Having the choice to use BTC doesn't matter if you don't have BTC.

So where do people get their BTC from (when basically no-one pays you in BTC)?

Perhaps we are talking ad-sig posting - so you can afford 1 coffee per month then?

No-one is going to go through all the hoops (and fees) to acquire BTC just to spend it on something when in fact they are charged the same price (which is the case with the vast majority of places that let you pay using BTC at the moment).

There is simply *no benefit to the consumer* (the only benefit is either to the merchant or to the payment provider).

Why *MUST* it?

You did notice that BitPay has already sacked most of their employees today because basically their business model isn't working (i.e. hardly anyone is buying anything with Bitcoin).

I really don't know why having bigger blocks is going to somehow attract more people to use Bitcoin to pay for things (as there is basically no logic to this thinking at all).

I do hope they gain traction and agree that this is the kind of thing we really want to see to show off the Bitcoin potential.

I think idolising everything that Satoshi said or did is a bit silly really (he/they wrote code very poorly from any serious software engineers perspective).

Bitcoin should be able to take over the remittance market (worth billions) right now - yet it has basically failed to make any inroads there.

It should also be able to replace SWIFT (but we don't see that happening yet either).

People are worrying about buying coffees for BTC when to do so would actually cost them more (you'd have to change your dollars to BTC which would cost you a percentage and then the retailer will just use BitPay or the like so they won't offer any discount).

This whole idea of thinking that Bitcoin needs to be used for trivial purchases when virtually no-one is even paid in BTC seems to be a very silly one.

You don't get people to want to use a new currency just by making it acceptable to be used somewhere.

They aren't the only one and unfortunately one such business in Africa recently shut down its operation (don't have a link sorry).

For sure Bitcoin should be *owning* this area as things like Western Union are entirely ridiculous (as much as 50% fees for people sending small amounts to African countries).

If people who support Bitcoin want to see "world changing stuff" then I think they should want to see the end of ripping people off to send money overseas rather than worrying about buying a coffee with their smartphone.

Maybe take a look at what these "low value transactions" actually are.

To help you out let's say "stupid ad-sig campaigns that pay people to post rubbish in this forum" and "idiotic gambling systems like Satoshi Dice" and then more recently simply "stress testing rubbish txs".

So basically you're in favour of increasing the block size so we can have "more rubbish posts" and "more idiotic gambling systems" and "more useless stress tests". Did I miss anything (apart from the ridiculous coffees that no-one is buying)?

If Bitcoin can't do remittance then basically it has failed (as that is the biggest 'low hanging fruit" in the entire financial system).

Maybe so - but Silk Road was shut down quite a while back (and so were all the other such sites) so those who were still hoping to buy drugs for BTC would probably be now actually too afraid of being caught to even try that (so they are probably holding their BTC).

Also it is very clear you are not the original owner of your account as that forum member had never mentioned about buying drugs (some of us have been around on this forum long enough to detect when an account suddenly completely changes their personality).

Hmm... not sure what to make of that.

Anyway - I think this is all now rather OT so perhaps get back to bashing XT.

How much fees do you think Starbucks is charged for credit card purchases?

(hint - less than 1%)

Advantage for Starbucks to accept Bitcoin then? None.

People that keep on saying they want to buy coffees for BTC can really only be people who are sitting on a large stash of BTC that they got for very little (say 5 USD or less).

No-one else is going to fork out the fees and the hassle to change their dollars into BTC just to pay *more* for their coffee and have a less convenient purchase.

Yup - I had edited my reply - you were too fast.


You need to think about the consumers not the merchants as this whole block size debate is really about that.

If everything to do with Bitcoin is just to benefit the merchants then for sure it will never take off at all (consumers are sick and tired of being ripped off).

I have tried using Bitcoin to purchase things and in general I've found it to be actually a hassle (and has saved me nothing). If it wasn't for having bought cheap BTC I doubt I would ever have even bothered so I really find it hard to believe that people are going to be convinced to transact in BTC unless they basically have no choice.

It is still easier to set up a bank account with a card than it is to set up an account with an exchange (even if only one step difference) because you have to first have set up your fiat banking account in order to set up your BTC exchange account!

Also you do realise that every retailer (well at least the vast majority of them) are using BitPay and are just converting the dollar price into BTC (so no discount for paying in BTC)?

The only people benefiting from using BTC for purchases are those that got BTC back when it was very cheap (as I did) and many of those people have now stopped purchasing things (as I have done) in order to keep the value of their remaining BTC.

You are kidding aren't you?

So I pay a % in order to by BTC for dollars then I buy a coffee making my coffee actually more expensive (and it took me the time to first change my dollars into BTC which I could have instead just used to by my coffee saving me that wasted time).

Note that if I had used by credit card I could just "tap to pay" but if I use BTC they'll have to find their person that knows how to do the tx (and many stories on this forum show that places that accept BTC only have one person that even knows how to do that) and muck around with QR codes (which will take at least 5x as long as tap and go does).

And in order to get the BTC you would have most likely had to set up an account at an exchange (requiring all sorts of ID checks) or gone through an even more complicated procedure (risking being targeted as some sort of tax evader by using localbitcoins).

Why on earth would anyone do that?

It seems that a lot of people here are just living in some sort of "fantasy land" in which BTC is able to be acquired for zero fees or hassles.

It seems to me the entire block size debate is a bit like this:


How many people in the world are being paid wages in BTC at the moment?

So the importance of being able to buy your morning coffee with BTC is for exactly what reason?

You need to pay people in BTC before they can buy coffees with them. If every website accepted payments in LTC do you think suddenly everyone is going to adopt LTC (or any other alt)?

I find that most websites accept payments in PayPal - but guess what - I don't use PayPal (so adding another payment option won't result in that payment option being used just because it exists).

It is putting "the cart before the horse" to even worry about this. If Bitcoin can't even make a "dent" in the remittance market then the dreams of buying coffees with it are really just ridiculous (and so far it appears that Bitcoin hasn't even made a "dent" in the remittance market).

The "low hanging fruit" that Bitcoin should be gobbling up is the remittance market and other banking settlement transfers.

If the OP wants to "send the gold first" then maybe someone would offer to pay for it with an irreversible payment system like Bitcoin.

Both Adam Back and Nick Szabo have stated the same thing that I have been trying to point out in that Bitcoin should be first aimed at things like the remittance market (which it should be able to kill the competition in).

Yet still we hear the rabble wanting to pay for coffee's with BTC when it has failed to even make an inroad into the most obvious market it should be dominating.

When virtually no-one is being paid in BTC why on earth do people think it is important to pay for a coffee in BTC?

My guess is that most of the people screaming to have BTC payments for coffees probably don't even have enough BTC to pay for a coffee!

The whole point of Corallo has nothing to do with compression - it is to do with nodes already being aware of txs so blocks can just use txid's rather than the actual tx content.

It is simply saving bandwidth in terms of information that was already communicated.

The current @adamstgBit forum member seems to be completely unaware of this and thinks that some magic "compression" has been invented (am pretty sure the old @adamstgBit would have known better which makes it more likely that this account has been sold to a newbie).

Why is it that no-one with any technical credibility backs @adamstgBit's claims (and in response please show people that have quoted you as their source rather than yourself misquoting them)?

Apparently he is smarter than everyone in the world I guess - so why doesn't he just fork Bitcoin (perhaps BitcoinAB) and see how that goes?

Prior to this whole block size thing I thought this guy was reasonable but now that he creates a new thread every day full of bullshit claims I can only wonder whether in fact he sold his account and whoever is posting this stuff is actually some newbie (and that wouldn't surprise me one bit).

So then - even if we have two entities by your definition it would not be centralised.

Personally I'd think two is not enough but I don't have a ready formula to respond with apart from that I think it would be best to have at least two entities from every major country.

Another point that I'd like to make is there is no reason to only have one blockchain (and it will be possible to transfer funds between different blockchains in the future as I've already built tech to do that).

So it comes down to what you consider to be "centralised".

If that is that "everyone should run it" (the full version) then Bitcoin clearly fails that test.

Others believe that provided we have enough *players* (that perhaps come from different countries) then it can still be considered to be decentralised (and that is basically what Satoshi had pretty much stated).

You are simply wrong - this isn't going to happen and if it grew by that amount then most will stop running it.

I have already stopped running it because of where I live (and I would like to run a full node).

So if someone with advanced computing skills has "given up" then why on earth would you think that anyone with less skills would keep doing that (seeing their computer getting CPU and I/O bound).

I am not sure what sort of "super home computer" you are running but when I run Bitcoin on my laptop it basically stops working properly.