Economists often use an index which does not to look at changes because the noise introduced by fuel and food prices in the short run obscures more significant economic signals. But all long-term deflators and considerations of purchasing power use full index.
This isn't the way economists and politicians sell it to the public. My problem is despite this they mislead the general public into thinking that inflation is much milder than it actually is.
What's wrong with getting on with the rugged individualism solution and own investment property that isn't a $FIAT_CURRENCY_NOTE in your wallet?
You seem to be educated enough to realize that you must invest your money into a business or possibly property to have decent returns. Many people are mislead, whether intentionally or unintentionally, into thinking their Roth IRA/High yield savings account/treasury bonds/ect are growing in value when they aren't when you factor in all the taxes, fees, and inflation.
Deflationary currencies like Bitcoin have several advantages and disadvantages and thus are good asset class to invest in and use along with other ones.
The objections to inflation made by anarchists have more to do with the ethical and moral implications of doing so than any loss in potential investment returns. When a government inflates the monetary supply with quantitative easing, over spending, or various other means they are essentially increasing taxes upon the whole population to possibly fund inefficiencies, illegal and/or immoral activities without the consent from many that would probably object to their behavior if they were aware. Government decisions create complex consequences for the better or worse of the populace but the ends do not justify the means if they need to accomplish their goals through violence or secrecy.
For most people 'in the bank' is still the best bet.
USD is still great because its high liquidity, fungibility , and stability. My point is there are pros and cons to Bitcoin in relation to USD and it would be smart to hedge against any government backed currency for multiple reasons.
The point of bitcoin is to do an end run around government regulation, so a government backed one would be counterproductive.
That is merely one purpose amongst many. Whatever you call this "Bitcoin" like technology is of no consequence as there will have to be inherent value to those tokens on the public or private ledger used by states. This international "reserve token" system would have to either be pegged to a domestic currency or have an independent value. This would ultimately compete against the value of bitcoin and I welcome it.
If politicians start behaving these "tokens" will ultimately have more value than Bitcoin. History has not been kind however and either way we all win because those paranoid anarchists would have nudged governments into transparency and inveted a really neat technology which will ultimately be adopted in some form or another
Complete bullshit. As a depositor in a bank you are NOT an 'unsecured creditor'. Where does this nonsense come from? Thousands of banks have failed since FDIC was formed 80 years ago, and no depositor has lost any insured money.
Except 5-13% yearly inflation- 0.3% to 0.8% interest for a high yield money market account.
There are insured Bitcoin vaults for those too lazy to secure themselves-
Elliptic Vault https://www.elliptic.co/vault
Not at all. There are elements of the bitcoin transaction model that are superior to existing ways of transferring money between banks in different countries. The legacy of bitcoin will be to improve the means by which conventional currencies are transacted between states. The implementation with a real currency will be superior to bitcoin itself, because it can be near instantaneous. Bitcoin can't be instantaneous because the truth of a transaction isn't made final until possibly competing block chains have had time to prove their arbitrary fitness and have been consolidated.
Most of us welcome the introduction of an alt-coin backed up by the full faith and control of states. Eurocoin, Amerocoin, GOVcoin? This will be an interesting economic and political experiment to see how those competing blockchains deal with Bitcoin.
What you seem to be describing is what we currently have with digital fiat. I wonder why fees are so high and ACH's and wires so slow?
Perhaps GOVcoin will indeed be open, cost half a penny to wire, process quicker than days, and allow users to see and confirm transactions on a public blockchain? Perhaps States won't greedily devalue currencies 5-13% a year? Some of us doubt this, and even if they do approach competing with Bitcoins valuable features than we all still win as Bitcoin would have facilitated this transition into a future era of efficiency and transparency.
People who say "aww the rules suck, we'll be much better off with no rules" get burned easily.
There is a misconception being circulated that Bitcoin users are against regulation. Most of us want regulation. Some with the assistance of governments and others within the code and amongst the user base. Decentralized exchanges and mutisig exchanges can do the later just fine.
That all depends on how one prefers to be robbed. The transparent, libertarian way is to have your money stolen in front of you. The opaque, governmental way is to have it stolen in 3% to 5% increments every year via government-mandated inflation.
You are being far too kind sir, the CPI was juked in the 80s by removing "fuel" and "Food". 2 variables that everyone somewhat depends upon. Most are losing 5-13% a year in the most stable Fiat worldwide; other national currencies are much worse.
The transparent, libertarian way is to have your money stolen in front of you.
So, the 700,000 bitcoins that disappeared under Mt Gox were stolen "in front of" the people who owned them?
Maybe we need to define "in front of".
An person with an understanding of Bitcoin would realize that he only owns the assets when he controls the private keys. The foolhardy individuals who decided to keep their assets in an exchange were loaning their Bitcoins for Goxcoins and there wealth was stolen long ago.
Either one should use a mutisig exchange, a decentralized one, or buy small amounts at a time and immediately withdraw them from centralized exchanges without the above protections.
Yes, it's a funny thing, libertarianism is focused towards the rights of an individual to do as they like, so long as they don't harm others. Anarchism is focussed against the state as a controlling force.
In reality most of those American right wingers that call themselves libertarians are in fact anarchists. Even though that's a label they would hate.
Historically, Libertarianism is merely a form of anarchism. some Americans co-opted that term under a minarchist platform and thus the absurdity of "libertarians" running for political office and a party was created.
Your definition of anarchism is far too narrow. Anarchists are against all authoritarians who break the non-aggression principle whether it be a government, corporation, or individual criminal. Anarchists are fine with rules and regulations as long as they are either voluntary agreed upon or consequential
Neoliberals? I'm under the impression that Libertarians with the minds of teenagers are the ones so in love with Bitcoin, and opposed to regulation that would normally keep their money safe.
This is interesting, half of libertarians I meet hate bitcoin because they are "sound money" goldbugs who recently took a major loss when Gold tanked in value.
You aren't looking back far enough. The "with-it" trendy people as you call them, mined bitcoins or bought them when they were worth ~$1 or less. If the world comes crashing down and they end up back there, they lost nothing. I believe you are thinking of the people that only cared about bitcoin when it began to have some exchangeable value, where bitcoin was an investment, or a scheme to get rich. These will be the people who suffer. These are the ones who "fell for the scam"
Bears indicated similar objections when it spiked at a few dollars and than subsequently crashed.... poor investors, they all bought in irrationally during a buying frenzy and will be stuck with a loss. It is ridiculous to assume that this magic internet money would be worth more than a dollar right?
Economists speculated that Bitcoin is a perfect bubble and those that bought above 200 were stuck holding the bag when it dropped like a stone from 260 to level around 100. Those "victims" are truly regretting buying at 200 right?
Expect many more deflationary bubbles where those that bought above 1k will surely be upset that their currency has crashed from 10 times in value to only 4-5 times in values when it hits the new support. Most people understand the volatility , the risks and the long term promise and thus simply do not sell for a loss, thus creating supports multiple times above the past lead up.
Reality: in the long term, almost every gambler loses. It's a zero sum game and it's biased towards the house or the bookie.
You are assuming that Bitcoin has no inherent benefits as a technology. Even Goldman Sachs admits Bitcoin will save society at least 200 Billion a year - http://www.coindesk.com/goldma... . This sounds a lot like everyone winning by a more efficient means of moving money around alone thus lower fees for consumers.
You do not need to invest in Bitcoin, or gamble. Hundreads of thousands of businesses are benefiting right now with Bitcoin and whether it goes up or down in value is no consequence.
For example, scaling the network up to 2000 transactions per second would result in a Bitcoin node downloading about 1 MB per second. No big deal, until you realize that means each node will need about 2.6 TB of bandwidth each month, and that's just to handle the needs of 10% of the population of the United States, assuming 5 transactions per person per day.
The numbers don't make sense, and never will. Modern economies are far too complex to operate in the serial fashion that a blockchain mandates. Bitcoin will never be more than a niche player in the world financial system.
There are multiple solutions to solve this problem proposed that can be implemented. Here are 2:
There are scaling problems....The confirmation process has a 7 transaction per second limit.
This is incorrect. 7 tps is an artificial limit. There is no theoretical limit to the amount of transactions that can be processed per block as the protocol will keep adapting to scale with the demand. There are multiple solutions to deal with the size of the blockchain as well when it becomes a problem
Two mining pools control more than half of Bitcoin's mining capacity, and they have the power to set fees and change the rules.
Fees are requested and set by the market. A mining pool can not impose a fee on a user and if they request too high of a fee another miner will simply process the transaction. If too large of a percentage of miners request high fees than the protocol can be changed to increase the transactions processed per block. The users have all the control over what protocol implemented will be used as well.
Two mining pools control more than half of Bitcoin's mining capacity, and they have the power to set fees and change the rules.
Rules are set by the users, which may or may not be miners. If 95% of the miners want to go in 1 direction and the most users in the opposite direction than there will be a hard fork in the blockchain with the miners currency most likely quickly devaluing to nothing.
the reverse however is true (bitcoin has an arbitrary or not-so-arbitrary value in currency, but the value of the US Dollar/British Pound/Euro/etc. is not defined as having value relative to bitcoin).
Is anybody here still naive enough to confuse my (personal crypto) check for cash? I assert that the check in my hand is worth $100.00 - who'll give me $95.00 for it? I promise it's good . ..
USD Fiat has no legal enforcement as currency outside of the US either. Exchanges, Companies, Governments or Individuals can choose to accept them or not. They place a value on them dynamically by what they perceive they are valued at in reference to their currency.
Stolen coins can all be tracked but are still usable. There are numerous ways to make it harder to track with coinjoin, mixers, and trading back and forth between different crypto-blockchains that a thief can use to hide their assets however.
What assurances are there that there are not vulnerabilities in the method discussed in the video..
There are never 100% assurances with anything including traditional banking and investing. That being said if you can lower your risks by understand how Bitcoin works and diversifying your risks. Don't leave bitcoins in any exchange and if you prefer to use a hot wallet only leave a little money in one. Buy small amounts at a time and transfer them immediately into cold storage from a trusted exchange. This way even if the trusted exchange has an issue you are only at risk for the small purchase and you are constantly testing the responsiveness of the exchange by securely transferring Bitcoin.
I would indeed contest that they are in part indirect methods of paying. Because they are not in part indirect methods of paying, they are in whole indirect methods of paying. And considering you said "Fuel, cars, land, and other big ticket items are now sold directly with Bitcoin" - you are wrong.
Reread what I actually posted:
"The acceptance of bitcoin for fuel is dependent upon the owner as many stations are franchised. There are certain locations that accept it directly.."
Sorry, shows how ignorant I am of how things have progressed in the bitcoin world after having stopped participating a couple of years ago. I was under the impression that turning bitcoins into anything else was difficult, but obviously I am not well informed. I tried selling a couple of fractional bitcoins on eBay and just got scammed (losing about $200 worth to thieves with stolen accounts). That's all I've done to try to liquidate them. I'll investigate the options you mentioned, thanks.
Yes, you are quite correct that there are a lot of scammers on Ebay buying bitcoins. The reason ebay is a dangerous place to sell is that bitcoin is secure and non reversable while stolen credit cards and paypal accounts are less secure(as a trusted way to RECEIVE money) and reversible. Only sell your bitcoins in person for cash with localbitcoins.com , or use one of three above options.
They're simply applying the money you put in to the account of the person you're sending it to. Almost like a bank account. The money transfer fees just come off the top. They're not using some other form of currency or commodity to represent a nebulous, volatile cash value.
Also, if the money gets applied to the wrong account, the funds can be retrieved and applied to the proper account. With BTC, it's "Toughski Shitski".
So go shill someplace else.
With those companies they provide a service to do the following - Take my USD cash> convert it to Paypal/Moneygram/W/U digital Tokens in their private ledger> than transfer those tokens back to Fiat Cash on the receiving end in person or through an ACH.
With Bitcoin its the exact same thing but with a public ledger if you use it as a payment protocol.
It really is a ridiculous claim that Bitcoin has no value when the marketplace clearly states otherwise. I would even go so far as to posit Bitcoin will always have value as long as their are humans who are aware of it as there are always individuals willing to transfer their other assets to hold onto a finite piece of important history.
(on paper of course, I never sold them and I don't really think it's possible to actually liquidate bitcoins into real money without serious work and headache).
Your post was interesting up until the point of the end and than became became puzzling. If you wanted to liquidate those bitcoins easily you could:
1) Spend the directly with Overstock.com or tigerdirect.com
2) Buy one of hundreds of gift cards with gyft or egifter for free
3) Setup a coinbase.com account (easier to setup than paypal) and ACH them to USD fiat into your bank account with one click
The blockchain is currently about 15GB, and grows every time there's a transaction. That's a problem. Most phones don't have 15GB of free space. You'd have to get an SD card, just to hold it and that is only a temporary solution, since it'll keep growing.
Also this would be a real problem if BTC was actually used like a major currency and not just played with by speculators as the number of transactions would be orders of magnitude higher, and thus so would the growth.
So it would be totally unrealistic to just store it on mobile devices, which is something you'd probably want to do if you were going to use it as a general purpose kind of payment system, security issues aside and those are not minor.
The Blockchain is over 17GB now. Your post doesn't account for SPV clients, Block pruning, off chain transactions, technological memory advancements, ect...
The problem isn't a large concern because smart phones now use hot wallets or SPV clients and home computers can run the full nodes. When the blockchain grows to 30GB or larger the developers will start introducing Merkle Tree pruning solutions that were discussed originally all the way back to the whitepaper.
A USD is a representation of a monetary asset; as of right now a Bitcoin is regarded more as a fixed asset, such as a stock certificate. It's not cash and isn't treated the same way.
Can you explain how Bitcoin solves the problem of 'undoing' transactions made by mistake or fraud?
If you give your bitcoins to a stranger it offers no more or less protections than giving cash to a stranger. If fraud is committed against you by an individual or company where the identity is known you can take them to court as judges have already prosecuted bitcoin theft.
Bitcoin has more protections not found elsewhere such as-
If you want to do business with a stranger and want to be protected against risk you can use an escrow service like www.Bitrated.com with mutisig authentications. Bitcoin allows you to do 2 things not found with traditional escrow systems:
1) Free escrow when no dispute is made(90+% of transactions)
2) No counter party risk. The protocol makes it impossible for the arbitrator or escrow service to steal the funds
If by "now" you mean "not" then sure. Because you most certainly can not buy fuel, cars or land with Bitcoin. And you certainly can't remit the taxes on those sales using it.
The acceptance of bitcoin for fuel is dependent upon the owner as many stations are franchised. There are certain locations that accept it directly and all other can use options like - http://www.coinfueled.com/
I never mentioned taxes but you can pay your taxes with bitcoin with services like snapcard - http://www.coindesk.com/pay-ta...
You may contest that these are in part, indirect methods of paying, but isn't using a credit card indirect as well where you have to pay a monthly check to your credit card company for their service of convenience?
Slashdot Mirror
Economists often use an index which does not to look at changes because the noise introduced by fuel and food prices in the short run obscures more significant economic signals. But all long-term deflators and considerations of purchasing power use full index.
This isn't the way economists and politicians sell it to the public. My problem is despite this they mislead the general public into thinking that inflation is much milder than it actually is.
What's wrong with getting on with the rugged individualism solution and own investment property that isn't a $FIAT_CURRENCY_NOTE in your wallet?
You seem to be educated enough to realize that you must invest your money into a business or possibly property to have decent returns. Many people are mislead, whether intentionally or unintentionally, into thinking their Roth IRA/High yield savings account/treasury bonds/ect are growing in value when they aren't when you factor in all the taxes, fees, and inflation.
Deflationary currencies like Bitcoin have several advantages and disadvantages and thus are good asset class to invest in and use along with other ones.
The objections to inflation made by anarchists have more to do with the ethical and moral implications of doing so than any loss in potential investment returns. When a government inflates the monetary supply with quantitative easing, over spending, or various other means they are essentially increasing taxes upon the whole population to possibly fund inefficiencies, illegal and/or immoral activities without the consent from many that would probably object to their behavior if they were aware. Government decisions create complex consequences for the better or worse of the populace but the ends do not justify the means if they need to accomplish their goals through violence or secrecy.
For most people 'in the bank' is still the best bet.
USD is still great because its high liquidity, fungibility , and stability. My point is there are pros and cons to Bitcoin in relation to USD and it would be smart to hedge against any government backed currency for multiple reasons.
The point of bitcoin is to do an end run around government regulation, so a government backed one would be counterproductive.
That is merely one purpose amongst many. Whatever you call this "Bitcoin" like technology is of no consequence as there will have to be inherent value to those tokens on the public or private ledger used by states. This international "reserve token" system would have to either be pegged to a domestic currency or have an independent value. This would ultimately compete against the value of bitcoin and I welcome it.
If politicians start behaving these "tokens" will ultimately have more value than Bitcoin. History has not been kind however and either way we all win because those paranoid anarchists would have nudged governments into transparency and inveted a really neat technology which will ultimately be adopted in some form or another
Complete bullshit. As a depositor in a bank you are NOT an 'unsecured creditor'. Where does this nonsense come from? Thousands of banks have failed since FDIC was formed 80 years ago, and no depositor has lost any insured money.
Except 5-13% yearly inflation- 0.3% to 0.8% interest for a high yield money market account.
There are insured Bitcoin vaults for those too lazy to secure themselves- Elliptic Vault https://www.elliptic.co/vault
Not at all. There are elements of the bitcoin transaction model that are superior to existing ways of transferring money between banks in different countries. The legacy of bitcoin will be to improve the means by which conventional currencies are transacted between states. The implementation with a real currency will be superior to bitcoin itself, because it can be near instantaneous. Bitcoin can't be instantaneous because the truth of a transaction isn't made final until possibly competing block chains have had time to prove their arbitrary fitness and have been consolidated.
Most of us welcome the introduction of an alt-coin backed up by the full faith and control of states. Eurocoin, Amerocoin, GOVcoin? This will be an interesting economic and political experiment to see how those competing blockchains deal with Bitcoin.
What you seem to be describing is what we currently have with digital fiat. I wonder why fees are so high and ACH's and wires so slow?
Perhaps GOVcoin will indeed be open, cost half a penny to wire, process quicker than days, and allow users to see and confirm transactions on a public blockchain? Perhaps States won't greedily devalue currencies 5-13% a year? Some of us doubt this, and even if they do approach competing with Bitcoins valuable features than we all still win as Bitcoin would have facilitated this transition into a future era of efficiency and transparency.
People who say "aww the rules suck, we'll be much better off with no rules" get burned easily.
There is a misconception being circulated that Bitcoin users are against regulation. Most of us want regulation. Some with the assistance of governments and others within the code and amongst the user base. Decentralized exchanges and mutisig exchanges can do the later just fine.
That all depends on how one prefers to be robbed. The transparent, libertarian way is to have your money stolen in front of you. The opaque, governmental way is to have it stolen in 3% to 5% increments every year via government-mandated inflation.
You are being far too kind sir, the CPI was juked in the 80s by removing "fuel" and "Food". 2 variables that everyone somewhat depends upon. Most are losing 5-13% a year in the most stable Fiat worldwide; other national currencies are much worse.
So, the 700,000 bitcoins that disappeared under Mt Gox were stolen "in front of" the people who owned them?
Maybe we need to define "in front of".
An person with an understanding of Bitcoin would realize that he only owns the assets when he controls the private keys. The foolhardy individuals who decided to keep their assets in an exchange were loaning their Bitcoins for Goxcoins and there wealth was stolen long ago.
Either one should use a mutisig exchange, a decentralized one, or buy small amounts at a time and immediately withdraw them from centralized exchanges without the above protections.
Yes, it's a funny thing, libertarianism is focused towards the rights of an individual to do as they like, so long as they don't harm others. Anarchism is focussed against the state as a controlling force.
In reality most of those American right wingers that call themselves libertarians are in fact anarchists. Even though that's a label they would hate.
Historically, Libertarianism is merely a form of anarchism. some Americans co-opted that term under a minarchist platform and thus the absurdity of "libertarians" running for political office and a party was created.
Your definition of anarchism is far too narrow. Anarchists are against all authoritarians who break the non-aggression principle whether it be a government, corporation, or individual criminal. Anarchists are fine with rules and regulations as long as they are either voluntary agreed upon or consequential
Neoliberals? I'm under the impression that Libertarians with the minds of teenagers are the ones so in love with Bitcoin, and opposed to regulation that would normally keep their money safe.
This is interesting, half of libertarians I meet hate bitcoin because they are "sound money" goldbugs who recently took a major loss when Gold tanked in value.
You aren't looking back far enough. The "with-it" trendy people as you call them, mined bitcoins or bought them when they were worth ~$1 or less. If the world comes crashing down and they end up back there, they lost nothing. I believe you are thinking of the people that only cared about bitcoin when it began to have some exchangeable value, where bitcoin was an investment, or a scheme to get rich. These will be the people who suffer. These are the ones who "fell for the scam"
Bears indicated similar objections when it spiked at a few dollars and than subsequently crashed.... poor investors, they all bought in irrationally during a buying frenzy and will be stuck with a loss. It is ridiculous to assume that this magic internet money would be worth more than a dollar right?
Economists speculated that Bitcoin is a perfect bubble and those that bought above 200 were stuck holding the bag when it dropped like a stone from 260 to level around 100. Those "victims" are truly regretting buying at 200 right?
Expect many more deflationary bubbles where those that bought above 1k will surely be upset that their currency has crashed from 10 times in value to only 4-5 times in values when it hits the new support. Most people understand the volatility , the risks and the long term promise and thus simply do not sell for a loss, thus creating supports multiple times above the past lead up.
Reality: in the long term, almost every gambler loses. It's a zero sum game and it's biased towards the house or the bookie.
You are assuming that Bitcoin has no inherent benefits as a technology. Even Goldman Sachs admits Bitcoin will save society at least 200 Billion a year - http://www.coindesk.com/goldma... . This sounds a lot like everyone winning by a more efficient means of moving money around alone thus lower fees for consumers.
You do not need to invest in Bitcoin, or gamble. Hundreads of thousands of businesses are benefiting right now with Bitcoin and whether it goes up or down in value is no consequence.
For example, scaling the network up to 2000 transactions per second would result in a Bitcoin node downloading about 1 MB per second. No big deal, until you realize that means each node will need about 2.6 TB of bandwidth each month, and that's just to handle the needs of 10% of the population of the United States, assuming 5 transactions per person per day.
The numbers don't make sense, and never will. Modern economies are far too complex to operate in the serial fashion that a blockchain mandates. Bitcoin will never be more than a niche player in the world financial system.
There are multiple solutions to solve this problem proposed that can be implemented. Here are 2:
http://www.bitfreak.info/files/pp2p-ccmbc-rev1.pdf
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=88208.0
There are scaling problems. ...The confirmation process has a 7 transaction per second limit.
This is incorrect. 7 tps is an artificial limit. There is no theoretical limit to the amount of transactions that can be processed per block as the protocol will keep adapting to scale with the demand. There are multiple solutions to deal with the size of the blockchain as well when it becomes a problem
Two mining pools control more than half of Bitcoin's mining capacity, and they have the power to set fees and change the rules.
Fees are requested and set by the market. A mining pool can not impose a fee on a user and if they request too high of a fee another miner will simply process the transaction. If too large of a percentage of miners request high fees than the protocol can be changed to increase the transactions processed per block. The users have all the control over what protocol implemented will be used as well.
Two mining pools control more than half of Bitcoin's mining capacity, and they have the power to set fees and change the rules.
Rules are set by the users, which may or may not be miners. If 95% of the miners want to go in 1 direction and the most users in the opposite direction than there will be a hard fork in the blockchain with the miners currency most likely quickly devaluing to nothing.
the reverse however is true (bitcoin has an arbitrary or not-so-arbitrary value in currency, but the value of the US Dollar/British Pound/Euro/etc. is not defined as having value relative to bitcoin).
Is anybody here still naive enough to confuse my (personal crypto) check for cash? I assert that the check in my hand is worth $100.00 - who'll give me $95.00 for it? I promise it's good . . .
USD Fiat has no legal enforcement as currency outside of the US either. Exchanges, Companies, Governments or Individuals can choose to accept them or not. They place a value on them dynamically by what they perceive they are valued at in reference to their currency.
This is exactly the same with Bitcoin.
Additionally, many judges and governments have indeed declared Bitcoin a currency. One example : http://www.courthousenews.com/...
Stolen coins can all be tracked but are still usable. There are numerous ways to make it harder to track with coinjoin, mixers, and trading back and forth between different crypto-blockchains that a thief can use to hide their assets however.
What assurances are there that there are not vulnerabilities in the method discussed in the video. .
There are never 100% assurances with anything including traditional banking and investing. That being said if you can lower your risks by understand how Bitcoin works and diversifying your risks. Don't leave bitcoins in any exchange and if you prefer to use a hot wallet only leave a little money in one. Buy small amounts at a time and transfer them immediately into cold storage from a trusted exchange. This way even if the trusted exchange has an issue you are only at risk for the small purchase and you are constantly testing the responsiveness of the exchange by securely transferring Bitcoin.
I would indeed contest that they are in part indirect methods of paying. Because they are not in part indirect methods of paying, they are in whole indirect methods of paying. And considering you said "Fuel, cars, land, and other big ticket items are now sold directly with Bitcoin" - you are wrong.
Reread what I actually posted:
"The acceptance of bitcoin for fuel is dependent upon the owner as many stations are franchised. There are certain locations that accept it directly .."
As evidenced by multiple people .... one example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
I stand behind my facts as I never claimed taxes can be paid directly.
Sorry, shows how ignorant I am of how things have progressed in the bitcoin world after having stopped participating a couple of years ago. I was under the impression that turning bitcoins into anything else was difficult, but obviously I am not well informed. I tried selling a couple of fractional bitcoins on eBay and just got scammed (losing about $200 worth to thieves with stolen accounts). That's all I've done to try to liquidate them. I'll investigate the options you mentioned, thanks.
Yes, you are quite correct that there are a lot of scammers on Ebay buying bitcoins. The reason ebay is a dangerous place to sell is that bitcoin is secure and non reversable while stolen credit cards and paypal accounts are less secure(as a trusted way to RECEIVE money) and reversible. Only sell your bitcoins in person for cash with localbitcoins.com , or use one of three above options.
They're simply applying the money you put in to the account of the person you're sending it to. Almost like a bank account. The money transfer fees just come off the top. They're not using some other form of currency or commodity to represent a nebulous, volatile cash value.
Also, if the money gets applied to the wrong account, the funds can be retrieved and applied to the proper account. With BTC, it's "Toughski Shitski".
So go shill someplace else.
With those companies they provide a service to do the following - Take my USD cash> convert it to Paypal/Moneygram/W/U digital Tokens in their private ledger> than transfer those tokens back to Fiat Cash on the receiving end in person or through an ACH.
With Bitcoin its the exact same thing but with a public ledger if you use it as a payment protocol.
It really is a ridiculous claim that Bitcoin has no value when the marketplace clearly states otherwise. I would even go so far as to posit Bitcoin will always have value as long as their are humans who are aware of it as there are always individuals willing to transfer their other assets to hold onto a finite piece of important history.
(on paper of course, I never sold them and I don't really think it's possible to actually liquidate bitcoins into real money without serious work and headache).
Your post was interesting up until the point of the end and than became became puzzling. If you wanted to liquidate those bitcoins easily you could:
1) Spend the directly with Overstock.com or tigerdirect.com
2) Buy one of hundreds of gift cards with gyft or egifter for free
3) Setup a coinbase.com account (easier to setup than paypal) and ACH them to USD fiat into your bank account with one click
The blockchain is currently about 15GB, and grows every time there's a transaction. That's a problem. Most phones don't have 15GB of free space. You'd have to get an SD card, just to hold it and that is only a temporary solution, since it'll keep growing.
Also this would be a real problem if BTC was actually used like a major currency and not just played with by speculators as the number of transactions would be orders of magnitude higher, and thus so would the growth.
So it would be totally unrealistic to just store it on mobile devices, which is something you'd probably want to do if you were going to use it as a general purpose kind of payment system, security issues aside and those are not minor.
The Blockchain is over 17GB now. Your post doesn't account for SPV clients, Block pruning, off chain transactions, technological memory advancements, ect... The problem isn't a large concern because smart phones now use hot wallets or SPV clients and home computers can run the full nodes. When the blockchain grows to 30GB or larger the developers will start introducing Merkle Tree pruning solutions that were discussed originally all the way back to the whitepaper.
A USD is a representation of a monetary asset; as of right now a Bitcoin is regarded more as a fixed asset, such as a stock certificate. It's not cash and isn't treated the same way.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/08/07/federal-judge-rules-bitcoin-is-real-money/
http://www.courthousenews.com/2013/08/06/Bitcoin.pdf
Stare decisis for all future cases.
Can you explain how Bitcoin solves the problem of 'undoing' transactions made by mistake or fraud?
If you give your bitcoins to a stranger it offers no more or less protections than giving cash to a stranger. If fraud is committed against you by an individual or company where the identity is known you can take them to court as judges have already prosecuted bitcoin theft.
Bitcoin has more protections not found elsewhere such as-
If you want to do business with a stranger and want to be protected against risk you can use an escrow service like www.Bitrated.com with mutisig authentications. Bitcoin allows you to do 2 things not found with traditional escrow systems:
1) Free escrow when no dispute is made(90+% of transactions)
2) No counter party risk. The protocol makes it impossible for the arbitrator or escrow service to steal the funds
If by "now" you mean "not" then sure. Because you most certainly can not buy fuel, cars or land with Bitcoin. And you certainly can't remit the taxes on those sales using it.
The acceptance of bitcoin for fuel is dependent upon the owner as many stations are franchised. There are certain locations that accept it directly and all other can use options like - http://www.coinfueled.com/ I never mentioned taxes but you can pay your taxes with bitcoin with services like snapcard - http://www.coindesk.com/pay-ta... You may contest that these are in part, indirect methods of paying, but isn't using a credit card indirect as well where you have to pay a monthly check to your credit card company for their service of convenience?