BTC will never extend more

[murraypaul]

For normal, everyday, mundane transactions, Bitcoin doesn't really offer the normal consumer anything they don't already have with a combination of cash, debit cards, credit cards and PayPal.

Really? Can you send money to Iran with credit card?

Did you actually read my post?
Do you really think that sending money to Iran counts as an everyday mundane transaction for a normal consumer?

Buying groceries.
Buying gas or a train ticket.
Paying rent.
Going out for a meal.
Those are normal transactions.

[knight22]

For normal, everyday, mundane transactions, Bitcoin doesn't really offer the normal consumer anything they don't already have with a combination of cash, debit cards, credit cards and PayPal.

Really? Can you send money to Iran with credit card?

Did you actually read my post?
Do you really think that sending money to Iran counts as an everyday mundane transaction for a normal consumer?

It is not because you can't

[murraypaul]

For normal, everyday, mundane transactions, Bitcoin doesn't really offer the normal consumer anything they don't already have with a combination of cash, debit cards, credit cards and PayPal.

Really? Can you send money to Iran with credit card?

Did you actually read my post?
Do you really think that sending money to Iran counts as an everyday mundane transaction for a normal consumer?

It is not because you can't

So you think that if it were possible, most people would start sending money to Iran all the time?
The only reason they aren't it because they don't know about Bitcoin?
 

[knight22]

So you think that if it were possible, most people would start sending money to Iran all the time?
The only reason they aren't it because they don't know about Bitcoin?
 

Yes I think so.
Do you really think that Iran and other financially restricted countries has nothing to offer to the rest of the world?

[murraypaul]

So you think that if it were possible, most people would start sending money to Iran all the time?
The only reason they aren't it because they don't know about Bitcoin?
 

Yes I think so.
Do you really think that Iran and other financially restricted countries has nothing to offer to the rest of the world?

Boggle.
Just to get this straight.
You think most normal consumers outside Iran have a real desire to send money into Iran, and the only thing stopping them is a lack of an easy process to do so?
Not some people, not the odd one or two, but this is actually something that most normal people would want to do?

[knight22]

Boggle.
Just to get this straight.
You think most normal consumers outside Iran have a real desire to send money into Iran, and the only thing stopping them is a lack of an easy process to do so?

Fist, I'm sorry but I did't know that normal people only reside in US

Not some people, not the odd one or two, but this is actually something that most normal people would want to do?

Bitcoin has absolutely no restriction, and believe me that there is way more people interested in that feature than you might think.

[murraypaul]

Boggle.
Just to get this straight.
You think most normal consumers outside Iran have a real desire to send money into Iran, and the only thing stopping them is a lack of an easy process to do so?

Fist, I'm sorry but I did't know that normal people only reside in US

What I said was:

For normal, everyday, mundane transactions, Bitcoin doesn't really offer the normal consumer anything they don't already have with a combination of cash, debit cards, credit cards and PayPal.

To which you responded:

Really? Can you send money to Iran with credit card?

Sending money to Iran implies being outside Iran.
What I'm saying is that most normal consumers outside Iran do not have any need to send money to Iran.
In fact given that Iran has a population of maybe 75-80 million, and the world has a population of almost 100 times as much as that, it seems likely to me that only a tiny fraction of the non-Iranian population has any reason to be sending funds to Iran.

Other than a truly surreal diversion into Iranian finances, do you disagree that for mundane transactions like:
Buying groceries
Buying gas or train tickets
Paying rent
Going out for a meal

Bitcoin doesn't really offer any overall advantage over the existing available payment methods: cash, check (forgot that one before), debit card, credit card or PayPal?

[knight22]

Fine, do you know how much China, Russia and North Korea are doing business with Iran?
A lot
And believe me that they are sick to use US dollars.

But I guess they are not normal people.

[murraypaul]

Fine, do you know how much China, Russia and North Korea are doing business with Iran?
A lot
And believe me that they are sick to use US dollars.

But I guess they are not normal people.

No, they are countries.
I doubt very much whether many everyday Chinese, Russian or North Korean citizens are sending money to Iran.

[faiza1990]

Fine, do you know how much China, Russia and North Korea are doing business with Iran?
A lot
And believe me that they are sick to use US dollars.

But I guess they are not normal people.

No, they are countries.
I doubt very much whether many everyday Chinese, Russian or North Korean citizens are sending money to Iran.

please can you explain which are normal peoples which are using US dollars

[knight22]

No, they are countries.
I doubt very much whether many everyday Chinese, Russian or North Korean citizens are sending money to Iran.

Just to give you an idea Iran is the second exporter of oil in china.




But you are right. Those countries have absolutely no commercial interest.

[murraypaul]

No, they are countries.
I doubt very much whether many everyday Chinese, Russian or North Korean citizens are sending money to Iran.

Just to give you an idea Iran is the second exporter of oil in china.
But you are right. Those countries have absolutely no commercial interest.

I give up.
You just keep posting random comments which have nothing to do with what I am saying.
I'm not saying there is no usage model for Bitcoin, no situation in which it offers an advantage.
I'm saying that I don't currently see an advantage for normal everyday consumers buying things like groceries and gas over existing payment methods they already have. I have said this same thing to you at least three times now.
And you respond with comments about sending money to iran, oil revenues, and government actions and commercial interests.
None of which address my posts in any way.
Continue with your ramblings without me.

[knight22]

I'm saying that I don't currently see an advantage for normal everyday consumers buying things like groceries and gas over existing payment methods they already have.

My point is the advantages for consumers will come with adoption and solutions. And adoption won't go through "normal consumers" but with other specific interest with bitcoin unique features. It is only a matter of time.
 

[mgio]

Here is why you are wrong:
1) Scams. The Internet is full of scams. Most of them existed before bitcoin and will continue to exist if bitcoin went away. Bitcoin puts more risk to the buyer while PayPal transfers the risk (of charge backs) to the seller. sellers love bitcoins while buyers love PayPal. One is not better than the other. They are just different. Right now bitcoin is used mainly for transactions with individuals and small companies. Imagine if amazon.com accepted bitcoin. Would you hesitate to buy merchandise from them with bitcoin? I'm guessing you wouldn't have an issue with because they are large, trusted company. Bitcoin is like cash and cash has existed for a long time without reversible transactions.

In the future there will be online wallets that insured by the companies holding them so that your coins are safe even it their site is hacked. There is nothing to prevent this from happening once banks get in on the bitcoin game. Only libertarians -- the kind that keeps gold bars in a safe and cash under their mattress will bother keeping their savings in a local wallet,

2) Bitcoin is inconvenient. Yes, bitcoin isn't convenient to use now but there is nothing that says it must always be this way. New software will be developed that will make bitcoin easier to use. New exchanges will be started that will make it easier to buy and sell bitcoins (I personally think that coinbase is pretty darn simple). And in the future no one will ever be downloading the whole blockchain. People will use online wallets, or they will use local wallets that don't require the whole blockchain. Bitcoin ATMs will be out there and there will be plenty of easy to use mobile bitcoin apps and wallets. If you can use online banking, you'll be able to use bitcoin. Bitcoin is still new there ans we have a ways to go but there is no reason we can't get there.

3) Fees are too high. This is not true at all. Fees are very low right now. In fact, you can still send bitcoins for free and have your transaction accepted into the blockchain. Worst case scenario, you have to add 5 or 10 cents to the transaction.

Fees do not need to go up once the block reward goes away!! Why not? Well, the fees can stay low because by then we expect the NUMBER of transactions per block to greatly increase as bitcoin becomes more widespread. Fees can still be 5 cents per transaction. The difference is we will have 1000 times more transactions.

Furthermore, credit cards are NOT free. Credit card companies charge merchants 2-3% to process transactions. Who ends up paying that? Well, you do in the form of higher prices. Merchants would love to charge you less if you use cash (and many gas stations do) but in general the credit card industry imposes strict rules to prevent merchants from doing that if they want to be able to accept credit cards at all.

Exchanges currently are a pain to use and can be expensive. But as Bitcoin gains acceptance and there are more exchanges, increased competition will bring lower fees and easier to use exchanges. In the future, exchanging fiat for bitcoin will be done for such a small fee it will be essentially free.

4) Confirmations are too slow. No, they are virtually instantaneous. There is no reason for most ,enchants to even wait for a block confirmation. Double spending is almost impossible to perform in practice and I've yet to hear of anyone successfully double spending in the real world ever. And the risk can be reduced if the merchant uses a payment processor that watches the network for double spend attempts. Already merchants such as Foodler will credit your bitcoin deposit immediately without waiting for confirmation. The only time a merchant might want to wait for confirmation would be for an expensive item like a car and those purchases usually take much longer today anyways. Finally, if you are using bitcoins on the Internet instead of POS, confirmation time doesn't really matter.

Merchants love bitcoin because they get their money right away too. Credit card companies take a long time to actually send money to the merchants (as you pointed out).

[Oldgamer]

murraypaul,

you can't explain to some people that if Russia, North Korea and some other communist countries sending money to Iran does not mean people of those countries want to send money also.
And what the point to use bitcoins for money transfer between countries? They do not do it because they are not that stupid anyway.

knight22 says "The hole concept of banking has evolved to trap society into a endless and growing debt. So yes, banks as we know them today is pretty much evil", same time he says " Bitcoin is scarce and powered by greed". So, why then miners are better than bankers?

murraypaul, do not try to find much logic here. Also, you can not explain some serious things to kids or just not really educated people.

And yes, i don't care about my privacy when I buy bread or gas. Probably if I will buy drugs then I will.

[johnyj]

The most important reason that bitcoin attracted a lot of attention:

Fiat money are constantly inflated by central banks. In just a few years FED has printed 400% more money than 2008, this in turn created huge debt (national debt and housing debt) which might take many decades to unwind, or default

[marcovaldo]

Here is why you are wrong:
1) Scams. The Internet is full of scams. Most of them existed before bitcoin and will continue to exist if bitcoin went away. Bitcoin puts more risk to the buyer while PayPal transfers the risk (of charge backs) to the seller. sellers love bitcoins while buyers love PayPal. One is not better than the other. They are just different. Right now bitcoin is used mainly for transactions with individuals and small companies. Imagine if amazon.com accepted bitcoin. Would you hesitate to buy merchandise from them with bitcoin? I'm guessing you wouldn't have an issue with because they are large, trusted company. Bitcoin is like cash and cash has existed for a long time without reversible transactions.

In the future there will be online wallets that insured by the companies holding them so that your coins are safe even it their site is hacked. There is nothing to prevent this from happening once banks get in on the bitcoin game. Only libertarians -- the kind that keeps gold bars in a safe and cash under their mattress will bother keeping their savings in a local wallet,

How would it be possible to insure that the wallet will remain safe? Assuming that Amazon uses bitcoins, and some random guy found the private key of the wallet, and send all the bitcoins to a mixing service. How would you retrieve the coins? How would you revert an irreversible transactions? How do you track an untrackable move?

2) Bitcoin is inconvenient. Yes, bitcoin isn't convenient to use now but there is nothing that says it must always be this way. New software will be developed that will make bitcoin easier to use. New exchanges will be started that will make it easier to buy and sell bitcoins (I personally think that coinbase is pretty darn simple). And in the future no one will ever be downloading the whole blockchain. People will use online wallets, or they will use local wallets that don't require the whole blockchain. Bitcoin ATMs will be out there and there will be plenty of easy to use mobile bitcoin apps and wallets. If you can use online banking, you'll be able to use bitcoin. Bitcoin is still new there ans we have a ways to go but there is no reason we can't get there.

I think that it is not a big deal, with safety is the main problem. You can see in the newbie section people complaining about comprised online wallet every day, even with double authentification ON.

3) Fees are too high. This is not true at all. Fees are very low right now. In fact, you can still send bitcoins for free and have your transaction accepted into the blockchain. Worst case scenario, you have to add 5 or 10 cents to the transaction.

Fees do not need to go up once the block reward goes away!! Why not? Well, the fees can stay low because by then we expect the NUMBER of transactions per block to greatly increase as bitcoin becomes more widespread. Fees can still be 5 cents per transaction. The difference is we will have 1000 times more transactions.

Furthermore, credit cards are NOT free. Credit card companies charge merchants 2-3% to process transactions. Who ends up paying that? Well, you do in the form of higher prices. Merchants would love to charge you less if you use cash (and many gas stations do) but in general the credit card industry imposes strict rules to prevent merchants from doing that if they want to be able to accept credit cards at all.

Exchanges currently are a pain to use and can be expensive. But as Bitcoin gains acceptance and there are more exchanges, increased competition will bring lower fees and easier to use exchanges. In the future, exchanging fiat for bitcoin will be done for such a small fee it will be essentially free.

Current fees: 0,005 btc = 67,25 USD cents.
If you are buying a car it's fine. But if you are buying a 1 USD item, or moving money from wallet to wallet, it can increase quite a lot: almost 7 USD for 10 transactions, that you can do within 12 hours.

The numbers of transactions can go up, or down, and the fees as well. In the future, it might even not be possible to send btc without the fees.

Why would I care if the seller pays fees to VISA? If I am a customer and I don't pay anything, I don't pay more if I pay with a credit card, or by cash, I don't really care... You say that some merchants are selling cheaper if you pay by cash? I have never seen any of these.

Do you think that the blockchain will accept more transactions by blocks?
I have been waiting for 3 days for my last transaction to proceed (no fees). It took 45 minutes to get one confirmation with a 67 cents fee. I am not sure, but it seems that it is taking longer and longer to confirm. Before, transactions with fees were instant, and without took 12 hours max.

4) Confirmations are too slow. No, they are virtually instantaneous. There is no reason for most ,enchants to even wait for a block confirmation. Double spending is almost impossible to perform in practice and I've yet to hear of anyone successfully double spending in the real world ever. And the risk can be reduced if the merchant uses a payment processor that watches the network for double spend attempts. Already merchants such as Foodler will credit your bitcoin deposit immediately without waiting for confirmation. The only time a merchant might want to wait for confirmation would be for an expensive item like a car and those purchases usually take much longer today anyways. Finally, if you are using bitcoins on the Internet instead of POS, confirmation time doesn't really matter.

Merchants love bitcoin because they get their money right away too. Credit card companies take a long time to actually send money to the merchants (as you pointed out).

Yes maybe, but do you think that it will impossible in the future to double spend the bitcoins with new technique / with and without fees? And some tricks?

[knight22]

knight22 says "The hole concept of banking has evolved to trap society into a endless and growing debt. So yes, banks as we know them today is pretty much evil", same time he says " Bitcoin is scarce and powered by greed". So, why then miners are better than bankers?

murraypaul, do not try to find much logic here. Also, you can not explain some serious things to kids or just not really educated people.

You are probably not educated enough to understand the difference between a miner an a banker

[Oldgamer]

knight22 says "The hole concept of banking has evolved to trap society into a endless and growing debt. So yes, banks as we know them today is pretty much evil", same time he says " Bitcoin is scarce and powered by greed". So, why then miners are better than bankers?

murraypaul, do not try to find much logic here. Also, you can not explain some serious things to kids or just not really educated people.

You are probably not educated enough to understand the difference between a miner an a banker

What was the point to say that "Bitcoin is scarce and powered by greed"? Bitcoin powered by miners, without miners Bitcoin is nothing (no transaction can be done without them).

And yes, greed is powering everything. You and me, we both are greedy. But I do not blame others. It is hypocrisy

[giantdragon]

Current fees: 0,005 btc = 67,25 USD cents.

You are wrong with decimal point - default fee is 0.0005 BTC.