Bitcoin Forum

Hi all,

I'm an entrepreneur/developer, and I recently sold my last venture, and I've been biding my time looking into something exciting to put my time and energy into.

Bitcoin has a long way to go before the mainstream sees it as both a simple and powerful service. By mainstream, I'm talking about first world countries, like US and Europe. Bitcoin is already solving problems for third-world countries where there is no adoption of credits cards, etc., that most of us use on a daily basis.

Decentralization is a very important feature, but without making it's benefits clear, people won't see a value in that or the need to change into a different system from what they are used to.

My question is, what benefits can bitcoin provide to an average consumer that simply can't be done using traditional financial services?

Nick

How about being able to send money to anyone anywhere in the world in minutes with basically zero fees and involving no need to exchange anything other than a pseudo-anonymous address?

Yes, that's a benefit built-in to the very nature of bitcoins. Anyone with a bitcoin client can do that. Where can it go, beyond that? How can that feature be leveraged into something bigger?

I have been developing a system for paying for contributions to Open Source projects that uses "open book" accounting and provable delivery (in combination with git push request merges).

Such "open book" accounting would also be very useful for NGOs (and has never existed before in any way that could be trusted).

Yes, for as much as the pseudo anonymity of bitcoin is touted, I believe some of it's real value is actually in the accountability it provides since everyone has a record of all transactions since the beginning of bitcoin.  For any organizations that publicly disclose their bitcoin addresses, all money to and from can be openly tracked and verified. I think there is a lot of potential for disruption there.

The privacy of bitcoin allows many new ways of doing things. I love buying VPN service for security. I just send them bitcoin and they send me an account and password. The best security is when you don't have to trust the seller. If I had used my credit card, they would have to know all my info.

Funny how a feature of bitcoin is the ability to publicly track all transactions which should help prevent scams.  Funny how easy it is to get scammed with bitcoin.

How about an online black mar - Oh, wait.

This is a really good point, especially in a third-world / developing countries / developing markets context. 

As with most things, many of the greatest strengths of a system are often its greatest weaknesses.  Namely, Bitcoins cannot be charged back (strength and weakness, making security the sole responsibility of the user.)  This is a good thing in my opinion, but in the opinion of most grandparents, it is scary. 

Bitcoin is more "pseudonymous" than "anonymous".  Most Western countries do now have the ability to require encryption keys from users, and refusal to provide them on appropriate demand (in the case of a court order) is a crime in and of itself - so although it would be extremely DIFFICULT to link a user to a given address, the fact that the addresses and their associated transactions are indelibly written in the blockchain forever does make them an indefinite source of liability if you`re conducting dodgy or outright illegal transactions.  Again, these are both strengths and weaknesses depending on who you are.  I`m still relatively new to BTC, so I don`t claim to be an expert.

Returning to the original point - I think that the indelible transaction record embedded in the blockchain does make it much more possible to implement this kind of accounting, and the absence of major payment processors in many markets, coupled with the ubiquity of cell phones and data connections even in such areas, makes BTC a logical step up.

Also, a confluence of other technological changes (smart devices, data connections, rural electrification) may make BTC even more accessible in these areas.  Here`s an example:

http://www.biolitestove.com/homestove/overview/ (http://www.biolitestove.com/homestove/overview/)

Making remote electrification (for smart devices, not for currency mining) makes BTC a more accessible payment option than ever before.  This is illustrative, not intended to be a sole proof of this - point being simply that times are changing worldwide.