Bitcoin Forum

Privacy, not having to share your personal information is a good reason. However, the vast majority of people don't care about sharing their personal information while making most of their transactions.

You don't want to share your personal info with a merchant that you don't trust. But would you want to make an irreversible payment to that merchant that you can't trust?

How will the average consumer deal with the complexities of keeping a wallet safe, transaction fees, confirmations, change addresses? We certainly need abstraction layers such as e-wallets.

How will anyone trust their money with an e-wallet that can't guarantee the safety of people's money? That is the most bountiful target for hackers and criminals?

The volatility is making people steer away from holding the bitcoins even if they receive bitcoin for the services/products they provide. Hence the success of Bitpay. So the idea that you are more likely to spend Bitcoin if you get paid in Bitcoin is not happening.

How will we make Bitcoin the future if we can't solve these and get mom and dad to pay with Bitcoin?

Honestly, I asked the loan place if I could pay off in bitcoin 2 weeks ago, no idea what I was talking about.

Asked again today and it's being implemented within the next 30 days.

You'll be quite surprised, I think.

There was a day when "mom and dad" knew nothing of facebook.

I find it more useful as a store of value vs debased fiat currencies.

If fiat exists, and remains legal tender, it would only make sense to spend bitcoins when a person has run out of fiat.

many people think that in a few decades governments will crumble and every single person of the 7 billion people in the world will be using bitcoin. this is just not the case.

so far with lets say only 1.5m people only ever having to invest $10k (once in their life) comes to the valuation of 12mill coins at $1300 value each. so imagine only 20 million($7k per coin once all 21m are 'minted'/mined) people or 50 million($18k  per coin once all 21m are 'minted'/mined) people use bitcoin, thats still some large valuation numbers.

so it does not require whole world adoption to outvalue gold.. and of those 50million people. lets say that they work internationally, or work from home, or prefer payment in bitcoin so that they can easily use it when their vacation days come around.

there will be more stability and ALOT more merchants.

alot of you beleive that bitcoin is near the end. YOU ARE ALL WRONG, there is over a century to go of mining and beyond that.. well lets allow our great great grandkids worry about that,

at the moment bitcoins is going through its teenage rebellion stage of life, resisting authority and trying to find its own way in life to become fully independant.

no one should be worrying about volitility. as there are services such as bitpay that will give instant valuations and a good enough time buffer for customers to pay wthout the merchant losing out. and then when bitcoin has 'sowed his wild oates' so to speak and calmed its volitility down then you will see the future of bitcoin.

at the moment bitcoin is too young to see whats in its future. all we know is that it has a future, and a long way to go yet.

now to be more direct about your answer.
i like to see a near future that when i go online from the UK i dont see just £ prices or $ prices. meaning if i go to an american site i have to convert  it to pounds. or if i go to a euro site i have to convert euro to pounds or if i go to a japanese, ill have to convert yen to pounds. id like to see a universal valuation in bitcoins. and when i go abroad for vacation i dont have to worry about travellers cheques, currency conversion rates, i just use my phone with a local person to do transactions and get more cash without trying to find a ATM that accepts my UK FIAT card and know a universal conversion rate.. of bitcoins

Agree

Unfortunately wider acceptance and volatility are directly proportional to each other. The more BTC gets popular, the more stable it will become. Also if people stash more and more BTCs in cold storage for use as an investment, the selling pressure can ease and the value can stabilize.

So people will be buying bitcoins because it's a good store of value.

And they will only make payments with their bitcoins when they run out of fiat which they were holding for their regular payments.

Is that what you mean? If not, please explain. If so, doesn't that mean that they will eventually keep more fiat to not have to spend btc?

Why would a consumer pay with Bitcoin?

1 Firstly to see how it works, another life experience and evaluate it .

2 Personal experience then allows you to START to understand, weigh the pro's and Cons and discuss/debate the principle and idea.

That will account for a million or so users (in 2014). In fact the number of wallets was about 12million last July of which about 3-4% have one BTC or more so last July there were approx 250k "users"

Since then there has been much media attention and that figure has probably doubled (and will continue to do so until either it collapses or all the middle class in the World have been exposed/experienced it. (1 Billion?)

3 For the Tech savvy it has been well and often stated that


http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article43353.html

Conclusion

"Every informed person needs to know about Bitcoin because it might be one of the world’s most important developments!" - Leon Louw, Nobel Peace prize nominee. We agree with those sentiments both at ATCA 5000 and at the mi2g Intelligence Unit.

4 Use as regular form of payment for consumers is a work in progress, Rome was not built in a Day. There are enough parties currently working toward that goal (and many more will join) that unless there is extreme negative disruption from Govts it will continue to snowball.

5 Meanwhile there are many groups and individuals who, if they have the means, will use it on principal. Particularly those who understand that the large financial institutions and the Fed are playing a rigged game with the ultimate result being that the debasement of the currency and peoples saving deposits etc.

The number of those who will use on principal is large and will give bitcoin businesses the momentum and revenue to grow until they really can offer a more convenient and less expensive payment method than fiat.

I have not included speculators or persons wishing to use it as a store of value as your question seems specific to consumers ( purchasing goods and services)

You don't have privacy though. Unless you're doing an in-person transaction you don't have total privacy when it comes to the "real" to bitcoin transaction, or visa versa, and your bitcoins are entirely traceable to the point where if someone knows info from a single (unwashed) transaction, they can trace it back to pretty much every transaction you've made with an address and even in some cases other addresses you use.  That also makes buying real world products with bitcoin high risk, since any shipped product still requires real world information which is stored on a server which could be hacked which would tie every transaction you made/make to your real world details.


People have been saying the same thing about gold and silver for quite some time. Who knows, it may happen at some point, but in the meantime the diehards didn't sell when it went up and they won't sell until they really have to personally (at which point the price will well below it's peak) or until not just the dollar but most viable alternatives (if the dollar collapsed we'd probably switch to the Canadian Dollar before gold as an acceptable currency) stopped working, at which point they'll have a head start on everyone else but it won't really matter since society will have pretty much collapsed anyway making the majority people who are poor, starving, and don't have precious metals to trade.


Volatility is actively preventing adoption of bitcoin, both because it hurts its real usability and because of the PR effect, mainly nobody except for techno-geeks and crazy people are going to buy into a currency that drops 46% in a day. Also, merchants aren't going to accept a currency that changes so much as to risk rapidly devaluing any sale that they make below their costs which is why many of the merchants that currently accept bitcoin are places like Amagi which deals in metals, or mining companies, which are speculating in their own way on the adoption of bitcoin.

I have been. I'm one of those using it on principle. I have good reasons to use it but I can't see how mass consumer adoption can be done. That's what the question is more about.


I'm not saying that Bitcoin is not revolutionary. Not at all. I'm in love with it.


Which parties and what solutions? The questions are explicit. And the point is to explore the answers.


Yes the question is specific to consumers. From experience, I know that most adopters are ignorant fools trying to get rich quick.

I would love to believe that people paying merchants with Bitcoin on principle are numerous enough to sustain bitcoin as a viable payment option. But I doubt it.

Quote from: qwerty555 on Today at 01:10:23 PM
4 Use as regular form of payment for consumers is a work in progress, Rome was not built in a Day. There are enough parties currently working toward that goal (and many more will join) that unless there is extreme negative disruption from Govts it will continue to snowball.

Which parties and what solutions? The questions are explicit. And the point is to explore the answers.

Well here's a starting list of the parties. There are many more.



Direct and indirect purchases

https://www.spendbitcoins.com/places/

http://www.reddit.com/r/BitMarket/new/

http://bitcoinmagazine.com/2651/where-to-spend-your-bitcoins/

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade


There are a number of websites which offer a map displaying bitcoin accepting business world wide. Below is an overview.

    Bitcoin.travel - Google Maps-based bitcoin directory of online and real world businesses that currently accept Bitcoin - Where to Buy, Store, Spend and Sell Bitcoins Around The World.
    CoinMap - Collaborative map based on OpenStreetMap data and rendering
    Mercado Bitcoin - Empresas, negocios y sitios que aceptan Bitcoin
    useBitcoins.info - Use Bitcoins in the real world
    Bitcoinlocator - Presents a searchable map of Bitcoin accepting businesses.
    The Bit Pages
    Bitcoin Map - Shows merchants accepting Bitcoin, individual traders, miners and bitcoin users on one map.
    BitiMap - The Map show you, where you can pay, earn or swap Bitcoins (BTC) and Litecoins (LTC) over the world.
    Bitcoinkiez - Map for Berlin.
    Aceptamos Bitcoin - Map for Spain.

The solutions to making the payment process smother and more attractive to ALL persons (with or without principals) I assume is being worked on by the payment providers such as bitpay and others who have not yet entered the market. Previously the momentum has been provided by miners and speculators but now mining is being industrialized due to the large capital requirements and high difficulty levels the focus will /is to turn to adoption by consumers to drive demand (and the price).

There does not appear to be an organization who is actively promoting use in payment systems ( Previous thread came up with no candidates) It appears to be the realm of private  businesses. I can understand that volatility is a negative risk factor for this but most on the forum are in agreement that this will eventually stabilize ( maybe a few years to go yet)


Ps I do not think any of us are in a position to know what is in the mind of earlier adopters and many who I have seen here are not in the camp that you mentioned ( or though some clearly are :) )

it is not. there are new people joining into bitcoin daily. and they are not all geeks or freaks. they are investors and forex traders. personally as a forex trader i love the ups and downs. movement means profit. if something only moved $1 value per year unless i had $1m invested i would not make $10k a year profit. but with movements of $100's a month i can make soo much more using so far less initial investment.


taking bitcoin and manually cashing out at the end of the night back into fiat. you are right shop owners get hurt. but for shop owners that don't actually want or have interest in bitcoin, but are just using it to gain more customers. they can use bitpay which removes the hurt by fixing the value. instead of accepting bitcoin and risking the value change that may occur by the time they cash up in the evening. merchants should not be thinking ok if i accept this bitcoin at 10AM and i cash out at bitstamp at 7pm after i close for the day, wht am i risking. they should be thinking either
1) if i need to cash out today lets use bitpay
2) if im going to hold for the long term growth/investment ill do things manually

i personally had FIAT, converted it to bitcoin sent it to another country and that person converted it to their native currency.. all within 10 minutes and at better rates then travelex bureau de change could offer. but if your going to wait all day, then accept the risk. or use a service to protect the volatility.

and as i said before. bitcoin is still young. everyone that has researched the first days of using gold, has found 'bartering' volatile initially. same as the first days of bank notes. no one knew how to value it. one baker would charge a totally different amount of bread loaves compared to another baker for the same bank note. untill everyone got used to it and it became common.

so calm down, bitcoin is YOUNG!!!

I would add that currently the major market for consumers is purchases on the internet which has consistently gained ground over purchases in retail shops. The internet sales market is huge and that is where bitcoin will survive and grow first and where it is has real potential for cost competitiveness versus fees on credit card transactions

https://www.google.com.ph/search?q=value+of+internet+purchases&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&gws_rd=cr&ei=fiqjUq-ECMOCiQflsoGQDg#q=value+of+internet+purchases+2012&rls=org.mozilla:en-US%3Aofficial

Pretty much, although bitcoins can be converted to fiat relatively easily (or even just given in lieu) if there's a fiat shortfall. If a company prices a debt in terms of fiat, which you don't have in this scenario, you either pay them directly in bitcoins or convert it yourself to fiat first then pay them that if it they don't accept btc. You don't really need a store of fiat, except to maybe hedge against bitcoin volatility.

The reason behind this is because of the inflationary nature of fiat against the deflationary nature of btc. Any dollar you hold is constantly watered down over time due to the increase in the money supply. The rough calculation is that it halves in purchasing power every 7 years. There will be no more bitcoins once the cap has reached, and instead be slightly deflationary as coins are lost. Assuming the network remain resilient, the purchasing power of bitcoins should go up over time.

Don't make payments to merchants you can't trust, period.

Simple. They probably wouldn't use the coins. Why would you when banks can drop their fees to zero?

Banks make a lot of money from other products such as mortgage fees.

In Australia we have basically abolished account fees, dishonor fees, it is very likely that international transaction fees are next to be abolished. After all, it doesn't really cost the banks to process it as it is automated.

Try to get on an international flight with $10k or more of USD/gold/silver… take your pick. Let me know how it works out (after the government confiscates YOUR money).

Now lets try that same experiment with Bitcoin. Are there any people left who don't see the value in that?

Maybe you're smart - you will send the money through the banksters…. let me know how much that privilege costs.

It's quite cheap to send your gold around the world. Just pay armaguard private security or whatever your local armored courier is.

I don't think you understand how to move gold. You don't have to pay a bankster.

Furthermore, fiat transactions are very cheap compared to the losses you could incur using bitcoin.

Gresham's Law...


Bad money drives out good money.

Why spend something valuable when people accept worthless things just as or more readily?

For me the big reason is MICROTRANSACTIONS

I can make very small charges/purchases/transfers  with bitcoin that I simply couldn't do with credit/debit cards or at least not without getting hit with heavier fees.

I'll give you an example. Most small stores (think liqour stores or gas stations) will charge you a fee if you use credit/debit on anything under x amount of dollars. There are plenty of times where people might stop by a store to grab a soda or a bag of chips and they end up paying fees that sometimes can equal more than the item itself they bought.  Bitcoin helps eliminate that.  No more having to worry about stopping in a store and buying a bottle of gatorade for 99cents only to get hit with a .75cent charge.

That's just one example , im sure there's plenty others. For example, I like to bet on sports, one thing I really like about these bitcoin sportsbook sites (here's my refferal if you're interested,  https://bitbook.biz/?referer=Galaxys3 )  is that you can bet insanely small amounts. It's great for the person who likes to gamble on sports for the excitement but doesnt want to lose much money.  Most sportsbooks dealing with fiat that i've ever seen the min deposit is $50 and the min bet is $5 , with something like bitbook the mean depoist is 0.69cents (at current prices as of this posting) and i don't even know if there is a min bet you have to make, the other day just fooling around i bet less than half a penny.   I know this is more of a niche thing maybe but considering how large gambling is in the world bitcoin has the potential to really change the game so to speak.

I really can't see Bitcoin becoming an actual currency that people use to buy food or whatever else. I think it's purely just a store of wealth like gold, but it's easier to buy/sell/trade than gold is for obvious reasons.

BItcoin cannot become a currency while the price is still going up. There is a small minority of people who buy things with Bitcoin now, but personally I think they're insane. Why pay BTC50 for a car when a year from now that BTC50 might be worth a house? They would argue that they're supporting Bitcoin by spending them, but I disagree.

My opinion on the future of Bitcoin:

- Average people like us use it as an investment (gold 2.0)
- Companies/banks/etc use it for transferring LARGE amounts of money around the world rather than doing slow and expensive wire transfers

The only way it can become a currency that all of us use is if Bitcoin banks start up. The same as how a bank controls your $$ now. They give you a debit card which you scan at a shop. The bank says to the shop "I promise I'll give you this money at some stage in the future". Then, if you've done something dodgy, the bank chases you to get their money back. The shop is generally not out of pocket as long as they've followed the rules.

The notion that people will be scanning QR codes at the supermarket checkout and waiting for transactions to propagate throughout the Bitcoin network is preposterous.

the way it can "become" a currency is by merchants accepting it as a currency, simple as that.  

we can already see many major stores, dealers, businesses, etc accepting bitcoin.  that makes it a currency.  only your disbelief makes this an argument

edit to add:  anyone spending bitcoin on a car is actually an idiot unless they have the BTC to waste, in that case...

I can buy a shop and accept turnips as payment for my products, but that doesn't make turnips a currency.

There are not "many major stores" accepting Bitcoin as payment. There is an extremely small number of shops accepting it, many of whom did it just to get free advertising. It's ridiculous seeing a post on Reddit with 1000 upvotes which says "my mum's home business which sells figurines of cats made out of mouldy pasta and recycled string now accepts Bitcoin!" Who fucking cares, seriously? Who upvotes something like that?

I can only think of one place in my entire country (Australia) which accepts Bitcoin, and it's a pub in another state. So it means nothing to me.

Go look at the wallets for any of these shops. I bet most of them have had a negligible number of sales paid with Bitcoin. I believe the Baidu wallet only received donations from Westerners.

If I owned a shop I would accept Bitcoin, but ONLY because I know they're going to go up in value. So the money from someone who buys a $5 sandwich today may be worth $50 next year.

You have to remember Bitcoin is still in it's infancy though. While it's true that most places don't accept bitcoin, the number of places that do (both big and small) is growing rapidly. It's becoming easier for businesses to do such a thing, it's becoming easier for consumers to get and use bitcoin, and it's spreading.

If the world was to come to an end today, then yes Bitcoin isn't much of a currency. The world isn't coming to an end today though (I hope) , and the rate of places accepting bitcoin is growing pretty rapidly.

It wasn't that long ago though IT workers would have a hard time convinencing the company they work for that they should have a website. The common thing was "oh comon who uses websites, only a few people".  Or remember back when online shopping first came about, it received a lot of backlash and as well and took nearly 20 years to reach the point it has today.  So trying to remember bitcoin has only been around a few years and things like these don't happen over night.

I think it's very short sighted to think "well RIGHT NOW there's still not many places that accept it" and to come to the conclusion that that's always going to be the case. The trend says otherwise. It's not that far stretched to think more and more businesses will start to accept bitcoin and it will become more widespread, especially for online shopping/payments. Much crazier things have happened.

You're completely right. I work in IT and I've been using the Internet since before it even had graphics (I used to dial up to a BBS and use Lynx through a remote Unix shell), so I've seen first hand how the Internet changed. I remember when I was in school, people would make fun of you if you liked, or even just used, computers. And I'm only 27 so I don't think I'm THAT old.

It's just my personal opinion that Bitcoin in its current state will never be used by average people to buy things in shops. Perhaps somebody will build a system over the top (like the banks I mentioned in my first post) that becomes widely used. You could reasonably argue that people don't even use cash anymore - it's all debit/credit cards now. So even though you still pay dollars, or whatever your local currency is, you're isolated from how it works. The currency behind your debit card could be dollars, or Bitcoin, or carrots. It would appear the same to you as the user.

I believe that within a few years, the majority of all purchases will be made with cell phones and digital devices. Digital currencies will play a key role during this transition.

The days of rolling up to a drive through or gas station and paying with crypto are not far away.

Simple answer is that it will take time, right now most people aren't ready and neither is the software / services.

for me it's several reasons.

1) it's fast
2) it's fun
3) i don't like paper money (i hate getting change, and having to walk around with coins)
4) i don't trust banks with my money (in fact when you deposit money at the banks it's no longer your money, even legally).
5) even if i would trust banks with my money, i don't trust money itself because the government can just print unlimited amounts.

The idea that people do not spend something that always increases in value has been challenged.

1) People actually save to spend. Meaning that they spend their savings either in small pieces regularly or in large chunks. So the good store of value property does not contradict its payments network property.

2) When Bitcoin prices stabilize, it's fiat value will still increase. But that does not necessarily mean your bitcoins are worth more each year, it means fiat is worth less each year.

So in theory, there is no reason why Bitcoin cannot be used to make everyday payments.

The overall idea I get from the answers is that everyone agrees that it's inconvenient to pay with Bitcoin at the moment. But we also think that the inconveniences will eventually be resolved by services that will be built on top of the network.

Asking you what those services will be might be stupid. If you knew one, you'd either be building it or planning it and would not post it on the forum :=)

That's why I pay my taxes in fiat and not Bitcoins. :-)

Also because you have to :)

Ask any Cypriot what he thinks about keeping money in the bank an paying with his check card.  

Coming to a bank near you.  http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-09-26/cyprus-style-wealth-confiscation-starting-all-over-world

Solve what? Since you said yourself that the bitpay model works then the real problem here is volatility. I don't expect volatility to go away for years to come but things will become only better over time.

customer will save in bitcoin and spend in quarks

I said Bitpay is successful but I believe the driver of this model's success is Bitcoin enthusiasts and supporters like us. Not mass adoption.

I don't think volatility is the only obstacle standing in the way of mass adoption as I described in the OP.

what makes quarks better than bitcoins?

Isn't it obvious that any good model around bitcoin would be initially supported from the bitcoin community? What do you expect someone that has no clue about what bitcoin is to include bitpay as payment option in their businesses?

The big paradigm shift that Bitcoin enables is the case where customer is the merchant and the merchant is the customer.

Now imagine how we can use that to outcompete facebook and destroy the plans of the bastards who want to track everything.