Topic: Chart of pros and cons - any suggestions? (Read 854 times)

A lot of these look good, but you're missing a major downside to bitcoins: no consumer protection.  Take the security from sellers and payment processors: true, you're right that there is "blind trust with credit card information", but there's a huge difference between giving someone a $100 bill, and charging $100 to your credit cards.  The chargebacks: if someone screws you over when you're buying something with a credit card, you can do a chargeback, and you get the money back.  If someone screws you over when you buy something with bitcoins, you're out the bitcoins, period.

This is by far the biggest weakness of bitcoins, in my opinion.  Ideally, all sellers would be totally aboveboard and one wouldn't have to worry about this, but it happens, and as a consumer, I worry a lot less buying from a website that I'm unfamiliar with because of the implicit credit card protections than I would if I were purchasing something with bitcoins.  (Of course, it's an advantage for sellers because they don't have to worry about chargeback fraud and have much cheaper fees.  But most consumers don't care about that.)

Even with things like the credit card thefts: most banks / credit card companies eat the losses on this and give their customers zero liability and new credit card numbers.  It can be a pain for consumers if people have recurring payments on those cards, but they don't have to worry about the losses with them like they would with bitcoin.  

Thus, I strongly disagree with three of your sections' assessments: "Security from private sector thieves", "Security from digital thieves", and "Security from sellers and payment processors".  From the third category, your security is zero: if you give a seller or payment processor money and they take it away from you, you can't get it back.  I trust bitpay and Coinbase to not do this, but other companies?  Maybe not as much.  As far as digital thieves, well yes, it's technically potentially high if you use offline wallets and an offline computer to do the signing of transactions.  But unless you do that, you're at risk from trojans / spyware that will steal your bitcoins.  These programs already exist.  My wallet is an offline wallet, and I'll buy another computer to do the signing some day if I ever have a lot of bitcoins in it.  But you can't trust everyday users to go to that kind of trouble.  (Trezor would eliminate the need for another computer, but it's pricey compared to using credit cards.)

I'm not sure why there's really a differentiation between "Security from private sector thieves", "Security from digital thieves" in this chart.  You can have one guy write a worm that'll steal bitcoins, or there are entire companies that do it, often in countries like Russia or thereabouts.  But it doesn't make much of a difference to the user, either way it's a worm / trojan / keylogger stealing your bitcoins.

Of course, there is one way in which bitcoins for online purchases from a theft perspective: if you try to buy something online with bitcoins, and don't get it, you're out those bitcoins but you don't have to worry about them spending money on your credit card.  In a sense, this one's a tradeoff: with bitcoins, you're out that money, but with the traditional system, you aren't out the money, but you have to hassle with banks to get it back.

Yes you can on most paper wallets there is a 2 QR codes, if not I would not accept it. 1 QR code will check the balance the other QR code will transfer the private key to your wallet thus giving you the bitcoins and they the piece of paper should be discarded, if you reload it the coins will go directly to the wallet with the private key attached to it.

good work so far, add in some things about protection for the consumer purchasing with paypal, cc, etc. If you buy something with BTC your btc is gone if the site is rouge (a massive, massive problem). Fluctuation in value might be a good thing to add in, although hard to really accurately portray all three imo. Recognizability would be good, utility as well (gold has some, dollars make decent fuel for a fire, btc has the blockchain)

You can give away a paper wallet with coins on, but you cant make a transfer.

paper does work as long as it has the addy on it and the private key.

Bitcoin face-to-face-transfer with paper wallets? Dont work, or?

Governments control the value of their fiat (to some extent) by measuring the amount of taxes to be paid in the fiat currency. They might balance the value of their fiat to that of other nations by trading on the currency markets.

What do you mean by "government mandate" for source of value for fiat?  Do you mean that governments attempt to control the value of their fiat vs another (i.e. China devaluing their currency, etc.)?  Or do you mean that fiat is backed mainly by faith?

Your on a crypto currency forum what do you expect? If it was a gold forum it would be biased to gold. Its only logical right.

Lines I'd consider adjusting:

Creation - I'd agree if you were only comparing BTC to BRL, INR, IDR, etc., but you're being a bit unfair with USD/GBP/EUR.  First world currencies are highly stable, and either have a stated inflation rate (like the UK), or a generally known inflation rate (like the US).

Source of Value can be both a weakness and a strength.  Currency can be increased or decreased to keep prices at a norm.  BTC and Gold cannot be easily adjusted.

Digital Transfer - Instant is a bit generous.  P2P, it's not instant, and exchanges are proving to be a bit risky these days.

Security from government thieves - This is temporary.  If people start using BTC to avoid taxes, this will not be so much different than the others.

Security from private sector/digital thieves - Currency should have a green (thanks to the FDIC).  BTC may need to be a yellow (asides from inconvenient cold storage, a bank is safer than an exchange or BTC kept in an online computer as people cannot get stolen BTC back).

Security from sellers/payment processors - Currency should be a green thanks to anti-fraud laws / ability to charge back payments.  BTC is theoretically at a higher risk here, as they can't chargeback a payment if the seller doesn't deliver.

Transaction fees - I'd make Gold a red.  Normally a sizable bid/ask spread, and many dealers will only buy below the fair market price.

Not sure what you mean by infrastructure.

And until BTC becomes a somewhat normal currency, it's not completely anonymous. 

Lines I'd add:

Value Stability - Currently, this is BTC's biggest weakness.  If I can buy something for $600 now, I'll be able to buy it for $610 a year from now.  If I buy something for 1 BTC now, it might cost 0.1 BTC a year from now, it might cost 60 BTC.  Gold would be in the middle.  Less stable than a dollar, more stable than BTC.

Lastly, the main issue with your score is that you're rating everything evenly.  Issues like face to face transfer and stability are far more important than anything else you've listed.

That's why I'm asking for input. I can't seem to think of anything where Bitcoin isn't a clear winner. Have any ideas?

I'd add an objective friend.

You're being horribly biased with your results.

Never knew about those. They seem expensive though. I found increments worth less than $10 for "only" $10 over spot.

You can sell also smaller units of gold, like grams.

I'm working on a chart to compare Bitcoin to other currencies and commodities. Here's what I have so far. Anything that should be fixed, or any lines I should add?