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Here's Why People Don't Buy Things With Bitcoin (vice.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: One reason for this, if you live in Toronto like me (or anywhere else for that matter), is that there's basically nowhere to spend digital coins in the real world. Coinmap, a service that maps bitcoin-accepting locations all over the world, shows a few places that accept bitcoin in Toronto, but it's clearly out of date -- I called several businesses listed on the site and they had no idea what bitcoin even is. A bigger problem is perfectly illustrated in a Reddit post from Wednesday morning complaining that a bitcoin transaction worth just $9 still hasn't gone through the network after two days of waiting. Two. Days. The likely reason is that the fee attached to the transaction in order to incentivize faster confirmation -- 50 cents, which is about as much of a premium as I'd pay for a $9 transaction -- simply wasn't enough. "Should I have paid $3 on a $9 transfer to get it processed?" the person wrote.
says the real world
The author has a good point, and I've always felt that the transaction fees were a big problem for bitcoin. Many of the people who are looking for an alternative form of payment are trying to get away from all the fees banks put on their money, but if you have to spend more than 5% in transaction fees to get your payment processed, have you really gained anything?
I like the concept behind crypto-currencies, but it's just not going to work if it's more expensive to use it than to use existing payment methods.
Seems like the inevitable is about to happen. Nobody want's to mine Bit Coin for what they pay anymore. Silly me, I thought that this wouldn't happen until all the coin was gone and they stopped issuing new ones, I was wrong by a long shot.
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There are people paying actual money for it. I wish I would have come up with that idea.
You can use Bitcoin person to person.
Yes, Bitcoin (BTC) has been taken over by companies and individuals who hate the original anarchist idea of unstoppable decentralized cryptocurrencies.
This takeover will centralize and have high fees and controls and you will lose.
That's why there's now Bitcoin Cash to replace it...
https://www.bitcoincash.org/
Only stupid people believe that in the new world of cryprocurrencies that any particular crypto will be *THE COIN* for all eternity.
That's not what this is all about.
You have to adapt, and exchange.
Or go back to sucking the teat of the fiat government you love so dearly.
I didn't really think or look into it too much, but I'm not sure I understand this whole bitcoin thing.
I understand the technology behind it is very valuable to banking institutions; but what makes the bitcoin itself be worth (more?) than an ounce of gold for example?
It's even worse if, according to this, it's hard to use your bitcoins. Is it the same dilemma as using gold? I imagine if walk into a store with a tiny nugget of gold, they won't go out of their way to bring a scale to weigh it/an expert to ensure it's the real thing. They'll probably send me to a store that will transform my nugget of gold into cold hard cash, that I can then use at the store.
Gold, however has an actual physical value and use, though. Bitcoins, from my understanding, are generated through raw processing power(?). You can track them down to the very moment of creation so there's no such thing as counterfeiting(?). For some reason not a lot of physical merchants actually seem to accept them, despite their worth, and I believe it's fairly easy for someone to get setup to accept transactions(?). Again, I haven't looked into it much, but I just don't get it why this sort of thing would hold that much value. Lots of question marks in there.
I tend to rant.
If a 5.5% fee can't get a transaction complete in 2 days, how much does it cost?
I've never paid more than 3% extra for credit card transactions, 1.5 or 2% is more common. My bank gives me back 1% of that anyway. If the merchant absorbs that cost and distributes it across its credit card and cash customers, I effectively get a discount.
Like any other currency, it's worth what you can buy with it. Given the relatively illiquid level of commerce done in bitcoin, it's no wonder there is so much maniacal speculation over its value.
I once heard a currency expert on NPR remark that bitcoin is a collective hallucination we all share, that ascribes a value to an abstract entity. But he was quick to add that every currency is like that.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
The idea of any blockchain-verified cryptocurrency being widely used as money never made sense, and never will. What, if I buy lunch for $10, I have to wait several hours or days for a bunch of server farms in China to verify my transaction while burning enough energy to light every house in my neighborhood? Either that, or pay $2 or $3 to get it "expedited" in 15 minutes?
It's insane. The world economy is far too large and complex to be funneled through 1 MB or 2 MB or 4 MB chunks of data verified one at a time, and even the people pushing BTC realize that now. When was the last time you heard BitPay brag about how many new merchants were using their service? The idea of BTC as money has all kind of faded away. It simply won't scale, regardless of the supposed "solution" of SegWit.
Now it's all about the speculative frenzy, and the different factions within the Bitcoin ecosystem fighting for control of the blockchain with hard forks. BTC is useful for moving large sums of currency across borders without government control (many wealthy Chinese like that), but as far as being used as "money", that ship has long sailed.
We need to have a bank account with bitcoin that is not necessarily tied to a bitcoin wallet, that would just be bitcoin credit, similarly to what a fiat coin account would be. And then bitcoin credit card where a payment wouldn't require any movement of bitcoin from a wallet to the next and the financial institution could approve that purchase in bitcoin immediately. And then, financial institutions would only need to do a bitcoin transaction once in a while in large batches and they wouldn't mind paying $5 to complete that transaction. A bitcoin transaction would also be required when you are cashing out, but hopefully you don't have to cash out $9 dollars at a time, just like you don't withdraw $9 from an ATM.
Bitcoin suffers from it's own design. It's decentralized, and unregulated. Criminals have flocked to the 'currency' for these very reasons.
It just goes to show, regulation does have a place. I personally can't get behind something that facilitates criminality to the degree bitcoin does.
It's very design is the problem. It can't be regulated. Oversight is impossible. In the age of scams, fraud and identity theft, we simply cannot have a deregulated decentralized, pseudo-anonymous 'currency.' It just causes way too many problems and ultimately doesn't solve any problems legitimate government issued currency has.
Because scaling the transactions was becoming a problem. SegWit is supposed to allow for future development of the 'lighting network' which is supposed to allow thousands of transactions a second instead of just hundreds. Its a technological problem, for which there are multiple solutions. We'll just have to let the market work itself out.
Interesting times if you are an amateur economist.
Disclaimer: I have invested in Ripple and Ether (ETH).
If you're reading this guy's complaint and thinking "see, bitcoin is stupid" then you're a fool.
Bitcoin is a future currency, and it is technically awesome and solves an extremely significant problem - banking middle men stealing bits of every transaction.
This is why it is worth $4000, not because of its "practicality".
The fact that someone is trying to use it and writing about how impractical it is, is a good sign. It means the future of Bitcoin is real, it just isn't here quite yet, which makes it an amazing investment opportunity.
Imagine this future article: "Gartner study shows more purchases in US were made with Bitcoin than with credit/debit and cash combined in 2027" and then ask yourself, in that world, what is one Bitcoin worth? $4000? No way. Much more. Practicality is not a serious concern yet because we're in the early phase of educating people about it, and improving it to reduce friction. That's where our focus should be. The transaction fee problem will be solved, one way or another, possibly via an altcoin but it will be solved. And that will be one more step toward mass adoption. The trick is getting in on the investment just before everyone realizes that mass adoption is absolutely inevitable.
I mean, even if you have some virtual gum with you, you have to chew it and then put it on a virtual 5 meter pole, just to pick up the virtual coins.
Rather have a decent loonie or toonie instead. Those stay in your pocketses.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
There's a lot of bitcoin hate on Slashdot from people who are mad they don't own any bitcoin, and didn't get in when it was affordable.
Businesses are reluctant to deal with Bitcoin because it's nothing but stable, transactions (confirmation times) are nothing but certain, there's this whiff of something which is used for illegal purposes to launder money and it's still largely unknown aside from those who read tech news. Over 95% of general population have no idea what Bitcoin is and how it can be used.
Second, "the fee is not evaluated relative to the transaction value. The fee is evaluated relative to the transaction size in bytes. In other words, whether you send one cent or a thousand dollars worth of bitcoins, the required fee is the same".
Look, you BC guys want to have your little fantasies about "alt-currencies"? Go right ahead. Do NOT, however, think that BC will ever be any kind of true money (legal tender). It's 100% pure, organic, dolphin-free gambling. Sure, today, I can agree with a barber, say, to cut my hair in exchange for non-currency. It's known as barter. Barter, however, is even better in that there is something of value being exchanged. What's BC? Some algorithm generated on a Chinese server-farm. Woo-hoo! Suckers, apparently, are born every nano-second.
I don't use bitcoin in part because it is of very limited utility -- you can't buy much with it directly. I also don't use it because it's inconvenient.
But mainly, it's far too volatile for my tastes.
Credit card fees float around 2-3%. Debit's even lower. Why bother with bitcoin when everybody has cash? There's no upside and lots of downsides.
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No one but distributors actually buys the products. The products exist to keep the pyramid just barely legal.
Bitcoins are only held by "distributors". They buy and sell them amongst themselves, driving the price ever higher. They have no more value than tulip bulbs did in the 1600s, and will end the same way, when people come to their senses.
The strength of Bitcoin comes from the health of the computers maintaining the Bitcoin network, and those computers are only on the network is because they're getting paid in bitcoin to maintain it.
Once it becomes hard to impossible to mine bitcoin, to the point where it is not financially feasible to do so, Bitcoin's network will weaken and fold as miners move onto the next crypto-currency with a better ROI.
This will have the net effect of weakening the number of systems maintaining bitcoin - and potentially weakening the strength of the bitcoin network. This *might* possibly cause bitcoin's price to suddenly drop as people pull out.
It's either that or bitcoin has to continue to inflate for eternity I guess.
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Well, money is anything that people agree is money. If you and I were to agree on M&Ms as a medium of exchange, that'd be money. If we agree to exchange goods for Monopoly money, that Monopoly money becomes real money.
But a lot of people, perhaps the majority, want to simplify their finances and avoid exchange fees by relying on one currency. This currency ends up being the one in which the local violence monopolist expects payment of protection money.
I use my shift card all the time. Its issued by visa and comes out of my Coinbase account.
We make assumption that Bitcoin can be considered a currency by design. Since it is not back by any national bank or precious metal by design (Yes, you trade BTC to other currencies or gold, but it has highly variable exchange rate.). So, how does the IRS treat transactions involving BTC? They treat like a capital gain, either short term or long term, depending on how long you have possessed the BTC. That makes for intricate accounting, and it means the taxes involved for each transaction depending on the change of value while held. US dollars may rise or fall in value with respect to Euros or U.K. Pounds, but you are not taxes for any gain value. You are taxed for Bitcoins, which make them similar to other commodities.
Until some country undertakes making BTC their currency, it remains a commodity. If it becomes a foreign currency, then other parts of the Tax code come into play. Go talk to a good CPA or financial lawyer, and you will find that BTC offers some novel financial possibilities, but there are limitations in taxes and transaction costs.
It amazes me how much hate for cryptocurrency is concentrated on Slashdot. Don't get me wrong, I think skepticism is appropriate for cryptocurrency -- my point is how unbalanced the general attitude here is. The negativity here really doesn't reflect the conversations I've had with friends, family, or colleagues (I'm in software).
Personally, I think blockchain will be nothing short of a revolution. Sure, it faces a lot of huge challenges, but what transformative technology doesn't? There is a tremendous amount of talent looking to solve these problems, and that effort will be greatly rewarded. Adoption is cumbersome right now, but so was the internet in its infancy.
To those of you who are so utterly dismissive of crypto/blockchain/bitcoin, perhaps you should take a deeper look with an open mind.
I am thinking of my firewall I spent 8 bitcoins on. Still works, nice unit, end of service life.
Still a bit of a bitter taste in my mouth as today I could buy a car with that money.
But I am not alone. Think about the pizza that cost 10,000 BTC, and the endless list of crap bought with it that could buy a car, a house, a large property or a finance a retirement with your kids' college education paid for the amount.
I think, that's why the people who saved some are still saving it.
As for the "black markets". Yes it works. But people exchange it to USD or other fiat.
That said, once I thought this would be "the thing". Invested in and spent 2 years of 12-hour coding work into a multi-coin project. Failed, fell on my arse. And realised, that people don't want to spend it. It is criminals and grey-area markets that want it. The rest is mining/speculation and pump and dump.
I was hoping to to buy with it, get paid in it and use it as a better "currency" ... several years after it is worse than it was before. $3 on a $9 xfer? ... yeah, even Paypal is better than that, and they charge the hell out of you.
Chose a shop at random. It will accept your USD/EUR/GBP/Whatever. Try to pay as bitcoin, watch them thinking you are insane. The lack of penetzration in shop make bitcoin solely a speculating commodity and not a currency. Facit : for 99+% of the population, the one who count, bitcoin do not exists.
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Because people aren't paid in Bitcoin, they can't buy a Big Mac with Bitcoin, and they don't give a rats ass about Bitcoin, so why the fuck do you keep writing about it?
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The title stands to lose the first word. Clickbait-style title writing.
What has yet to be established is not whether there were winners, but on what timescale it sums to zero.
My guess is unless there is some catastrophic hack Ethereum will triumph. Their roadmap to having useable transaction costs is much shorter.
When there is a truly usable cryptocoin for the masses, rather than criminals, speculators and miners, the game will enter a winner take all stage.
Here is a list of businesses that will accept Bitcoin as payment in the UK, mostly in London: http://www.wheretospendbitcoin...
(1) Bitcoin stops at a certain number, no more mining, no more purchasing in hopes it will increase like gold. In other words, it becomes a frozen cryptocurrency, zero expansion and zero reason why to belong to the club.
(2) As we have all seen, there will be no end to new cryptocurrency because everyone will always chase the lower price which is what it begins with
(3) No internet, congested internet, virus internet and say hello to latency for transactions.
Buyer beware, its the year 2000 all over again.
Drugs and ransoms aren't anywhere near enough sales volume to push the bubble as big as it is. The value of BTC keeps climbing because people see it keeps climbing and want to "get in on it" while it's rising. Speculators. Whoever's latest to the party gets left holding the bag. It's an effective way to make some money, if you get out at the right time and don't mind participating in something that's eventually going to leave a bunch of people broke.
The main issue with bitcoin is simply that it is not real money.
And on the Eighth Day, Man created God.
Not to mention pneumosilicosis and Trump mincing around like the seventh village person pretending to be you.
Close call as to which is worse.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."