Bitcoin Forum

This morning over coffee I was pondering for a while over the incredible losses that many big companies are going to face due to Bitcoin's timely arrival.

We're on the cusp of mainstream mobile phone payment systems - systems that have been built for hundreds of millions of dollars over the past couple years. These systems are now about to hit the market, and big companies like eBay/Paypal, Google, and Visa are buying them.

And now this ridiculous thing called Bitcoin happens, and this dude Brian Armstrong develops a beautiful and elegant Android client, and suddenly anyone in the world can send payments to each other online or with their phones with almost zero fees. How disruptive this is! These other mobile payment companies may be screwed over the next 1-2 years of Bitcoin is widely adopted as a currency.

Capitalism can be brutal.

Short the Dow.

http://money.cnn.com/2011/07/07/technology/ebay_zong/index.htm?source=cnn_bin&hpt=hp_bn3

What do you have to say about Zong-Pal?

Confirmation. They see the writing on the wall, and predictably are trying to adapt/compensate.

Zong is centralized, so it can be controlled by Ebay/government/whomever.  It has nothing on Bitcoin.

Yeah that's kinda the article that prompted my post - there are similar developments with other companies as well.

Let's consider that it took at minimum 3-4 months for ebay and zong to negotiate and sign a contract together. That takes us back to mid-march... when Bitcoin was essentially still a completely unknown phenomenon. In that span of time, Bitcoin appreciated by an order of magnitude, hundreds of new businesses have been created, half a dozen new exchanges emerged, and an elegant end-to-end mobile app was developed for Android. All in the time it took them to discuss their contract.

Wow =)

Average people don't really care that much about "been controlled" by ? and ? and ?.

They do if that control prohibits them from freely using their money.

Controlled currency: Someone else imposes fees on you, tells you when you can pay, how much you can pay, imposes restrictions on who you can pay to, and can even take back money paid to you already.

With bitcoins all those are irrelevant and unavailable. It's one reason why I think it will always have at least some future.

When 2 people have a bitcoin wallet, money will travel freely between them.
There is nobody to tell you what you can, or can't do with your money. If you have it, you can pay with it to anyone who accepts it.

^^this.

yeah, Bitcoin is doomed.  dooommmmed, i tell ya.

But a natural fallout of that is the fees that accrue at every stop along the way. Average people sure care about that. That is why bitcoin has the edge.

The beauty of what entrepreneurs can do in the Free(er) Market that is bitcoin. Love it! I can only imagine what new bitcoin innovations we'll see coming out of the garages of entrepreneurs over the next 30-90 days...

LOL.  i just got an email from Dwolla advertising their new iPhone app that allow you to send money to an email address.  everyone's gettin on board.

but how do u compete with btc's  minimal tx cost?

+1 on "short the Dow", but probably as of a bit higher levels. I think we may see another high above 12,900 before this SHORT will probably be the trade of the past centuries..

Dwolla's a great example of a new, innovative, and valuable company that probably would've been very successful until Bitcoin arrived. Sure BTC is helping them immensely in the short term, but in 2 years, what advantage can Dwolla offer?

The brilliance of Bitcoin is that the transaction mechanism is essentially free... no office with staff have to be involved in the process. That whole cost is gone. Dwolla has to earn revenue from money transfers, but how can it compete with Bitcoin which does not? The staff and assets at Dwolla have been made redundant. Perhaps same with Paypal?

"Disruptive" does not begin to describe Bitcoin.

Assuming Zong-Pal is a way to pay fiat currencies person to person, there are at least three problems:

1) No privacy since a third party watches and records 100% of your transactions attached to your real-world identity.

2) A central party decides who you can and can't pay.

3) It still relies on fiat currencies which are constantly inflated by central banks thus removing wealth from you and giving it to bankers with yacht fetishes and politicians with war fetishes.

It reminds me of the early days of email, when everyone like AOL, CompuServe, etc all had their own email systems.  To send an email to someone, they had to be on the same service.  With these payment systems, if you're on dwolla, the person you're sending money too also needs to use dwolla...same with paypal and probably this ebay acquisition too.

Bitcoin is the next web. A global, decentralized platform with endless uses. Imagine if someone tried invented a centralized web, where you had to get the web browser from them, and all websites had to be hosted on their servers. It could never compete with the real web. That's what centralized payment methods are to bitcoin.

yeah, i have to laugh when skeptics point to all the wasted computer time and electricity costs associated with maintaining the block chain.

but they fail to see that its replacing the entire banking system along with all the waste, corruption, and fraud behind that institutional edifice.  maintaining the block chain is a mere pittance compared with that.

not to mention Facebook credits.

true

Don't forget the power of marketing and propaganda. If people are told it's for their own best, or, better yet, for their safety, then they will accept almost anything coming to them.
Look at the sexual harrassment coming from TSA agents. First in airports, soon in bus stations and malls and then on the streets. If you accept that, then I think you accept anything.

But people will have fear doing that because 'they' tell them it's dangerous and/or outright forbidden.

One solution: counter-propaganda.