Topic: Bitcoin can replace the credit card today - page 3. (Read 5157 times)

This.

Confirmation speed, transactions per second, volatility, non-reversible payments, and absence of credit... not there yet.

I love the idea of non-reversible payments, but it represents a major transition for consumers. Consider the most successful Bitcoin markets, black market sites, and their reliance on escrow. Although reversible payments can be a source of fraud, they are also used for consumer protection. I see the fraud limiting aspect of non-reversible payments benefiting sellers more than buyers. Mass scamming is incredibly easy for merchants, in absence of consumer protection. FE (finalizing early: releasing funds from escrow before the exchange of goods or services has been completed) has been a cornerstone of fraud in many marketplaces.

Credit is also valued by many people. It is out of philosophical alignment with the Bitcoin community, but not the majority of consumers.

Affecting cultural change is just as vital as making technical improvements. Bitcoin also does not have a stellar reputation, yet, and that is part of the change that needs to occur.

Beyond just 'can Bitcoin replace X?', clearly explaining why Bitcoin is better than X is necessary. Libertarian platitudes do not hold widespread traction.

Does Bitcoin offer a better end-user experience than a Starbucks mobile payment app? Mass adoption includes those users.

I think Bitcoin has potential to be enormously successful---without immediate need to overthrow and replace alternate payment systems.

Is Ripple still going?  I thought it was exposed as an exploitable mess of IOUs?

Where can I donate more tin foil to your cause?   

My thoughts.

I'd add one very simple point: the CC companies make billions of dollars every year.  Think about how they do that.  They are ruthless.  Clue: it's by tricking you into thinking you get a good deal.

I remember in the UK a year or two ago we had CC companies intentionally changing the monthly due date for repayments to catch people out that had set up standing orders to pay their bills on time!

Read Satoshi's original paper, chapter 7:

https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

Explains how to prune the blockchain, to about 5MB/year. (removing transaction hashes, only keeping the merkle root hash in the end)
Now we just have to wait for devs to implement it!

Bandwidth is another thing.. Come-from-beyond has a good point, but if internet speeds keep rising, I personally think by the time BTC gets to 10000transactions/s this will be high enough.
A lot of home connections are already able to easily keep up with that speed.

That's why we need a Coin with 3 seconds transaction times...

Why is this a problem?   Consumer flash memory devices that can hold 16G can be found for less than $10.  This eventually gets cheaper.   Mass produced devices can hold a ROM of the current history of the blockchain for even cheaper.

Pretty sure it can, can't it? All you need is current location of all the coins, you don't need the history of it, you just need the history to calculate the current location.

Points you left out:

1. Credit card companies make money on interest, and can provide rewards programs to customers.  Bitcoins can't.  Advantage - Credit Cards.

2. Credit cards allow someone to know how much money they can spend.  Bitcoin prices are volatile, and need to be converted back to USD to determine their value.  Advantage - credit cards.

3. Theft and fraud - Someone steals my credit card, and the bank is SOL as long as I report it when I notice it.  Someone steals BitCoins, the owner is SOL.  Advantage - credit cards.

Points you're taking an awfully biased approach on.

1. Your chargebacks point is horribly limited in scope.  As a consumer, I prefer the charge back over the non-charge back option.  Consumer Advantage - credit cards.  Business advantage - depends on whether or not the business is large enough to operate their own credit card and earn the interest/fees associated with this.

2. Time of transaction - A pending transaction with a bank is slightly more reliable than a pending transaction with a random person.  For online purchases (excluding instantaneous downloads), it may not be an issue, but this would never work in retail stores, or for online products that people would instantly receive.

Have fun living with Google as your ultimate overlords. Surely, a company that admitted they spy on you daily...

This!
Maybe you should change the title to debit cards

But it was about 2GB a year ago. At this rate, it will require a NAS with several dozen 4TB hard drives in RAID by the end of 2016.

I think the BTC card is what Neo-Bee are trying to do.

If you deposit BTC in your wallet and it is available then when you swipe your card it only takes seconds (I am guessing).

Seems ppl don't undestand blockchain size issue. The problem is bandwidth, not storage space. VISA processing volume (10'000 tps) requires 10'000 transaction/s * 200 bytes/transaction * 8 bit/byte = 15 Mbps connection, assuming 200 bytes per transaction, average transaction requires more bytes.

What are you, living in 1995?

15 GB is not large. Any one of my 60 games on Steam are that size or bigger.

The blockchain is already highly optimized.  Compression only is effective when there are patterns in the data, or data that is not important for the end result that can either be summarized or discarded.  I doubt there is much information in the blockchain that fits into either of those categories.

 

This solves the issue for end users, but exchanges, processors, miners, and power users will always need the blockchain.

Ripple.  Solved.