Don't get me wrong, I want to believe..

[zkay]

Hello

I made this post to add some sobering thoughts to the subforum here, not that the events of today haven't done a lot of that for a lot of people.

I wanted to say that although I have so far enjoyed my stay in bitcoinland, I've noticed a good many obstacles that have yet to be overcome before we have a truly robust and functioning 'bitconomy'. And I'm not talking about Mt.Gox (though that is also a major 'problem').

My first issue occurred trying to use bitinstant to fund my account. I had used their services a couple times in the distant past (6-8 months ago) and never had an issue. Then when I deposited my last $300 in march I basically wondered where my money was for a few days. This then turned into a fight over the amount of BTC I was owed because the price had just jumped from ~$58 - $75. It was eventually resolved, but not without considerable effort on my end.

Mind you that during this entire time, and even still today, the site was constantly accepting orders even though they were having a lot of trouble filling the orders that had already been made.

Flash forward to most recently, this past weekend. I had been wanting to spend some of my coins on lowes.com using bitspend. I first contact bitspend to try and inquire whether or not they accept coupons for orders, wanting to make sure I got a good deal on what I was after. No reply whatsoever. Wait 2 days, still nothing, so I call. I get someone on the phone and he says the whole office was out over the weekend with laryngitis. Fair enough, I give him the benefit of the doubt and wish him and his staff well, and he tells me that while they do have a backlog of orders to get through, I can almost assuredly make an order and have an invoice within 12 hours. I make the order and go to bed.

I wake up to find the invoice in my email. Joy! I pay the specified amount, and include instructions and the coupon. I wait. I get no reply for another two days, nothing saying the order was funded or that the item was ordered. Then I get an email after posting in service discussion saying they can't use the coupon because it isn't working. At this point the exchange rate has risen from ~$188 to $240, and I decide I'd rather just get a refund for my BTC in the hope I could then just turn around and make another order, this time for store gift cards instead of the actual item itself. The staff at bitspend respond that this shouldn't be a problem, and that they'll refund my bitcoin 'as soon as the boss comes in tomorrow morning'. I do note something funny at this point; the email was timestamped well past 2:00am EST, where they are located. What morning did he mean?

This was last night. Fast forward to today and I decide I will just let them keep the original amount of bitcoin if they'll make me whole on my order and order me gift cards instead of the item itself in the dollar amount I had paid previously. I email, call, PM, and try to skype. I am getting nothing, and $1100 is lost in limbo.

Again, this entire time the site has been functioning seemingly 'normal', with no announcement that there is any kind of problem or that customers should expect any kind of delay on their orders.

These are not the only issues I've had, not by a long shot; the aforementioned horrible exchange lag, services buckling under pressure from customer inflows, pricing anything being very difficult or nigh impossible because of the constant wild exchange rate fluctuations, and so on.

While I do want to believe in the bitconomy, I think we need to throw some cold water on $1m/coin price predictions until we have a functioning economy that can handle our little niche's load on the system, let alone a significant population of the globe's.

[BitcoinAshley]

Hey zkay, you raise excellent points -

I am by no means bearish and I know bitcoin will succeed, but if there's something people need to understand, it's that while price may be rising exponentially, exchange and merchant capacity will not, at least not initially.
There is "PEOPLE LAG." It takes weeks to hire and train competent staff. It takes time to install and configure new servers, upgrade hosting, change datacenter providers, get inventory, set up payment systems, deal with an exponentially increasing userbase. Meanwhile, the demand for these services are increasing at unprecedented levels, and users are demanding top-quality instant service (rightly so) which these merchants are simply unable to provide at the time.

There is also "magic number lag" in that the dev team is taking too long to remove the blocksize limit and fix the issue with tx fees (i.e. let them price themselves in rather than magic numbers.) But this is just another form of "PEOPLE LAG." 


Things are going to be rough and jagged until the businesses involved with bitcoin understand they really need to ramp up their capacity in order to meet bitcoin demand - it's a gamble because who wants to invest in unprecedented amounts of infrastructure for a seemingly high-risk niche market? On the other hand, this very unwillingness to scale for an exponentially increasing level of demand is a main contributor to issues like the Gox lags that induce even more panic sells after an initial panic sell. A big holder can absolutely count on Gox lag making the panic sell they induce (by selling a large number of coins on Gox) even bigger and more profitable than they had hoped. And the other major exchanges experience regular downtime and lag as well.

Thanks for bringing these issues to our attention, they are what we need to think about rather than "LOL bubble, evil speculators, hoarders, spenders, single digits, bulls, bears" and associated memes and stereotypes.

[zkay]

Hey zkay, you raise excellent points -

I am by no means bearish and I know bitcoin will succeed, but if there's something people need to understand, it's that while price may be rising exponentially, exchange and merchant capacity will not, at least not initially.
There is "PEOPLE LAG." It takes weeks to hire and train competent staff. It takes time to install and configure new servers, upgrade hosting, change datacenter providers, get inventory, set up payment systems, deal with an exponentially increasing userbase. Meanwhile, the demand for these services are increasing at unprecedented levels, and users are demanding top-quality instant service (rightly so) which these merchants are simply unable to provide at the time.

There is also "magic number lag" in that the dev team is taking too long to remove the blocksize limit and fix the issue with tx fees (i.e. let them price themselves in rather than magic numbers.) But this is just another form of "PEOPLE LAG." 


Things are going to be rough and jagged until the businesses involved with bitcoin understand they really need to ramp up their capacity in order to meet bitcoin demand - it's a gamble because who wants to invest in unprecedented amounts of infrastructure for a seemingly high-risk niche market? On the other hand, this very unwillingness to scale for an exponentially increasing level of demand is a main contributor to issues like the Gox lags that induce even more panic sells after an initial panic sell. A big holder can absolutely count on Gox lag making the panic sell they induce (by selling a large number of coins on Gox) even bigger and more profitable than they had hoped. And the other major exchanges experience regular downtime and lag as well.

Thanks for bringing these issues to our attention, they are what we need to think about rather than "LOL bubble, evil speculators, hoarders, spenders, single digits, bulls, bears" and associated memes and stereotypes.

Thank you for that very succinct response. I appreciate it.

Now to see whether or not bitspend is going to honor my original purchase agreement and price. God, I hope so.

[Crypt_Current]

Hey zkay, you raise excellent points -

I am by no means bearish and I know bitcoin will succeed, but if there's something people need to understand, it's that while price may be rising exponentially, exchange and merchant capacity will not, at least not initially.
There is "PEOPLE LAG." It takes weeks to hire and train competent staff. It takes time to install and configure new servers, upgrade hosting, change datacenter providers, get inventory, set up payment systems, deal with an exponentially increasing userbase. Meanwhile, the demand for these services are increasing at unprecedented levels, and users are demanding top-quality instant service (rightly so) which these merchants are simply unable to provide at the time.

There is also "magic number lag" in that the dev team is taking too long to remove the blocksize limit and fix the issue with tx fees (i.e. let them price themselves in rather than magic numbers.) But this is just another form of "PEOPLE LAG." 


Things are going to be rough and jagged until the businesses involved with bitcoin understand they really need to ramp up their capacity in order to meet bitcoin demand - it's a gamble because who wants to invest in unprecedented amounts of infrastructure for a seemingly high-risk niche market? On the other hand, this very unwillingness to scale for an exponentially increasing level of demand is a main contributor to issues like the Gox lags that induce even more panic sells after an initial panic sell. A big holder can absolutely count on Gox lag making the panic sell they induce (by selling a large number of coins on Gox) even bigger and more profitable than they had hoped. And the other major exchanges experience regular downtime and lag as well.

Thanks for bringing these issues to our attention, they are what we need to think about rather than "LOL bubble, evil speculators, hoarders, spenders, single digits, bulls, bears" and associated memes and stereotypes.

Like I'm sayin'