4 ms·

This seems pretty stupid. Is my understanding that Bitcoin txns are no/low-cost and fast incorrect?

by pbreit 11y ago

thesimpsons1022 11y ago
incorrect.
micaeked 11y ago
Read the comments on that page for the justification.
- pbreit 11y ago
  I did and they are non-sensical to me. The fact remains that Bitcoin txns are low/no fee and relatively fast. Those extremely important attributes should continue to be played up.
viraptor 11y ago
Depends on what's low for you. Given many banks will transfer money without any fee within that bank, bitcoin is definitely not low cost. Fast depends on how much you pay for the transaction - if you don't pay anything, it may take over a day.
- josteink 11y ago
  > Given many banks will transfer money without any fee within that bank What about in between banks? My bank still offers this for free, but I know that that's not the case for everyone. If you want to receive money for anything on the internet or pay for services on the internet, that means international transfers becomes the most common use-case because there is no way to guarantee that the sender and recipient resides in the same country. I'm constantly amazed by the amount of people who completely disregard this scenario as something "esoteric" and which doesn't need to be addressed. This is the core requirement* for a universal payment-solution in a internet-enabled world. Quite frankly, just talking about "banks" and in-bank transfers makes you look like something out of the 1920s. My bank will do international transfers, but at a considerable fee. This is where even "evil" actors like PayPal completely trump banks and this is why PayPal and its likes are very popular, at least on the internet. Bitcoin gives you all the internet-based benefits of PayPal (low cost) with none of its evil. I don't think calling it low cost is misleading or false advertising at all.
  - Swizec 11y ago
    My bank does super fast wire transfers from Slovenia to the US. It's not free, but at $40 to transfer ~$4,000 almost immediately, it's not bad either. If I initiate the wire at 1am PST it hits my US account at 8am PST. Sure, most of the speed is because of timezones, but still. It works, it's reliable, and if something goes wrong and the money doesn't show up on my US card, I know exactly who to complain to.
  - notsony 11y ago
    > Bitcoin gives you all the internet-based benefits of PayPal (low cost) with none of its evil. I don't think calling it low cost is misleading or false advertising at all. For now. A block size stuck at 1MB as transaction volume grows will result in a fee market, eventually making Bitcoin impractical/not so competitive for daily use as P2P cash... ...resulting in transactions being pushed off-chain onto centralised and regulated payment hubs (lightning, sidechains) which will most likely turn out to be just as "evil" as PayPal.
    - ikeboy 11y ago
      Sidechains don't need to be centralised. Lightning network hubs can refuse service to you, but I don't think they can outright take your money, which makes them better than Paypal.
  - raverbashing 11y ago
    A lot of banks offer free SEPA transfers in Europe, to any bank account anywhere (in the EU) Meanwhile in US/Canada people still write cheques to each other.
  - danbruc 11y ago
    Bitcoin's currently low transaction fees are an illusion hiding the real transaction costs because people holding Bitcoins for extended periods are paying for the real transaction costs with the devaluation of their Bitcoins. This is not a sustainable model and the only way out is a large increase in the number of transactions while at the same time not increasing mining costs. Theoretically one could also decrease the mining costs but that would make the Bitcoin network less secure. Or of course an increase of the transaction fees to reflect the real transaction costs.
deciplex 11y ago
Yes.
lucozade 11y ago
They are now but that's a function of the current state rather than a feature of Bitcoin. Hardy says in the comments that he feels that the current wording is misleading for newcomers and could cause them to leave when the fees do inevitably rise. He also questioned saying it was fast as, from a users perspective, it isn't always compared to other transactions.
grey-area 11y ago
Fast is a completely reliable transaction in seconds (as banks currently provide in many countries with CC or with transfers, or paypal does for example). Bitcoin doesn't provide that because you need to wait for real confirmation, and it doesn't provide a predictable time-frame for that. So it is slower than many other payment methods. No cost is not accurate, because to get fast, you need to pay. Low cost is debatable but possibly accurate compared to current payment methods (though CC charges are mostly borne by the vendor, an important distinction). I do think these criticisms strike to the heart of why Bitcoin will not be successful - it doesn't compare well to other payment methods, and because of the nature of its distributed consensus and proof of work, it never will. It has some interesting ideas but also embeds some ideas about transactions which make it impossible to satisfy the requirements of most vendors/customers. We will probably see a digital global currency supplanting government-backed currencies, but it needs to have very low volatility, a transparent guidance structure, a credible backer (probably corporate in today's world), verifiable identities to prove both sides of a transaction took part and prevent fraud etc., fast and low cost transfers (BTC has the low cost bit at least at present), and most importantly of all regulated central institutions like banks or exchanges which normal people can trust to carry out business, because most people do not have the time, resources or inclination to secure their servers/computers against determined intrusion and fraud. Personally I think the concepts of mining, a distributed block chain, and unique tokens which are hoarded and passed around like gold coins are fundamentally flawed and will prevent Bitcoin taking off long-term and are the cause of many of its issues like volatility. It is full of interesting ideas though and has triggered a renaissance in online payment, so I see why people find it interesting.
- ikeboy 11y ago
  > completely reliable >paypal So accepting risk of a chargeback counts as "completely reliable" to you. In that case, one can accept 0-conf.

This seems pretty stupid. Is my understanding that Bitcoin txns are no/low-cost and fast incorrect?

by pbreit 11y ago

This seems pretty stupid. Is my understanding that Bitcoin txns are no/low-cost and fast incorrect?

thesimpsons1022 11y ago

incorrect.

micaeked 11y ago

Read the comments on that page for the justification.

pbreit 11y ago
I did and they are non-sensical to me. The fact remains that Bitcoin txns are low/no fee and relatively fast. Those extremely important attributes should continue to be played up.

viraptor 11y ago

Depends on what's low for you. Given many banks will transfer money without any fee within that bank, bitcoin is definitely not low cost. Fast depends on how much you pay for the transaction - if you don't pay anything, it may take over a day.

josteink 11y ago
> Given many banks will transfer money without any fee within that bank What about in between banks? My bank still offers this for free, but I know that that's not the case for everyone. If you want to receive money for anything on the internet or pay for services on the internet, that means international transfers becomes the most common use-case because there is no way to guarantee that the sender and recipient resides in the same country. I'm constantly amazed by the amount of people who completely disregard this scenario as something "esoteric" and which doesn't need to be addressed. This is the core requirement* for a universal payment-solution in a internet-enabled world. Quite frankly, just talking about "banks" and in-bank transfers makes you look like something out of the 1920s. My bank will do international transfers, but at a considerable fee. This is where even "evil" actors like PayPal completely trump banks and this is why PayPal and its likes are very popular, at least on the internet. Bitcoin gives you all the internet-based benefits of PayPal (low cost) with none of its evil. I don't think calling it low cost is misleading or false advertising at all.
- Swizec 11y ago
  My bank does super fast wire transfers from Slovenia to the US. It's not free, but at $40 to transfer ~$4,000 almost immediately, it's not bad either. If I initiate the wire at 1am PST it hits my US account at 8am PST. Sure, most of the speed is because of timezones, but still. It works, it's reliable, and if something goes wrong and the money doesn't show up on my US card, I know exactly who to complain to.
- notsony 11y ago
  > Bitcoin gives you all the internet-based benefits of PayPal (low cost) with none of its evil. I don't think calling it low cost is misleading or false advertising at all. For now. A block size stuck at 1MB as transaction volume grows will result in a fee market, eventually making Bitcoin impractical/not so competitive for daily use as P2P cash... ...resulting in transactions being pushed off-chain onto centralised and regulated payment hubs (lightning, sidechains) which will most likely turn out to be just as "evil" as PayPal.
  - ikeboy 11y ago
    Sidechains don't need to be centralised. Lightning network hubs can refuse service to you, but I don't think they can outright take your money, which makes them better than Paypal.
- raverbashing 11y ago
  A lot of banks offer free SEPA transfers in Europe, to any bank account anywhere (in the EU) Meanwhile in US/Canada people still write cheques to each other.
- danbruc 11y ago
  Bitcoin's currently low transaction fees are an illusion hiding the real transaction costs because people holding Bitcoins for extended periods are paying for the real transaction costs with the devaluation of their Bitcoins. This is not a sustainable model and the only way out is a large increase in the number of transactions while at the same time not increasing mining costs. Theoretically one could also decrease the mining costs but that would make the Bitcoin network less secure. Or of course an increase of the transaction fees to reflect the real transaction costs.

deciplex 11y ago

Yes.

lucozade 11y ago

They are now but that's a function of the current state rather than a feature of Bitcoin. Hardy says in the comments that he feels that the current wording is misleading for newcomers and could cause them to leave when the fees do inevitably rise. He also questioned saying it was fast as, from a users perspective, it isn't always compared to other transactions.

grey-area 11y ago

Fast is a completely reliable transaction in seconds (as banks currently provide in many countries with CC or with transfers, or paypal does for example). Bitcoin doesn't provide that because you need to wait for real confirmation, and it doesn't provide a predictable time-frame for that. So it is slower than many other payment methods. No cost is not accurate, because to get fast, you need to pay. Low cost is debatable but possibly accurate compared to current payment methods (though CC charges are mostly borne by the vendor, an important distinction). I do think these criticisms strike to the heart of why Bitcoin will not be successful - it doesn't compare well to other payment methods, and because of the nature of its distributed consensus and proof of work, it never will. It has some interesting ideas but also embeds some ideas about transactions which make it impossible to satisfy the requirements of most vendors/customers. We will probably see a digital global currency supplanting government-backed currencies, but it needs to have very low volatility, a transparent guidance structure, a credible backer (probably corporate in today's world), verifiable identities to prove both sides of a transaction took part and prevent fraud etc., fast and low cost transfers (BTC has the low cost bit at least at present), and most importantly of all regulated central institutions like banks or exchanges which normal people can trust to carry out business, because most people do not have the time, resources or inclination to secure their servers/computers against determined intrusion and fraud. Personally I think the concepts of mining, a distributed block chain, and unique tokens which are hoarded and passed around like gold coins are fundamentally flawed and will prevent Bitcoin taking off long-term and are the cause of many of its issues like volatility. It is full of interesting ideas though and has triggered a renaissance in online payment, so I see why people find it interesting.

ikeboy 11y ago
> completely reliable >paypal So accepting risk of a chargeback counts as "completely reliable" to you. In that case, one can accept 0-conf.