The average joe would never accept bitcoin as means of payment due to tx fees

[peter0425]

I believe that transaction fees and losing your wallet or getting hacked and not receiving any reimbursement is a serious archilies heel preventing mass adoption for bitcoin.

In many poor countries people use cash as means of payment and no extra fees is levied. If each and every single transaction is levied fees, then people wont spend as much as they spend with cash. I mean if you even transfer from one wallet to another you are leived fees. 

The so called lightning network defense is not prudent as in lightning network the sellers ids is being broadcasted to everyone.

bitcoin will only be like gold aka store of value.

if you are truly a User of bitcoin and not just posting here about what you heard or read then  you misunderstood Bitcoin then .

because nowadays that the Fee is so much cheaper compared to what is last year and now getting lower as Segwit and Bench are there , also Lightning Network? it is indeed tend for small transaction with faster and cheaper fees.

[ajaxtempest]

I believe that transaction fees and losing your wallet or getting hacked and not receiving any reimbursement is a serious archilies heel preventing mass adoption for bitcoin.

In many poor countries people use cash as means of payment and no extra fees is levied. If each and every single transaction is levied fees, then people wont spend as much as they spend with cash. I mean if you even transfer from one wallet to another you are leived fees. 

The so called lightning network defense is not prudent as in lightning network the sellers ids is being broadcasted to everyone.

bitcoin will only be like gold aka store of value.

if you are truly a User of bitcoin and not just posting here about what you heard or read then  you misunderstood Bitcoin then .

because nowadays that the Fee is so much cheaper compared to what is last year and now getting lower as Segwit and Bench are there , also Lightning Network? it is indeed tend for small transaction with faster and cheaper fees.

Would you pay tx fees every time you purchase groceries, movie tickets, paying traffic fines?

I dont think avg joe would be comfortable with it.

[GeorgeJohn]

You keep your fiat money in your "wallet". There is a chance you can get robbed on the street or lose your wallet. Does that mean you will stop using your fiat money? You have to keep your wallet safe. The same way, you have to protect your crypto wallet. If you follow the basic security steps and don't be stupid, no once can hack your wallet. If you store your crypto wallet properly and back up all the required things, you won't lose your wallet.

No place of saving funds is better, you encouraged not to keep funds in the banking fiat, as a bitcoiner it's quite right, but from my perspective you have to comprehensively understand that even in your wallet you can lost your coins through hackers. Or through who monitors your method of securing your seed phrase to import your wallet. So no place is hundred percent sure of defence or security conscious. You can get rubbed everywhere, but what we need is carefulness and documentation

[BlackHatCoiner]

where by one of the U's might have done a turbo with another U without the other U knowing.

Yes, that sounds right. You only know the confirmation of the transactions you're sharing with other partners. You can't know if 2 partners across the network, who'll route your Lightning transactions, have setup a turbo channel, one of which might rip the other off by double-spending.

But, why is this a bad thing? Shouldn't I only be aware of my partners' intentions? What two individuals do isn't my concern; I don't lose any funds if one of the two cheat the other. Whether they route my transactions or not.

i know people can steal value. so why would i put value into a channel with you.. i know 100% you would steal it.. yes you would, dont deny it. i know your game already. but thanks for the offer. but ill reject your offer to have my value lost to you.

Any idea of penalty transaction?

Interesting reply. LN already suffers from privacy issue as ip addresses of the seller or receiver is known.

If you don't want to reveal your IP, use an onion service. Most Lightning nodes I've seen use Tor.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Well a physical bitcoin would be a sophistocated manufacturing process so that it couldn't be counterfeited very easily. Think of having the characteristics of the opendime but in a purely physical device.

And how do you do that without trust or destroying the physical item in question? If you put a raw private key on to the device, then you have to trust the manufacturer. Even if you use an encrypted key or some kind of split key, then it means you have to hand over a piece of data in addition to the coin which introduces a huge risk of loss, and still doesn't remove the need for you to trust the manufacturer and the other person aren't working together, or that the other person has tampered with the device and knows the full private key.

more people would use bitcoin if it had a physical form too.

Maybe they would, but only if they were secure and reusable. And no one has come up with a solution to that problem yet as far as I know.

[jaberwock]

I believe that transaction fees and losing your wallet or getting hacked and not receiving any reimbursement is a serious archilies heel preventing mass adoption for bitcoin.

In many poor countries people use cash as means of payment and no extra fees is levied. If each and every single transaction is levied fees, then people wont spend as much as they spend with cash. I mean if you even transfer from one wallet to another you are leived fees. 

The so called lightning network defense is not prudent as in lightning network the sellers ids is being broadcasted to everyone.

bitcoin will only be like gold aka store of value.

Why not? They will only accept it and they aren't the ones that will use it. It was the other person that will pay the fees and not the receiver unless maybe if the receiver uses different kinds of wallets where he will then transfer the btc's that he obtained from his other wallet, well if that's the case then he will still be paying some fees but he can always use some third party sites to convert his btc to other cheaper and more lighter coin. That should save him some fees. Losing your wallet or getting hacked is a different thing anymore. That was not the fault of btc but it was the fault of the user if ever those horrible things happen to him.

[franky1]

where by one of the U's might have done a turbo with another U without the other U knowing.

Yes, that sounds right. You only know the confirmation of the transactions you're sharing with other partners. You can't know if 2 partners across the network, who'll route your Lightning transactions, have setup a turbo channel, one of which might rip the other off by double-spending.

But, why is this a bad thing? Shouldn't I only be aware of my partners' intentions? What two individuals do isn't my concern; I don't lose any funds if one of the two cheat the other. Whether they route my transactions or not.

there lays your deceptive mindset
you dont want others knowing your value so that you are not caught cheating your partner.
but here is the thing, majority of people do care that currency is accountable and unable to be double spent
although the nodes do broadcast TXID to announce channel. thus your privacy deception is defeated in the gossip stuff. there is no consensus code that all LN wallets have to abide by, that drops a channel from its routing table and refuses to treat them as a possible route/destination if the same txid is used in another channel.. thus a nafarious person can use the same 'lock' with multiple partners.. AKA FRACTIONAL RESERVE

i know people can steal value. so why would i put value into a channel with you.. i know 100% you would steal it.. yes you would, dont deny it. i know your game already. but thanks for the offer. but ill reject your offer to have my value lost to you.

Any idea of penalty transaction?

dont make me laugh.
those silly 'penalties' are broke. heck the LN devs are now trying to invent middlemen watch towers  so that you can pay a middleman to watch for broadcasts, because people have abused the current/old penalty scheme that required both parties to never sleep never be away from computer screen to hope to spot a broadcast.
there are other flaws in penalties too. so go research that.. and not from your fangirl friends but from the actual devs.
part of it is that channel partners cant broadcast to a network, they both have to agree and send through a middleman where the middleman does the broadcast to avoid individual broadcasts
(amungst many other things)

there are possible ways to achieve an effective way to deter cheating. but i am not going to help you altcoiners out.. if you lot cant figure it out, then let your network continue to fail

Interesting reply. LN already suffers from privacy issue as ip addresses of the seller or receiver is known.

If you don't want to reveal your IP, use an onion service. Most Lightning nodes I've seen use Tor.

goodluck with that in the very near future.
ALL 'routing' (aka currency transfer as a service for commission(MSB(money service business)) will require LN nodes to register as a MSB. just wait for the 'honeypot' traps agents set up to entrap certain nodes, while also refusing to partner with other nodes as they will be treated as unregistered services and avoided.
yep. goodluck setting up a channel with an exchange if your hiding behind proxies/tor and other things. and goodluck not getting caught if you try to offer DEX for fiat, because via the fiat side they will find you as the person doing wire transfers and having a tor node offering a financial service(msat routing).
and goodluck if your just a CEX customer wanting to convert your fiat in a CEX into LN msat in a tor hidden channel. the CEX will refuse to pay that tor channel
thus everyone would end up having to go public if they want to interact and receive funds from or to a service
where by trying to pretend to hide your location will work against you when trying to serve legitimate users. or get served by legitimate businesses

meanwhile bitcoin (yes the bitcoin network) can pay anyone and all they need is a bitcoin address.. no pre-planning how to stake funds across several channels to fund best chance of route. no need to pre-plan future spending to have to lock certain amounts. no need to negotiate or rely on the trust of partners to authorise payments or rely on legitimacy of oute options(or lack of). bit coin allows people to just pay anyone.
(and dont get me started on the limitation of how many people can connect to each other with the limits of the 20 hop and the under 500 possible promises issues.

LN is more flawed in many ways. its not a solution.

[BlackHatCoiner]

although the nodes do broadcast TXID to announce channel. thus your privacy deception is defeated in the gossip stuff.

Not the privacy of my micro-transactions that are onion-routed.

that drops a channel from its routing table and refuses to treat them as a possible route/destination if the same txid is used in another channel.. thus a nafarious person can use the same 'lock' with multiple partners.. AKA FRACTIONAL RESERVE

Could you explain me how's that possible? Can't you check that a Lightning nodes use a duplicate channel?

there are other flaws in penalties too. so go research that.. and not from your fangirl friends but from the actual devs.

I know there are flaws, but I don't consider this one. I'm normally running my own full node 24/7/365, checking the mempool in case someone cheats me.

but i am not going to help you altcoiners out..

Am I an altcoiner now?

ALL 'routing' (aka currency transfer as a service for commission(MSB(money service business)) will require LN nodes to register as a MSB. just wait for the 'honeypot' traps agents set up to entrap certain nodes, while also refusing to partner with other nodes as they will be treated as unregistered services and avoided.
yep. goodluck setting up a channel with an exchange if your hiding behind proxies/tor and other things. and goodluck not getting caught if you try to offer DEX for fiat, because via the fiat side they will find you as the person doing wire transfers and having a tor node offering a financial service(msat routing). [...]

I never said you can hide with it. I just said that it hides your IP address.

[franky1]

that drops a channel from its routing table and refuses to treat them as a possible route/destination if the same txid is used in another channel.. thus a nafarious person can use the same 'lock' with multiple partners.. AKA FRACTIONAL RESERVE

Could you explain me how's that possible? Can't you check that a Lightning nodes use a duplicate channel?

again there is no network wide consensus to enforce this check!!!!
thus guess what. people can make fake balance channels or many channels with the same utxo

also its not just about checking 1 node for its many channels.. to see if it has the same UTXO because a HUMAN can decide to 'sybil' many nodes and have them atleast 20 hops away from another node it owns. (outside the distance allowed in routing gossip) that way the partner(victim) again wont be checking the full network (yep another flaw) to even see the 'promised' utxo is not used elsewhere
there are many many many ways to cheat LN, and many flaws in LN that prevent those cheats being dealt with

again. its time you stop listening to your LN fangirl friends PR scripts. and start actually using LN as if you are critical bug finding/fixing and looking for flaws to fix, or speaking with devs about the actual issues you and your buddies should be aware of

you have spent too much time only learning the utopian fantasy stuff of positive PR spin of snake oil sales.
so now go spend some time learning about the risks and issues. if not for making others risk aware, but for your own regards to your own safety of joining partners that might secretly want to steal from you while they kiss your ass to sucker you into locking more value with them.

now go do some research

anyway folks. sorry for the interuption by the certain LN fangirl that plays dumb when they do know the available flaws he describes as features.. and earns the title of idiot by wanting to play the part of an idiot to avoid admitting he knows of the flaws.

i do occassionally act like he doesnt know the flaws(although this conversation with him is not the first). but thats more for the sake of other readers that might think he really is an idiot that doesnt know. so i pretend that im teaching him something new

but back to the topic.
LN is not the solution to the fee problem.
people in, for instance africa (min wage 20cent/hour) are not going to pre plan 6 months of spending. and then make 5 channels where they split up 6 months worth of spending into those channels for a weak hope of being able to make a possible future payments on a network that allows fractional reserving and balance stealing. where 6 months of spending is at risk, just for the hope of cheaper fee's
.. because the cost of setting up 5 channels to have a modecome of chance of reliable routes. is going to cost alot more in set up fee's than it costs for a few hours of real life wage..
EG if paypal said their fee's are 1cent to do paypal user to paypal user but it comes with a US $30(3x min wage) set up fee every 6 months. would you use it. . especially if your not even sure if all the people you desire to pay in the next few months are even paypal users
..or would you see what other payment methods have to offer.

they wont wont to have to keep having to open and close these channels(accounts) every one/two months either if they cant afford to lock up enough for lengthy 6-12 month spending plan timescale either, as the onchain fee's would ruin any net positive they can gain on any altnet.

the actual solution is to make bitcoin fee's cheaper and make bitcoin more accessible,
otherwise africans would prefer to use altcoins like LTC for the 'blockchain reserve' with cheap onchain fee's and then have LTC as the gateway blockchain to bridge to altnets. avoiding btc completely

..
eg ever noticed how although ethereums blockchain is bigger than bitcoin. no one is crying about the blocksize/blockchain length.. and yet ethereum is becoming more popular as a gateway blockchain to many altnets(NFT and such)

yep. FUD propaganda of "bitcoin shouldnt grow its blockchain size coz its 1990's dial up and computers cant handle it" is a dead argument.we are in 2022.. fibre and 5g exist.

ethereum has proven people dont care about stifling the blocksize.
ethereum is half the age but double the size and no one is crying that ethereum breaks their computer
the only reason certain people want bitcoin blockchain size halted and fee's to be made high is so they can advertise their crap-nets as solutions. again idiots. all they care about is profiting from off-ramping people into their risky and flawed altnets. its done out of greed

[TheGreatPython]

I guess average joes doesn't want to accept Bitcoin not because of the tx fees, but because they don't understand how to minimize Bitcoin tx fees as they might think it would be too complicated than using credit and debit cards which also has tx fee too.

Bitcoin is already a currency and at the same time a store of value.

The fact that bitcoin is volatile could be another big reason. Sure they could switch it as quickly as possible, and they could just let the buyer pay the fee and they could collect it as high as possible before they cash out and that would drop the tx fee issue and all of that. But at the same time, we are not going to be really worried about the situation because it is going to be volatile so that's the biggest trouble hence tx fee wouldn't be a big deal.

I personally would prefer if I could accept something like USDT or BUSD, which I dislike those but as a business I can't handle bitcoin in that situation. However, since I am just a freelancer and not a shop, I can accept bitcoin easily.

[o_e_l_e_o]

The fact that bitcoin is volatile could be another big reason.

So then the merchant can set up a process by which any bitcoin they receive is immediately converted to their fiat of choice. Or maybe a certain percentage is kept as bitcoin and a certain percentage is converted to fiat. Either way, the volatility can become a non-issue if the merchant desires.

I personally would prefer if I could accept something like USDT or BUSD

Centralized coins built on centralized fiat. All the risk of the altcoin scamming you or going bust (just look at Luna) along with all the downsides of rapidly inflationary fiat.

[larry_vw_1955]

Centralized coins built on centralized fiat. All the risk of the altcoin scamming you or going bust (just look at Luna) along with all the downsides of rapidly inflationary fiat.

Luna wasn't collateralized.  For every token there needs to be $1 in a bank account that they can prove.  That's the point of things like BUSD and USDC, etc. Tether is a little bit of a grey area but dyor and use what you think is best. or don't use ... as they say rapid inflationary fiat is better than no fiat at all just ask luna investors.

[Ale88]

In many poor countries people use cash as means of payment and no extra fees is levied. If each and every single transaction is levied fees, then people wont spend as much as they spend with cash. I mean if you even transfer from one wallet to another you are leived fees.

And in the rich countries now pretty much everyone uses credit cards to pays, and the commissions that the businesses pay to companies that process the transactions are way more expensive than bitcoin's fees right now since the get a fixed amount + a % of each transaction. Square for example takes $.10 + 2.6% per each transaction, I just sent a little payment in BTC and I paid a few cents, so less that the fix amount that a business would pay to Square, without considering the % of course.

[yazher]

Transaction fees don't matter when you have local exchanges in your country because they won't charge you any transaction fees as long as you are sending and receiving from the same local exchanges like ours. The good thing about it is you can also implement it in your stores and services because of these convenient features and some accept it as bus fare to promote the payment of bitcoins. There are lots of things to make it convenient just don't use the usual wallet you have because it would delay and probably you will gonna be stuck in the line which is really annoying.

[o_e_l_e_o]

as they say rapid inflationary fiat is better than no fiat at all just ask luna investors.

Sure, but rapidly inflationary fiat is also better than a shady, centralized, inadequately-collaterized altcoin based upon that rapidly inflationary fiat. Although I'd obviously prefer bitcoin, I'd much rather have plain old fiat over one of these fiat based altcoins every day of the week.

We know is Tether is fractional reserve. I haven't spent any time looking in to other centralized "stable" coins, but I doubt very much it is possible for you to independently verify that they are holding in reserve what they claim to be holding in reserve, not to mention these coins be seized out of your own wallets: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5204055.0

[larry_vw_1955]

Although I'd obviously prefer bitcoin, I'd much rather have plain old fiat over one of these fiat based altcoins every day of the week.

Me too but there are disadvantages to not using stablecoins for example you can't earn interest. Not sure if these places are sustainable but many of them paying 10% apr for holding something like usdc. Where can you get that with fiat with no risk?

We know is Tether is fractional reserve. I haven't spent any time looking in to other centralized "stable" coins, but I doubt very much it is possible for you to independently verify that they are holding in reserve what they claim to be holding in reserve, not to mention these coins be seized out of your own wallets: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5204055.0

USDC is fully backed by cash and short-dated U.S. government obligations, so that it is always redeemable 1:1 for U.S. dollars. Each month, we publish attestation reports by Grant Thornton regarding the reserve balances backing USDC. You can read that on their website.

If tether really is a fractional reserve then they can just get bitcoin for free. Mint tether, buy bitcoin, rinse and repeat.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Not sure if these places are sustainable but many of them paying 10% apr for holding something like usdc. Where can you get that with fiat with no risk?

But the 10% comes with a massive risk, far greater than the risk you take by holding fiat. When you hold a stablecoin, you assume all the risk of holding a centralized coin which can be seized out of your own wallet and could scam you, be hacked, or collapse at any time (as Luna just did), on top of all the risks of holding a rapidly inflationary fiat. If you think losing everything is worth 10% interest then go ahead, but the number of people who have lost everything by "investing" in similar altcoin scams is uncountable.

If tether really is a fractional reserve then they can just get bitcoin for free. Mint tether, buy bitcoin, rinse and repeat.

Correct. This is exactly what they do. Here are some relevant posts of mine examining the Tether fraud:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5129382.msg51051918#msg51051918
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5322147.msg56656992#msg56656992
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5279466.msg55352002#msg55352002

[larry_vw_1955]

But the 10% comes with a massive risk, far greater than the risk you take by holding fiat.

If you just withdraw interest earnings then it takes around 9 years to reach break even, just to get your money back. Everything after that is profit. So what you really doing is assuming nothing bad happens is you are betting that they will keep paying interest for 9 years. At least that long. If they don't pay for at least 9 years then you lost. That's how I look at it anyway.

When you hold a stablecoin, you assume all the risk of holding a centralized coin which can be seized out of your own wallet and could scam you, be hacked, or collapse at any time (as Luna just did), on top of all the risks of holding a rapidly inflationary fiat. If you think losing everything is worth 10% interest then go ahead, but the number of people who have lost everything by "investing" in similar altcoin scams is uncountable.

Well, I am not aware of any large scale seizure of usdc or gusd. neither had i heard of any largescale hack of them. how is usdc or gusd going to collapse if they are backed 1:1 with us dollar? you can lose everything by investing fiat into a scam. investing usdc or gusd into a scam is no different but usdc and gusd are about as solid as it gets when it comes to stablecoins. as far as i know. the main risk is going to be the company you give your stablecoin to. if they can't keep paying then that would be a problem. company's aren't like the government, they can't just print more money to pay their obligations.

If tether really is a fractional reserve then they can just get bitcoin for free. Mint tether, buy bitcoin, rinse and repeat.

Correct. This is exactly what they do. Here are some relevant posts of mine examining the Tether fraud:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5129382.msg51051918#msg51051918
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5322147.msg56656992#msg56656992
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5279466.msg55352002#msg55352002

so if they are minting tether out of thin air to buy bitcoin then they are just getting bitcoin for free. but someone has to pay the price. i wonder who that is.

[o_e_l_e_o]

So what you really doing is assuming nothing bad happens is you are betting that they will keep paying interest for 9 years.

That's a huge assumption to make, when you look at just how frequently altcoins come and go.

Well, I am not aware of any large scale seizure of usdc or gusd. neither had i heard of any largescale hack of them.

You can find such incidents with a simple web search, but even so, the fact remains that these coins are centralized and they can be frozen at any time. Justifying it by saying "Well, it hasn't happened yet" is the same as saying that it's safe to drive without a seat belt because I've done that before and I'm still alive. By using such coins, you do not have control over your money.

how is usdc or gusd going to collapse if they are backed 1:1 with us dollar?

Can you prove that?

but someone has to pay the price. i wonder who that is.

Users like yourself who end up holding bags of a worthless stablecoin when it collapses to zero.

To get back on topic, these are the reasons I would never accept such coins, regardless of the fees. If you can't pay me in Bitcoin (or Monero), then I'd much rather just have plain old fiat than a centralized fractional reserve scam built on top of fiat.

[sklopan]

It should be understood that the issue of taxes now is quite difficult and you need to be prepared for different options for solving problems.