Bitcoin Forum

If you have fiat and bitcoin, the only reason you want to spend bitcoin is to help developing it. Ok you don't need to do that because bitcoin will be developed anyway by other generous folks, and you get to keep your wealth.

From merchant perspective, accepting bitcoin is great, since it increases in value, and there's no processing fee. On the other hands, for consumer, not only does he lose precious coins, he also loses the benefit of credit card.

Most cc give 5% cash back on gas, at least 1% on other things, not to mention those freebie insurances. You can buy exxon gift card with bitcoin using Gyft, but you'll miss that huge 5% benefit. So it makes more sense to sell coins though coinbase/campbx or what not, and use that to pay for credit card bill.

Ok, I think in order to convince consumers to spend bitcoin, merchants or services like Gyft have to come up with unquestionable better deal, like at least 6% discount, 90 days returnable, free shipping, maybe a blow job coupon.

I'd like to think that many many people will horde their coins until such a point happens that ppp is like 1000 USD or maybe 600+ USD per coin - then people would be willing to spend the fractional portions of past earned coin to future fund their lives.

No fees.
You can send money to anyone in the world.
Your money will not be stolen by the banks/credit card companies.

If you read his post you would have understood that Credit Card gives cash back to customer. It might charges fees to the merchant, but not the customers. And it's a valid point.

It is currently more expensive to buy things with bitcoins than fiat.

But lots of fees and steps to actually buy the bitcoins first.
And don't point to localbitcoins cause those are 5-10% more costly.

You can mine bitcoins for free ( :D )

LOL, 2009 reprise!

As a payment method, Bitcoin > Debit card > Credit card

Credit cards are useful, but it sucks when the CC company refuses a legit payment, which seems to happen more often than it used to.

The existing debit card companies could easily launch a bitcoin card with the added value you mention. Something like this:

smartguy@visa:~$ mkdir /btc
smartguy@visa:~$ sudo cp -ax /usd /btc
smartguy@visa:~$ cd /btc
smartguy@visa:/btc$ find . -type f -exec sed -i 's/USD/BTC/g' {} \;
smartguy@visa:/btc$ make

Don't tell them, let some others have a go at it first.

It's all the same for the consumer but the merchants LOVE bitcoins more because they don't have to pay the 2-3% the credit card companies charge them!

That savings should and ultimately will be passed down to the customer in the forms of lower prices.

Rewards programs are always a scam. You never get out of it what you put in.

Most of the credit cards with really useful rewards charge an annual fee.

Fraud.

In order to use a credit card, you have to give the merchant enough information to charge you up to your credit limit.  While the merchant might be trustworthy, it is harder to trust everybody who has access to your private information via the little credit card box they swipe your card with.  Thousands go missing every year, and charges that go unnoticed can add up.

With bitcoin, you only have to trust the merchant do deliver the product.  No matter who has access to the details of the transaction, you only authorized amount X to be sent one time.  Your private key still secures the rest of your funds.

You got refunded anytime if your CC is used for a transaction you did not do / want.
You got fucked in the ass, if your btc got stolen (from mt.gox, blockchain.info or wherever), and that happens every day.

If you catch it.  If you don't you're SOL.  And even if you do, the money comes from the merchant.  Too much fraud and they have to raise prices, hurting every legitimate customer.

If you BTC got stolen then you shouldn't have kept so much money with an online service or on an internet connected computer.  Good luck hacking my paper wallet.

You think that money comes out of thin air? Everyone loses in a CC fraud situation, the merchant being the biggest loser. I work directly with restaurants who run into this problem on a daily basis. People dine in, run up the bill, and then report the charge as fraud. There is a huge demand for a better system, but if you're not running a business how would you know? You're just focusing on one side of the issue. We've already seen CC's phased out due to ridiculous fees (American Express) so they're definitely not the end all, be all system we need.

Cash gets stolen everyday, why don't you bring that up? Once you lose it, you're "f'ed" as you say.

The bottom line is, if we are going to step up to a better system, we need to step up ourselves. The CC companies and banks are a false sense of security, their babying is what keeps their pockets fat. It's already been proven that they're in it for their own interests, their exploits of human nature have done nothing but make things worse. It's time we take responsibility for our actions, starting with where the decision making power lies: Money.

true that merchant get fucked by cc, so they raise price to have customer bear the cost. But they can't raise so much price as they lose, because it will fuck fait customer too bad, and other merchants whose target is fait customer will cut the price down.. Let's say a credit card company charges 3% on merchant. Merchant probably raises item price by 1% or less to stay competitive. And now I come with AMEX, I get 1.5% cashback reward, making 0.5% discount on the raw price. At the end, cc customer fucks fait customer indirectly.

If I come with a phone loaded with coins, not only is it awkward to pay, bad exchange rate, and other craps, I also got screw by cc folks.

You don't get any discount if you pay by cash.
You don't get any discount if you pay by bitcoin.

It's better to use the safest and easiest way of buying thing.

LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL
Yeah right!
And we can create energy for free , build dams for free , grow bananas for free
In this world I only know two things you can get for free
air and sex

Must be a different world from the one I'm living in! :o

Sex is said to be the most expensive commodity on Earth. It is best when it is not paid for with money, but if it is not paid for with money, it requires the utmost of hard work and/or luck, so very far from a "free lunch".