Topic: Reasons Bitcoin does not replace Fiat (today March 2015) - page 2. (Read 2672 times)

But there are parts of Bitcoin that won't change.

Transactions are irreversible. And with hackers and thieves having access to virus's, malware, spyware, key loggers and everything else, I'm sorry but that's not just s matter of understanding computers or not. I'm shocked at how many Bulls overlook this, the sheer risk to people's earnings and life savings that people will be exposed to. And that the vast majority of the public is in no way adept to handle, that is coming if Bitcoin is adopted by the masses. Be it today or in 10 years. People even advocate for third worlders, the unbanked, to adopt this. All that will do Is lead to even more theft from those at the bottom of the totem pole  

We need to think about Bitcoin not from our own perspective, but from the lay persons. And we need to come up with real ideas for solutions, not just non-descript "someone else will figure that out one day" excuses.

You want Bitcoin to take over the world? Great! Now put on your thinking hats and figure out the Risks the lay people will face, honestly, and better, let's discuss actual solutions, not just assumptions that things will be taken care of by some miracle. That's not how it works. We're the pioneers. We don't just claim the land for ourselves, we lead and clear the way.

No, the solution to my moms theoretical inability to secure bitcoins isn't for me to do it for her. Because there are billions Of people out there who have no one to reach out to, who the community thinks should be transacting in Bitcoin.

You dont understand.. Us market is $4 trillion a day.. What kinda volatility would u see with a market order book in billions instead of thousands today? Get it?

Also never say never you will eat crow with that thinking. I bet you would say people wouldnt fly either or turing wouldnt be able to create the modern day computer or the internet is just a fade?

Bitcoin will never replace fiat, I mean, imagine bitcoin on forex. With those 20 dollar daily fluctuations, you could make a mill+ everyday.

Volatility is key. Once Bitcoin can hold its price like Gold, it could be considered more of a commodity than a currency.

The main reason that makes bitcoin a financial gimmick, is the lack of mechanism that dynamically regulates the inflow and outflow of new coins in circulation.
That makes bitcoin's value unstable and highly fragile against speculation.

Unstable value is the main characteristic of a low quality currency. You can't make any serious financial plans with a currency that's value is this unpredictable. It's only good for speculation, so bitcoin is basically good for only being an innovative gambling platform in the internet.

There is no decentralized consensus on protocol changes thats what scares smart money the most.. Its not any better than a bank yet in that way if people can commit so,ething that breaks the security or against common will.. Thus the biggest win is when there is a decentralized vote applied to protocol changes maybe via a prediction marrket or so,ething.. Then critics wont really have a reason not to convert.

Did you grandpa understand computers?

New technology needs people to grow up with it before the full potential can be unleashed. Give it time. In ten years the average teenager will be just as it-savvy as most "pros" are today.

This is exactly why bitcoin is not close to mainstream

Handle the technical bits for her. I do that for my parents and it works well for everyone.

Yes, merchants can go Aling and send funds back to the payer. But merchants aren't always that receptive to that, which is why people need to go to their credit card companies to force the merchants hand, when necessary. Yeah, charge backs suck, but sellers can build that into their price. Buyers can't build in the likelihood of being scammed, receiving broken merchandise or having whatever they ordered stolen off they're front porch into to price for which they're willing to buy something.

Best example in the Bitcoin conmunity is BFL and miner manufacturers subsequent to them; people who bought with Bitcoin were held hostage. People who bought with PayPal or credit had s method to cancel their order once it became clear it wasn't going to arrive in the time frame they expected. PayPal enventuslly fired Bfl as a customer, and Bfl stopped allowing payments from any reversible method. And that spilled out of BFL; many miners in here were refusing to buy mining hardware unless they could buy it with credit, specifically because of memories about Bfl. Miners, who should be bitcoins' biggest afvocate not wanting to buy the hardware they made their livelihood with for Bitcoin. It was ironic.

So. Transaction permanence is indeed a feature of Bitcoin. But its a limiting feature, which will prevent it from becoming the preferred payment method of choice for a huge portion of commerce.

Myself, I don't think that ecommerce would have taken off if not for merchants accepting credit cards AND issuers dramatically lowerinh the liability of cardholders whose details were stolen. One gave consumers the courage to transact in a new way, buying things site unseen from vendors they had never heard of. The other gave them the courage to use their cards on the "scary" internet, confident that even if they proved no match for hackers, they wouldn't lose much of anything.

Bitcoin is a roll back. Great fir certain things, remittance, tax payments, mortgage and rent. But for ordinary people to buy random things online? It'll only take a few stories about a few bad apples to make them unwilling to abandon their credit cards.

I think.

For us it isn't necessarily complicated, to OP it is though. And I certainly wouldn't feel comfortable if my mom suddenly declared she had started buying up bitcoins

He wasn't talking about bank transactions, wires, ach, etc. but an in person transaction.


Everything may be solvable, but until it's solved, I don't think it's appropriate to act as if it has been. Code is changeable, by committee. Look at all the drama that's been going into increasing the block size from 1 Mb to 20 Mb. Which is one step towards achieving better scalability. Everything else will need to get through this committee as well, with no promise that it will. Bureaucracy is the enemy of progress, often times.


This is actually the reason I responded, because it's a myth that circulates far too frequently. Tie does nothing for your privacy as it relates to Bitcoin; For one, IP addresses aren't used for keeping track of transactions, wallets, or addresses on the block chain, and that's all Tor does, obfuscate your IP address. An adversary tracking you and your spending might examine your internet connection to verify that you're accessing the Bitcoin network, but beyond that, IP TRACKING is meaningless. What you adversary will do is gather up all the Bitcoin addresses known to be yours and analyze the transactions among them, and agaiN, tor provides no assistance

Not just that, but accessing the block chain through tor is fraught with difficulties and attack vectors; no, your coins won't be stolen, but you'll be at the mercy of the exit node you're connected through. Do yourself a favor and Google Tor Bitcoin attack, or "Bitcoin over tor isn't a good idea"

Bitcoins have a clear line of ownership, which tor doesn't obfuscate. Splitting up your coins among different addresses only throws off an unmotivated attacker, if any of your spends combine from multiple addresses, that effort is for nothing. So really, all I can think of to truly obfuscate your spending is to spend through mixers; but you have to pay fees, and doing so opens you up to often reported "selective scams" and one day will likely lead to large losses when an operator decides to do an exit scam. Bitcoin history is full of examples that demonstrate that giving your funds to an anonymous party won't end well. It might be fine for a time, but human nature keeps winning out.
Ironing out problems does not equal mass adoption.

Otherwise, windows would have long ago lost to Mac, which would have then lost out to Linux. Never underestimate the power of inertia. You can build a much better system, but if people are content with their current one, they see no reason to change.

Even if every "shortcoming" of Bitcoin or it's implantation were solved tomorrow, and even if you ran commercials telling the public how great it is, the public doesn't possess nearly the libertarian bent, nor the level of paranoia that the Bitcoin community does. and not just that, the public will look at the purchasing power of their fiat, which gets slowly eroded away, look at bitcoins history and cling to their fiat.

It's a chicken and egg thing. Bitcoin and all the programs that people will need to rely on need to be made dummy proof, yes, that's most important. But even when that's done, If Bitcoin is still so volatile, the floodgates could swing open and you might only see a trickle of Interest.

That's all. Really, I wanted to address your Tor suggestion!

It's because they demand it.

Irreversibility is a feature. It will be useful in some scenarios and less so in others. That said, it also means the user has to have a greater degree of responsibility than at present, which means that a lot of people will not like it for that reason alone.

But that's on the blockchain level. Transactions can be manually reversed by the receiver, and there is no reason that will not become standard practice just like it is with fiat today. After all, it is not you, the enduser, who reverses a paypal or bank transfer. It is done by others. The main difference is that it is the enduser who sends money when using bitcoin. With present systems, we do not even have the ability to do that.

How can that happen when bitcoin transactions are irreversible? that's what you are paying 3% to Paypal for, protection.

You (and he) choose not to. The ability to do it in seconds is there.

In Utah you can pay taxes in bitcoin. More states to follow.

IMO, one of the hardest things about bitcoin going mainstream is the trust problem.. I guess some people just dont think bitcoin is secure enough to hold their funds.

Fiat, face to face transactions are almost always anonymous, you are on something

Just getting to three confirmations is a pain in the ass. I said I cannot exchange with a person without waiting, this is true and until some side chain miracle starts to transpire, always will be.

When dealing with large amounts of fiat, you have to go through financial intermediaries. Your anonymity straight away goes out of the window. Use dollar bills in your garage sale - fine. If you have a million dollars in cash, tough luck spending it without revealing your identity.

That said, I don't think Bitcoin is ever going to replace fiat.

Bitcoin do not have to replace fiat. Bitcoin can be used in parallel to fiat and credit card. There are situations where fiat is better and other times Bitcoin is better. Bitcoin will replace other internet payment systems like paypal.