
There are plenty of people who recommend against using those US companies like Coinbase because of they follow the regulations. This is on the front page of /r/Bitcoin at the moment: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/335lqi/coinbase_flagged_transactions/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/335lqi/coinbase_fl...
- IkmoIkmo 11y ago
  So, did you change your point and agree with me, or does this somehow refute what I said? I don't follow.