Topic: Bitcoin will NOT surpass traditional methods of payment. Convince me. (Read 576 times)

Your concerns are valid but first of all I'm not sure if there is any entity producing that amount of ASIC miners. Only if they would buy another miners' whole operations by paying a supra-price for their operations, but I don't think any mining farm would give up their mining operations taking into account the upside potential that Bitcoin has.

BUT, as far as I see Bitcoin - as a currency is not yet a threat for banks and probably they won't consider interfering in this way with the cryptocurrencies and by the time they do believe is the time to interfere it is going to be too late as (my belief) is that BTC will actually start being used for daily, mundane transactions only when its value will be somehow stable.

Bitcoin is not accepted by the world central banks and the governments but it doesn't matter because the use of Bitcoin increasing day by day. Question arises why people switch to Bitcoin?Obviously they feel more comfort as compare to traditional banking system.

It is acceptable that the transaction of Bitcoin slow than the Ether,So if we talk about overall crypto it will be accepted by the people and if not now but later it will be legalized and no once can stop the crypto. 

Decentralization is needed and it is acquired by the people. I am against your idea of it cannot be act as an alternative of fiat, I am of the view that not in future, but in present time it is acting as a best alternative of fiat currencies. People have adopted it as an option at all places where it is acceptable as a payment method. People are also investing huge amounts in trading with digital currencies. These are the results of its usage and acceptance by the people.

How will someone get you it funds? You can't Rob a bitcoin address like your u can with a bank. A bank is physical and a waste of space. Who told you that stolen funds will be given back? If you have your money stolen the banks not going to replace it. Only if it's their fault. If you get hacked or your money is stolen some how like you held up at an ATM then guess what? Tough luck that's life. Do you honestly think the bank will replace stolen money? That means criminals would generate infinite funding without ever effecting the balance of anyone's account but the value of the currency will go down. Oh and I know you talking about banks being h ld of up and robbed what a useless and stupid argument. Bitcoin has no bank your u are the bank.

It is quite true that regulation is what restricts people to do what they want in their own way, but I've known allot of people getting rich without considering the fact that they save their money to banks, in the first place banks will really help you to safely store your money, incase that the bank get's robbed, they have the option to still give the money of the people back because they are backed by the government. decentralization on the other hand will grant complete ownership of bitcoin and crypto, thus, taking the opportunity of regaining back the funds if it lost.

Why try to convince someone of something. We will soon know the answer. But I don't think it will happen in the next 5 years.

Well, who says the Bitcoin is created to surpass the traditional payment method? Because, as far as I know, --the Bitcoin was created just so the people can have an alternative payment option while having transactions online. Bitcoin is like the first version of the windows operating system. The most basic, but the foundation of its next generations.

Indeed, I can tell that Bitcoin is at its early stage. We won't need to convince each other here. We are here to observe what will happen to the next era of the payment methods and trades.

You are right on saying that. However, I think that although crypto might not be a good alternative to fiat and such payment methods, the decentralization is very much needed in the modern world as institutions and businesses are making the wealthy wealthier and poor poorer by their manipulative techniques. Every pros come with cons, it's just how we manage to milk out from it.

These features make Bitcoin system more reliable over traditional ways of payments. As you said that it can be used for making even smaller payments, it is more secure, easily used and highly benefited. The present banking systems are not liked by the nations because of the taxes also, their working and the centralized nature of them , this involve third parties in their payments.

Only 10 years ago, not more; there were people saying that credit cards and debit cards will not surpass cash for shopping. In my country, 90% pays by cards for shopping nowadays. So better solutions will always surpass the previous ones.

It would actually be a lot strenuous for bitcoins to surpass the traditional methods of payments.
Traditional methods of payments are been made to ease the transactions in between people of the same country.

There have been a lot of methods implied for oversea transactions so people do not really assume to use bitcoins as a payment method because they are already meant as an currency for investment and to multiply our profits with. Traditional ways are been easily available for a lot of people who are not tech driven and I think this would never allow bitcoins to overtake that position. Bitcoins are doing great but they are not assumed to get legalized soon which would never allow them to surpass the traditional means of payment.

It is too early to come into any conclusions now. At the moment you cannot compare Bitcoin with big payment processors like banks. Still a lot of development have been going on. With the recent development of lightning network you can now send a small amount like 1 Satoshi. Earlier it was not possible.

Banking system did not evolve within a decade it took time to create such a massive infrastructure. By the way you still cannot send small amount through banking payment system but, you can now by using Bitcoin lightning network.

It will be hard to get 100 of the top banks to all put in 20 million in order to set up a new mining station/purchase already running ones. Some of them may have interests in crypto-currency (when crypto gets huge, there is going still to be a need for centralized services, and some banks are definitely looking towards creating a business on that, we've seen some exchanges from banks.

Sure, you've listed 10 or so banks that lose a shit ton of money. Can you do that with the other 90 or so banks? Do you think that every single bank will be able to reach a single conclusion, they all are extremely powerful and it's similar to how world-wide trading discussions fail. A crowd of people with huge amounts of power, means it's very, very hard to reach a single decision (even though it might be good for them all).

Just take a look at the DOHA round as a decent example.

Interesting thread, however.

Bitcoins would be beneficial in terms of international payments as the traditional methods of payments usually charge a lot hectic fees for sending transactions over the nation boundaries. Bitcoins would help us in that case because borderlines does not affect the fees for the transaction of bitcoins. We need to same transaction fees for sending bitcoins to the next door and even the same amount of fees for sending over nations.

This makes it easier for people who transact globally to adopt bitcoins but for the remaining who transact within their nation would never feel bitcoins are a convenient mean for payment. Transacting with traditional methods like cash, card, etc would be suitable for those people.

No, why would I want volatility to die becauae of the government? That just means decentralization will die too, the governments will be controlling the price too. I don't want that, the reason I use this price despite the profit I am getting is also to get out of that zone where the government control and take advantage of their power. It may not surpass other payment method, that is fine as long as it is the bitcoin I am used to know

Volatility has always been the unique characteristic of bitcoin ever since. But i believe this will given a solution once the government will come to support bitcoin and end up mass adoption. And even if bitcoin will not end up surpassing the fiat system, it's not really a failure knowing it has become a good alternate payment system.

And where will you get all that asic gear? Magic? You could also argue the same thing by saying they could band together to buy "all bitcoin", and the exact same thing occurs: Price will go up faster than all the money they could pool, EVEN if govs joined and started printing to foolishly attempt this.

Every 10 minutes a new block is found. You can broadcast when there is only 1 minute left or 9. Fast transactions should not be the aim for someone using Bitcoin, you should stick to transactions that can wait, such as something you would buy online and can wait one day or so for confirmation. The "instant" thing is a specific situation than most people can simply avoid, or perhaps use LN but this is something extraordinary, very uncommon. ETH is a very poor example, its blockchain is also clogged with all the non ETH traffic (gazillion tokens and random contracts) and worst thing is they can undo transactions on a whim, as they already did. No one has the power to do that to Bitcoin, not even Satoshi. ETH re-created the worst characteristic of fiat money.

Anything that is not instant payment, such as wire transfer, can be done with Bitcoin perfectly fine and cheaply. There is only one tx fee you should ever use: 1 sat/B. Its true you can pay more to have more priority, but this should only be done in rare circumstances. It is wrong when wallets try to guess the network and change tx fees on their own, it projects the wrong image of Bitcoin. It is NOT Bitcoin's fault that most wallets do the wrong thing, just don't let the wallet decide for you when you want to speed things up which should only be done rarely, and perhaps never once LN becomes a thing.

Bitcoin is in the hands of too many people for it to be attacked successfully. Some of the smaller altcoins do have this problem. Neither the banks nor the govs even banding together can destroy Bitcoin. People know this and that is why it has its current value after 11 years of its creation. It is safe money you can use or keep without any artificial restrictions imposed by law or politics.

The answer to this thread is subjective. Depends on what you mean by "surpass".

Are we talkin' about utility? Again, this depends. Bitcoin will never surpass traditional payment systems. LN is trying to give that a try but I've never studied LN before so I have no idea what to say about it. Putting it aside though, the block confirmation part of Bitcoin makes it lose in favor of fiat & cards.

If we think about advanced payments and bank transfers though, Bitcoin is way more useful. With a <1$ you can basically send as much money as you'd like. The recipient will see their funds instantly and they can be used within the first confirmations of the tx. This, compared to how bank transfers work, puts Bitcoin in favor.

Changes Bitcoin might have to go through may take some weight off Bitcoin on its balance vs Fiat/Cards, but I don't think it'll ever surpass them. Controlled assets will always be, one way or another, more convenient to attract people.

If we're talking about the total number of transactions and total volume per day, it could surpass it at any time. As soon as Bitcoin's maturity approaches, the number of txs/day will increase due to a higher number of Bitcoin users coming in and we don't have just a few countries people are joining from. It's worldwide. But although it could surpass the two numbers, that would become a big threat to world leaders and it needs utility. We need to have something to spend Bitcoin on so the number of transaction and total volume rises. But will they let it get to that point knowing there are probably a lot of tax evasions going on through the txs?

It's hard. Bitcoin could become a very largely traded asset but it's hard to say whether it'll surpass traditional payment systems, especially when you have for example PayPal which transfers money in a matter of seconds and is very convenient. In order to add utility to Bitcoin, we need more ways we can spend it. In Europe there isn't very much you can do with it.

Lightning network is the solution for this problem. With this network, the transactions will be able to faster than its normal transaction speed. So I don't think that will be a problem. The problem right now is that if bitcoin will be a payment method, it is so volatile. As price changes, that means the value of that thing will always be changing too.

First of Payal is a scam! They will ruin your business on first given chance. Those people are so corrupted by money that they don't give a fuck if you go down.

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Get rich!

Yes, it may not surpass but it can compete with the current payment methods. And actually, it is already being utilized already. There are known merchants that already integrated bitcoin as means of payment method. Like in my country, I didn't know that Grab is already accepting bitcoin to top up your account. So I guess that's one good example that bitcoin adoption is going mainstream.

Those are indeed problems that need to be resolved by bitcoin and I could say that any centralised currency or method of payment that are non-blockchain benefits from the speed simply because the entire system is controlled by them and doesn't require hash power. That's where the weakness of decentralized platform lies. I also think that bitcoin is still inferior in many aspect compared centralised method of payment, maybe in the future we'll get it resolved.

It may not pass traditional methods of payment but it doesn’t need to. It can be a valid method of payment along with cash, credit cards, PayPal, etc. and still be successful.

It will not surpass when countries are going to be developing their own digital fiat but the use of crypto will increase over time.

If its worth attacking using the 51%, they've probably done so already. But they did not. I'm sure with the number of businesses going to be affected by BTC, they'd do all they got to bring it down. The problem with this one is that they will have to bring down every coins that is brought to their attention.  

You can be right for now, I mean bitcoin isn't well known in some part of the world like mostly in the 3rd world countries, but there's always some evolution over the years. Bitcoin can't surpass now the traditional methods of payment, but it could surpass it in some time in the future, when everyone around the world are able to use internet everywhere.

i thought the latest fix for btc improves its scalabillity issues   ? but the speed ,  speed depends on the fees you put because the higher the fee the more your transaction will be priotize by the miners   . 

small fees results to slower transfer too  . it still depend on the user if what is his prefer usage for his btc  . there are people treats thier btc as a payment tool while others love to hodl and make it as a investment  for profit purposes   .

That's right, until we are able to increase the speed of Bitcoin network as well as improving it's scalability it can never outweigh the performance of making Fiat payments. Right now Bitcoin is better  seen as a store of value more than a currency.

It is gonna be an alternative, not the replacement.
People will still get used to how money works currently. It has been always like that even pre-credit/debit card era. If Bitcoin was possible to replace the current payment methods, then we should all have been using cards, but turns out it become also an alternative.
Bitcoin could surely replace these cards, but as for the traditional payment, I highly doubt. It'll just get adopted a lot.

Couldn't agree more, that bitcoin can't surpass the traditional methods of payment, people will not pay something that has more fee, bitcoin has a higher fee comparing to traditional payment, that's why people prefer to hold bitcoin as an investment tool rather than using it as a payment processor., the spend time is over. However, I don't think that all the Banks in this world will unite and planning to destroy bitcoin.

I think we have this misconception that Bitcoin can only be really worthy if soon it can be able to topple all the banks we have around. I am not so sure but I am not buying that crap...and we should stop that kind of non-sense because yes in the first place Bitcoin is not made for that type of thing. Why should a decentralized platform be compared  to what banks which are centralized infrastructures can be providing. Bitcoin can stand on its own. Maybe we are just carried away from our philosophical ambitions that we have forgotten the big realities out there. Personally, I don't believe that big banks will magically cooperate with each other and then just suddenly decide that they will pour millions just to defeat Bitcoin. This is just another conspiracy theory to me.  If I am a banker right now, I will not be threatened at all with Bitcoin because it is not making even a small dent with my revenues in remittances and other banking services. According to what I read, not more than 10% of the USA population is into Bitcoin and that means we still have a lot of years to work on to make it really go into mainstream.

Hello ,
I completely agree with you , as for me the traditional methods of payment have more options , are more easily accessible , doesn't need the internet and overall are the most dominant form of payment .
But there are some places where they do lack and where the Bitcoins can come into play .
Like you can consider payment made internationally, when you pay in bitcoins , you have to ultimately pay very less 1/3 as the fee , considering a large amount .
Also at the same time we can also use the lightning network for a number of transaction that might be considered secret .

I think that the most likely scenario for bitcoin is that it will continue to coexist and play an increasing role in terms of facilitating transactions.

However, it is very difficult to see that one day BTC is able to actually surpass or replace fiat per se. That will take much more than just BTC adoption, because of the fact that the government and central banks around the world have a firm grip over monetary policy that they wouldn't just easily give up.

I'm not overly optimistic and saying that BTC will replace fiat like a lot of others are, but I'm certainly not bearish on BTC in the long run either.

This might be happening because the initial expectation we did to attract people is to help them earn money, instead of the best method of adoption but takes more time such as convincing people to take alternative payments rather than to tell them about investment. I am not saying we're wrong about our way of advertising bitcoin but the effect is evident, and might be better if people starts to see bitcoin as a currency and followed later on by their understanding that it could be use in investment. Though, the main purpose of it being established already is bitcoin being a currency.

This is an issue that I see IMO. People only see bitcoin as a means of making money alone both hodlers and traders. This is a bad omen for bitcoin rise because you have to use it for personal transaction for it to gain relevance.

Your questions OP are very easy to answer.

You're concerned with traders and speculators. This is popular among them because it's profitable so traders and holders come first but when it goes mainstream and becomes popular not all people will buy to trade. Most traders are already here in the space that's why you think there's many of them. Wait until other professions get  interested. They already are and that includes bankers.

51% attack is not only very expensive but also unprofitable for the attacker because the attacker is invested in Bicoin. He owns mining hardware. If he damages Bitcoin he won't be able to get ROI and his attack will be similar to setting fire to his own server room.

How will banks buying massive amounts of hashpower help? What's the plan there? To do a 51% attack? I hear people speak of this all the time it's like some elusive mythical beast that noone has ever seen. I understand that 51% means you own the majority of the network but so what? how will it benefit you in any other way besides having more? owning 1% is almost the same as owning 51% the different is the one is 51x more powerful then the other. I don't see how this helps with an "attack" Trying to crash the system or mess with it? How? Can someone please explain to be how owning 51% of the hashpower is such a threat to bitcoin?

Bitcoin is better then traditional methods simply because it is easier and faster. Why wait 4 days for bank clearance when you can get the funds within 10 minutes? Why the hell must my bank clear what is rightfully mine? I can clear it myself with bitcoin and know once I see it on the blockchain and in my wallet it is there to stay and no silly bank or thief or scammer can touch it unless I send it to them myself. One thing I really hate about banks is freaking debit orders.... Those are just wtf.

Even when i first started BTCitcoin i too had the same mentality that it will replace the traditional payment system and during the early stages many merchants were accepting BTCitcoin and it was a golden time as you were able to use it everywhere with minimal transaction charges and the adoption rate was massive but then it changed after that and now it is a great speculative market and hopefully in the future we will see some changes in that aspect. Still BTCitcoin can be used to send transactions globally if you are an exporter with minimum transaction fees than traditional methods.

There's a common rule to the use of inflationary and deflationary units of exchange.
When times are good, like now in Europe and the US inflationary currencies are spent and deflationary held. See EUR, USD, JPY.
When there's a big crysis and a fiat currency hyperinflates it all turns the other way. Nobody wants to spend inflated fiat because it's purchasing power is extremely weak. They turn to trading valuable goods and stores of value like fuel, alcohol, medicine, jewelry, gold and silver, even mobile phone prepaids. See Venezuela, Zimbabwe.

I am kind of believing the same thing right now. The first time ever my bank said they don't even accept bank SEPA form LocalBitcoins bitcoin traders. Now they sent my money back to the sender. So living in Europe for people being paid by Bitcoin is getting harder and harder. Now I have to take out my salary through MoneyGram or western union to be able to pay my bills here, which means more inconvenience for me and more payment in fees. I am really upset by this because it's not as if I earn a fortune and they are chasing me from money laundering. I don't bring more than 12-13k euros a year into my bank lol, it's a joke.  Instead of chasing the Mafias that launder millions each month, they chase the little people who earn 1-2k euros a month.

I agree,  first of all,  bitcoin has limitation and not all people know what bitcoin is compare to fiat currency.  One thing also is we need internet to access it so think about those who doesnt have internet in their place.  Bitcoin for me was just an another source of income but I never see it to surpass what methodnof payments we have now.  Maybe its just another option.

No one in the world know what's going to happen
Even today, there are a large portion of population that only use cash, without credit cards, without bank account...so it's hard to speculate if BTC is going to be the next method of payment

Maybe in a few years we'll look to BTC and says: wow, BTC was so old and boring, how people use that?

I am not thinking about bitcoin will surpass traditional methods of payment. Still, I believe bitcoin will help the traditional methods of payment because bitcoin can cross the border to any country without use converting methods to local currency.

Maybe you are right that 90% of cryptocurrency users are just traders, but I don't think that traders don't want to use cryptocurrency for another thing as they will see that many merchants now trying to integrate their system to the blockchain by offerings the new option to their customer to pay using bitcoin or altcoin.

I think your scenario can work or happen if all banks united to block the existency of bitcoin so they can make their position strong in public. But that will be too complicated for me to think about what will happen later.

There are any revolutionary virtual currency (btc or others online payment gateway) is impossible to surpass our traditional method. Specially crypto illegal countries they have not forgotten the dream. Even BTC isn’t used a official currency in any legalize country. Sorry, i cannot convince you about this matter. I think not necessity btc to use as a traditional currency.             

You speak as if it's normal to attack a public network/infrastructure.
Well , I think anyone who is observant enough would know what is currently hindering mass adoption. I believe this will be solved eventually,as i already noticed that some are taking the problem very seriously and will most likely find desirable solutions.

Still, it would be much faster than international wire transfer from 1st to 3rd world country. And much cheaper after taking into consideration volatility of BTC!

One by one
- Cards? as in Credit Cards? quite technically impossible Debit...not impossible but hard as hell.
- Bank transfers? Those things will start to become a thing of the past by themselves for the average user.
- Payment gateways? Bitcoin, when issued for purchases most of the time is through a payment gateway so...

But wait!!!
Bitcoin is money! So, why does it need to compete with services?  


Rather than going through this...
They could close down every damn exchange bank account.
Imagine coinbase losing its bank account access, where do you think the price will go? 1000?
At 1000 mining becomes unprofitable for everything mining above 3c/kwh , hash rate would drop like a stone, gear would be easy to buy at scrap prices....

But, why do it?
Have you asked yourself how much money banks have made from people sending and receiving wires from exchanges and those accounts?

A colleague of mine was so angry at the last gas price spike that he said he is going to buy an electric car.
I asked him if he knows that our city gets its energy from a gas plant owned by an oil company. He didn't speak to me that day anymore!  


Not directly but with the blockchain getting bigger faster than HDDs and SSDs, yeah it could lead to that!

That is why for cryptocurrency, my expectation not really high. If it can profitable for me although only for investment, then i wouldn't ask more. Because and i think people will still use their fiat if they want to make transaction inside their country. And not much who really use bitcoin as payment if not for overseas transaction or in other country.

I agree with you there, and I'm not one who would argue that bitcoin is ever going to surpass fiat currency.  Ever.  Not unless people start getting their paychecks in bitcoin and items are priced in terms of bitcoin--and neither of those things shows any sign of happening.

But here's the thing: bitcoin could be used as money if you needed to use it as such.  Thus, even if you're an investor it has that added value.  If you're tired of hanging on to it, you could always spend it.  There are plenty of merchants that sell some pretty interesting stuff for bitcoin, and big merchants at that.  Overstock and Newegg are two that come to mind.  I don't think the fact that bitcoin is mostly a thing that gets traded instead of spent has much effect on its importance or utility.

Ultimately, bitcoin doesn't need to replace any established payment methods or currencies.  It can peacefully (and profitably) co-exist alongside all the rest of them.  I never saw it as being in competition with fiat.

It's true that trading is the most popular use right now, but it doesn't mean that it will keep being that way forever. It's just an observation, not a prediction.

As for 51% attack - it's not about just amassing hash power, you also need to constantly burn electricity to sustain it, which is why Bitcoin is so resilient. It's really not a big threat to Bitcoin thanks to how it was designed.

Speed - Lightning network takes care of it. And you comparison with ETH or other shitcoins is wrong, because 1 confirmation in Bitcoin has different amount of security than 1 confirmation in ETH.

They can surpass it terms of conveniency, in my country mobile banking, over the Counter banking and bills payment were too hard to do due to limited stafs or counter that took long lane before you will be accommodated. Unlike in crypto it's on our hands. The only needed first is the proper application that will allow typical stores to accept btc, a portal or wallet app will do.

Any currency have pros and cons. The first currency that the old people used is their items. They did the barter or trading of goods and other things and it has pros and cons too. After that the people created a coin and it has too and until now, the current that we are using right now which is fiat has pros and cons too. This goes with Bitcoin too. It also has pros and cons too .

At first place, Satoshi didn't said in the whitepaper that "it will surpass traditional methods of payment etc." It is stated that Bitcoin is just a new payment system and completely digital money and it has been created so that middleman will be removed in the transaction. It is stated here.

I don't see Bitcoin surpassing the traditional payments right now but if it will, it must solve the problems that is occurring on Bitcoin especially the scalability of it and the fees. If this has been solved then MAYBE, more and more people will use it

I believe in bitcoin technology, I believe bitcoin has provided many benefits to every user. but I'm not sure bitcoin is able to surpass the performance of traditional currencies, because bitcoin still has some shortcomings such as fluctuating prices, expensive transaction fees, not all countries accept its presence, and there are still others. don't compare bitcoin with traditional payment methods anymore, let them walk side by side, because they have advantages and disadvantages of each.

Current methods of payment include Gold, Silver, Cash, digital fiat, SDRs, Bills of Exchange, bearer bonds, and other instruments. Bitcoin is just the latest one to be added to the list. They all have their own use cases,strengths and weaknesses,but the 21 million cap, and the 10 min average block generation time was included by the creators to ensure that it could never become the dominant payment method.

Yes, I believed. Bitcoin will not surpass the traditional payment method unless if this will be centralized and the government will have control over it. But the fact, they dont have any authority to control bitcoin that's why this will not be able to use as to replace the traditional fiat.
But I believed that Bitcoin is the alternative way in methods of payment. And now that is proven because there are mass adoption of bitcoin and it is almost worldwide currency and it is dollar base price.

The real intention of Satoshi Nakamoto for Bitcoin was to introduce a new way of making financial transactions with more freedom and no third party involvement in the transaction. Personally, i don't really think Bitcoin was developed to surpass the existing traditional methods of payment. It was meant to be an alternative method of payment for people who do not want third party involvement in their transactions. But failed to achieve this due to the way people see Bitcoin. Bitcoin is now an asset rather than a digital currency for payment of goods and services.

Bitcoin as a currency would have scalability as an issue. Increased number of transactions lead to network congestion which in turn makes the network slower and expensive. Thus, not really viable for day to day transactions. So yeah, Bitcoin becoming a payment mode is not really viable and can't match the ease and speed of the present payment modes.

I think that VISA/MC can implement blockchain in their systems but i dont believe that crypto will be more popular than them

Bitcoin was created to have a decentralized version of fund transaction between one user to another user on the internet without having a middleman or a trusted financial institution. They are an alternative to Bank Transfers while Cards and Payment Gateways are still possible with bitcoin and we cannot categorize them as traditional methods of payment. The primary idea is to prevent banks and centralized financial institutions in playing a role in our transactions on the internet. As like people tend to use fiat money even after the introduction of Credit and Debit Cards and the same goes with bitcoin. Bitcoin will stay as well as fiat money would stay here. It is upto the marketplaces or stores to accept bitcoin or not.

A common scenario favoring the usage of bitcoin is like : We tend to buy goods from market and pay using Debit or Credit Cards. What if there tends to be a problem with Card machine and there is a withdrawal from your account and there is no sign of deposit to the merchant account? What if you didn't get your money back? I have experienced this and got back my money only after providing evidence in Bank the next day. With Bitcoin, all you need is just a transaction ID and with providing that, merchant would let you go with your purchased goods.

We are in the initial stages of the development of something like a virtual currency and it would significantly take time to reach the goal of being used by merchants. People who would go with supporting the government and the plans they are undertaking, would always speak against bitcoin. They would never support the technology even if the technology tends to overtake the current banking system.

10 years into the technology and are we in need of rapid developments? Not many are still really aware of bitcoin and if many become aware, we would see a rise in developer count and significant developments would take place. Aren't we aware of Lightning Network and other scalability options? We can always have a hard fork and increase the scalability, but with the community support and through a soft fork or off-chain payments, I don't think we would face scalability issues in future.

the strength of the crypto community is stronger than the money held by conventional banks.
Conventional banks move from money and assets of customers, without customers, the bank will not function properly.
but that doesn't apply to bitcoin.

Why do people keep on insisting that Bitcoin would surpass or be the only payment method?
It is very different from traditional payment method and it could never replace it.
It could be used as a payment method but it could only be an option not the top priority since the fluctuation would affect both the seller and the buyer.

I'm also in the position that Bitcoin is not here to surpass traditional payments. It's more of an alternative to the traditional methods of payment. If they don't want the traditional one, they can use cryptocurrency as an option.
Looking at the different factors, Bitcoin is at the early stage and it has no power to surpass traditional payment as of now. We need to consider the technological capabilities, the government, and the people.

Sadly, I am one of those who strongly believe that "Bitcoin will NOT surpass traditional methods of payment." It's commonsense to note that the tech behind Bitcoin or cryptocurrency is embedded in the internet, electricity and knowledge of the tech world. More than half of the world's population is still illiterate and can't have a handle on this Bitcoin tech.

why does it matter?
bitcoin was never created to "surpass" or replace anything. it is an alternate option that works in an entirely different way (in short decentralized) and the goal has always been to keep it that way not to compete with or replace anything.

that is an entirely different discussion which has nothing to do with your main subject. not replacing traditional methods doesn't mean complete failure and no future.

the rest of your arguments regarding 51% attack, speed,... are already discussed in dozens of other topics.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.6306

Those are some good points. In regards to being too expensive, is it fair to say that a company would spend any amount to save their companies business? So let's bump that spend to $100,000,000 (100 million USD) per top bank. Budget of $100,000,000,000 (10 Billion USD).

Banks such as HSBC have been fined 1.9 Billion USD and it hasn't hurt them. 100 million USD isn't going to do much to their profits.
J.P Morgan gets fined every 2-3 years averaging over 100 million USD.
Barclays similar amount to J.P Morgan.


Bank   Fines:

Bank of America   $76.1 Billion USD
JPMorgan Chase   $43.7 Billion USD
Citigroup           $19 Billion USD
Deutsche Bank   $14 Billion USD
Wells Fargo   $11.8 Billion USD
RBS                   $10.1 Billion USD
BNP Paribas   $9.3 Billion USD
Credit Suisse   $9.1 Billion USD
Morgan Stanley   $8.6 Billion USD
Goldman Sachs   $7.7 Billion USD
UBS   $6.5 Billion USD


Keep in mind that fines are Banks having to forfeit money "involuntary".

Imagine how much they'd spend to stay in business.

There will always have a solution if it will have a mass adoption. At first the government will be needing an implementation notice or announcement that may businesses provides necessary materials needed to speed the transactions. As I'm using BTC more on payment s now than Banks. It might need more improvement but in my area it's quite good to use now as payment and investment solutions.

It's either:

1. They buy power from existing rigs. However, the price is not the only thing they'll need to consider, but also if these pools would cooperate with them and sell them their service. Or,

2. They buy their own nodes, which they would need to make 101% of the current network node size, which would be too much expensive compared to the benefit they'll gain.

I've been for cryptocurrencies from when I first heard about it and got involved back in 2013. There are some pros to having Bitcoin as the future method of payment however there are some cons too.

It would be interesting to see why you think Bitcoin (or other cryptocurrencies) will surpass traditional methods of payment (Cards, Bank transfers, payment gateways etc.). Or if you think they have no future please share why.

Some of my concerns:

• Ever since a few people have made a fortune from the massive spike in prices, it's attracted a lot of traders and day traders. Not a bad thins but it's clear to me that easily 90% of cryptocurrency users are just traders with no intensions of using the currencies. Hence the rise in a lot of exchanges (a lot of which look the same).
• All it takes is 51%. Although for a coin such as BTC would be very expensive to attack the network it's still possible.
  
  Here's my insane scenario:
  
  100 top banks from across the world don't like the threat BTC has on their business so they all join together to buy compute power, take over the network and cause havoc. I estimate it would cost around $2,000,000,000 (2 Billion USD). This is very expensive but what's $20,000,000 (20 million USD) to a top bank? That's an investment to help protect their business.
• Speed: BTC is known to be slow to confirm a single transaction (approx 10 mins). ETH is faster (approx 15 seconds). I believe (correct me if i'm wrong) that if you cut down block times it slowly starts to make a decentralised system more centralised.