The future of Bitcoin. Why would a consumer pay with Bitcoin?

[TakashiMakat]

Privacy, not having to share your personal information is a good reason. However, the vast majority of people don't care about sharing their personal information while making most of their transactions.

You don't want to share your personal info with a merchant that you don't trust. But would you want to make an irreversible payment to that merchant that you can't trust?

How will the average consumer deal with the complexities of keeping a wallet safe, transaction fees, confirmations, change addresses? We certainly need abstraction layers such as e-wallets.

How will anyone trust their money with an e-wallet that can't guarantee the safety of people's money? That is the most bountiful target for hackers and criminals?

The volatility is making people steer away from holding the bitcoins even if they receive bitcoin for the services/products they provide. Hence the success of Bitpay. So the idea that you are more likely to spend Bitcoin if you get paid in Bitcoin is not happening.

How will we make Bitcoin the future if we can't solve these and get mom and dad to pay with Bitcoin?

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[joeroxor]

Honestly, I asked the loan place if I could pay off in bitcoin 2 weeks ago, no idea what I was talking about.

Asked again today and it's being implemented within the next 30 days.

You'll be quite surprised, I think.

There was a day when "mom and dad" knew nothing of facebook.

[invisiblehand]

I find it more useful as a store of value vs debased fiat currencies.

[Hunterbunter]

If fiat exists, and remains legal tender, it would only make sense to spend bitcoins when a person has run out of fiat.

[franky1]

many people think that in a few decades governments will crumble and every single person of the 7 billion people in the world will be using bitcoin. this is just not the case.

so far with lets say only 1.5m people only ever having to invest $10k (once in their life) comes to the valuation of 12mill coins at $1300 value each. so imagine only 20 million($7k per coin once all 21m are 'minted'/mined) people or 50 million($18k  per coin once all 21m are 'minted'/mined) people use bitcoin, thats still some large valuation numbers.

so it does not require whole world adoption to outvalue gold.. and of those 50million people. lets say that they work internationally, or work from home, or prefer payment in bitcoin so that they can easily use it when their vacation days come around.

there will be more stability and ALOT more merchants.

alot of you beleive that bitcoin is near the end. YOU ARE ALL WRONG, there is over a century to go of mining and beyond that.. well lets allow our great great grandkids worry about that,

at the moment bitcoins is going through its teenage rebellion stage of life, resisting authority and trying to find its own way in life to become fully independant.

no one should be worrying about volitility. as there are services such as bitpay that will give instant valuations and a good enough time buffer for customers to pay wthout the merchant losing out. and then when bitcoin has 'sowed his wild oates' so to speak and calmed its volitility down then you will see the future of bitcoin.

at the moment bitcoin is too young to see whats in its future. all we know is that it has a future, and a long way to go yet.

now to be more direct about your answer.
i like to see a near future that when i go online from the UK i dont see just £ prices or $ prices. meaning if i go to an american site i have to convert  it to pounds. or if i go to a euro site i have to convert euro to pounds or if i go to a japanese, ill have to convert yen to pounds. id like to see a universal valuation in bitcoins. and when i go abroad for vacation i dont have to worry about travellers cheques, currency conversion rates, i just use my phone with a local person to do transactions and get more cash without trying to find a ATM that accepts my UK FIAT card and know a universal conversion rate.. of bitcoins

[invisiblehand]

If fiat exists, and remains legal tender, it would only make sense to spend bitcoins when a person has run out of fiat.

Agree

[bryant.coleman]

Unfortunately wider acceptance and volatility are directly proportional to each other. The more BTC gets popular, the more stable it will become. Also if people stash more and more BTCs in cold storage for use as an investment, the selling pressure can ease and the value can stabilize.

[TakashiMakat]

If fiat exists, and remains legal tender, it would only make sense to spend bitcoins when a person has run out of fiat.

So people will be buying bitcoins because it's a good store of value.

And they will only make payments with their bitcoins when they run out of fiat which they were holding for their regular payments.

Is that what you mean? If not, please explain. If so, doesn't that mean that they will eventually keep more fiat to not have to spend btc?

[qwerty555]

Why would a consumer pay with Bitcoin?

1 Firstly to see how it works, another life experience and evaluate it .

2 Personal experience then allows you to START to understand, weigh the pro's and Cons and discuss/debate the principle and idea.

That will account for a million or so users (in 2014). In fact the number of wallets was about 12million last July of which about 3-4% have one BTC or more so last July there were approx 250k "users"

Since then there has been much media attention and that figure has probably doubled (and will continue to do so until either it collapses or all the middle class in the World have been exposed/experienced it. (1 Billion?)

3 For the Tech savvy it has been well and often stated that


http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article43353.html

Conclusion

"Every informed person needs to know about Bitcoin because it might be one of the world’s most important developments!" - Leon Louw, Nobel Peace prize nominee. We agree with those sentiments both at ATCA 5000 and at the mi2g Intelligence Unit.

4 Use as regular form of payment for consumers is a work in progress, Rome was not built in a Day. There are enough parties currently working toward that goal (and many more will join) that unless there is extreme negative disruption from Govts it will continue to snowball.

5 Meanwhile there are many groups and individuals who, if they have the means, will use it on principal. Particularly those who understand that the large financial institutions and the Fed are playing a rigged game with the ultimate result being that the debasement of the currency and peoples saving deposits etc.

The number of those who will use on principal is large and will give bitcoin businesses the momentum and revenue to grow until they really can offer a more convenient and less expensive payment method than fiat.

I have not included speculators or persons wishing to use it as a store of value as your question seems specific to consumers ( purchasing goods and services)

[Kao]

Privacy, not having to share your personal information is a good reason. However, the vast majority of people don't care about sharing their personal information while making most of their transactions.

You don't have privacy though. Unless you're doing an in-person transaction you don't have total privacy when it comes to the "real" to bitcoin transaction, or visa versa, and your bitcoins are entirely traceable to the point where if someone knows info from a single (unwashed) transaction, they can trace it back to pretty much every transaction you've made with an address and even in some cases other addresses you use.  That also makes buying real world products with bitcoin high risk, since any shipped product still requires real world information which is stored on a server which could be hacked which would tie every transaction you made/make to your real world details.

many people think that in a few decades governments will crumble and every single person of the 7 billion people in the world will be using bitcoin. this is just not the case.

People have been saying the same thing about gold and silver for quite some time. Who knows, it may happen at some point, but in the meantime the diehards didn't sell when it went up and they won't sell until they really have to personally (at which point the price will well below it's peak) or until not just the dollar but most viable alternatives (if the dollar collapsed we'd probably switch to the Canadian Dollar before gold as an acceptable currency) stopped working, at which point they'll have a head start on everyone else but it won't really matter since society will have pretty much collapsed anyway making the majority people who are poor, starving, and don't have precious metals to trade.

no one should be worrying about volitility. as there are services such as bitpay that will give instant valuations and a good enough time buffer for customers to pay wthout the merchant losing out. and then when bitcoin has 'sowed his wild oates' so to speak and calmed its volitility down then you will see the future of bitcoin.

Volatility is actively preventing adoption of bitcoin, both because it hurts its real usability and because of the PR effect, mainly nobody except for techno-geeks and crazy people are going to buy into a currency that drops 46% in a day. Also, merchants aren't going to accept a currency that changes so much as to risk rapidly devaluing any sale that they make below their costs which is why many of the merchants that currently accept bitcoin are places like Amagi which deals in metals, or mining companies, which are speculating in their own way on the adoption of bitcoin.

[TakashiMakat]

Why would a consumer pay with Bitcoin?

1 Firstly to see how it works, another life experience and evaluate it .

2 Personal experience then allows you to START to understand, weigh the pro's and Cons and discuss/debate the principle and idea.

I have been. I'm one of those using it on principle. I have good reasons to use it but I can't see how mass consumer adoption can be done. That's what the question is more about.

"Every informed person needs to know about Bitcoin because it might be one of the world’s most important developments!" - Leon Louw, Nobel Peace prize nominee. We agree with those sentiments both at ATCA 5000 and at the mi2g Intelligence Unit.[/i]

I'm not saying that Bitcoin is not revolutionary. Not at all. I'm in love with it.

4 Use as regular form of payment for consumers is a work in progress, Rome was not built in a Day. There are enough parties currently working toward that goal (and many more will join) that unless there is extreme negative disruption from Govts it will continue to snowball.

Which parties and what solutions? The questions are explicit. And the point is to explore the answers.

The number of those who will use on principal is large and will give bitcoin businesses the momentum and revenue to grow until they really can offer a more convenient and less expensive payment method than fiat.

I have not included speculators or persons wishing to use it as a store of value as your question seems specific to consumers ( purchasing goods and services)

Yes the question is specific to consumers. From experience, I know that most adopters are ignorant fools trying to get rich quick.

I would love to believe that people paying merchants with Bitcoin on principle are numerous enough to sustain bitcoin as a viable payment option. But I doubt it.

[qwerty555]

Quote from: qwerty555 on Today at 01:10:23 PM
4 Use as regular form of payment for consumers is a work in progress, Rome was not built in a Day. There are enough parties currently working toward that goal (and many more will join) that unless there is extreme negative disruption from Govts it will continue to snowball.

Which parties and what solutions? The questions are explicit. And the point is to explore the answers.

Well here's a starting list of the parties. There are many more.



Direct and indirect purchases

https://www.spendbitcoins.com/places/

http://www.reddit.com/r/BitMarket/new/

http://bitcoinmagazine.com/2651/where-to-spend-your-bitcoins/

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade


There are a number of websites which offer a map displaying bitcoin accepting business world wide. Below is an overview.

    Bitcoin.travel - Google Maps-based bitcoin directory of online and real world businesses that currently accept Bitcoin - Where to Buy, Store, Spend and Sell Bitcoins Around The World.
    CoinMap - Collaborative map based on OpenStreetMap data and rendering
    Mercado Bitcoin - Empresas, negocios y sitios que aceptan Bitcoin
    useBitcoins.info - Use Bitcoins in the real world
    Bitcoinlocator - Presents a searchable map of Bitcoin accepting businesses.
    The Bit Pages
    Bitcoin Map - Shows merchants accepting Bitcoin, individual traders, miners and bitcoin users on one map.
    BitiMap - The Map show you, where you can pay, earn or swap Bitcoins (BTC) and Litecoins (LTC) over the world.
    Bitcoinkiez - Map for Berlin.
    Aceptamos Bitcoin - Map for Spain.

The solutions to making the payment process smother and more attractive to ALL persons (with or without principals) I assume is being worked on by the payment providers such as bitpay and others who have not yet entered the market. Previously the momentum has been provided by miners and speculators but now mining is being industrialized due to the large capital requirements and high difficulty levels the focus will /is to turn to adoption by consumers to drive demand (and the price).

There does not appear to be an organization who is actively promoting use in payment systems ( Previous thread came up with no candidates) It appears to be the realm of private  businesses. I can understand that volatility is a negative risk factor for this but most on the forum are in agreement that this will eventually stabilize ( maybe a few years to go yet)


Ps I do not think any of us are in a position to know what is in the mind of earlier adopters and many who I have seen here are not in the camp that you mentioned ( or though some clearly are )

[franky1]

Volatility is actively preventing adoption of bitcoin,

it is not. there are new people joining into bitcoin daily. and they are not all geeks or freaks. they are investors and forex traders. personally as a forex trader i love the ups and downs. movement means profit. if something only moved $1 value per year unless i had $1m invested i would not make $10k a year profit. but with movements of $100's a month i can make soo much more using so far less initial investment.

both because it hurts its real usability

taking bitcoin and manually cashing out at the end of the night back into fiat. you are right shop owners get hurt. but for shop owners that don't actually want or have interest in bitcoin, but are just using it to gain more customers. they can use bitpay which removes the hurt by fixing the value. instead of accepting bitcoin and risking the value change that may occur by the time they cash up in the evening. merchants should not be thinking ok if i accept this bitcoin at 10AM and i cash out at bitstamp at 7pm after i close for the day, wht am i risking. they should be thinking either
1) if i need to cash out today lets use bitpay
2) if im going to hold for the long term growth/investment ill do things manually

i personally had FIAT, converted it to bitcoin sent it to another country and that person converted it to their native currency.. all within 10 minutes and at better rates then travelex bureau de change could offer. but if your going to wait all day, then accept the risk. or use a service to protect the volatility.

and as i said before. bitcoin is still young. everyone that has researched the first days of using gold, has found 'bartering' volatile initially. same as the first days of bank notes. no one knew how to value it. one baker would charge a totally different amount of bread loaves compared to another baker for the same bank note. untill everyone got used to it and it became common.

so calm down, bitcoin is YOUNG!!!

[qwerty555]

I would add that currently the major market for consumers is purchases on the internet which has consistently gained ground over purchases in retail shops. The internet sales market is huge and that is where bitcoin will survive and grow first and where it is has real potential for cost competitiveness versus fees on credit card transactions

https://www.google.com.ph/search?q=value+of+internet+purchases&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&gws_rd=cr&ei=fiqjUq-ECMOCiQflsoGQDg#q=value+of+internet+purchases+2012&rls=org.mozilla:en-US%3Aofficial

[Hunterbunter]

If fiat exists, and remains legal tender, it would only make sense to spend bitcoins when a person has run out of fiat.

So people will be buying bitcoins because it's a good store of value.

And they will only make payments with their bitcoins when they run out of fiat which they were holding for their regular payments.

Is that what you mean? If not, please explain. If so, doesn't that mean that they will eventually keep more fiat to not have to spend btc?

Pretty much, although bitcoins can be converted to fiat relatively easily (or even just given in lieu) if there's a fiat shortfall. If a company prices a debt in terms of fiat, which you don't have in this scenario, you either pay them directly in bitcoins or convert it yourself to fiat first then pay them that if it they don't accept btc. You don't really need a store of fiat, except to maybe hedge against bitcoin volatility.

The reason behind this is because of the inflationary nature of fiat against the deflationary nature of btc. Any dollar you hold is constantly watered down over time due to the increase in the money supply. The rough calculation is that it halves in purchasing power every 7 years. There will be no more bitcoins once the cap has reached, and instead be slightly deflationary as coins are lost. Assuming the network remain resilient, the purchasing power of bitcoins should go up over time.

[Siegfried]

You don't want to share your personal info with a merchant that you don't trust. But would you want to make an irreversible payment to that merchant that you can't trust?

Don't make payments to merchants you can't trust, period.

[lindatess]

Simple. They probably wouldn't use the coins. Why would you when banks can drop their fees to zero?

Banks make a lot of money from other products such as mortgage fees.

In Australia we have basically abolished account fees, dishonor fees, it is very likely that international transaction fees are next to be abolished. After all, it doesn't really cost the banks to process it as it is automated.

[Swapster]

Try to get on an international flight with $10k or more of USD/gold/silver… take your pick. Let me know how it works out (after the government confiscates YOUR money).

Now lets try that same experiment with Bitcoin. Are there any people left who don't see the value in that?

Maybe you're smart - you will send the money through the banksters…. let me know how much that privilege costs.

[lindatess]

Try to get on an international flight with $10k or more of USD/gold/silver… take your pick. Let me know how it works out (after the government confiscates YOUR money).

Now lets try that same experiment with Bitcoin. Are there any people left who don't see the value in that?

Maybe you're smart - you will send the money through the banksters…. let me know how much that privilege costs.

It's quite cheap to send your gold around the world. Just pay armaguard private security or whatever your local armored courier is.

I don't think you understand how to move gold. You don't have to pay a bankster.

Furthermore, fiat transactions are very cheap compared to the losses you could incur using bitcoin.

[drrussellshane]

Gresham's Law...


Bad money drives out good money.

Why spend something valuable when people accept worthless things just as or more readily?