How long until Bitcoins render Paypal obsolete, if ever?

[paradigm]

Just curious as to what thoughts there are now on this.  How long do you think it will be until Bitcoins are preferred over Paypal for online transactions?

[paradigm]

My thoughts are..  Paypal won't operate in 60+ countries because of fraud, they take extortionate fees.. If I had a stake in PayPal right now, I'd be looking to cash out quick. . The bigger they are.. the harder they fall.

Yep.  Paypal also won't handle certain transaction, for example, adult related business.  Then there are all the stories of Paypal locking accounts.  For a seller Bitcoins would be better because the transaction cannot be reversed.

[bitsource]

we can only hope. I am no fan of Paypal, they need some dressing down..

[wonderbash]

In my opinion, it is always good to have competition - Competition keeps the market competitive. Hopefully this will influence paypal to lower their fees, or add extra features that make them better to use. But I'm still looking forward to see bitcoin success

[paradigm]

In my opinion, it is always good to have competition - Competition keeps the market competitive. Hopefully this will influence paypal to lower their fees, or add extra features that make them better to use. But I'm still looking forward to see bitcoin success

Same here.    I noticed on Google Trends that 'bitcoin' has about 1/50th of the name recognition as Paypal.  Let's hope the gap is narrowed as time goes on.  One thing which would help I think is making it easier for people to get started while also making them feel reasonably secure.  As it is now I think many newbies are nervous they are goign to get hacked or lose their bitcoins.

[over1977v]

Just curious as to what thoughts there are now on this.  How long do you think it will be until Bitcoins are preferred over Paypal for online transactions?

With current Bitcoin limitation 7 transactions / second, never.

[captainsik]

From the wiki:

Today the Bitcoin network is restricted to a sustained rate of 7 tps by some artificial limits. These were put in place to stop people from ballooning the size of the block chain before the network and community was ready for it. Once those limits are lifted, the maximum transaction rate will go up significantly.

So, if this limit is impose, we won't be able to catch up to paypal's 4 million transactions per day for an average of 46 tps.

[Lethn]

I don't know if we'll ever truly kill off all these financial institutions because of how big they are, but I'm pretty sure we'll make them bleed heavily for a long time.

[dooner4]

It won't over shadow PayPal ever. In a perfect world, yeah PayPal would fuck off. PayPal scammed the shit out of me for 300$. The security issue of Bitcoins in the main reason. The average person (In the general public, not just computer savvy people) needs security for them and they won't know how to set it up without messing up their wallet. PayPal has pretty good security, can't deny this but it is a shitty company but the security does fuck up people's accounts a lot over nothing.

[nobbynobbynoob]

I don't know if we'll ever truly kill off all these financial institutions because of how big they are, but I'm pretty sure we'll make them bleed heavily for a long time.

Too right, and how satisfying that will be! I know how asinine legacy (fiat) financial institutions can be, having worked in asset management myself.