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

[SpenserReed]

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. 

Interesting, that's a real cash advantage. I don't even know what crypto can do with that...

[worle1bm]

So you have not heard about lightning channels I think as there are many people making payments through it and it's instant while if we also say about fees it's not too much for an average transaction.The fees also don't depends on the amount but size of transactions and many average Joe's are paying with it don't know how you come up with this.

[PrivacyG]

but that does bring up a good point which is that bitcoin needs some type of cash equivalant (non-electronic pure physical) that you could just hand to someone as a means of payment without the transfer being recorded on the blockchain. that would then have no fees. unfortunately they don't invent that yet. probably never will. that's what gold is for in other words. bitcoin can't do that.

Look at Bitcoin as the Money of the Internet.

Now here is what I think about Bitcoin bank notes.

For now I think there is no way to safely transfer Bitcoin through 'bank notes' unless a central, trusted entity produces them and we trust their words, their work and the employees.  They can implement QR codes to verify balance and serial numbers, they can have scratch to reveal or peeling private keys in case you want to invalidate the bank note and take the balance off it but just because it requires a TRUSTED third party it immediately makes pretty much no sense to produce them.  That is because if you have no internet there is no way to validate the bank note's legitimacy anyway, and if you have internet then you do not need the bank notes in the first place.

On the other hand.  A positive note would be how easy you can remain private with the bank note, similar to cash.  But for me, the trade-offs are too large and against Bitcoin's core principles.  But since you say Gold is for barter, if Cash became inexistent or worthless right now how many average Joes do you think would have Gold in their house to buy food with?  Gold is not as popular as it used to be for the average person and the ones to benefit would be once again the rich, the billionaires, the one percent of the population.  When Cash becomes worthless, for the average population barter will more likely happen between goods and not between precious metal and goods.  During hard times like that people become hungry, but for food and not for Gold.  The only ones who will be hungry for precious metals are the ones who today decide our fate and freedom.

-
Regards,
PrivacyG

[o_e_l_e_o]

more than half is taken by the exchange as a withdrawal fee

That has nothing to do with bitcoin and everything to do with whatever exchange you are using blatantly ripping you off. You should stop using that exchange.

And if you go by some suggestions that say keep the majority of your btc in a cold wallet at home (since you can't carry your laptop or hardware device about) and only load your device with what you need, that's a tough thing to do, how would you know what you will need! there are unexpected situations that will occur and requires funds, what will you do! Run back home to reload?

I have never ran in to this situation despite spending bitcoin regularly in person for 5+ years. A few hundred bucks will cover almost everyone's daily spending money. If you are going out with a plan to buy something more expensive like a tablet or a laptop, then you can load up a bit more in advance. If you still want to carry more around with you, then do so with a hardware wallet. Simple.

@o_e_l_e_o and @PepeLapiu were more considering it for online cases but that's not how we should use it.

No, I was talking about in person shopping as well. My argument is that people accept credit card transactions all the time, which take exponentially longer to finalize than a bitcoin transaction (180 days versus 10 minutes), and are significantly easier to reverse during that time (a simple phone call versus trying to convince a miner to include a malicious double spend of a non-RBF transaction). Accepting a zero confirmation bitcoin transaction which is non-RBF and pays an appropriate fee for something low value like a coffee or some fast food is less risky than accepting a credit card transaction for a large purchase, and yet the latter is ubiquitous.

put the card in a contraption to "scrape" it to show through triplicate carbon copies.

Oh, I remember the CLU-CLUNK sound of those damn things very clearly. As an aside, this is why credit cards used to have raised numbers on them - so they would imprint on to the carbon paper.

[Pmalek]

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.

That's a feature of Bitcoin, not a bug or an oversight by satoshi. The goal is that you and you alone control what happens with your money. That also means being responsible of how to secure your keys and being careful who you transact with. 

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 future will be a cashless one, not one where everyone carries paper bills in their pockets. It already kind of is. Bank and card transactions also entail fees. If you ever worked with a client who sends you money from abroad, you would know.

Your bank charges you a fee for incoming international transactions, not to mention currency exchanges, and routing fees for intermediary banks (if applicable). Online banking? You pay for that too. As well as the SMS and email notifications you get about account balances and transactions made. Then there are monthly fees just for having a bank account and other fees the banks think of to take more money from you.

Credit card transactions aren't free. Ask the person and shop owner behind the register and they will tell you. Have you ever been asked if you are paying by cash or credit card when you shop? That's most probably because you will be charged a bit more if you pay with a card.

And what about the people that are unbanked? Depending on what sources you find, they claim that hundreds of millions of people (maybe even over a billion) are unbanked. Imagine what fees they have to pay to Western Union or similar services that hold a monopoly on that market!   

[mindrust]

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.

That's a known issue. Nobody's denying it. If the fees are too high for you then you should use LN, alts or simply your credit card. Personally I find it completely unnecessary to make payments via crypto. My credit cards work very fast and precise. Why would anybody even care to use a decentralized payment system in the first place? As a store of value, bitcoin works quite good however.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Why would anybody even care to use a decentralized payment system in the first place?

Privacy, censorship-resistance, fast transaction settlement, lower costs, irreversible transactions, half of which are written literally in the first page of the whitepaper. Please read the replies before making one.

The fees also don't depends on the amount but size of transactions and many average Joe's are paying with it don't know how you come up with this.

Not for Lightning, that you've mentioned. Lightning transactions' fees depend on the amount that is transacted, and other things such as how much routing, at which fee rate etc.

[larry_vw_1955]

You want money you can touch, but you already have that.

Who, me? I don't have money I can touch. It's all digital. Never see actual physical cash anymore. But I think bitcoin needs a physical form so I could just hand it to people and avoid the network.

Maybe at some point Bitcoin will be 'street money' you can use at your coffee shop. But I think we are getting ahead of ourselves here.

why are we getting ahead of ourselves? there are certainly challenges in creating a physical object that represents some fraction of a bitcoin but that doesn't mean they shouldnt try. it would have alot of use cases.

one day the us dollar may be valued at some fraction of a bitcoin rather than bitcoin being valued at some fraction of a dollar. when that happens, bitcoin would need to go into a physical form too.

[PepeLapiu]

why are we getting ahead of ourselves? there are certainly challenges in creating a physical object that represents some fraction of a bitcoin but that doesn't mean they shouldnt try. it would have alot of use cases.

What gives Bitcoin it's valuebis the blockchain. If you take it off the blockchain all you have is a worthless random bunch of code.
Who you gonna trust to back a physical coin with a Bitcoin? What are you going to do with the physical coin when you put the bitcoin back online?
And why do you think there would be a use case for a physical bitcoin? You plan on trading it on a dessert island with no internet?
If you want anonimity with your coin, use the Lightning network for total privacy.
There is a reason why the IRS is offering private contractors a ton of money to break the privacy features of Monero and LN.
Asking for a physical Bitcoin to use in the physical world is like asking for a Japanese Yen to be used in Congo.
We already have enough of those bitcoin derivatives, we don't need an other one to keep down the price of Bitcoin.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Who, me? I don't have money I can touch. It's all digital. Never see actual physical cash anymore. But I think bitcoin needs a physical form so I could just hand it to people and avoid the network.

I don't really follow your logic here. You've just admitted that you never use physical cash and do all your transactions electronically, but then you want physical bitcoin? Why?

why are we getting ahead of ourselves? there are certainly challenges in creating a physical object that represents some fraction of a bitcoin but that doesn't mean they shouldnt try. it would have alot of use cases.

It already exists in things like Casascius coins and OpenDimes. They fulfill a niche but they are not widely used because they are not widely needed.

one day the us dollar may be valued at some fraction of a bitcoin rather than bitcoin being valued at some fraction of a dollar. when that happens, bitcoin would need to go into a physical form too.

Why would it? If we reach the point that everyone thinks in bitcoin and uses bitcoin daily, then everyone is going to have an open Lightning channel or some other second layer solution for instant and feeless transactions.

[Oasisman]

~snip~

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.

[bakasabo]

Bitcoin fees is one of the things that can scare people, mostly in age, from using it or even trying to understand. If we look on Bitcoin only as a payment systems and compare it to our regular banking system, it will be hard to explain people and convince that Bitcoin is better, when you start to explain that number of transactions in pool increase transaction time and in some cases cost. I pay about 30 euro cents for every transaction (no matter when) through internet bank and it takes half a day for money to reach received. And I can pay from 1 cent to infinity for a transaction in Bitcoin and it could take minutes of weeks for money to reach receiver. This little difficulty will scare average joe from Bitcoin.

[larry_vw_1955]

I don't really follow your logic here. You've just admitted that you never use physical cash and do all your transactions electronically, but then you want physical bitcoin? Why?

Because no one wants cash. the us dollar continues to deflate why would you want to hold it in physical form. better to get rid of it. but if i could have bitcoin in physical form that would be different.

It already exists in things like Casascius coins and OpenDimes. They fulfill a niche but they are not widely used because they are not widely needed.

i have heard of those 2 things but as you yourself admit they are just novelty items that no one is going to trust for useage as physical cash. just because someone hand me a coin with some security sticker on it that supposedly means the private key never been looked at, well, i woudln't trust that at all. neither can i trust some electronic device that if it fails would cause me to lose the funds stored inside it since it can't be backed up. plus, why should i have to pay to be able to have my bitcoin in a physical form?

Why would it?

well if the us dollar failed and the government switched over to bitcoin then everything would be based on bitcoin. the government would be printing bitcoins then.

[o_e_l_e_o]

i have heard of those 2 things but as you yourself admit they are just novelty items that no one is going to trust for useage as physical cash. just because someone hand me a coin with some security sticker on it that supposedly means the private key never been looked at, well, i woudln't trust that at all. neither can i trust some electronic device that if it fails would cause me to lose the funds stored inside it since it can't be backed up.

So what is your proposal for physical bitcoin then? To be analogous to cash, in that I can just hand you some physical thing and now you possess those coins with zero risk that I can still access those coins, then you need a trustless way to pass private keys to another person, entirely offline. OpenDime is the closest we have to that at the moment, but you don't want to use an electronic device. Paper wallets don't work since I can just make a copy of the private keys before I hand it over. How are you going to make this work?

well if the us dollar failed and the government switched over to bitcoin then everything would be based on bitcoin.

Sorry, I should have been clearer here. I was referring to the second half of your statement and asking "Why would bitcoin need to go in to a physical form?" Everything is going digital, money included, and this is only going to accelerate over time. If I can pay for anything instantly and feelessly by just scanning a Lightning invoice QR code with my phone, then why would the average person want to carry physical bitcoin as well?

[franky1]

in regards to the topic of acceptable crypt currency and certain idiots ploys of advertising LN as the solution

if luna(and its pegged stable coin) has taught anyone anything..
the currency that has no PoW blockchain, that currency/network has no underlying value, as there is no cost in the creation of the units of measure.. only in the main blockchain currency thats being pegged has some store of value. and if its PoW it has more than other blockchains that are not PoW.
but if that peg is bad and breakable . the bridged/peg network without the blockchain has no value.

if luna has taught anyone anything..for emphasis
if the pegging mechanism is not strong or guaranteed then the currency unit on the pegged network is not strong/guaranteed
learn lessons from the Luna fiasco

LN suffers this same fate.
infact a worse fate due to the crappy ways it locks bitcoin to create its msat equivalent units of measure.
these contracts are not audited at all... LN has no consensus network to ensure every Msat is accounted for on the LN side. its why turbo allows for fractional reserving(setting up balance without confirmed utxo). its why channels can be set up with unbacked balance in LN.
be warned about this.

goodluck to all the LN fangirls thinking LN is the solution.. enjoy your network when everyone catches up to the realisations of the issues with LN

an 1000msat is not worth 1sat if you can create msat balance without a firmly validated and network wide audited peg that cant be broken where by its impossible to create msat without a confirmed utxo

and i wont even go into the other flaws of how channel partners can cheat the balance in their channel against each other

let luna and its stablecoin be a lesson to people about how to perceive the LN peg flaw of LN, especially in regards to features like 'turbo'(unconfirmed(unpegged) msat balance)

[BlackHatCoiner]

its why turbo allows for fractional reserving(setting up balance without confirmed utxo). its why channels can be set up with unbacked balance in LN.

Who has implemented, released and used turbo? Cut the crap. Nobody. You've just read it in a Github issue/proposal and believe that's the way things are. Channels in Lightning are backed by their corresponding on-chain transactions which were used to open them. People own the digital signature(s) to regain access to that money whenever they want.

I know you're such a drama queen, but please, for once, don't spread your misery.

and i wont even go into the other flaws of how channel partners can cheat the balance in their channel against each other

I challenge you to open a channel with me, and try to cheat me successfully.

[Oilacris]

~snip~

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.

Fee complaints is into those times where market condition or network situation Is on the condition on having high traffic which do results into high fees which make people do really make out some complaints but if we do look as of this moment then I don't see for having some high fees and we've been staying a while onto this one where cent valued fees doesn't hurt at all.

I do agree with that store of value on which the reason on why people do really mind off on not to spend because of that long term perspective which isn't something surprising.

[franky1]

its why turbo allows for fractional reserving(setting up balance without confirmed utxo). its why channels can be set up with unbacked balance in LN.

Who has implemented, released and used turbo? Cut the crap. Nobody. You've just read it in a Github issue/proposal and believe that's the way things are. Channels in Lightning are backed by their corresponding on-chain transactions which were used to open them. People own the digital signature(s) to regain access to that money whenever they want.

I know you're such a drama queen, but please, for once, don't spread your misery.

you can keep loving your altnet as much as you like.. just dont sell the utopian dream to others.

and you ask 'who has implemented and lets users use turbo'.. well YOU definitely know the company that made it.. and called it 'turbo' in the first place, so dont play dumb.

also bolts is not even a consensus!!.. i cannot throw a turbo channel off the network or make it a fork or do anything.
when 'building' the routing table (via gossip) NONE of the wallets check the network of channel ID's exist against the blockchain and reject channels that have no confirmed UTXO.

https://github.com/lightning/bolts/blob/master/02-peer-protocol.md#definition-of-channel_id

Note that as duplicate temporary_channel_ids may exist from different peers, APIs which reference channels by their channel id before the funding transaction is created are inherently unsafe. The only protocol-provided identifier for a channel before funding_created has been exchanged is the (source_node_id, destination_node_id, temporary_channel_id) tuple. Note that any such APIs which reference channels by their channel id before the funding transaction is confirmed are also not persistent

yep not only can nothing be done to prevent false ID's
all they have provided is a way to have a mix of sham id's from different users so that when combined they create a further sham Id thats is unique. but in all cases none of this means that nodes reject these channels

what you are not realising is because the 'turbo' feature exists in a wallet. (and you know this)
users that are channel linked in this way to the company may think the 'liability' is on the company side, as YOU think they created the channel and the only route is through the company so they have the debt exposure risk
EG

U
   \
     C -- L
   /
U
where by in YOUR MIND, when a User 'spends' value via C to L, YOU think C has to have real confirmed value with L for L to be able to close session with value derived from U. meaning if C has faked the U value. only C loses out when L closes session

but you forget some basic things
if L is too in a turbo. then his balance is not real either. he has no confirmed/locked UTXO to sign if he wanted to close session after msat amounts have changed.
so L may have handed the products/services/goods to U, but then cant close session the CL channel as there is no confirmed UTXO to sign. meaning L cant get paid for the U payment amounts

also because the wallet allows it, the U people may want to connect together within the wallet.
because the wallet allows it..
    U
  /   \
U    C - L
  \   /
   U
where by one of the U's might have done a turbo with another U without the other U knowing.

yep due to silly GUI design that hides the true validation/vetting of channels(well truthfully complete LACK of validation/auditing even at code level to reject channels with no funding lock). these users may not even know their msat is even backed by a locked utxo OR NOT.
all they see is that msats balance exists. even if a UTXO doesnt.. and they only find out when they try to broadcast and find out there is no confirmed utxo to sign for,
..

and again.. LN has no consensus.. each wallet does not need to follow strict rules or get thrown out the network. wallets can set their own rules if they want. there is no network wide ruleset all wallets are forced to abide by.. bolts are more like guidelines. not network audited rules
..
oh and by the way.
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.

however, you love LN so much. how about YOU use it and create your own channels with other nodes you own and try to steal from yourself. that way you can see the flaws, without actually physically losing (because your paying yourself back)
so go try finding the flaws to learn how to protect yourself rather than believing in trust and compassion of your peers being friendly.. because we all know LN fangirls are not friendly

bitcoin(yes the bitcoin network) has had 13 years of people trying to break it to see what it can handle and to ensure its safe.. unlike you that is too afraid to try and break LN(or probably more like you know its broke but dont want to admit it).
so i dare YOU. yes YOU, try and break your own favoured network, learn the flaws. as it seems you are too afraid to realise/admit LN has flaws.

stop living the utopian dream. and definitely stop trying to coax people to use LN with you just so you can steal from them because you are that much of a nefarious actor.

if the LN devs can admit the flaws.. so should you.
show some honesty, integrity and some actual insight into making people risk aware of certain things. stop trying to over sell the snake oil. you are not a good salesman. and a very poor PR guy
again the LN devs have lost value between themselves and admitted the flaws.. so stop pretending LN is utopia

people need to learn from terraUSD/Luna.. not be shuffled off into another altnet thats has poor pegs and fractional reserve option

[larry_vw_1955]

So what is your proposal for physical bitcoin then? To be analogous to cash, in that I can just hand you some physical thing and now you possess those coins with zero risk that I can still access those coins, then you need a trustless way to pass private keys to another person, entirely offline. OpenDime is the closest we have to that at the moment, but you don't want to use an electronic device. Paper wallets don't work since I can just make a copy of the private keys before I hand it over. How are you going to make this work?

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. But I don't see why it couldn't be done. It's just that no one has done it. The opendime never really needs to be opened up and used until someone holding it needs to pay for something electronically. So that might never be necessary. But if it is, then the opendime is destroyed because it can't be passed on anymore. Same idea with the physical bitcoin.

Sorry, I should have been clearer here. I was referring to the second half of your statement and asking "Why would bitcoin need to go in to a physical form?" Everything is going digital, money included, and this is only going to accelerate over time. If I can pay for anything instantly and feelessly by just scanning a Lightning invoice QR code with my phone, then why would the average person want to carry physical bitcoin as well?

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

[ajaxtempest]

in regards to the topic of acceptable crypt currency and certain idiots ploys of advertising LN as the solution

if luna(and its pegged stable coin) has taught anyone anything..
the currency that has no PoW blockchain, that currency/network has no underlying value, as there is no cost in the creation of the units of measure.. only in the main blockchain currency thats being pegged has some store of value. and if its PoW it has more than other blockchains that are not PoW.
but if that peg is bad and breakable . the bridged/peg network without the blockchain has no value.

if luna has taught anyone anything..for emphasis
if the pegging mechanism is not strong or guaranteed then the currency unit on the pegged network is not strong/guaranteed
learn lessons from the Luna fiasco

LN suffers this same fate.
infact a worse fate due to the crappy ways it locks bitcoin to create its msat equivalent units of measure.
these contracts are not audited at all... LN has no consensus network to ensure every Msat is accounted for on the LN side. its why turbo allows for fractional reserving(setting up balance without confirmed utxo). its why channels can be set up with unbacked balance in LN.
be warned about this.

goodluck to all the LN fangirls thinking LN is the solution.. enjoy your network when everyone catches up to the realisations of the issues with LN

an 1000msat is not worth 1sat if you can create msat balance without a firmly validated and network wide audited peg that cant be broken where by its impossible to create msat without a confirmed utxo

and i wont even go into the other flaws of how channel partners can cheat the balance in their channel against each other

let luna and its stablecoin be a lesson to people about how to perceive the LN peg flaw of LN, especially in regards to features like 'turbo'(unconfirmed(unpegged) msat balance)

Interesting reply. LN already suffers from privacy issue as ip addresses of the seller or receiver is known. But this comment above is like a stake. Blockchain size would have to be increased but this will lead to more space taking up.

I still say bitcoin would be used as a store of value or could replace US dollar for cross border transaction for only GOVTS being the BANCOR currency which keynes originally envisioned

Bitcoin is the bancor that is required. Your local currency will be used but for international govt trade it will be bitcoin imo.

bancor history
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qDGMzXiiIs