I see the threat coming more from banks rather than other established payment systems. When you have the ability and to power to print an infinite amount of money, you can always use that as a tool to manipulate the market and crash bitcoin prices. It's amazing how the fiat system works. On the other hand, the rest are just presenting a miniscule threat, as you need funds, and lots of them, to actually manipulate the market. 

If he sells a pair of jeans for 1 bitcoin and when the customers ask for a refund due to product dissatisfaction, the customer will get back 1 bitcoin. Simple as that. How complicated could that be? the problem that arises here is the bitcoin to dollar mentality which has been engraved in our mind that whatever tangible item value has to be measured against fiat currency. If it is priced in btc then by all means it is measured in btc. You don't hear people paying for a pair of jeans in euro and when the dollar equivalent value goes up, he will ask for extra refund.

It's interesting to see how this will turn up and how it will affect the future money transfer business. For instance, if you look at Rebit.ph, what they are offering is considered something similar to what WU is offering and without the extra fees. Question is how many people knows how to utilize it. The biggest barrier to mass adoption might be that the bitcoin community is still dominated by the groups of people having IT knowledge and we need to over this to bring the knowledge to all the common people.

Well business do offer to accept bitcoin but some of them backed up after some time when they found out that the volume of payment coming from bitcoin is rather low. The problem here is mainly there's a lot of people who have not learned about bitcoin. In fact, for those who know about it, they would rather hog the coins than spending it. These things take time to change. Adoption is certainly progressing but I would say it's still at a slower pace.

Sounds good to me. Even if they are not taking bitcoin as a payment currency, by just opting to integrate into their reward program, will mean having them show a certain level of acceptance, and the fact considering McD is one of the biggest franchise in the world. If it goes on fine, probably we might see other companies adopting the method and doing the same.

Anything can happen in 5 months. Positive or even negative news can change the price considerable, so nothing is firm in bitcoin. If only I knew the answer. But one thing I hope to see is for the price to be stable and not fluctuate too much. Usually a fast rise will coupled with a quick dump, so that is one inherent problem btc is always facing.

Well, I don't see the impact or how much damage it could cause with just one exchanger but usually a single crash wouldn't pull the price down for the rest of others. Unless you are talking about a panic sell or some traders taking advantage of the price difference to manipulate the market. Generally I would say it's the sentiment because sometimes people might take that as an indicator.

One of the inherent problems that I see with the euro is that by having so many countries each with their own style and way of management decides to congregate and form a group to share one single currency, all that doesn't seem like a good idea to me. When a country ran into trouble like what we are seeing right now, the rest will have to fork out the fund to bail it out. Essentially Greece are bound by that conditions as they don't have a complete control over the currency and will have to seek consensus on whatever things need to be done. It's bound to fail.

I think the market share will most likely come from the expatriates who are using bitcoin services to send money back to home country. Imagine if that becomes fully utilized. I think the main barrier is still the 3rd party services being made available at oversea something like what you see having WU offices spread at every different countries.

One thing to take note is that human complexion changes especially with increasing age, so I don’t see how feasible would that be to link address to face recognition. More over, there’s chances that could even lead to security getting compromised if let’s say somebody could duplicate and create the exact facial expression almost similar as what you see in wax museum. I would accept that being done for other non-important applications but definitely not for addresses holding your life savings.

It's because there are different angles of the crisis that we could discuss, different scenarios are possible, depending on how we look at it. Also I'm sure everybody would like to know what's the ending for this, so there's the endless speculation and hype going on to where this might leads to. And then there's the chance for people to realize bitcoin potential.

Sometimes it's just the culture of the people. You can see that they are willing to take the risk on the expense of ending up with nothing. It's not just the casino but it's pretty inherent with stock markets as well. When it comes to bitcoin, for them it's just an opportunity to gamble and make more money. I don't know if technology means that much to them, but the allure of profit would be the main driver.

Well it does solve the problem for the people by allowing the money to be stashed away for good and use it anytime when it is needed. After this round, I'm sure they realize how bad it is by keeping money in banks especially when it comes to chaotic situation. I do agree this helps the people but not the underlying problem for the whole economy. You still can't create money out of thin air.

I don't understand what's the point of having the blockchain for transparency when the inherent problem we are facing right now is on the centralization. We want to avoid manipulation and yet we have a system created solely for this and yet it does not serve its objective. My answer is a clear "No". It's still bitcoin.

When the euro weakens, it does not only make Greece become an attractive travel destination with the increased purchasing and spending power but involves almost all of the euro countries that uses the same currency will benefit from it. As long as there is no civil unrest or chaos, that certainly will help to boost their earning. Question is, will that be enough to cover the shortfall?

The good thing about bitcoin is that it is available 24 hours a day regardless of whether it is weekday or weekend, you can practically perform cross border transactions and have the fund available in just a matter of hours. Consider that with banks, it will probably take at least a week and you haven't even consider about the fees just yet.

And you haven't taken into consideration the hidden fees. What I hate about banks is that they will hide behind their Terms and Conditions and I bet most individuals, an average daily user like myself didn't even notice that the fees existed. And you haven't consider the fact that there are millions of users using their services each day and the small amount will really pile up.

You will be surprised to see how some people would be willing to sell their coins even for a small profit margin. That includes also the miners. But that's not the point. What I want to say is that as long as people cling on to that mentality, bitcoin price can never move anywhere. There will be resistances at every level.

We just need to hold and aim high.

Talking about popping the champagne too soon. Well, while it's nice to see the price having breached the 300 level, my hope is that if only it can maintain and stay that way for long. Right now, seems that things have cooled down and I can see is the pressure coming along and pushing it towards the downside.  

Nowadays the mindset seems to be fixed on when price is too attractive, people would just sell for quick gain. We need to change that.

I don't expect the price to crash because some mining farms were unable to compete with the rest and dropped out. There will always be other competitors taking their spot. And talk about altcoins gaining traction and surpasses bitcoin popularity? I don't think so. If it were to happen, it would have long time ago. Right now, I don't see any of the alts worthy enough.