Bitcoin solving the problem of intermediary

[BIN-BIN]

I am quite familiar with the fact that one of the primary features of Bitcoin is to eliminate the third party system in financial transactions such as banks; I have been shipping goods from the US to my country and selling them in my retail store but over the years I have been using the traditional method of going to the bank to convert my native currency into US dollars before sending the money to my customer in the US and this has not been an easy process for me and my transactions some time take days to be cleared and it take weeks before getting my good delivered, this have always caused delay and set back in my business.

But during the covid-19 Lockdown, I was forced to look for an alternative way to get payment across to my US partner, for which we both agreed to use Bitcoin to carry out the transaction. Within an hour my partner confirms the payment, and I got my goods delivered within a week through DHL, going to a year now since then I have never used the traditional banking process to make the payment again and business has been moving smoothly all thanks to Bitcoin.

Note we have an agreement on price changes because of volatility in Bitcoin price. I choose to share my experience here to encourage members to use Bitcoin for their businesses.

What is your personal experience with Bitcoin?

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[avikz]

It's indeed great to know that you are actively using bitcoin for your businesses. It solves one major problem you were facing in your business. It completely eliminates the intermediary called banks and you now get the funds with a great speed compared to traditional currency exchange business.

But I am interested to know how you are handling the price volatility? That's a huge risk for you if you don't convert your bitcoins immediately after receiving the payment. If you keep it as it is, you either will get huge profit or generate huge loss. How you are hedging against the volatility?

[Upgrade00]

What is your personal experience with Bitcoin?

A common example of my experience with Bitcoin is here on the forum. I have been an a signature campaign for a couple of years now and have always received payments in Bitcoin each week. Without Bitcoin it would have been amost impossible as I would not want to post my banking details here on the forum, in addition to the stress of actually receiving international transactions through the banking system, Bitcoin eliminates the need for a third party and allows seamless transactions.

I've also been part of donations using Bitcoin and it went smoothly as usual.

[Imran232]

............

Well bitcoin easily solve your problem simply. And bitcoin proves its a solution for any sector no what is it. And bitcoin must be a solution for those business who has related with import export. Because we know in import export business payment is a biggest issue because of its currency exchange. But now you don't need to go bank, exchange currencey to currency, do not need to wait day you just stay calm at your sit on your office and send payment from your phone.

What is your personal experience with Bitcoin?

Well my experience with bitcoin is unbelievable. Its change my life. Because of bitcoin now i don't need to do job for money. Now as a student of College in a asian country work and salary is just nothing. Where now i manage ny study cost, my younger brother study cost, family all expense i bear as a student. Where i asked pocket money to my mom 1 year ago now i give them money for family cost. Crypto is becoming my life now. Its my job, business whatever you guys say.

[ChrisPop]

First I'd like to correct you. You said you "have been shipping goods from US to your country and selling them in your retail store" and then you say you are converting native currency to US dollars before sending the money to your "customer" in the US - if you are sourcing goods from an entity it is called a SUPPLIER, not a customer. Maybe you hurried and made that mistake.

Second of all, congratulations for adopting Bitcoin. Advanced technology is here to make things simpler for us by optimizing processes. Great to hear that both you and your supplier managed to make thsi change.

Unfortunately I don't have my own business yet, but Bitcoin is a viable solution for companies around the world to trade in no doubt about that. The volatility of the asset shouldn't be a problem neither as the transactions are more or less instant, so they can quickly convert back to fiat or a stablecoin.

[hatshepsut93]

Banks are not going to stand in one place, most European banks have instant transactions within their own country, it's a matter of time before international transactions will become faster too, especially if there will be a bigger demand for that. Bitcoin never had a goal of providing cheap or fast transactions, it's main goal is providing control over your money without any third parties.

So, to me the main benefit of Bitcoin is not worrying if my government will decide to freeze my account and ask about the origin of my funds and if I have fully paid my taxes and so on.

[Shenzou]

I am quite familiar with the fact that one of the primary features of Bitcoin is to eliminate the third party system in financial transactions such as banks; I have been shipping goods from the US to my country and selling them in my retail store but over the years I have been using the traditional method of going to the bank to convert my native currency into US dollars before sending the money to my customer in the US and this has not been an easy process for me and my transactions some time take days to be cleared and it take weeks before getting my good delivered, this have always caused delay and set back in my business.

But during the covid-19 Lockdown, I was forced to look for an alternative way to get payment across to my US partner, for which we both agreed to use Bitcoin to carry out the transaction. Within an hour my partner confirms the payment, and I got my goods delivered within a week through DHL, going to a year now since then I have never used the traditional banking process to make the payment again and business has been moving smoothly all thanks to Bitcoin.

Note we have an agreement on price changes because of volatility in Bitcoin price. I choose to share my experience here to encourage members to use Bitcoin for their businesses.

What is your personal experience with Bitcoin?

Sure bitcoin could be used for business but the problem is like you said the volatility of the price, now if you were to be using bitcoin to the full meaning you buy goods with bitcoin and you sell them for bitcoin than you might be able to make profit , but if you are trying to exchange between fiat and bitcoin than you might have some days where you are not making profit.

[franky1]

i dont see the volatility being a big issue for this topic creators scenario
he pays the guy in under an hour...

volatility is noticable if people are trading where the request and the payment are days apart..
but when the request and payment are less than an hour the volatility is near meaningless

say a guy in europe buys bitcoin using euro and wants to pay an american.
sending a private key via postal mail on a 7day stamp..
well, then the value change can be noticable when the american recipient gets the btc and then tries to convert to dollar.

same with wire transfers of just euro-usd in a 7 business day contract. the exchange rates can be noticable
especially with forex and international wire transfer fees added on

but a euro guy buying btc on a euro exchange and withdrawing it to the americans us exchange. in under an hour. makes the price difference negligible, especially when skipping the forex/wire transfer fees of fiat methods of remittance

[franky1]

This looks amazing. I thought what if all remote payment systems like this used Btc or altcoins, especially for business transactions such as online shops, maybe we wouldn't need a third party like this, namely the online shop page, I mean. We only need to market the product on our personal pages such as blogs or social media. This is so much easier. After reading this i feel like i should do this too but i'm not ready.

third parties are still needed
(the btc exchanges to fiat on both sides).
it just uses a different third party that doesnt have extreme forex/wire transfer fees/time added on

it changes (imagine euro to USD)
 
euro>bank wire>forex central service >bank wire>usd
euro>btcexchange>btcexchange>usd

the whole
bank wire>forex central service >bank wire
is a time/fee headache.

so still needs middlemen. but just ones causing less time/fee headache

[stompix]

I have been shipping goods from the US to my country and selling them in my retail store but over the years I have been using the traditional method of going to the bank to convert my native currency into US dollars before sending the money to my customer in the US

Ok, so before things were
Your currency > Deposit at bank > Exchange to US dollars > Send wire >

But during the covid-19 Lockdown, I was forced to look for an alternative way to get payment across to my US partner, for which we both agreed to use Bitcoin to carry out the transaction. Within an hour my partner confirms the payment, and I got my goods delivered within a week through DHL

Now you claim you have, send bitcoins to get goods!

Yeah, sounds wonderful but you forgot one step to make this credible.
If you get "native currency" for your sales you also need to exchange that into bitcoins, so the step is

Your native currency> Bank > Send to exchange > Exchange fiat to bitcoin > Withdraw bitcoin > Send bitcoin (or compress the last two in one by sending directly from the exchange to your partner) Receive good > Sell them for your own currency
One more thing, if covid lockdown prevented you to go to the bank and deposit cash, how did you manage during the same lockdown to exchange cash to bitcoins?
To me it seems that you've just added one more intermediary than getting rid of them

[Tim-BTC]

In fact, I would choose USDT instead of Bitcoin to pay. The funds exchanges between my friends and I sometimes use wallets to transfer funds. USDT avoids price fluctuations and is more convenient than Bitcoin.

[yazher]

Banks are not going to stand in one place, most European banks have instant transactions within their own country, it's a matter of time before international transactions will become faster too, especially if there will be a bigger demand for that. Bitcoin never had a goal of providing cheap or fast transactions, it's main goal is providing control over your money without any third parties.

So, to me the main benefit of Bitcoin is not worrying if my government will decide to freeze my account and ask about the origin of my funds and if I have fully paid my taxes and so on.

But when they saw the problem with the transactions they want to develop it into a fast lightning network. Which will give us the convenience to use it on payments and rush hours. Right now is under development and it's not been recognized by the other payment system yet because right now there prefered to pay more transaction fees but as soon as they fixed some bugs, they will release its fully developed and fastest bitcoin payment method you could use.

[yhiaali3]

This is a really interesting and useful experience, despite all that is said about the delays and high fees in the Bitcoin network, but it remains better than the old financial system, especially when there are some special circumstances such as the Corona virus, the transmission is done quickly and without need for a third party, also the fees are considered low compared to the old traditional system.
For me, I tried to buy some games with bitcoin and it was really fun. There are still some problems, of course, but everyone should share their experiences with Bitcoin so as to encourage others to spread the culture of using Bitcoin around the world and overcome the existing problems.

[BIN-BIN]

In fact, I would choose USDT instead of Bitcoin to pay. The funds exchanges between my friends and I sometimes use wallets to transfer funds. USDT avoids price fluctuations and is more convenient than Bitcoin.

It depends on your location in my country the government has some restrictions on cryptocurrency so the only means of getting any cryptocurrency is through P2P means we don’t use exchange and since Bitcoin is the most popular cryptocurrency, it’s easier to get access to Bitcoin than USDT.

[o_e_l_e_o]

To me it seems that you've just added one more intermediary than getting rid of them

Maybe. Or maybe he was going to be depositing some money in his bank, sending it to a bitcoin exchange, and buying bitcoin with it anyway. Whether he does that with $100 or $10,000, it's still the same process, and so these extra steps are trivial for him. It also opens the possibility of people purchasing goods from him with bitcoin, and him sending that bitcoin directly to his supplier, meaning no intermediaries at all for him.

USDT avoids price fluctuations and is more convenient than Bitcoin.

And also more centralized and less secure.

[Ucy]

This is actually nice to read. But I wonder if you used a Bitcoin payment processor for this, or were they direct p2p payments? How do you handle disagreements with your peer? Or does it have an escrow or something? Sometimes I thought about trying this but always got discouraged due to disputes or disagreement issues that may arise between me and peer. So, I decided it's better to do such transaction on advanced smart-contract platform that works automatically, even though it may have human arbiters.

[SFR10]

Note we have an agreement on price changes because of volatility in Bitcoin price.

Out of curiosity, is it around 5 to 10% up and down? Usually, a markup is around 20 to 50% ^{[depending on the item]}, so even on a bad day minus the exchange fees ^{[around 5% if he/she converts it right away]}, your supplier would still profit from his/her sales. Did I get it right?

[dupee419]

Convenience, from the old hassle and discovering Bitcoin for an easier transaction and a hassle-free delivery, Bitcoin may be volatile but I think it's not really a problem, I guess the only problem is if the price heavily fluctuates, not much of a problem though, it may just cause inconvenience, try using USDT just like what the others have said, a much more convenient process compared to Bitcoin, but both currencies work anyways.

[pealr12]

Yeah in a way btc transaction is more effective than through the bank especially when you have to convert to another currency before buying, however you still need bank in a way for your transaction to complete, except you are able to buy btc directly from seller and pay cash, and I must say you are lucky to have an understanding and trusted seller's  that have are willing to cooperate with the new payment method, it is good to know btc can serve as a good alternative.

[mrongoz_imut]

bitcoin solves the intermediary problem, I think this might be the right answer, Bitcoin is a consensus network that allows new payment systems and fully digital money. Bitcoin is the first decentralized peer-to-peer payment network that is completely controlled by its users without any central authority or intermediary. From the user's point of view, Bitcoin is like cash in the internet world. Bitcoin can also be seen as the most prominent triple bookkeeping system in existence today.