Topic: If I cared about Bitcoin I would do this - page 2. (Read 2340 times)

But if you get mugged on the street by a common criminal you can only lose the cash in your wallet and the largest daily ATM withdrawal that you can make. If you get mugged on the street by someone with a smartphone who knows you keep your money in Bitcoin, they could coerce you to hand over your entire life savings. There is a legitimate reason to not want to have instant access to all of your money at any time.

I don't understand this sentiment - the allure of Bitcoin isn't that it is always decentralized, it's that it can be if you want it to. You decide the level of trust you want to have. If you trust almost no one, you run a full Bitcoin client connected to a few trusted nodes. A step up from that, you're running a chain-less client that has to trust wherever it gets it's balances from. Continue up the ladder until you reach whatever Bitcoin will eventually call banks.

Same goes with mining - yes pooled mining is essentially doing away with the decentralized auditing and blah blah blah... who cares? The fact is that there are plenty of smaller pools to choose from, and the bar is still adequately low that almost anyone with an upper-middle-class disposable income could setup a pool if they so chose to.

Bitcoin isn't about "my way or the high way" in that respect. It's also worth noting that plenty of people are already using places like MtGox as a Bitcoin bank for the exact purposes put forth in the OP - the system just isn't very good yet.

We Bitcoin users are our own bank. We hold the bitcoins more securely ourselves, and we can make absolutely trustable money transfers instantly. We also can choose to tell the law about our money. Banksters are obsoleted.

I understand where you're coming from, but isn't the whole point of bitcoin that it ideally should be decentralized? Alas mtGox seems to be dictating the price at the moment as this is the largest exchange with the most trade volume.

The structure that you suggest, would it not cost a lot? And how would we pay for it? Fees? Banking fees is something bitcoin is trying to avoid.

Hi,

I'm an engineer, also somewhat involved in politics and therefore money comes to the question. I have some bitcoins but I won't waste much time in developing anything for bitcoin because I just don't have time for this shit. But, if I were one of you who actually care about bitcoin, I would do the following if you really want bitcoin to take off:

I would create a secured and fast bitcoin bank.

This is the idea: The bank must have all kind of security measures so that its money doesn't get stolen and the bank complies with the law. The bank holds your bitcoins, and the bank guarantees that all transfers that you want to do will take place.

For example, lets say that you want to pay 10btc to your local shop. You use your bitcoin bank credit card to allow the payment. Instantly, the transaction "10btc from this btc account to this other account with this id" gets published in the public board of the bitcoin bank. As the owner of the shop trusts the bank, he won't need to make you wait 10-30mins because the bank guarantees that the transfer will take place.

Also, you need to be able to do instant transfers between banks. Therefore you need to define some kind of process or protocol by which new banks will get to trust each other so that transfers between them can be done instantly.

In other words, what you need is BITCOIN LIQUIDITY. Then, and only then bitcoins can be useful to the layman. And for that you actually need to be able to TRUSTS some BANKS, with a serious plan for security, banks that follow the law and people who are willing to pay for that TRUST. Of course this bank will need some kind of software to interface all this (and/or some kind of credit card). And of course I would like this type of bank NOT to be a fractional reserve bank.

Once you have bitcoin liquidity, bitcoin-usd liquidity is not much of a problem because bitcoins will be actually useful for the lay man.

As I don't have TIME on my side I would be willing to put some MONEY where my mouth is. Not much, but some (perhaps $1000). And others may also like the idea.

Also, you need to understand that this bitcoin liquidity is the means to be able to make CASH out of bitcoins, meaning some kind of money that can be instantly transferred from person to person. You really nee that if you want bitcoins to succeed.