Topic: It's all about "why" do I need Bitcoins (Read 4466 times)

Lots of dangerous misconceptions in this thread. The only reason Bitcoin offers certain degree of anonymity is its obscurity and novelty.  If and when it gains traction,  block chain will become a data-mining heaven for corporations and governments.  At least it's open to all, so no unfair advantage there. Overall, you are delusional if you consider Bitcoin inherently anonymous, and quote anonymity as an answer to "why do I need Bitcoin?".


I need Bitcoin as a tool for instant, simple, affordable online payments. I need it as a store of value immune to arbitrary inflation by the self-appointed asses. I need it as a tool of financial transparency of corporations and governments.

LOL at the assertion that Bitcoin is immune to inflation or that BTC transfers are free

The fact that the network must be maintained by a large number of miners, with expensive hardware, who expect to be compensated, dictates otherwise

The compensation those miners receive comes from (1) dilution and (2) fees.  Sorry.  No free ride.

To date, early Bitcoin investors have been fortunate that the speculation has, so far, greatly exceeded the dilution resulting in a massively deflationary currency

Unfortunately, for anyone but the early investors, deflation stinks - see Japan

People with open minds can see the potential of bitcoin. No one should control your money except you. When you actually take a step back and look at how much of your money goes to taxes and fees, even the average person, you start to see the potential. P2P finance is an infant and the nature of the system opens the doors to not only a currency revolution, but a P2P internet revolution where the people take back control of everything we should have controlled all along. Our money, our personal info, and our privacy.

More people will use bitcoins as soon as there are more ways to use them. I've never met a smart person that wasn't immediately interested in the potential of btc when I introduced them to it. To me it's a no-brainer. And the no-brainer is not that bitcoin will be the one global currency of the future. It's that this idea will be the base idea behind currency, communication and digital storage of information in the future. It may not be bitcoin, but it will be something like it. Maybe we will get a new version every few years like windows. who knows, but it really could empower the common people. Ive read this whole thread and there have been some really great arguments made in bitcoins favor. The only one for fiat is basically that's what everyone uses and you can avoid fees if your smart and the world will collapse if we stop paying taxes. Im not saying people should not pay taxes. But what if you knew exactly where the taxes you paid went and you could pay based on the benefits you received from tax monies locally within your local community? There's no reason why bitcoin (or something like it) couldn't eventually replace fiat altogether. And we already know fiat can't do what bitcoin can. We just need the market price to start a more stable growth pattern, make it super easy to use, make it way more easy to access, and keep coming up with gadgets and technology that allows you to do really cool news things with money and it will takeover. I have no doubt about that and I really feel like this is going to be the next big leap in how we interact with currency and people. The next big revolution and I am even more excited now than I was a year ago when I first heard about it.

.............and oh yeah if it does succeed, btc is gonna be worth a whole lot more than it is now........yeeehaaaw

because people are willing to pay cash for it. and we can use that cash to buy other things we actually need like food and stuffs

The whole world needs bitcoin because governments cannot be trusted to manage our money systems.

Heathen!   Heretic!   Witch!   Good lord almighty, HAELP!  Burn the witch!

Or they are responsible and use them as a zero cost loan for30 days and pay off the balance each month while earning rewards.

- People who needed an unseizable trust fund before 

- People who needed a prenup before

- People who want to send money
(even if it's only like this cash=>exchange to BTC => send BTC => receive BTC => exchange to local currency)

- People who want to trade devisable assets without having the need to store any denomination of the currencies needed in the trade
(you may have cash with you but if you suddenly end up having to pay exactly 32.733 Dollars/Euro/Pound you might not be able to)

- People who want to travel with their money without restrictions (like there is in many countries for cash or bullion)

- Once the reoccuring payments are implemented in the client(s) it can be a very nice and easy way to divide your monthly income
=> kids' allowances, retirement savings, reserve fund for vacation, reserve fund for a new car, household expanses/groceries, etc.


 

What if a newer/better infrastructure financing method is invented?

 

+1

Great, let's all do that. No one pays tax ever again. Yippeee.... Just like Amazon, Google, Apple in the UK.....

Then let's see how fast the infrastructure of the planet collapses.

With each reply, you bring on more fail.  Instead of gushing with thanks when told that you do not need to pay ATM fees, you reply with "Well, i don't pay ATM fees myself, but others do."  When i offer you concrete, objective technical shortcomings of Bitcoin, you reply with "I'm not worried ... free market yada yada derp."  After i point out that i can not even buy basics -- gasoline, electricity, milk, or cigarettes with Bitcoin, you tell me that i haven't offered you a single example of fiat being superior to Bitcoin.  
...And then you bring up the Wright Flier, completely forgetting that since the time of Ancient Greece, man has been trying to build flying machines.  Bitcoin could be any one of those iterations -- one in a series of limited successes (balloons) & endless fails.
Now concentrate on your learnings  Keep your nose to the grindstone, all the cool kids are doing it!  It's perfectly safe, i promise.

It is the fiat money overvalued (cost nothing to produce), because people have no choice for other transaction medium, when they have some alternative, you will see how fast fiat money will depreciate against everything

Like all industry revolution in human history, typically it is the smartest people pay attention to new things first, and others will just follow when it has reached mainstream

- People who want to diversify their investment portfolio

- People who want to have part of their retirement saving in a liquid form

- People who understand how theft is done by printing fiat money and the unavoidable long term inflation of fiat money

- People who understand that the current debt based money creation will eventually collapse (The ultimate reason) and they are moving their wealth out of the current system before it is too late

- Merchant who want to have a low fee for their transaction

- Merchant who frequently do international commerce

- Bank haters, don't trust a centralized authority oversee the society

- Ancap

- Geeks

And many more  

Yes to basically all the above remarks plus :

1) BTC attacks the entire centralized finance / government monopoly system that relies on a constant flow of plunder to the state. That is why we need to move to BTC (and its variations).

2) BTC is also a natural progression in the scheme of things : the idea of information -> information tech -> computing -> internet -> social networking -> p2p finance... Not to belittle the efforts of Satoshi et al, but kind of inevitable (with hindsight) if one thinks about it.

• Wealthy people NEED Bitcoin as an unseizable, untraceable, automatically-internationalized option for storing wealth when push comes to shove.
• People working in rich countries to send money home to their families in poor countries NEED Bitcoin to maximize the welfare of their families. (The fees and delays can make a huge difference to people living hand-to-mouth).
• People using VPNs for anonymity NEED an anonymous payment option (Bitcoin + anonymity measures) in order not to make the whole thing pointless.
• Companies that have branch offices in other countries NEED Bitcoin to save money and time on remittance, and in some cases to even have a hope of being profitable.
• People fleeing (or considering fleeing) countries with draconian capital controls NEED Bitcoin to get their money out.
• People traveling abroad from any unstable country NEED Bitcoin as an insurance policy in case shit hits the fan back home while they're away.
• People who are at risk of being arrested, deported, or just having their assets frozen NEED Bitcoin as an insurance policy so they can still control their money from jail, abroad, or faced with government seizure.
• The power elite (Illuminati or whoever) NEED Bitcoin to store their wealth without relying on anyone to keep their secrets safe and move money with perfect secrecy behind the scenes.
• As Germany illustrates, governments NEED Bitcoin for trustless international settlement, as storing gold in the New York Fed's vaults isn't cutting it.
• Anyone who telecommutes internationally (translators, writers, editors, consultants, investment advisors, etc.) NEEDS Bitcoin to get money from their employers/clients quickly, with no fees, and with no third-party risks.
• Anyone that employs people internationally NEEDS Bitcoin to save on fees, get rapid payment verification, and eliminate third-party risks.
• Any parent who has to send money to their kids, especially abroad, and most especially in developing countries, NEEDS Bitcoin in order to save on fees and get the money to the kids quickly.
• Anyone who wants to sell content online to people many countries for sub-dollar prices per unit NEEDS Bitcoin to make this feasible at all.
• Anyone who wants to sell anything online from any country that is blocked by PayPal and the CC companies NEEDS Bitcoin in order to operate at all(!).
• The need for any of these is increased at least tenfold when the amounts of money dealt with are unusually large or small.
• Use your imagination! There are applications everywhere for a trustless, borderless, private, irreversible, unseizable commodity that can be teleported anywhere in the world in any amount virtually for free. The average Joe in the US doesn't need it (yet), but there are plenty of people and organizations who do, especially in less advanced countries. Not to mention all the things that people don't yet know they need because it wasn't until Bitcoin and other now-unfolding technologies that these things became possible.

Imagine, for example, paying 0.1 BTC to have a highly-rated expert mechanic in India walk you through how to fix your car over Google Glass, maybe even sending you the data file for a needed part to print out on your 3D printer and screw on. Nobody "needs" this now, since they can "just" have their car towed to the local garage and get it back in a few days for a "small" fee, assuming the local garage happens to be reliable and competent (remember, the Indian mechanic is an expert you probably chose from a website that has a solid rep system).  

I don't pay ATM fees myself, but there are plenty of people that do pay them.  Bitcoin eliminates this needless expense for them.


If your battery is dead, you could use physical bitcoins.  Fiat doesn't have a monopoly on physical money.  Just because a business chooses to transact in fiat doesn't mean it's the better form of money.  Yes, we are all going to be stuck using fiat for quite a while longer, but as with any new technology, adoption will take some time.  We are still in the very early stages of the transition.  The infrastructure is being built, you just have to be patient.  As more and more people understand Bitcoin's advantages they won't just accept it, they will prefer it.



A person of your intellect is in no position to be teaching anyone anything.  You still have a lot to learn about how money works.  You're in the right place though, and that's a start.  There's plenty of people here that can get you up to speed.


I'm not worried about it all.  I'm confident that the free market will be able to easily overcome these challenges.  Bitcoin's issues pale in comparison to those of fiat currencies.  I'll take blockchain bloat and slow confirmations over quantitative easing and massive sovereign debt any day.


You have not yet provided a single example of how fiat is superior to Bitcoin.  You've only pointed out that more businesses are willing to accept an inferior form of money.  Again, that is because we are still early in this transition to honest, sound money.  It's going to take years.  Give it time.  Old habits die hard.


I'm not pretending anything has already happened.  Bitcoin has a long ways to go.  I acknowledge that.  The Wright brothers first flew a little over a hundred years ago.  We didn't get military jets, unmanned drones, spacecraft, satellites, commercial airliners, and airports in every city overnight.  It took time for the infrastructure to develop and for society to adapt to the new technology.  Same applies to Bitcoin.

Nothing that readers on this forum don't know, but how about for Americans that want some assets that is not under US control?

http://www.coinweek.com/bullion-report/foreign-banks-and-brokers-are-refusing-overseas-accounts-for-american-customers/

Well, to be fair no one actually uses their computers to balance their checkbooks or store recipes (And who even uses checkbooks anymore...)

Mericans use credit cards because they live too far outside their means or they aren't paid enough to support their lifestyle. Foolish people exist on credit. Bitcoin isn't a replacement for credit it can be used to replace cash in some circumstances.