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

[o_e_l_e_o]

On-chain transactions cannot scale nor can it be faster than traditional payment methods.

I disagree with this. On chain transactions are exponentially faster than every traditional payment method other than handing physical cash to a merchant. See this post of mine:

The problem here is that people compare a credit card transaction being broadcast to a bitcoin transaction being confirmed, and then say bitcoin is too slow to use in person.

When I pay with a credit card:

• The merchant sees the transaction immediately
• The merchant receives the money in 3-5 business days
• The transaction can be reversed for 180 days

When I pay with bitcoin:

• The merchant sees the transaction immediately
• The merchant receives the money in 10 minutes
• The transaction can be reversed for 10 minutes

The two lines I have bolded are what people compare. Credit card transactions are hugely risky for the merchant. They don't receive any money for days, and the transaction be reversed for months. It is also almost trivial to reverse a credit card transaction. I can phone my card provider any time in the next 6 months and say my card was lost, stolen, skimmed, phished, whatever, and for a value of $200-300 most will reverse it without question. Compare this with how difficult and costly it is to reverse a non-RBF bitcoin transaction, which must be done within a time frame of only 10 minutes on average.

And yet, almost every merchant accepts credit card transactions and experiences minimal fraud.

So yes we shouldn’t use it as a local means of payment.

If you don't want to use it as payment, fine, but blanket statements like "we shouldn't use it as payment" are stupid. I use bitcoin as a payment method for something or other near enough every day. I have never paid a fee of more than a few cents, and sometimes I even get a discount for paying in bitcoin since the merchant doesn't have to eat a 3% credit card fee.

Just like most people who use email don't even know what a POP server eats during mating season.

What protection should I use during mating season to stop my emails getting viruses?

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[ranochigo]

I disagree with this. On chain transactions are exponentially faster than every traditional payment method other than handing physical cash to a merchant. See this post of mine:

The problem here is that people compare a credit card transaction being broadcast to a bitcoin transaction being confirmed, and then say bitcoin is too slow to use in person.

When I pay with a credit card:

• The merchant sees the transaction immediately
• The merchant receives the money in 3-5 business days
• The transaction can be reversed for 180 days

When I pay with bitcoin:

• The merchant sees the transaction immediately
• The merchant receives the money in 10 minutes
• The transaction can be reversed for 10 minutes

The two lines I have bolded are what people compare. Credit card transactions are hugely risky for the merchant. They don't receive any money for days, and the transaction be reversed for months. It is also almost trivial to reverse a credit card transaction. I can phone my card provider any time in the next 6 months and say my card was lost, stolen, skimmed, phished, whatever, and for a value of $200-300 most will reverse it without question. Compare this with how difficult and costly it is to reverse a non-RBF bitcoin transaction, which must be done within a time frame of only 10 minutes on average.

And yet, almost every merchant accepts credit card transactions and experiences minimal fraud.

As a consumer, I cannot afford to wait for 10 minutes, or potentially longer. It just seems absurd to have to wait 10 minutes (or sometimes more) for a cup of coffee for my morning commute. That is assuming there isn't any network congestion that would result in a far longer wait.

The reality is, the whole payment process was never designed for the merchants to get their money as fast as possible. It has always been to get the cup of coffee from the barista to the consumer as fast as possible. Agreed on the point about the reversibility but in reality, the risk is something that any merchant would be able to stomach without much difficulty. At least for where I live, each of the claims are to be filed with a police report where investigations would reveal either the person that is paying for the transaction is in fact the owner of the card. Not to mention that fraud is highly illegal and having something that ties the identity to you makes this a difficult task to justify for the profit.

The argument on reversibility would only be valid, if you assume that consumers won't be turned off by any delay during the payment process, which could very well result in consumers either opting for other payment methods or other stores entirely.


Non-RBF transactions are not ideal for users, or you'll end up waiting hours for a cup of coffee. The problem with this is that it is so trivial to RBF a transaction that can be RBF'ed and there is no concrete proof that the customer did it; your local police probably wouldn't care about some signed raw transaction.

[Silberman]

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.

We will have to wait and see if your prediction is in fact right, some have indeed speculated that bitcoin will become simply too valuable to be used in everyday transactions and it will become like gold, and they may have a point, during the gold and silver era in which they dominated the world economy it was silver the one that saw the most use during your everyday transactions, so it would be interesting to see if a similar pattern emerges here and another coin becomes the silver of this market.

[o_e_l_e_o]

As a consumer, I cannot afford to wait for 10 minutes, or potentially longer.

That's the point I'm making - you don't need to. Nobody waits 180 days for their credit card transaction to become irreversible, and yet everyone accepts credit cards. So you don't need to wait 10 minutes for your bitcoin transaction to be irreversible, especially when reversing a non-RBF bitcoin transaction with an appropriate fee is exponentially harder than reversing a credit card transaction. And if we still don't want to accept that, then we can just use Lightning.

There are already plenty of payment processors and places online which will accept zero confirmation transactions which are non-RBF and pay an appropriate fee. There is absolutely no reason a coffee shop couldn't do the same for transactions in the region of $5-10 and experience minimal, if any, fraud.

[ranochigo]

That's the point I'm making - you don't need to. Nobody waits 180 days for their credit card transaction to become irreversible, and yet everyone accepts credit cards. So you don't need to wait 10 minutes for your bitcoin transaction to be irreversible, especially when reversing a non-RBF bitcoin transaction with an appropriate fee is exponentially harder than reversing a credit card transaction. And if we still don't want to accept that, then we can just use Lightning.

There are already plenty of payment processors and places online which will accept zero confirmation transactions which are non-RBF and pay an appropriate fee. There is absolutely no reason a coffee shop couldn't do the same for transactions in the region of $5-10 and experience minimal, if any, fraud.

I've addressed the scalability of Bitcoin as a network and with the use of lightning, I don't think you can possibly support mass adoption with lightning without having to increase on-chain capacity eventually but that becomes a slippery slope. It is a topic for another day.

But the point is that transactions cannot be non-RBF. If you have a non-RBF transaction, then what happens to the customer when the transaction gets stuck (over a sudden surge of fees)? I've paid more than sufficient fees (est. conf within 2 blocks) more than once, and had to deal with a sudden surge of transactions on the network and ended up having to wait hours. The point with chargebacks is that there is always an intermediary investigating for the legitimacy of such claims and more often than not, the banks would side with the merchants. I'm speaking from my own experience, but perhaps the place where you are at might have different policies.

Depending on where you live, having double spends on Bitcoin might not necessarily be considered a crime worth investigating.

[PepeLapiu]

As a consumer, I cannot afford to wait for 10 minutes, or potentially longer. It just seems absurd to have to wait 10 minutes (or sometimes more) for a cup of coffee for my morning commute. That is assuming there isn't any network congestion that would result in a far longer wait.

The reality is, the whole payment process was never designed for the merchants to get their money as fast as possible. It has always been to get the cup of coffee from the barista to the consumer as fast as possible. Agreed on the point about the reversibility but in reality, the risk is something that any merchant would be able to stomach without much difficulty. At least for where I live, each of the claims are to be filed with a police report where investigations would reveal either the person that is paying for the transaction is in fact the owner of the card. Not to mention that fraud is highly illegal and having something that ties the identity to you makes this a difficult task to justify for the profit.

The argument on reversibility would only be valid, if you assume that consumers won't be turned off by any delay during the payment process, which could very well result in consumers either opting for other payment methods or other stores entirely.


Non-RBF transactions are not ideal for users, or you'll end up waiting hours for a cup of coffee. The problem with this is that it is so trivial to RBF a transaction that can be RBF'ed and there is no concrete proof that the customer did it; your local police probably wouldn't care about some signed raw transaction.

You sound like a credit card naysayers from 45 years ago.
If I told you in the future credit cards will be used to buy coffee, you would have called me insane. Who's going to show an ID to buy a cup of coffee, sign a triplicate carbon copy of the transaction, and get charged 10% on all transactions? You?

First you would do well to think of the internet as it's own sovereign country. While every other country has it's own central bank and currency, now the internet has it's own central bank and currency.

You tell me my internet currency is not well suited to buy a cup of coffee in your country? Well, your country fiat is not well suited to buy a cup of coffee in my country either.

When you are in your own country, if you have a stable currency, use that. And use my country's currency when you are in mine. And soon you will be able to use Bitcoin in it's native country too: the internet.

And in you still insist on using a foreign currency (BTC) in your country to buy a cup of coffee, don't be an ass and use LN. No waiting 10 minutes, no paying $1 of miner fee.

[ranochigo]

You sound like a credit card naysayers from 45 years ago.
If I told you in the future credit cards will be used to buy coffee, you would have called me insane. Who's going to show an ID to buy a cup of coffee, sign a triplicate carbon copy of the transaction, and get charged 10% on all transactions? You?

Precisely why PayWave and contactless payment are growing so rapidly. Because you no longer have to do anything like that. Do stores really add on any percentage to your transaction when you pay by card vs cash? My experience is that it has always been factored-in the item price and it doesn't make a difference whatever payment method you use.

First you would do well to think of the internet as it's own sovereign country. While every other country has it's own central bank and currency, now the internet has it's own central bank and currency.

You tell me my internet currency is not well suited to buy a cup of coffee in your country? Well, your country fiat is not well suited to buy a cup of coffee in my country either.

When you are in your own country, if you have a stable currency, use that. And use my country's currency when you are in mine. And soon you will be able to use Bitcoin in it's native country too: the internet.

And in you still insist on using a foreign currency (BTC) in your country to buy a cup of coffee, don't be an ass and use LN. No waiting 10 minutes, no paying $1 of miner fee.

You're missing the whole point of my argument. I'm not saying you cannot use Bitcoin to pay for your coffee. Duh, you can. I've been using Bitcoin to transfer funds, pay for my servers for the past 10 years. I've never disputed this.

The whole thread is about Bitcoin in a specific use case, when compared against other payment methods. If you like to use it, please do, by all means. All I'm providing is an alternative point of view, or criticisms of what Bitcoin has to improve on. Ditto on the LN part, I've addressed it in my other post.

[Fivestar4everMVP]

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.

Even though bitcoin transactions fees currently have dropped significantly compared to what they used to be, I still agree with you, and this is because I used myself and my experience as a yardstick or something to base my argument on.
I remember a time I stopped buying and holding bitcoins because I didn't have plenty money majorly because when I buy bitcoins and withdraw it to my private wallet, more than half is taken by the exchange as a withdrawal fee, and when I wanna send out the coins, I spend almost half again on transaction fees, I practically stopped buying bitcoin because of that, though things have changed a bit now cus transactions fees have become quite low, but I still feel it's not low enough for the average business men and women to want to accept it as a means of exchange.

[Anonylz]

Speaking from the average Joe's perspective, I would say No btc won't be used by them to transact. Let's keep the transaction fees aside and look at the security aspect, the probability of an average Joe getting hacked and losing funds is very high.
Everyone needs a device and working Internet to transact with btc, lots of average Joe's don't know how to be security conscious, people use their smartphones to visit all kinds of sites and download anything they find interesting which is a major limitation.

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?
The truth is it is not as simple as some btc enthusiasts want it to be, there are lots of processes and procedures which will definitely prevent an average Joe not to use btc for everyday transaction.

[GeorgeJohn]

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. 

I think this wrong concept, from my view because it seems that in any transaction or fiat currency kind of payment their is atoms of transaction levied performed, if you pay through your debit card for the countries that uses debit card, their a charge of each transaction, and if your country is using credit card, same thing is applicable. Don't think that it's only bitcoin or cryptocurrency that charge for fees if you make payment through cryptocurrency. Banks charge when you withdraw money from fiat ATM machine, so its the same charge as same of any cryptocurrency levied. Flashback you will comprehend my scenario.

[PepeLapiu]

Speaking from the average Joe's perspective, I would say No btc won't be used by them to transact. Let's keep the transaction fees aside and look at the security aspect, the probability of an average Joe getting hacked and losing funds is very high.
Everyone needs a device and working Internet to transact with btc, lots of average Joe's don't know how to be security conscious, people use their smartphones to visit all kinds of sites and download anything they find interesting which is a major limitation.

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?
The truth is it is not as simple as some btc enthusiasts want it to be, there are lots of processes and procedures which will definitely prevent an average Joe not to use btc for everyday transaction.

I'm not aware of a single person who had his coin stolen out of his hot wallet. I'm sure it has happened, but not something frequent.
With my hot wallet, you will have to steal my phone, crack the phone unlock, crack the wallet password, and take the coin from there.
If you can do all that, you deserve to have my bitcoin 'fortune'.

Let's be realistic here. Hacking individual wallets is too much work for not enough rewards. They don't hack individual wallets, they hack exchanges.

Your coin is far more safe in your hot wallet than it would ever be in any bank vault.

[Oilacris]

You do really got the point but in return with the fees you do pay is on having;

1. Anonymity
2. Decentralized

which is something that you cant really be having when you do have or dealing with fiat.
What would be those fees for or bothering yourself with that if you could really have these kind
of benefits. Pro's outweighs its con's so i dont see much of an issue. Let adoption and recognition
move normally or naturally.Also, fees now arent that high for you to bother yourself. 

[PepeLapiu]

You do really got the point but in return with the fees you do pay is on having;

1. Anonymity
2. Decentralized

which is something that you cant really be having when you do have or dealing with fiat.
What would be those fees for or bothering yourself with that if you could really have these kind
of benefits. Pro's outweighs its con's so i dont see much of an issue. Let adoption and recognition
move normally or naturally.Also, fees now arent that high for you to bother yourself.  

Well, the big difference here is that bitcoin fees are up front and transparent for everyone to see. But fiat fees are hidden and baked into the cake so most people are not aware of them even paying those fees.
.inflation is a hidden fee baked into the cake. And all digital fiat payments come with their own fees, almost all of them hidden and baked into the price of everything.

Most of those fees ate charged to the merchant who accepts the payment. So it's included into the price of everything. Credit card payments and banking card payments all require some sort of paperwork and separate accounting. Than you have your bank fees and you credit card fees and interests.
It goes on and on..... People have just no idea what % of they transactions go to various fees. So they just assume it's all 'free'. But it ain't.

I would argue fit payment fees are much higher than with Bitcoin, just not as honest

[PepeLapiu]

Precisely why PayWave and contactless payment are growing so rapidly. Because you no longer have to do anything like that. Do stores really add on any percentage to your transaction when you pay by card vs cash? My experience is that it has always been factored-in the item price and it doesn't make a difference whatever payment method you use.

I am in Canada. I bough an aircraft parts kit in the USA 5 years ago. They told me they will give me a 2% discount if I don't use a credit card. And when I mentioned I was paying cash, they offered me an other 3% discount on top of the original 2%.

Granted, it's not worth paying coffe with cash to save 2%. But the point is it's baked into the price of everything. Along with inflation which is also an other hidden fee.

Than you have to consider stores, banks, and payment processors don't work for free. They have to tabulate all these transactions, and invoice the next middle-man until it gets to you seemingly for free. A.k.a baked into the price.

[LeGaulois]

@PepeLapiu

Fees taken by Visa and the gangs are not hidden, it's rather people who don't care since it's included in the price item. At best, they can ask any merchant and they will answer.
But if we told people "if you pay cash, you get a 2% discount +0.20 cents" believe me they would use the cards a lot less

I don't know how old you are to have known the time when you needed an ID card to use a bank card, but you must be a dinosaur ,
I have never heard of such


@ranochigo @o_e_l_e_o @PepeLapiu

You're debating on different stuff. You're confusing shopping on the internet and shopping IRL. @ranochigo was more referring to using BTC IRL (i.e to pay for a coffee) than using it online. While it's easy to shop online with it (and he agreed with it), it's another story to do it at the bakery for example (unless LN is adopted as @o_e_l_e_o then argumented)

@o_e_l_e_o and @PepeLapiu were more considering it for online cases but that's not how we should use it. I mean, it's supposed to be used for our daily lives, I don't live on the web, I don't eat virtual food, I eat real chickens lol.

And yes about LN, but the time when it will be massively used is very far. Perhaps, we won't be alive, since it will take decades after Bitcoin is accepted everywhere (if it is)

[PepeLapiu]

@PepeLapiu

I don't know how old you are to have known the time when you needed an ID card to use a bank card, but you must be a dinosaur ,
I have never heard of such

Not bank cards, credit cards.
Credit cards were around before bank cards. And before the internet too. I am 59 years old. When I worked at a gas station as a kid, we had to request an ID, put the card in a contraption to "scrape" it to show through triplicate carbon copies.Than I would fill out the date and amount, and the customer would sign it. I kept two copies, he kept the third one.

[adzino]

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.

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.

Do you know all the transactions you do with your credit card, you have to pay the fee? The merchant usually pays the payment processing fee which is usually 0.5% to 1.5% of the total amount. Compare this with your btc transaction fee and you will see that the fee is actually much more cheaper.

[larry_vw_1955]

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 think bitcoin is bad with fees, try using ethereum. people on there can pay thousands of dollars in fees sometimes for a single transaction. and they don't complain (too much).

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.

[PepeLapiu]

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. r words. bitcoin can't do that.

The way I look at it is every country has it's own money and central bank. Now the internet has it's own money and central bank: Bitcoin.
You want to buy a cup of Joe in your town with Bitcoin?
In my book that's like trying to buy a New York hot dog with Japanese Yen. The Yen was not designed to do that, neither was Bitcoin

In think we should focus on Bitcoin's use case and design purpose: internet money. Not Japanese or American money, internet money.

Asking Bitcoin to become physical is like asking PornHub actresses to kiss you through your screen. Neither were designee to do that.

You want money you can touch, but you already have that. Let it be the money you can touch. Biitcoin finds you creepy with your grubby hands trying to grope it.

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. We are at the very early stages of adoption. Let Bitcoin be internet money and keep your greasy fingers in your pocket. Bitcoin doesn't like to be fondled like that.
 

[NotATether]

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.

Achilles heel! And you want to know how many hacks MasterCard has sustained on ts network in total? Over 300 thousand!

Banks with even worse security than Windows XP are getting hacked all the time but you know why the customers get reimbrusement? Because the government compensates them with taxpayer money.

So either way, you still got milked out of your money. One was just done outright, the other by means of an "extortion racket" that is federal taxes in general.

Fees are never too high if you understand what input, output, transaction size, and mempool mean - I agree that the average Joe doesn't want to understand that, but Bitcoin is still for those who use a little more brain than the average Joe who has a plastic card and PIN and is incapable for nothing more than that.

Hopefully BTC infrastructure will evolve to such a point where LN becomes the primary means of BTC payment thuse Joe won't have to understand these terminologies. (But I still feel uneasy that your having a LN node depends on your ability to create a Tor hidden service as clearnet IP address nodes are out of the question).

bitcoin will only be like gold aka store of value.

That's not what Satoshi had in mind when he put "Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks" in the Genesis block.