Topic: Best practical uses for bitcoin? (Read 4726 times)

No. Because Dwolla is not available here in Canada or for that matter in Spain or Uganda. M-PESA for example has the same problem. It is not available in the United States or Austria for example. Also Dwolla has already being sued over chargebacks.

Interestingly, you could be describing Dwolla there with each of those as well.

The biggest strength of Bitcoin is payments under 1000 BTC over the Internet. Above this amount wire transfers of fiat start to become competitive. For an online merchant accepting Bitcoin is actually a no brainer especially with services such as Bit-Pay.

The big advantages are:
No risk of chargebacks this is especially important for international transactions, "at risk" merchants, high value low margin transactions and escrow services.
No need to qualify for a merchant account.
No need for the purchaser / sender to have good credit. This by the way is a big market.
No risk of identity theft. Credit cards were never designed for transactions over the Internet and their use over the Internet is inherently insecure. They were designed in the 1950's and 1960's for in person / card present transactions. All the industry has managed to do is lessen the risk. Furthermore services such as PayPal are hamstrung by using credit cards as a funding source.
Very low or minimal transaction costs.

Here is my favorite: Bitcoin is the only electronic payment method that can be used to give alms to the poor directly. How many homeless persons have merchant accounts? But all a homeless person needs to beg for Bitcoin is card with a QR code!

I should highlight my favorite benefit of Bitcoin: protection from identity theft.   This is the number one reason I use it (and it was mentioned by someone else, but I don't feel they stressed it enough). 

Not only are your transactions pseudo-anonymous, but you get to send the money to the merchant, not give the merchant your credit card info and unnecessary personal info so that they can store it insecurely and/or sell it to others who will abuse it. 

I don't have to worry about shady business practices signing me up for "monthly" subscriptions to services I didn't realize I was agreeing to in some long-winded EULA and have to sit on hold for hours trying to cancel it and get a refund.  I don't have to worry that the company might accidentally compromise my information, leading to identity theft and damage to my credit that can take forever to get sorted out.

A merchant requests payment and then I pay them.  I don't send them all this potentially-compromising information and let credit card companies profile my every move so they can send me targeted promotional materials or adjust my credit rating unnecessarily.

With control comes extra responsibilities.  But in today's world, people are starting to value individual control/security/privacy more than convenience. 

I don't care much for the word 'fair' either. But if you were to place all the various systems in order from fair to unfair, Bitcoin is pretty much the fairest. It always makes the same offer to everyone and the way that offer might change is made as explicitly clear as anything in the world. I mean the 'interpretation' and enforcement of the rules is done by computers.

Paying people in other countries without processing fees or currency conversion fees? Man I hate paypal for them

But people who can't produce or secure bitcoins for themselves can buy them and pay for their storage for a fair price from those who can. Is it highly unfair that I have to buy my shoes from someone else because I don't have the tools or experience to make my own? Is it highly unfair that I charge people money to fix their computers when they don't know how to do it themselves? People producing things that other people can't and needing things they can't produce on their own is the very reason trade exists, and money is the thing that makes fair trade possible. And Bitcoin is the fairest form of money in this sense.

It is also not unfair that late adopters pay a higher exchange rate, since early adopters are taking a much greater risk with their money, because nobody really knows for sure whether Bitcoin will succeed. Late adopters pay extra for the assurance that their money isn't likely to just vanish if Bitcoin suddenly fails for some unforeseen reason, and there's nothing unfair about that. This is how all investments work.

absolutely.  i've been drawing a correlation btwn real world economics and their effects on Bitcoin ever since i started posting on the forum despite many skeptical calls on that outlook.

Euro fears boost virtual currency Bitcoin
http://business.financialpost.com/2012/06/08/euro-fears-boost-virtual-currency-bitcoin/

yes i do.  and it is always good to be as precise as one can be so i can understand where you're coming from.  

to me, words are just words, and can have multiple definitions which is why i don't necessarily get hung up on them especially when it comes to something as hard to define or describe as Bitcoin.

but Freemoney, i think, said it very well; the Bitcoin system itself is fair based on its mathematics, what can be unfair is ppl's relative positions in the world.

but here's the thing.  a very poor person in the Ukraine could have been an early adopter and either mined 10,000 BTC early on or bought $100 worth @ $0.01.  all he needed was the vision.  i am far from being that poor Ukrainian but i didn't have the vision at that time and i did read about Bitcoin back then.  how can that be described as unfair to the Ukrainian?  maybe i ought to be the one complaining about unfairness?

http://thesaurus.com/browse/nitpicker

or is "carper" or "quibbler" better?   

Much like with the word democratic my problem with the word fair is that it's definition of what it means in a certain circumstance is all too subjective and while I agree with your definition it leaves the room for someone else to interpret it in a different much more hostile and violent way that ultimately leads to problems of some people claiming some sort of entitlement.

I don't see a single reason to leave that door open even by a hair, if we have oh so many other more precise objective words to describe the same properties. Do you understand what I'm getting at?

thanks for making me reread that article.  i remember blowing past thru it not really thinking about the implications.

i don't think the Ultimatum Game applies to Bitcoin.  the scenarios put forth by all the researchers involve a spontaneous, out of the blue, monetary offer btwn 2 individuals for fiat USD's.  putting myself in the shoes of the one receiving the offer, i could very well see myself turning down $1 out of $100.  after all, the one doing the offering and I are mired in the same shithole USD fiat system and we both know those fiat USD's might be worthless down the line so i wouldn't give a hoot to turn down the offer just to spite the guy making the offer.

otoh, if i were offered 1 BTC out of 100 BTC, i might very well accept knowing full well that if i don't, we both won't get anything.  why?  b/c if i took the time to evaluate the future prospects for 1 BTC, i might come to the conclusion that its a revolutionary and great idea.  why, that 1 BTC could turn into $100,000!  i wouldn't care less about the fact that miners might get coins with subsidized electricity costs or that early adopters have more coins than me b/c they were around sooner.  i would come to the conclusion that the system is inherently fair and unbiased which is much better than the system i am stuck in now and that while some may view those attributes as unfair, i would know that the majority wouldn't.

edit:  as an example, i cannot believe what ppl are willing to do around here to get there hands on 1 BTC.  i've had major work done on my website for instance for 1 BTC that would've cost me hundreds of USD's equivalent.  ppl can see that the inherent fairness in the Bitcoin system may have long term ramifications for the global monetary system.

while i can understand that the strict definition of the word "fair" might not play well with you, i also think it is not an unfair term to describe Bitcoin much like the term "democratic" that we disagreed upon previously.

http://thesaurus.com/browse/fair


I think equitable, unbiased and impartial are a lot better adjectives to describe Bitcoin rather than the highly subjective fair.

 


+1

FreeMoney I suggest you read this: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/beware-proud-greeks-and-ultimatums if you want to learn why I try to avoid and discourage other to use the word fair.

that's very well put.

It's fair in that it treats everyone by the same rules. The fact that people bring different resources could be interpreted as an unfairness in the world, but not Bitcoin.

Vandroiy, I'm sorry to nitpick but I wouldn't label Bitcoin fair. It's actually highly unfair to those who do not have cheap electricity, or who don't have a high end mining hardware, or to those who don't know how to secure the use of the Satoshi client being forced to use and pay fees of ewallets, or to those who were late to hear about it and were forced to pay higher exchange rates for a lower amount, ect.

I think the word that's better suited for what I assume you meant to convey is honest. Bitcoin is truly honest in the sense that it's piratically impossible to counterfeit or doublespend or chargeback or break any of the other rules governing it no matter who you are.

I don't think immediate usability is why people get into Bitcoin. It is not yet better than established payment processors in just paying an invoice. Even if it were so, that is not the main reason why people are so excited about it. If you want to get people into Bitcoin, explain to them what it is really about!

Bitcoin is the first truly fair and international currency. It does not prefer one location, government, or institution. No "superior" can stop you from using your coins on the other side of the planet, no "minister of finance" can just inflate their value into oblivion, no "officer" can just declare that they are no longer yours. To a Bitcoin, every trading entity is equal.

For a newcomer, it is important to understand that he is dealing with the most real currency the world has ever seen, one compared to which the Dollar and Euro look like a dull fake. That's when an enthusiast is born, not with "this works better than PayPal".

As for immediate uses: a store of value that may be useful if the local currency blows up and Bitcoin doesn't. It doesn't hurt to hold a few coins just in case.