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Email had a clear business case. What is Bitcoin's?

by inoop 11y ago

CyberDildonics 11y ago
Is this even a real question? There are many. Remittances, micro payments, lack of credit card fraud and fees... Right now I could pay someone in Thailand and they could take money out of an ATM from one of the largest banks in 20 minutes. You could be on the island of Koh Tao, have money sent to you from anywhere in the world, and get cash as part of the same trip to go get a cold drink from a 7-11.
- sanswork 11y ago
  Remittances are a maybe but honestly the cost of moving money is the small part of a good remittance service. Having the end points is the expensive part. So far all the bitcoin remittance companies either have skipped that part(requiring bank transfers for the last mile) or are using other peoples services. The first isn't usually cheaper than the equivalent service at traditional remittance services. The second only works as long as they are small enough to fly under the radar. There is also the problem that as its usage increases the difficulty in offloading the bitcoins for the remittance company increases which means their costs increase. Bitcoin sucks for micropayments. Even the core devs agree with that and recommend you do them off chain. Credit card fraud is almost entirely a merchant problem and honestly when it comes down to it they don't matter in deciding what payments to accept. Their customers will.
  - CyberDildonics 11y ago
    I don't think you are quite understanding remittances. If someone uses an ATM on one side and another person uses an ATM on the other side, the endpoints are there and the middle man taking an extravagant cut is gone. Even without ATMs endpoints are not difficult. A stall in a mall that is frequented by Indians, Sri Lankans, or Filipinos is cheap. A tiny stall in a mall in Mumbai or Manilla is cheap too. >There is also the problem that as its usage increases the difficulty in offloading the bitcoins for the remittance company increases which means their costs increase. I don't understand what you are trying to say or how increased usage would make dealing with bitcoins more difficult. It doesn't suck for micropayments, I know this because I actually use it frequently. It's great. Have you actually used bitcoin? Visa defines micropayments and anything below $23 The core devs don't recommend doing that off chain, that is 100% not true. Credit card fraud is a massive problem no matter who you blaim. Credit cards are inherently insecure since you have to give someone all the information necessary to charge your card to use it at all! It makes no sense. Many businesses lose enormous amounts of money to credit card fraud. I buy many things with bitcoin, it's amazing how much easier it is than dealing with credit card transactions, the bank's false positive fraud protections, the banks not catching actual fraud, the vendor's false positive fraud protections (for using a vpn or ghostery), waiting for the transaction to go through, etc. Never mind putting all sorts of unnecessary information in. Bitcoin is literally two clicks. You can say 'it won't work'. The truth is, it IS working right now.
    - sanswork 11y ago
      In that situation you have two middle men the banks that own the ATMs on either side and both will want a cut once you start scaling up even if they allow free use of their services for less regular transfers. >I don't understand what you are trying to say or how increased usage would make dealing with bitcoins more difficult. In any given country you're only going to have so many buyers for bitcoin. So the service on the receiving end has a limited number of people to sell the bitcoins they receive to in order to get the cash to give to the recipients. As supply of bitcoin increases the buyers will start wanting to pay less and you end up with a wider and wider spread. The only way around this is for that company to then go sell them in a foreign market and deal with a large float and forex/transfer costs. All of which(spread,float risk,transfer costs) feed back into the fees they need to charge or the spread they need to have to keep them profitable. I don't consider $20 to be a micropayment but even then once you include the overhead in acquiring the coins existing systems will match the cost in most cases until you get to a small enough number that Bitcoin is unsuitable too. And yes I've used Bitcoin. I've been involved in the community for a few years now I just don't see it finding widespread success. It's not about blame its about who it is a problem for. Consumers get protection from credit cards that they don't get from Bitcoin. Its the vendors that have the problems and as I said they can promote Bitcoin as much as they want but it won't reduce fraud until they drop credit cards and that won't happen because users don't want to use bitcoin. It is working. I'm saying it won't be mainstream and that the people who have bought in expecting to be rich should be expecting to be disappointed.
      - grubles 11y ago
        Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe the GP is talking about Bitcoin ATMs, not $MegaBank ATMs.
        sanswork 11y ago
        In which case you're looking at 5-25% fee on either side so its still two middle men and they are even greedier than the old ones. But I think he was actually talking about things like ATMs in MX and TH which allow you to enter a code without having a card and it'll spit out money. The remittance company gives the bank money, they give them a code and you get the code and get your cash. It's meant for personal transfers though generally. I don't see banks offering it at a commercial scale for free.
- davidgerard 11y ago
  Bitcoin does literally none of these better than existing systems (including remittances - ask rebit.ph about their problems getting bitcoins turned back into pesos at the .ph end). Literally the only use case for Bitcoin is so that libertarians can buy illicit goods without having to go to the bad part of town and talk to minorities.
  - grubles 11y ago
    >Literally the only use case for Bitcoin is so that libertarians can buy illicit goods without having to go to the bad part of town and talk to minorities. Wow at how that quote is full of xenophobia and FUD.

Email had a clear business case. What is Bitcoin's?

by inoop 11y ago

Email had a clear business case. What is Bitcoin's?

Is this even a real question? There are many. Remittances, micro payments, lack of credit card fraud and fees... Right now I could pay someone in Thailand and they could take money out of an ATM from one of the largest banks in 20 minutes. You could be on the island of Koh Tao, have money sent to you from anywhere in the world, and get cash as part of the same trip to go get a cold drink from a 7-11.

sanswork 11y ago
Remittances are a maybe but honestly the cost of moving money is the small part of a good remittance service. Having the end points is the expensive part. So far all the bitcoin remittance companies either have skipped that part(requiring bank transfers for the last mile) or are using other peoples services. The first isn't usually cheaper than the equivalent service at traditional remittance services. The second only works as long as they are small enough to fly under the radar. There is also the problem that as its usage increases the difficulty in offloading the bitcoins for the remittance company increases which means their costs increase. Bitcoin sucks for micropayments. Even the core devs agree with that and recommend you do them off chain. Credit card fraud is almost entirely a merchant problem and honestly when it comes down to it they don't matter in deciding what payments to accept. Their customers will.
- CyberDildonics 11y ago
  I don't think you are quite understanding remittances. If someone uses an ATM on one side and another person uses an ATM on the other side, the endpoints are there and the middle man taking an extravagant cut is gone. Even without ATMs endpoints are not difficult. A stall in a mall that is frequented by Indians, Sri Lankans, or Filipinos is cheap. A tiny stall in a mall in Mumbai or Manilla is cheap too. >There is also the problem that as its usage increases the difficulty in offloading the bitcoins for the remittance company increases which means their costs increase. I don't understand what you are trying to say or how increased usage would make dealing with bitcoins more difficult. It doesn't suck for micropayments, I know this because I actually use it frequently. It's great. Have you actually used bitcoin? Visa defines micropayments and anything below $23 The core devs don't recommend doing that off chain, that is 100% not true. Credit card fraud is a massive problem no matter who you blaim. Credit cards are inherently insecure since you have to give someone all the information necessary to charge your card to use it at all! It makes no sense. Many businesses lose enormous amounts of money to credit card fraud. I buy many things with bitcoin, it's amazing how much easier it is than dealing with credit card transactions, the bank's false positive fraud protections, the banks not catching actual fraud, the vendor's false positive fraud protections (for using a vpn or ghostery), waiting for the transaction to go through, etc. Never mind putting all sorts of unnecessary information in. Bitcoin is literally two clicks. You can say 'it won't work'. The truth is, it IS working right now.
  - sanswork 11y ago
    In that situation you have two middle men the banks that own the ATMs on either side and both will want a cut once you start scaling up even if they allow free use of their services for less regular transfers. >I don't understand what you are trying to say or how increased usage would make dealing with bitcoins more difficult. In any given country you're only going to have so many buyers for bitcoin. So the service on the receiving end has a limited number of people to sell the bitcoins they receive to in order to get the cash to give to the recipients. As supply of bitcoin increases the buyers will start wanting to pay less and you end up with a wider and wider spread. The only way around this is for that company to then go sell them in a foreign market and deal with a large float and forex/transfer costs. All of which(spread,float risk,transfer costs) feed back into the fees they need to charge or the spread they need to have to keep them profitable. I don't consider $20 to be a micropayment but even then once you include the overhead in acquiring the coins existing systems will match the cost in most cases until you get to a small enough number that Bitcoin is unsuitable too. And yes I've used Bitcoin. I've been involved in the community for a few years now I just don't see it finding widespread success. It's not about blame its about who it is a problem for. Consumers get protection from credit cards that they don't get from Bitcoin. Its the vendors that have the problems and as I said they can promote Bitcoin as much as they want but it won't reduce fraud until they drop credit cards and that won't happen because users don't want to use bitcoin. It is working. I'm saying it won't be mainstream and that the people who have bought in expecting to be rich should be expecting to be disappointed.
    - grubles 11y ago
      Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe the GP is talking about Bitcoin ATMs, not $MegaBank ATMs.
      - sanswork 11y ago
        In which case you're looking at 5-25% fee on either side so its still two middle men and they are even greedier than the old ones. But I think he was actually talking about things like ATMs in MX and TH which allow you to enter a code without having a card and it'll spit out money. The remittance company gives the bank money, they give them a code and you get the code and get your cash. It's meant for personal transfers though generally. I don't see banks offering it at a commercial scale for free.
davidgerard 11y ago
Bitcoin does literally none of these better than existing systems (including remittances - ask rebit.ph about their problems getting bitcoins turned back into pesos at the .ph end). Literally the only use case for Bitcoin is so that libertarians can buy illicit goods without having to go to the bad part of town and talk to minorities.
- grubles 11y ago
  >Literally the only use case for Bitcoin is so that libertarians can buy illicit goods without having to go to the bad part of town and talk to minorities. Wow at how that quote is full of xenophobia and FUD.