Practical example on the usefulness of bitcoins...

[VPoro]

Hi,

Just wanted to share the story, since IMO it's a milestone - not a projectwide, but at least a personal one. A friend of mine was coming over to our place for a barbeque, and we called him and asked him to get some sausages and ice cream from the store. When he got here, we noticed that his bank account was in a different bank, and paying him back would take a day - until we remembered BTC, and so, we paid him in BTC ^ ^

So, for the first time, I used BTC in day-to-day life, and I can say, that the speed of the transaction (~1 hour) sure beats the 1 day+ time of inter-bank transfers in Europe

[CydeWeys]

I'm not knocking the coolness of that, but ... isn't that what cash is for?     I don't understand the trend of so many people (including many I know) that don't ever seem to have cash with them.

[mewantsbitcoins]

I'm not knocking the coolness of that, but ... isn't that what cash is for?     I don't understand the trend of so many people (including many I know) that don't ever seem to have cash with them.

That's the consequence of years of brainwashing which produced "credit card generation". If you don't see what you're spending it makes you spend more on useless things you don't need, but you're convinced you want, because talking head in a box told you so.

Bitcoin IS cash, but it's better - it's digital 

[shackra]

oh, cool! and your friend know how to spend they bitcoin-richness? :O

[Sukrim]

I'm not knocking the coolness of that, but ... isn't that what cash is for?

The problem I have with cash is that exact amounts are hard to pay.

18.88€ would be:
10€+5€+2€+1€+0.50€+0.20€+0.10€+0.05€+0.02€+0.01€ - and that's just the "optimum case" of having all coins + notes at your disposal. It would be even a bigger amount of coins/notes if you have no 50 cent pieces for example.

I would however give a friend probably just 18.90€ or 19€...

Just my 2 cents - oh, wait! No they are in my friend's pocket now!

[VPoro]

oh, cool! and your friend know how to spend they bitcoin-richness? :O

Yes, we're trying to fight the deflationary spiral and use our coins, I think he got his EUR back from trading them at MtGox :] And yes, cash would have been good for this scenario, however, in the modern world you hardly ever have cash, it's usually debit cards that are used. Cash is so... hard to transfer if not face-to-face, and besides, easily stolen by pickpockets And - cash is easy to withdraw from the account, but very hard to put back, you'd have to go to a bank to deposit it if you wanted to use it to pay over internet.

[Gabriel Beal]

That's awesome.  I think the next two steps for practicality are your friend being able to pay at the store with bitcoin and transactions being able to be sent via your phone.  That way you aren't chained to your PC to send money.  Bitcoin is being ported to Android and iOS, right?

[VPoro]

That's awesome.  I think the next two steps for practicality are your friend being able to pay at the store with bitcoin and transactions being able to be sent via your phone.  That way you aren't chained to your PC to send money.  Bitcoin is being ported to Android and iOS, right?

What I actually noted as the largest hurdle in using BTC to pay face-to-face was not the fact that we were chained into a computer (since I usually carry a mini-laptop around, so I have my wallet with me where ever I go), but the fact that my friend didn't remember his wallet address, and we had to go copy-paste it from his pool account...

So, a way to shorten the addresses would be really nice, I remember seeing a bitcoin related site which allowed you to link your wallet (or was I daydreaming?), a service which would give you a short http-link which you actually could remember (like bit.ly) would have been useful in that situation

[Gabriel Beal]

Surely no one remembers their bitcoin address.

[gigitrix]

That's cool: I settle stuff between me and my roommate using btc. He built my new mining machine (that I bought), so he got the use of one GPU (350Mhash/s) for a week