This is why Bitcoin will win ... the speed of credit cards with the cost of cash

[BitchicksHusband]

The way I see it, bitcoin is useful as payment for anything that needs clearing time, like bills. Bitcoin then is like a check that is accepted in seconds, cleared in minutes and confirmed in hours.

Electricity, subscriptions, house rental or payment, ... maybe not the grocery or the coffee shop, but your car oil change could accept bitcoins. Insurance premiums. Fees for licenses or permits.

Stuff that normally takes more than a few minutes to finish.

Hospital bill. Any physical good on the internet. Amazon. Newegg. Karate lessons. School tuition.

Like I said, most fast food is out. But many things can wait a block.

This is exactly how I see it.  Still, services like BitPay and Coinbase make it instant.

[hypostatization]

I have been staying away from bitcoins, litecoins, altcoins and others because they have no credibility and backed by nothing (or may just some binary codes).

They are backed by the integrity of their protocol, mining networks, source code, and the resulting trustworthy payment utility.

However, I have found a very promising digital currency called NOFIATCOIN–XNF- http://www.nofiatcoin.com A new digital currency which is backed by actual bullion.

XNF is backed by trust in a company promising ability to redeem in bullion. I trust BTC over XNF.

[Cryptopher]

Congratulations on the coin

har har har.. took me a while to get that one.  
I should really exploit my nickname / initials more.

It flew over my head until I saw your response 

[Dabs]

This is exactly how I see it.  Still, services like BitPay and Coinbase make it instant.

The way I've seen BitPay works, it gives you 15 minutes to pay an invoice. I think they're used for online orders of stuff, that will be shipped the next day, or even the same day. You're not going to get it within the hour anyway, so they can easily check your payment.

[Kazimir]

That could be a valid statement only bitcoin is adopted as much as US Dollars.
Until then, you check the price of bitcoins in dollars, not the opposite.

Sure, but it's rapidly growing.

We may soon enter an ambiguous phase. Today, 1 USD = 1.35 EUR. Last week, 1 USD was 1.38 EUR. Has the US Dollar gone up, or the Euro gone down?

Same with Bitcoin.

[shinybars]

Just one example.  http://shinybars.com/t/paymentoptions

Simplified you have three options:
CC = fast + 3% more expensive
"Bank stuff" = slow + 3% cheaper
Bitcoin = fast + 3% cheaper

Thanks for posting this as an example! We at ShinyBars.com are to the point where we prefer payment in bitcoins over any other payment method that we offer. We use low speed confirmations so it takes about an hour to fully confirm and we are confident in the confirmed transactions. There are fee's associated on the merchant side, however, it is only $30 a month(regardless of the amount of transactions)+a miniscule 0.01% transaction fee. So for every $100k worth of bitcoin transactions there's only $40 worth of fee's (in a month). Bump that to $500k and there's only $80 worth of fees. Compare that to CC's and you are working with at least $3000 and $15,000 respectively. Imagine what that does to consumer prices in the retail world.

There was mention in this thread regarding grocery and or other retail stores having a 3% margin and eating credit card fees. This is a slight misunderstanding as the fee's are not necessarily realized by the businesses. The fees are instead baked into prices, usually on an average cost basis, and thus punishing cash consumers with the expected credit card fees. Less credit card usage=less fees=lower prices overall.

One final comment, there was mention that bitcoins are not backed by anything....well in reality no modern fiat currency is backed by anything so we have to ask, what is the difference really? In the USD world, money supply is controlled by "people" whereas in the bitcoin world, money supply is controlled by code, written by "people". So, it is in my opinion that bitcoin will be here to stay and be successful for a long time. As regulation and more "people" become involved, it will potentially face the same demise as any other fiat currency. So, it is my ultimate conclusion that if you are concerned about your money not being backed by anything, whether we are talking USD, BTC, or whatever currency you use, visit ShinyBars.com, get rid of your un-backed money by purchasing hard assets such as gold and silver! :-)

Josh
Founder & CEO
ShinyBars.com

EDIT: It should also be mentioned that if merchants want to accept bitcoins, but doesn't necessarily want bitcoins, Bitpay allows you to instantly convert the payments to USD and sweep to your bank account. You can also set a pre-determined amount, in percentage of how much USD and/or BTC you want in each transaction.This allows us to adjust how much BTC we want at any given time. So, for example, a large percentage of current transactions go to BTC while the price is down, IF BTC goes back up to say $750, we will adjust to all cash and purchase inventory/equipment with our appreciated bitcoins. This allows for a bit of diversification away from our gold & silver inventory market risk. Processors such as Bitpay allow for company's to accept bitcoins, even if they don't like the concept of them.