Bitcoin Forum

I had a interesting discussion with a bunch of students from a 1st world country over the weekend. They made some good arguments,

which needs to be addressed. Political views aside, what would motivate people to use Bitcoin in a country where there are loads of

other payment methods to chose from?

Some reasons I gave them was :

~ Danger of centralization and all the evils associated with that.
~ It's cheaper
~ It's faster {should be under normal circumstances}
~ It's FREE to use by everyone {no permission needed}
~ It's global

What other reasons will you add to this, to convince someone to dump their current payment methods?

The fact that you could create an unlimited number of addresses to receive funds without the need of providing any real information's (ID , passport or Residence) makes it a great alternative , another thing would be not having to deal with BS of PayPal or payment methods ...such as connecting into your account using a VPN and getting your money frozen and account limited... you also don't have to worry about chargebacks for 180 days after selling your goods to someone .

Everything has your own demons...

It's cheaper? Can you imagine the fee's with the 1mb if a lot of people start to use?

It's faster in somethings and slower in others...

"It's free"... It's money, money isn't free.. (internet/cellphone/pc isn't free)

Global - ok

there's no good reason for that... why abandon everything and go for bitcoin? other payment methods always existed and they will never die.
i do believe bitcoin is, by far, the best investment right now. but as a payment method still not good, so why do that?

maybe after thunder network...

I think few more can be added in the above list of benifit...

~ it is more secure than traditional centralized payment processor or internet banking
~ Bitcoin network can't go down like other payment processor or nobody can take down bitcoin completely offline so we always have access to our money/bitcoin.

Ok, your convincing reason for people to opt for Bitcoin over other payment methods is? You totally misread the reason for the post. It's

not to scrutinize my reasons, but rather to give more reasons for other people to do it. We need to find more reasons for people to dump

their current payments for Bitcoin. Adoption will not grow in 1st world countries, if we cannot give people a reason to do it.  ;)

it sounds good but i def would not say its cheaper ...... this only damages your argument.  i agree "its global"  "its permissionless" and its "decentralised"  but i can send to any other person in the UK for free in seconds, bitcoin currently costs me at least 4 pence per transaction.  it also def not faster..... just as fast i would say.

dont get me wrong i love bitcoin too but there is no point arguing on points that just are not true.  i use bitcoin because it provides financial freedom not because it is cheaper or faster.  this is my reason to use bitcoin

Exactly why we need this discussion.. If we want Bitcoin to be the better alternative, we should make it better. This whole issue with

the Blockchain scaling is harming any chance we are having to go mainstream. The whole issue just have to come to a conclusion now,

so that we can be cheaper and faster than our competitors. The debate should not be, if we are cheaper or faster, but how much faster

and cheaper we are. People must take notice of this and soon... We are losing ground against them every day.  >:(

Er, I don't think there is any reason to dump traditional payment methods for first wordlers. They're instant, safe and hassle free. The only thing that could inspire people would be serious discounts. Most people don't give a fuck about centralisation, decentralisation or inflation. They just want to buy their shit.

It's a whole different ball game for merchants. They'd love every single angle about it. Unfortunately customers outnumber them quite significantly.

We can't do that at this moment because Bitcoin isn't popular enough. I can't pay my bills in Bitcoin, at a restaurant or at a supermarket. We have to get it popular first.

I can add to your positive points about Bitcoin one important point which is opening the door for thousands of persons from all over the world to work online and recieve payment easily, however, the first goal of Bitcoin is to provide easy solution to those who buy/sell and work on the internet.

I dont thing all other payment methods should be dumped for bitcoin.I think they can work along with bitcoin all they need to do is shift on blockchain

Its global mostly, its not that cheap anymore, its great store of value, independence from banks, you can carry money "in smartphone" etc.

Interesting things, I guess the centralized are full with a lot of cracks. that's so easy for used by the criminal and the placeman for using that for the wrong way. the important reason is the democratic is so vague.

If customers demand bitcoin as an option, then it is in the merchant's best interest to accommodate it. And customers (or individuals) like us may like holding our money in bitcoin rather than a government currency or in a bank.

one of reason I use bitcoin is because we don't have word "interest" in bitcoin world while banks have.

besides, we don't pay tax when we save bitcoin in our wallets. we just pay fees when we want to send bitcoins.

Well that is why my reason either because I am really interesting with this best crypto currency and upon seeing the road map of bitcoin this is the strongest one. And good thing for us who are earning bitcoin we don't have pay taxes and as well as the fees are very cheap whenever we are going to have transactions with it.

I could never figure this one out myself.  Tried to convince my mother and argument failed spectacularly.  There's really no advantage to spending bitcoin versus traditional fiat.  To me, anyway.  The value is in holding it, much like precious metals.  People will use it for dark markets and gambling, so that creates demand and a chance for price increases.  Hell, look at the price now compared to bitcoin's inception.  It's definitely taken off.

I do not think there is a need to dump payment options for markets that are already efficient, although Bitcoin could make a good complementary method of payment to make it more efficient. An example of this is online shopping. It would be nice to see Amazon start to accept Bitcoin even if they do not need to.

Bitcoin should be used in markets where there is an inefficient mode of payment. As I said before the dark market payments would be very inefficient if it did not have Bitcoin payments. There are also ways to create to create new markets for Bitcoins like for example an exchange for backed frequent flyer mile tokens done on Counter Party that is tradable for Bitcoins.

And the you can mention other, centralized and corprate payment methods like PayPal and Amazon Payments and you will see that:

Your reasons in comparison to Amazon Payments:
- Yes, it is centralized service. But most people don't care about this aspect, they want to transfer their money, that's all.
- It is not cheaper. Amazon Payments is not collecting any fee. Bitcoin is - although very small.
- I don't want to start about network capability, but confirmation could take a long time...
- Amazon Payments is free too...
- And here is where bitcoin really shines - all you need for BTC to work is an device with internet connection

In my opinion, bitcoin more simple,easy, cheap, there are not people or government that control it and every body can check the code of bitcoins (i mean people who know about it   ;D   ) and bitcoin is revolution of currency.

I would personally note the deflationary currency aspect of Bitcoin and how there is nex to no value lost in your investment due to "natural" causes, and the only losses are perpetuated by the market. Aside from that I think you have a pretty good list overall of things you'd need to make it all sound pretty neat to someone who is curious.

What do you mean cheap? It is cheap to send bitcoin or cheap to keep whole infrastructure around?
Do you know that bitcoin network could consume as much electricity as Denmark by 2020?

Here are the details: http://motherboard.vice.com/read/bitcoin-could-consume-as-much-electricity-as-denmark-by-2020 (http://motherboard.vice.com/read/bitcoin-could-consume-as-much-electricity-as-denmark-by-2020)

It is likely he is referring to the fees incurred by the miners for a typical transaction, and how those are cheap compared to a lot of other forms of banking. While the miners are expensive, they are rewarded, so that has to be kept in mind. Something always has to turn the cogs of the machine.

This is an issue. Not for us but for the governments because they are actually looking for control. Governments never liked having people out of control, so Bitcoin is like an enemy right now even though they don't seem like caring about it. Bitcoin was either created by a government if they really do not care about it just to fool us with this 'anonymous' thing or they just don't plan anything with it at the moment.

the fact that using bitcoin is decentralized and there is no need for getting permission from someone to use it, is more than enough for me to want to use bitcoin instead of any other payment method which asks me for all kinds of personal information and then leaks it betraying my privacy.

But the goverment are the mainly cause for the centralized system are put their ass into the highly chair rather than their civilians for blowing their civilians into the dream of the peace countries. and that is so disturbing for using the centralized system we could feeling the various element in the goverment are fully with a lot of problem about that. because the centralized system are the shady system every i seen and i the strongly agree about dump the centralized system in  this time.

bitcoin is indeed included transactions quick and easy money, but there is still much that needs to be fix, for example when we buy coffee at starbucks or cafes, and make payments with bitcoin requiring 1 confirmation, but sometimes it takes 10 to 15 minutes, it's very annoying

Unless we can finally get back to making micro payments for very small fees (or none at all) I still think other forms of payment are preferable to bitcoin. For bitcoin to succeed it cant be just marginally better than using cash or a debit card, Its got to have some real big advantages. unless i need to transfer $1000000 from china to usa or similar its not really useful to someone like me who would want to spend it around town. And should i want to spend it around town i have to pay more than $1 for $1 of bitcoin. With this being the case why would i ever spend any bitcoin? Its cheaper to use alternative methods.  Saying all that i do see bitcoin as the perfect investors asset, This is where for now i see it shining on its own.

that's only incase if "majority" customres are demanding bitcoin,if it is just minority of them then seems the merchant is not going to accomodate bitcoin or implement it,some people always hating government indeed and some even don't want to make government know their wealth,but they would seeking for the safest option

You could have asked a slightly different question;
Political views aside, what would motivate people to use Bitcoin in a country where there are loads of
other stores of wealth to chose from?

I see the use of Ƀ as a store of wealth becoming the biggest driver to Ƀ going truly mainstream.

I suspect there will be a huge scandal involving market manipulation and/or fraud in the Gold markets in the not to distant future. The only winners will be those holding physical gold and many people will ask themselves, 'Why not cold storage Ƀ instead?'

good heading and also we should add some options which are also the main advantage of bitcoin .
1) can maje trade
2) world wide payment but with less chare , which is cool
3) always under our own control .

From my point of view Bitcoin is better comparing to some traditional payment options because gives us independency from banks which no longer have insight in your finances, it's easy to make payments online and if you also have Bitcoin debit card you don't have any restrictions at all.

and also there should be option like there are some wallets which doesn't charge even any amount of fee for transaction . like coinbase .
and also we can give example of zebpay wallet .
further we can also tell them it is not a payment way also it is a way to save money without limit and without tax also .

It seems to me that in jurisdictions with well-developed banking systems there aren't many payment scenarios where Bitcoin has a material advantage to the average user. E.g. Within Europe (SEPA) or the UK (with faster payments) person to person or company payments are effectively free and to all intents and purposes instant (few minutes to a few hours max). Similarly debit/credit card payments appear instant from the perspective of the user.

If you are making a cross-border payment then it is clearly different, but the number of those which the average person makes is probably rather small.

Given the frictional losses involved in acquiring BTC for most people then the case for using BTC for routine payments is probably quite hard to make.

The points you make are fair except for the one about Bitcoin being faster. Sending/receiving payment via PayPal is pretty much instantaneous, at best with Bitcoin it takes a few minutes. It is true that when I pay for stuff from my Coinbase account via BitPay I enjoy zero confirmation/instantaneous but that's only when shopping. Transferring funds between regular wallet is not nearly as fast as money transfer between PP accounts.

Bitcoin is an alternative to the traditional payment systems and this is good.

It`s better to choose between alternatives rather than having no choice.

Well we can send at even lower amount than the usual required minimum in some of the payment processor where it requires at least decent amount before we can send an amount.

And yes, less hassle compare to the usual ways of sending and receiving money. And what I like more with that "less hassle"?, it covers even a country to country transactions which usually takes time before we received our money if it's done on the "usual" ways.

It's cheaper or faster are possibly the weakest arguments you can find in favor of Bitcoin. After all, Bitcoin is not a very efficient payment solution. Electronic fiat could easily compete with it in terms of transaction speed and costs if banks form a new consensus. The reason of Bitcoin's inefficiency lies within its strength: decentralization. Only to enable decentralization (i.e. lack of centralized control) a complicated and inefficient construct in form of a blockchain is needed to guarantee the authenticity of the monetary units and their ownership.

The main strength of Bitcoin is that it is private, sound money, independent of governmental control and not subject to monetary inflation. Bitcoin is a good store of value and at the same time is very fungible and easy to hide (it outmatches gold in that regard). So Bitcoin enables individual monetary freedom even in an oppressive societal environment.

ya.ya.yo!

i obviously agree that bitcoin as a payment option has great benefits, lots of which was mentioned in this topic but there is also a big problem and that is bitcoin is not yet ready for being used as a payment option because of the limitations and also the lack of adoption by the merchants.

As far as I know, more merchants are slowly adopting bitcoin as a mode of payment. Its already for several years had past and bitcoin have already proven its worth. Even big companies now have notice bitcoin,I hope so that in the future it is widely acceptable.

We can also add some of benefits while accepting bitcoin for merchants;
1. very low transaction fee while accepting bitcoin payments than usual card payments
2. no problem of chargebacks
4. Also no any heavy expensive POS device is needed, you mobile / desktop bitcoin wallet can make you accept bitcoin easily

its only because bitcoin is far more better than any other payment system and it is not just another payment method but it has a whole new technique to store and transact the money or so called numerical values (in programmincal language) it even has a public and private key feature which is not seen anywhere and its really and unique feature

I am not going to edit or change the first post, because it's been quoted too many times and people might think that I want to change my

initial view after reading all of these comments.  ;) ... Some of them have merit, and some of them stink.  ;D ... The ones I likes the most,

has to be :

~ increased privacy
~ No Chargebacks
~ Lower setup cost for merchants
~ It's Open Source { decreased risk for malicious code and backdoors }
~ Alternative uses eg. Smart contracts / Store of value / Investment vehicle.
~ Hassle Free { No verification or KYC/AML regulations }

Let's add more reasons for 1st world country users to dump traditional payment methods and to swap to Bitcoin. We are literally a Bitcoin

Think tank at this moment.  ;D ... This is good.