Physical bitcoin - Is this the future?

[MMS2017]

We know that bitcoin is now using for internet purposes but if the value of bitcoin is stable and it has a physical shape so it will be more valuable and it will be a universal currency but i don't think so it will possible in the coming 10 years.

[7jaka7]

If Bitcoin goes physicalized, the high fee problems will be solved well. Physical Bitcoin is simple enough and requires no fee for each transaction. People who are tech-dumb can easily to approach Bitcoin. But meanwhile, legistration will be an obstacle. Governments will definitely intervene or crack down on it.

We must keep in mind that governments are nothing without it's people.
Same goes with FIAT money. It is worth nothing if world population don't trust in it's value. So if people would make this transition quickly richest FIAT people would lose all their power.
But of course those people are smart - meaning if they won't be able to win against they will use it to generate even more value. So be smart, outsmart wealthiest people and you will definitely win.

[basici]

physical bitcoin will never be because it is fundamentally wrong with respect to technology

[ScottDominic]

Bitcoin gain its popularity only because of its virtual form and if it released as a solid currency then I think it will lose its popularity and also users and hope it will never going to happen.

[ParveZ219]

No if bitcoin becomes physical then whats the difference between flat and crypto... Everything will be same then... everyone likes online transaction because they are not gonna take any space in our pocket. So better to be digital.

[7jaka7]

No if bitcoin becomes physical then whats the difference between flat and crypto... Everything will be same then... everyone likes online transaction because they are not gonna take any space in our pocket. So better to be digital.

You do know that digital/physical form is not the only difference between cryptocurrencies and FIAT money? If I remember correct 97% of FIAT money is in digital form.
If we would develop good system every physical BTC would be backed by digital BTC hence all properties stay the same. And I hope you know that BTC has limited supply. And this is just one of the many differences between FIAT and cryptocurrencies.

[kasurnya]

lol obviously not, answering bitcoin in the form of fiat is the future he is a fool. what's the use of the blockchain system if it ends up being the same as paper money today.

[TropicalResource782]

The main difference between fiat and crypto is fiat has physical existence but crypto is virtual and if crypto also make physical subject then what will become the difference between them.

[arc67583]

I am exploring blockhain technologies for about 3 months now. So there are a lot of things I don't understand very good yet. These are all my opinions and solutions for problems I present might have been found already.

As I have seen these past months blockhain technology shows huge potential but there are still a lot of improvements needed in this technology.

One of the problems is network fees. All or at least majority of videos/presentations of Bitcoin are offering us zero or very low fees. As the Bitcoins price and number of transactions raised significantly these fees became pretty high.1 They are not like impossible high so the Bitcoin isn't affected by this too much. And for big transactions these fees are still very small. Let's say there is 3$ fee worth of BTC, if you are sending 1 BTC the fee is still nothing -> less then 0,15% (BTC price = 2700$). As I have seen there are some ideas of solving these high fees 2 but these solutions doesn't seem to satisfy whole community so some problems with this may occur.

I see two major problems of ''high'' fees.
1. It is not good for advertisement of Bitcoin and what happens is a big doubt of new users and users which operate with low amounts of bitcoins.
2. Second problem is using bitcoins for everyday use. You just can't buy 2$ thing in shop and pay 5$ for it (2$+3$ fee).
Because these two reasons I think bitcoin is far from currency which we could use for everyday and would suit everyone, from poor regions to most developed countries.

So to get to the topic:
Physical bitcoin.
Physical bitcoin would completely solve this fee problem, as you don't transfer bitcoins/satoshis from one address to another, but instead you transfer the ownership of this address from one person to another. This would increase bitcoins usage a lot, at least I think so.
Physical bitcoin should contain public key and private key. Public key must be there so you can verify balance on this coin. Private key must be hidden and you could only see public key once - and with you seeing private key, coin would become worthless. So when someone ''opens'' (check private key) coin you should clearly see it is worthless, it must be like broken or something. 3
If we get safe and practical physical bitcoins this solves few problems. I will present some advantages and disadvantages of using physical bitcoin.

Disadvantages:
1. Safety - I have come across some ''stickers'' which are considered safe. It is possible to check if someone tried to use private key 4. It bothers me what happens if someone peel of the sticker and save private key, then he apply new sticker which looks exactly the same on the outside. So the coin have completely same look on the outside. He can sell/ pass it over and he has private key. I haven't researched a lot about this, so please tell me more about this if you know
2. Centralisation - there must be complete trust to manufacturer of the physical bitcoins. He can save private keys, make ''empty'' coins and probably other things he could do to scam you.
3. Bitcoin price - You have let's say physical bitcoin worth 0,01BTC. In the moment you spend it you must check it's price, this means there must be internet connection at the spot you are spending this bitcoin. This is not really big problem nowadays in my opinion, but it is a problem. Actually only the person who is accepting this coin must know the price of bitcoin.
4. Return of change - You buy stuff worth 15$ and your physical bitcoin is worth 23,52$, so how can we make this work? Today there is still big dominance by FIAT currencies. So they can't just be canceled today. And I think we could use them very good in solving problem of returning the change. You would just simply return him FIAT currency. It would be also possible to return physical bitcoin + FIAT money. You buy thing for 15$, pay it with 23,52$ worth of BTC they can return you 8,52$ or you get back 6,52 worth of BTC and 2$.
5. Legal problems - If people would start using bitcoins a lot more, governments/banks would definitely interfere in it with some regulations, prohibitions etc. I think good concept of physical bitcoin would raise it's use a lot. So we can only imagine what would/will happen.
6. Hand to hand - You can't send physical bitcoin over the internet. The people involved in transaction must be at the same place. Of course this is not really a problem, as you can just get private key and send BTC to your digital wallet.

Advantages:
1. No fees - Only fee it would be paid would be in the process of making physical bitcoin and when you would send BTC from the physical bitcoin. And both of these fees can be at minimum, because there is no need to hurry. When you are spending physical bitcoin there is no fee required. The only fee could be from the person who receive bitcoins as payments. 5
2. Simplicity - It would finally become simple for old grandpa or grandma to use Bitcoin. No wallet, no computer, no explaining, no electricity...
3. No need to understand everything - We don't understand all the things we use everyday (how computers work, how internet works, how cars work...) but we still use them with no concerns. So it should become same with Bitcoin, we just need to make thing so simple that anyone can use without understanding it. And physical bitcoin is a big step towards this goal.
4. Good advertisement - If anyone can use BTC as payment method with ease it is very good for Bitcoin.
5. Interest - You can start to explain about Bitcoin, blockchain with something to show. Now only people who can use computer are able to operate with bitcoins. If you have something to hold anyone can start from there. This would in my opinion raise interest in blockchain technology a lot.
6. Secure - If coins would be safe (disadvantage n.1) this would be really safe currency to use. It would actually be backed with blockchain technology which we know is impossible to break, for now.

So what are your thought about physical bitcoin? Is this the future of Bitcoin?

1 Can someone post link where you could see average fees in BTC per byte over the time.
2 I don't understand technology behind this solutions yet, so I can't comment on that and predict it's effectiveness.
3 This is the idea I have about physical bitcoins, please correct me if I am wrong.
4 Is this information correct?
5 The person receiving coins can set fee. Example: Paying with bitcoins increase price for 3%. This fees are mostly set because of volatility of bitcoin, which should decrease over time so these fees will get smaller and smaller, until 0.

Please correct me, add disadvantages/advantages, answer, explain...

P.S. I don't want worthless spam in this topic. So I will delete posts which won't be constructive and make topic hard to read. This first post will probably get edited!

I think it is not practical to convert a virtual currency like Bitcoin into a paper currency without a centralized authority and if we do that it might get worse than fiat money because Bitcoin is popular as a digital currency in the digital world and it is considered as the king in the crypto world but when we think about the fiat world if we convert Bitcoin to a paper currency its main competitors would be United states dollar and other major fiat currencies which is impossible for Bitcoin to win the game because there stability in price and trust they have gained for years

[gorillajam]

I don’t believe that a physical existence of bitcoin is necessary. I mean after all the whole concept of the currency is that is it completely online and decentralized.

[felicita]

i also think that a bitcoin coin will bring some good benefits like the fees.
But we would also loose some good points like the security ....maybe it will be easy t print out that coin like fake money XD



kind regards

[ETHICKNINE]

I am exploring blockhain technologies for about 3 months now. So there are a lot of things I don't understand very good yet. These are all my opinions and solutions for problems I present might have been found already.

As I have seen these past months blockhain technology shows huge potential but there are still a lot of improvements needed in this technology.

One of the problems is network fees. All or at least majority of videos/presentations of Bitcoin are offering us zero or very low fees. As the Bitcoins price and number of transactions raised significantly these fees became pretty high.1 They are not like impossible high so the Bitcoin isn't affected by this too much. And for big transactions these fees are still very small. Let's say there is 3$ fee worth of BTC, if you are sending 1 BTC the fee is still nothing -> less then 0,15% (BTC price = 2700$). As I have seen there are some ideas of solving these high fees 2 but these solutions doesn't seem to satisfy whole community so some problems with this may occur.

I see two major problems of ''high'' fees.
1. It is not good for advertisement of Bitcoin and what happens is a big doubt of new users and users which operate with low amounts of bitcoins.
2. Second problem is using bitcoins for everyday use. You just can't buy 2$ thing in shop and pay 5$ for it (2$+3$ fee).
Because these two reasons I think bitcoin is far from currency which we could use for everyday and would suit everyone, from poor regions to most developed countries.

So to get to the topic:
Physical bitcoin.
Physical bitcoin would completely solve this fee problem, as you don't transfer bitcoins/satoshis from one address to another, but instead you transfer the ownership of this address from one person to another. This would increase bitcoins usage a lot, at least I think so.
Physical bitcoin should contain public key and private key. Public key must be there so you can verify balance on this coin. Private key must be hidden and you could only see public key once - and with you seeing private key, coin would become worthless. So when someone ''opens'' (check private key) coin you should clearly see it is worthless, it must be like broken or something. 3
If we get safe and practical physical bitcoins this solves few problems. I will present some advantages and disadvantages of using physical bitcoin.

Disadvantages:
1. Safety - I have come across some ''stickers'' which are considered safe. It is possible to check if someone tried to use private key 4. It bothers me what happens if someone peel of the sticker and save private key, then he apply new sticker which looks exactly the same on the outside. So the coin have completely same look on the outside. He can sell/ pass it over and he has private key. I haven't researched a lot about this, so please tell me more about this if you know
2. Centralisation - there must be complete trust to manufacturer of the physical bitcoins. He can save private keys, make ''empty'' coins and probably other things he could do to scam you.
3. Bitcoin price - You have let's say physical bitcoin worth 0,01BTC. In the moment you spend it you must check it's price, this means there must be internet connection at the spot you are spending this bitcoin. This is not really big problem nowadays in my opinion, but it is a problem. Actually only the person who is accepting this coin must know the price of bitcoin.
4. Return of change - You buy stuff worth 15$ and your physical bitcoin is worth 23,52$, so how can we make this work? Today there is still big dominance by FIAT currencies. So they can't just be canceled today. And I think we could use them very good in solving problem of returning the change. You would just simply return him FIAT currency. It would be also possible to return physical bitcoin + FIAT money. You buy thing for 15$, pay it with 23,52$ worth of BTC they can return you 8,52$ or you get back 6,52 worth of BTC and 2$.
5. Legal problems - If people would start using bitcoins a lot more, governments/banks would definitely interfere in it with some regulations, prohibitions etc. I think good concept of physical bitcoin would raise it's use a lot. So we can only imagine what would/will happen.
6. Hand to hand - You can't send physical bitcoin over the internet. The people involved in transaction must be at the same place. Of course this is not really a problem, as you can just get private key and send BTC to your digital wallet.

Advantages:
1. No fees - Only fee it would be paid would be in the process of making physical bitcoin and when you would send BTC from the physical bitcoin. And both of these fees can be at minimum, because there is no need to hurry. When you are spending physical bitcoin there is no fee required. The only fee could be from the person who receive bitcoins as payments. 5
2. Simplicity - It would finally become simple for old grandpa or grandma to use Bitcoin. No wallet, no computer, no explaining, no electricity...
3. No need to understand everything - We don't understand all the things we use everyday (how computers work, how internet works, how cars work...) but we still use them with no concerns. So it should become same with Bitcoin, we just need to make thing so simple that anyone can use without understanding it. And physical bitcoin is a big step towards this goal.
4. Good advertisement - If anyone can use BTC as payment method with ease it is very good for Bitcoin.
5. Interest - You can start to explain about Bitcoin, blockchain with something to show. Now only people who can use computer are able to operate with bitcoins. If you have something to hold anyone can start from there. This would in my opinion raise interest in blockchain technology a lot.
6. Secure - If coins would be safe (disadvantage n.1) this would be really safe currency to use. It would actually be backed with blockchain technology which we know is impossible to break, for now.

So what are your thought about physical bitcoin? Is this the future of Bitcoin?

1 Can someone post link where you could see average fees in BTC per byte over the time.
2 I don't understand technology behind this solutions yet, so I can't comment on that and predict it's effectiveness.
3 This is the idea I have about physical bitcoins, please correct me if I am wrong.
4 Is this information correct?
5 The person receiving coins can set fee. Example: Paying with bitcoins increase price for 3%. This fees are mostly set because of volatility of bitcoin, which should decrease over time so these fees will get smaller and smaller, until 0.

Please correct me, add disadvantages/advantages, answer, explain...

P.S. I don't want worthless spam in this topic. So I will delete posts which won't be constructive and make topic hard to read. This first post will probably get edited!

Certainly converting Bitcoin into paper form has some benefits because most old people who doesn't have any knowledge about digital currencies and how to use them but if we focus on them or other insignificant reasons and bend the technology of Bitcoin to become a paper currency we loose the future benefits of a great digital currency forever because in the future most functions in the world will run upon digital technology and Bitcoin will have the ability to fit with them easily

[deisik]

I don’t believe that a physical existence of bitcoin is necessary. I mean after all the whole concept of the currency is that is it completely online and decentralized.

But you can't deny that in certain cases and under specific conditions (for example, when there is no Internet access in some hole), paper bitcoins could be quite useful - if we assume there is no more fiat sticking around. In fact, we don't even need physical bitcoins as such (though they would be perfectly legit) since depositary notes of some Bitcoin bank would do just fine, especially if you can at any time check their validity using a block explorer, that a certain note is actually linked to a certain amount of bitcoins on the blockchain. If I recall correctly, some company had already tried something like that in the past

It was BitNotes, if I'm not mistaken

[KIROMATH]

Some prefer paper Bitcoin because most currencies today used as paper currencies and that is the common way but this common way is digitizing rapidly and as an example print out papers that we used in our offices are not used often that much to save money and carbon so instead of that we use an electronic mail system which is very convenient and cost effective than a paper so it is the same for Bitcoin in paper form and digital from so even paper form is preferred today in the future digital from will be accepted as better

[John.Verdon761232]

Now, it seems to me, the probability of the appearance of physical bitcoin is not very high. At least batch production.

[ANUKRAMAYON]

If in the future Bitcoin will become a widespread currency, someone will notice that being digital can be a downside, because it makes Bitcoin 100% tied to the Internet, electricity and electronic devices, unlike fiat money that can exist in many forms. Physical Bitcoin already exists, but mostly for collectible purposes. If someone will decide a physical Bitcoin for payments, they will probably get a lot of Bitcoins (lets's say 10 000), lock them in and release paper currency that will be backed by those Bitcoins. It will work just like current cash, but backed by Bitcoin instead of gold, and it won't have any problems with private key ownership that you have described in your post.

It is a great concept and smart way to convert Bitcoin into paper currencies for necessary people in essential scenarios and of course today Bitcoin is entirely depending on the Internet and electricity and still many areas and regions in the world doesn't have those facilities properly and even have most retail and other payment options desire paper currencies over digital currencies so in such situations converting Bitcoing paper currency might be very valuable 

[Persiontateneis]

The beauty of the bitcoin is digital figure and its use through online purchasing and payments against services etc. So, I think we should have to provide internet for to make it common and I think there may not be a single country who do not have the facilities of using internet, even internet is almost present everywhere.

[7jaka7]

The beauty of the bitcoin is digital figure and its use through online purchasing and payments against services etc. So, I think we should have to provide internet for to make it common and I think there may not be a single country who do not have the facilities of using internet, even internet is almost present everywhere.

Sure for online payments, you wouldn't use physical form, obviously. But what if you are paying at a restaurant? Will you wait approximately 1 hour because they want 6 confirmations? What if you just happen to be in a store and there is no internet access? Will you wait until the internet comes? I never said we should go 100% into physical form. But it still brings some advantages. Actually, it brings a lot. I think adoption would also be a lot faster if BTC would also be represented in some secure/fair/transparent etc. physical form.

[funkenstein]

The beauty of the bitcoin is digital figure and its use through online purchasing and payments against services etc. So, I think we should have to provide internet for to make it common and I think there may not be a single country who do not have the facilities of using internet, even internet is almost present everywhere.

Sure for online payments, you wouldn't use physical form, obviously. But what if you are paying at a restaurant? Will you wait approximately 1 hour because they want 6 confirmations? What if you just happen to be in a store and there is no internet access? Will you wait until the internet comes? I never said we should go 100% into physical form. But it still brings some advantages. Actually, it brings a lot. I think adoption would also be a lot faster if BTC would also be represented in some secure/fair/transparent etc. physical form.

No restaurants I have been to have waited for even 1 confirmation.  Remember they also serve you food before you even pay, so if your intention was to be an asshole and not pay you already could have done that without bothering to prepare a Finney attack.

As to offline payments, there are a few forms of paper "bitcoin check" which one can prepare in advance.  The simplest is probably the check which has on it a private key containing some sum, of course the proprietor can't check or transfer until they go online but this is how cheques have always worked.  Another is to prepare a signed transaction,  very similar in practice as the proprietor can't check that it's valid or will clear until they go onilne. 

Physical forms aren't going to help you with this stuff. 

[7jaka7]

The beauty of the bitcoin is digital figure and its use through online purchasing and payments against services etc. So, I think we should have to provide internet for to make it common and I think there may not be a single country who do not have the facilities of using internet, even internet is almost present everywhere.

Sure for online payments, you wouldn't use physical form, obviously. But what if you are paying at a restaurant? Will you wait approximately 1 hour because they want 6 confirmations? What if you just happen to be in a store and there is no internet access? Will you wait until the internet comes? I never said we should go 100% into physical form. But it still brings some advantages. Actually, it brings a lot. I think adoption would also be a lot faster if BTC would also be represented in some secure/fair/transparent etc. physical form.

No restaurants I have been to have waited for even 1 confirmation.  Remember they also serve you food before you even pay, so if your intention was to be an asshole and not pay you already could have done that without bothering to prepare a Finney attack.

As to offline payments, there are a few forms of paper "bitcoin check" which one can prepare in advance.  The simplest is probably the check which has on it a private key containing some sum, of course the proprietor can't check or transfer until they go online but this is how cheques have always worked.  Another is to prepare a signed transaction,  very similar in practice as the proprietor can't check that it's valid or will clear until they go onilne. 

Physical forms aren't going to help you with this stuff. 

Don't you think they would need some kind of "safety switch" if the use of BTC would widely increase? They just can't afford to lose money if tx does not get included in longest chain. Yes, they serve you food before you pay, but imagine you "pay" go home and see the other day that tx was not included in BC. How big is a chance that you'll resend it? I think a lot smaller then paying for food while you're still there.
Got any links of this? Haven't seen it yet. Making tx offline would also work well yes. But again there maybe a way to exploit it. I.e. use fake app. I think the ownership exchange of money must be instant, with minimal to no chance of exploit.
I am 95% that an old person (50+) who is not very familiar with computer would listen to you easier if you can hand him a paper before starting talking.