Bitcoin's payment function can not compete with mobile payment solutions

[johnyj]

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/state-of-pay-an-overview-of-mobile-payments-2015-03-06

In fact some countries have already implemented well-functional mobile payment solutions for more than 2 years. Most of these solutions cost nothing to do payment, payment can be as low as 10 cents, and they confirm instantly

While for bitcoin, even if you have super fast nodes, it would still take 10 minutes to get the first confirmation, and it costs something. So it is a large disadvantage to use bitcoin blockchain to compete with those solutions, you must use a centralized service to achieve similar performance. And the real time casual payment space is already crowded with many different actors

Anyway, people are not going to spend bitcoin for groceries, they have plenty of depreciating fiat money to get rid of first. Fiat money is a perfect medium for spending: Get rid of it as soon as possible, it is even better to be indebted in it

Let's focus on bitcoin's unique strength: Long term inflation resistance and fast international settlement

[VirosaGITS]

Yes that sound correct, tho sometimes you're out of FIAT and buying a coffee or some groceries with BTC is just joly. While some merchants may want to wait for a confirmation before releasing the product, it is not always required. For instance, doing a double spending attack on a coffee shop would be pretty pointless. Doing the attack is not free.

This means that the seller only need to wait for the TXID to propagate which takes a second. This effectively mean you can go to a coffee shop, scan the QR, click send BTC and a moment later, the seller see the TXID on the blockchain and can give you your yummy coffee at little risk. After all, if the merchant take Mastercard, he is going to be paying a fee and a BTC tx fee of 1-3cents is cheaper.

It sound fairly competitive with the other payment processors IMO.

And i like that you mentioned that it is possibly even best to owe FIAT. While that may or may not be the case, since it depend on the interest rate... Overtime, the value of the Fiat currency inflate, which mean you effectively owe less. Clever.

[erik777]

For many holding, it isn't a choice.  Just not enough places to spend Bitcoins, yet.  I can't wait to be able to spend them locally at more places. 

It's a chicken and egg.

[VirosaGITS]

For many holding, it isn't a choice.  Just not enough places to spend Bitcoins, yet.  I can't wait to be able to spend them locally at more places. 

It's a chicken and egg.

You think so? I can buy nearly anything with it and get it delivered to my home. Newegg. Overstock. Tigerdirect. Gift card for Amazon, Starbuck, Burgerking, HMV, movies tickets, Steam games, pretty much anything digital.

If you mean, going to the convenience store and getting your pack of cigarettes with BTC, then there's the BTC debit card for that. They don't need to accept BTC since the payment processor will pay the merchant with debit and will deduct the amount from your BTC wallet.

So unless your local stores does not accept any form of debit, credit or credited gift cards, then you can buy anything with bitcoin.

[brg444]

For many holding, it isn't a choice.  Just not enough places to spend Bitcoins, yet.  I can't wait to be able to spend them locally at more places. 

It's a chicken and egg.

Why?

Bitcoin rewards delayed gratification. The coffee you buy today might be worth a new TV in a year. Careful what you wish for.

[n2004al]

Let's focus on bitcoin's unique strength: Long term inflation resistance and fast international settlement

You forget another important factor which support bitcoin as a currency and will do this for a long time. Bitcoin except a currency is a disruptive technology which will change to many others existing. This technology will made that bitcoin will be for a long time in the market and will be a very competitive currency.

[Kakmakr]

For many holding, it isn't a choice.  Just not enough places to spend Bitcoins, yet.  I can't wait to be able to spend them locally at more places. 

It's a chicken and egg.

Why?

Bitcoin rewards delayed gratification. The coffee you buy today might be worth a new TV in a year. Careful what you wish for.

The $2 coffee you bought 3 weeks back, would still have cost you $2. The fact that the price of Bitcoin increased, does not change that you paid $2 for that cup of coffee. In fiat currencies, I could walk into a shop 10 years ago, with only $5 and I bought 3 x loafs of bread / 3 x bottles of Coke / 5 x bars of chocolate / 2 cartons of milk. Today you cannot do that, there is simply too many cameras everywhere. ^joke^

[coinpr0n]

Current on-chain mobile payments may not be able to compete but I think that layer-2 options should become available that could solve this problem. Otherwise I do agree that it's probably best to use depreciating fiat ("bad money") to pay for your coffee.

[turvarya]

Again, I wished we haven't told people about confirmations in the first place.
Trying a double spend for a coffee, is like forging one dollar bills. Who would do that?
Furthermore, paying with a credit card takes days to confirm, but nobody thinks about that, when he uses a credit card, but in the Bitcoin World we have the problem, that it is nerds who tell the normal people about how Bitcoin works, and nerds tend to confuse people with just to much details and people get the whole thing wrong.
You see, that even OP, who is a Legendary Member, got it all wrong.

[S4VV4S]

For many holding, it isn't a choice.  Just not enough places to spend Bitcoins, yet. I can't wait to be able to spend them locally at more places.  

It's a chicken and egg.

Why?

Bitcoin rewards delayed gratification. The coffee you buy today might be worth a new TV in a year. Careful what you wish for.

The $2 coffee you bought 3 weeks back, would still have cost you $2. The fact that the price of Bitcoin increased, does not change that you paid $2 for that cup of coffee. In fiat currencies, I could walk into a shop 10 years ago, with only $5 and I bought 3 x loafs of bread / 3 x bottles of Coke / 5 x bars of chocolate / 2 cartons of milk. Today you cannot do that, there is simply too many cameras everywhere. ^joke^

LOL!
Nice one!

But I don't think you could have gotten that much with 5 bucks 10 years ago.
The dollar started losing value long before that.

[johnyj]

Again, I wished we haven't told people about confirmations in the first place.
Trying a double spend for a coffee, is like forging one dollar bills. Who would do that?
Furthermore, paying with a credit card takes days to confirm, but nobody thinks about that, when he uses a credit card, but in the Bitcoin World we have the problem, that it is nerds who tell the normal people about how Bitcoin works, and nerds tend to confuse people with just to much details and people get the whole thing wrong.
You see, that even OP, who is a Legendary Member, got it all wrong.

There are other reasons that you need a confirmation, for example the stress test or an attack going on could put your payment in hold for days if you did not pay enough fee, but you never know it in advance

A better solution is to use web wallets and LN payment channel, that could do the payment in real time without any fee (The merchant pay the fee once for thousands of transactions at daily settlement, so that each transaction's fee is neglectable)

But by the time people start to use web wallets at large scale, those fiat mobile payment solutions have already took majority of the market share, bitcoin is too late in the game

[VirosaGITS]

Again, I wished we haven't told people about confirmations in the first place.
Trying a double spend for a coffee, is like forging one dollar bills. Who would do that?
Furthermore, paying with a credit card takes days to confirm, but nobody thinks about that, when he uses a credit card, but in the Bitcoin World we have the problem, that it is nerds who tell the normal people about how Bitcoin works, and nerds tend to confuse people with just to much details and people get the whole thing wrong.
You see, that even OP, who is a Legendary Member, got it all wrong.

There are other reasons that you need a confirmation, for example the stress test or an attack going on could put your payment in hold for days if you did not pay enough fee, but you never know it in advance

A better solution is to use web wallets and LN payment channel, that could do the payment in real time without any fee (The merchant pay the fee once for thousands of transactions at daily settlement, so that each transaction's fee is neglectable)

But by the time people start to use web wallets at large scale, those fiat mobile payment solutions have already took majority of the market share, bitcoin is too late in the game

Why do so many people think this? This is a non-issue. The seller just need to check that a proper fee was input and then everything work as normal. It can even be done automatically.

I mean blockchain.info not only tell everyone in the world what the fee paid was but also the estimate of when it will be confirmed based on how much fee was paid and if the current fee is bellow recommended level. If there is no warning displayed, then spam attack or not, the transaction will confirm promptly.

The QR scanned just need to tell the buyer what fee to pay and bam done. And honestly its not a big issue to raise the the fee by 0.001/kB for an "important transaction". Just the many dollars you would save (on the seller's perspective) from not using a payment processor such as MasterCard will gladly make him eat the fee from confirming the transaction.

All he has to do is set the right price and cover the (minimal) transaction fee.

[Sourgummies]

Does some times feel like bitcoin was ahead of the pack and is slowly losing ground to banks and other services that are piggybacking the idea in some form and making it faster.
Most people in the general public will go with the faster version and more pretty,for example apple Iphones. The fact that they are also backed by established companies will only make it that more appealing to the every day person. I could use bitcoin but its going through a stress test,but this bank app works instantly.

But I am drawn to bitcoin after having the government lock up my bank account for a measly $256 because they could not find my phone number on their file.
They never thought of sending me mail or looking in any file besides the one in front of them for my phone number. On top of that,it was not owed at all but a mistake on their end. So the fact they could do that to me and barely say sorry,actually believe the lady did not say sorry,pissed me off. It also opened my eyes to how quickly the government could really screw me over. I know I am now flagged at tax time for kind of going nuts on them over the phone.

[gentlemand]

That Xapo bloke declared retail payments as a sideshow. I'm inclined to agree.

It makes sense for online payment but in situ is another matter. Much depends on what country you're in though. EU banking is miles ahead of the US in many ways.