Topic: Bitcoins users are what is holding Bitcoin back - page 2. (Read 1840 times)

lets first talk about fiat
on a good day, you can rely on banks to hold your funds with the blanket of protection that if proven that someone other then you takes funds without authorisation. The bank will just magic more money into existence to compensate you.. which happens to a person once every 5 years on average.

but every day, banks magic money into existence in many ways(mainly loans). meaning that a $10 you have now, would have bought you 30 loaves of bread 15 years ago, but will only buy you 5 loaves of bread this year. in 30+ years(whenever you retire) may only buy you 1 loaf of bread.
this is not due to some hacker directly stealing from your account.

on a bad day the banks could take some of your money without your acceptance. first they start with fee's then they start with negative interest.
ensuring your left with a bigger loss to buy even less loaves of bread when you retire.

on a very bad day they can go bankrupt and only give you pennies on the dollar (their 'protection' has cut off limits)
look at the Zimbabwe dollar, look at greece.. how many loaves of bread can you buy now with a set amount of Zimbabwe dollars that you could 20 years ago, how many loaves of bread can you get in greece now that you could have just 5 years ago

in short saving fiat for retirement will never give you back more then you have put in.(if you use the breadloaf value measure) even if they gave you $20 for every $10 you put in, it still will equal less loaves of bread when you retire


with the events of 2007-2008(banks go bankrupt, banks negative interest, bank debt, retirement investments evaporating) which woke some people up to the 'bad day' side of fiat.

its NOT about putting ALL your funds into bitcoin today.
yes we are still in the early stages and its silly to tell people to drop FIAT to go 100% gold, or 100% offshore or 100% bitcoin. but just dont go 100% fiat, because fiat buys you less loaves of bread as time goes on. bitcoin is only used by 0.3% of the world occasionally, and even less as a full time living-lifestyle choice. meaning bitcoin is not useless to spend direct.. but still in the early days of mass adoption

its about in realistic terms allowing anyone, even the unbanked to have an offshore place to hold value that is not storing $10 as $10 but as its own value to hedge against fiat value, much like the rich hand over fiat to off shore trusts measured in assets, but without the headaches of 2-5 days to cash out the funds from the 'institutional trusts' they set up.

its about having a safer place to store rainy day funds to save up for later knowing you can spend them without as much of a headache of dealing with institutional trusts. its about thinking of the future when you know people wont be able to rely on banks as much. its about having a contingency and not putting all your eggs into one basket(greece suffered by relying on euro banks as the only egg basket, and now they are hurt).

right now bitcoin is the middle ground between having an independent 'trust' of value, with the digital platform to spend it on goods direct.. without having to directly cash out, taking 2-5 days to then buy goods. which is the problem institutional trusts have.
right now bitcoin is the middle ground between having an asset of deflationary value, with the digital platform to spend it.. without having to find a specialist to barter to cash out, taking time and labour to then buy goods. which is the problem physical assets(gold/antiques) have.

as for pricing goods in bitcoin
much like the chinese pricing goods in dollars for Apple to buy microchips in dollars and sell to customers in dollars and pay staff in dollars so that america doesnt rely on the chinese yuan(even if the goods are initially priced in yuan behind the scenes).
much like the middle east pricing oil in dollars for fuel companies to buy in dollars and sell to customers in dollars and pay staff in dollars so that america doesnt rely on the Saudi riyal(even if the oil is initially priced in riyal behind the scenes).

it takes time for suppliers to price goods in bitcoin and merchants to buy goods from suppliers in bitcoin to sell to customers for bitcoin and pay staff in bitcoin to bring bitcoin into a circular mass adoption usage that no longer relies on fiat. so that more people can happily live only spending bitcoin and earning bitcoin as a real lifestyle choice (some people are but only a few, it will grow slowly)

its better to think of it this way: does the euro seem pointless and useless because a Yank only see's a chicago pizza priced in dollars.

The ridiculous amount of scams don't make any difference.  Tons of scams happen everyday, all day, with fiat. 

The problem I see with bitcoin (gee, this has never been a topic here before, so why the deja vu?) is that there's NO FUCKING REASON to spend it.  You can use fiat so much more easily, and with greater protection, than bitcoin.  I get paid in US dollars, right?  Well, why would I buy another currency just to spend it ON THINGS THAT ARE PRICED IN USD?

I apologize for my caps rage, but that's the big elephant who just took a shit in the room.  Everyone sees the elephant and can smell the shit, but no one wants to be the one to mention it.  Bitcoin is superfluous.  I do think it's a good investment as long as everyone agrees that it has value, but as a currency it sucks the big one.

i use bitcoins for a while right now too, though i dont use a lot of it now, it is more as an investment now

I can buy Bitcoin easier than I can buy Gold, yes I have to use an exchange but they take a credit card and I can do it very quickly. Yes I get ripped off $36 per $1000 by the exchange plus unavoidably ripped off that it costs me 1.36 times more to convert my New Zealand dollars.
So what, what will it matter in two years time.
If I buy gold and want to purchase something with it, such as $2000 crypto miners, I cant do it, cant even buy an ice cream with it and nor will I ever be likely to, but maybe I can with Bitcoin in the not too distant future.
Yes I used Bitcoin converted to Dash and purchased some crypto miners, they got the funds, then they sent them. Some $16000 worth at least.
Sometimes you just have to trust with some level of prior research to justify up your intended actions. Can't have your bread buttered on both sides, if you want the advantages of what Bitcoin brings, there is an expectation that you have to do the leg work of providing your own protection, or do you want to "mummy credit card company" to protect you forever more?
Bitcoin is hard, until you find avenues to make it easier, most are not, yet !
Here is your chance to make it easier, set up an online coin buying service using CC or buy some Bitcoin ATMs and spread them around.

You are right,but i don`t think that escrow is such a problem.

Buying bitcoins is really a pain in the a** and this is what stops bitcoin growth.

Scammers are everywhere.Most of the scammers are not bitcoin related.They steal fiat money.

Yes a newbie comes here and start blaming us.We have been using bitcoin for years and most of us are using it since its inception.First op must spend some time here and learn things

there is a lot of things other than these on bitcoin users' minds. like security, where to buy with less fee and where to spend bitcoin.


i think you should read the bitcoin white paper.
any system will always be based on trust and some party will always be at risk. and there will always be ways to exploit any system.
paypal has charge back scam, credit cards has stolen cards, bitcoin has double spend.
now risks of each of these are different. a double spend risk can easily be assesses by looking at the blockchain, checking the fees, etc while if order to assess the two other risks the merchants has to take an unbelievable amount of personal information from their users which is a privacy hazard to customers.


it is not at all tedious. it is the same as buying anything else.
there are a lot of good services like coinbase, circle and even localbitcoins and exchanges which you can buy through a wide variety of methods like bank transfer, credit cards, paypal, webmoney, whateverTheHellonTheInternetMoney....

buying gold is the same way if not harder and you will have to buy a considerable amount whereas you can buy small amount of bitcoin.


bitcoin is growing over time but these things you said are not things keeping bitcoin back.

So... Now change the word BITCOIN for the word GOLD and see what happens... same with others examples

About escrow question... Seriously?

The real magic here is the blockchain, Bitcoin is just a way to show the potential, look where we are after some years, now imagine the future.

Well, I have figured out a solution for this on my personal level and I am implementing this since last few months.
Basically, bitcoin’s movement is the key to its growth so there is no option other than spending bitcoins. On the other hand, we know bitcoin has bright future so no one wants to spend his coins. This is kind of irony situation so what we can do is,

1)   Keep Acquiring bitcoins as everyone is doing
2)   Don’t spend fiat, buy bitcoins with that fiat to spend
3)   Spend additional bitcoins bought for expenditure (for necessities such as recharging mobile or DTH, paying for other bills wherever possible).

I have been doing this so by this way I am acquiring some part of bitcoins and spending some part of it.

that is true and 100% my position too, but i also see that people want to hold their coin. but for the sake of the growing of bitcoin i like to suggest to them to buy small things like the morning coffee with bitcoin. that way you just spend around 2 bucks and help bitcoin. but then comes to fee into play. sure it is just cents, but paying 5% more is not appealing. nobody would mind paying more fore the coffee as such, but paying for a fee feels bad. i get that and i do not see a change in the near future.

You still need to trust the escrow, that's what the issue is for me, if you need to rely on trust it would be far better to have to trust the seller - buyer beware, the buyer doesn't have to buy.

in my opinion the only thing that is holding bitcoin back is users "resisting using bitcoin as a currency" and this is not the downfall as you suggest in your first post but it definitely is holding bitcoin back. because as long as we don't want to spend bitcoin and want to just hold it until the moon no shop will accept bitcoin.

what makes escrow absurd? even if someone gonna make a transaction to an individual that's stranger for the buyers through bank transfer they will also use escrow to prevent from any scamming attempt,as you say that actually buyers and sellers can't fully trust escrow,just seek for the most trusted ones
if there's a way to go without risk,why choosing to do this one?
even though i'm agree that bitcoin users are actually holding bitcoin back

bitcoin is just code.

people should not sit on their hands and think that bitcoin will do something special to suddenly make walmart accept it.
PEOPLE have to make decisions to start businesses or if you already have a business decide to accept bitcoin.

so i agree with the OP part that users are the problem.

people need to start looking around there home towns and find other bitcoiners.
set up some social events like bitcoin meetups at a bar if its only a couple of you or proper events if your in a popular area.

get to know people and start trading bitcoins as usually if there are a few people there is always someone that wants cash and another person wants bitcoins.

get to know people and start bitcoin businesses in your towns/cities.

but i disagree with the OP part about buying bitcoin with a credit card. well thats just the same as buying something with a cheque signed with that special ink that fades after an hour until its disappeared. (it wont get accepted)

in which case you need to know who the other person is to slap them with a wet fish or court order should they do you wrong.. but thats where the OP falls down a never ending spiral by halfway through the post saying he wants bitcoin to be bought without having to give proof of id(register) but then blames bitcoin sellers at the end of the post if they dont ask for enough proof of id

If bitcoin is left as is then it will be one of the best stores of value that will rise in time so would make a good investment but if people are wanting to use it as an actual currency then obviously the current blocksize would need to be increased. I still have high hopes for future price rises with bitcoin but with so many alts popping up you start to wonder.

I don't think that something is holding it back Bitcoin is doing very well and growing steadily imo,but I agree that things could be even better.About the safety as long as we have the option to use escrow there is nothing to afraid and we are safe,the only problem is that many newbies are not aware of it.

How can we safeguard them from scams if they are the ones pushing toward pyramid schemes and such things? We cannot do that unless they wake up. We've had so many scams lately and people still do not understand that they NEED to be secure 10 out of 10 times. Bitcoin is seen by most of us ad a trading currency.. For many, it's being considered as being like a poker chip for gambling. In many countries like mine, Bitcoin hasn't even been heard by many.

I find the issue is that you still need to trust the escrow.

Where can I buy Bitcoin with CC online, I'm in Hong Kong?

What do you see bitcoin in the next 10-15 years ? If you see it as a currency that is accepted everywhere, it cannot become that without safeguarding the users from the scams. Escrow is actually the best thing there is for that purpose.

Also there are already sites where you can buy bitcoins directly with a CC.