Topic: The average joe would never accept bitcoin as means of payment due to tx fees (Read 1372 times)

thats where you need to look at what services are available in your area.
if its just a exchange order market as the only converters. then yes that business would be seen as being an investor of a currency and have to declare such

however if there is a payment processor (no public market orderbook) which offers shopping cart options, where the total price of sale includes the currency conversion commission which the customer pays the extra then that is declared the same way as having a shopify or other merchant tools platform like accepting credit cards. which is not treated as an investment in alternative currency.
EG as a customer when i buy something internationally my receipt/bank statement shows 2 lines. one for the sale and one for the currency conversion. thus the business isnt paying for conversion. but they receive the native fiat they want

many businesses operating internationally that have sites that accept different countries fiat use shopping cart/card processing services. where the exchange to the end recipients native fiat is done on the customer/service side and the end business just gets their native fiat thus avoids all the taxes and duties of international tax stuff.

fiat is fiat. and what becomes important is not the receipt of fiat. but what the service does that sent you that fiat.
in short its very difficult to explain to a tax office that a receipt of fiat from a crypto service is just payment for goods if that service is not a merchant tools service and instead only offers currency swaps/investments.

for instance
many businesses in the US get fiat from coinbase and from bitpay. roughly the same volume each week.. but because it comes from different services its treated differently for tax reasons

EG you personally could get $1k from a relative, $1k from your employer, $1k from a retailer, $1k from government social security, $1k from an exchange and $1k from a merchant tools site

the $1k from relative is treated as 'gift'/personal loan (no tax)
the $1k from employer is treated as 'income' (income taxed)
the $1k from retailer is treated as 'refund' (untaxed)
the $1k from social security is treated as 'social benefits' (untaxed)
the $1k from exchange is treated as 'investment' (capital gains taxed)
the $1k from merchant tools is treated as 'business sales income' (sales/vat taxed)

where they all have totally different tax categories, even when its the same value being received

I have asked several people if it is possible for them to adopt bitcoin as a means of payment in their shop or service. I tried to explain how it could work so well and what scenarios would be good to make a profit with it, but none of them were interested in adopting it regardless of whether the government had not or had legalized it as a means of payment.

In addition to transaction fees and price volatility, the imposition of taxes by local governments for swap-to-fiat transactions on exchanges has discouraged them from adopting bitcoin. There is an additional fee for each item if someone wants to adopt bitcoin in their shop, because if they don't then I'm sure they will lose because of the tax obligations they have to bear.

"Stable coins" are the scamming part of the crypto space, because there's nothing stable to begin with; let alone decentralized and censorship resistant. Hold a stable coin and you have to trust the company that's responsible for their issuance and the monetary policy of the government that issues the currency the stable coin is "pegged to". Completely opaque and pointless.

The channel announcement message contains the funding transaction of the two nodes, a proof that the one node owns their key, another proof that the other node also owns their key, three of which are enough to verify they have coins in reserve.

The node, I deposit, constructed and gave me the signed closing-channel transaction that spends outputs that haven't yet been published. That's what I mean "beforehand"; before I even pay them, they've given me the right to take my money back.

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If you want to continue this, use your thread and don't derail this.

gonna laugh..

1. channel announce just tells you an ID..
     a. even bolts says that this ID can be a temp ID
     b. if using a phone* litewallets dont have the blockchain to compare it.
     c. need we forget that even turbo announces channels
     d. even the gossip protocol of building the routing map at your node side, does not include code to ensure all nodes and all channels listed on the routing map are checked against the blockchain.

oops. didnt any of your buddies that care so much about you tell you about these flaws.. aww

yes you might personally want to manually check using a different node to the phone wallet majority use*, but i dare you to try to find the page/option in most used wallets that list all the channels txids and show that they are all verified confirmed bitcoin transactions.. without having to manually check each one yourself via other means

*(no one carries their desktop to starbucks)

2. "had their digital signature before-hand"... you should have thought hard and long about how im going to debunk this
hint: how did you get their "beforehand signature".. oh yea they authorised it..
i love how you want to skip passed step 2 and only want to envision a scenario beginning at step 5 to not answer a step 2 question

so again if it requires someone elses signature it requires their authorisation..
stop using an example where after they authorised it that its (in your mind) permissionless and realise the authorisation/permission step before your dream begins

EG the initial deposit into the multisig address.. after the transfer in. but before the commitment signing.. .. yep you have risk. the funds cant go back to you unless they sign.

Yes, this model works only if crypto is legal in your country/area otherwise it may put you in more trouble. However, i also like that bitcoin is legalized everywhere and we get the option of payments in crypto along with fiat. Could we see that 100% transformation of fiat to digital currency in near future?

Whatever that thing is, I know it has nothing to do with the united states or FDIC lol. But from the brief description on wikipedia i don't think i would trust it further than i could throw it.


yep things do change dramatically in the crypto space in just a short time period but things like usdc and gusd become part of the underlying operating infrastructure for the crypto market so i dont expect them to go anywhere in the next 25 years. especially usdc. 25 years is something i wouldn't bet on though.



bitcoin will outlast any centralized stablecoin because bitcoin doesn't rely on a single company to operate. stablecoins do. eventually usdc and gusd will lose market share to something else and after that they might go away completely. at some point. but not in the next 9 years. thats my take on it.


if that's true then that's very cool. i think that's how bitcoin was supposed to be. trading person to person. but then companies took over and created online everything and put people at their mercy.


Well bitcoin and centralized stablecoins are 2 different beasts. As we saw with UST, making a truly decentralized stablecoin is not so simple. Things can fail catastrophically. DAI is a decentralized stablecoin though that seems to have been around for quite some time.


It's not just any commercial paper. It's us government short term treasury bonds. big difference. I would think that short term us treasury bonds are probably pretty safe and we won't be seeing a default on them. If that happens then there are big problems with the economy and people will have bigger problems than not being able to redeem their gusd. But if gemini is not the holder of the treasury bonds and they are just trusting some 3rd party to invest into treasury bonds via some money market setup then that would introduce more points of failure.

if you can read then gemini has the warning posted before you invest with them to get 7% that it is not an insured investment. how much clearer could they be? but i guess not everyone knows how to read or does read terms and conditions. you have to do that when its your money though. don't like the terms and conditions? then don't invest. no one is twisting anyone's arm to get them to invest either.

I'm sure they could make the distinction but whether they do or not I have no idea. that's called doing your due diligence. you do that before you give them your money. if you don't like what you hear then you saved yourself from being involved in something you wouldn't feel comfortable with. now with that said, one thing i am not impressed with gemini is you can't just pick up a phone and talk to someone. for me, that's an important thing to being able to ask anything i want and get all my questions answered. can't do that with them.

Which is the only thing that matters.

And trust what their bank say. And trust what their accounting firm say. It all comes down to trust. With bitcoin you don't have to trust - you can verify.

That's not accurate. I've traded both bitcoin and monero for years, hundreds of times, and never once had to have any trust in an exchange whatsoever because I trade exclusively peer to peer. And even so, the trust in such a case is trust of the centralized third party exchange you are using, and not trust in bitcoin. With a stablecoin, you must very much trust the actual coin itself in addition to whichever exchange you are using.

It says this:

And if stablecoin issuers were open, honest, and up front about that risk, then I'd not have so many issues with them. But they aren't. They gamble your funds for their own profits.

There is absolutely no way that Gemini make that distinction.

When saying "in 9 years" you don't mean just a time span of 9 years, right, just like any other 9 years in human history during which we more or less know what happened, right? Imo, the 9 years we have ahead of us can be so different, technologically and economically wise, from what we've seen before that we can't extrapolate our knowledge of market in the past to the future 9 years. So, no one knows for sure, but imo the probability of BTC staying here and stable coins like GUSD vanishing is high because(again, it's only my opinion) ... because Bitcoin is revolutionary money, the technology that is yet to be understood by most people, while stable coins is rather an attempt to return back to the old road.

The problem with bitcoin is that it is not "a means of payment" but an independent, naturally-emerged medium of exchange with an in-built final settlement mechanism. There is a distinct difference between "means of payment" and "medium of exchange, which many people don't fully understand. A means of payment is a way to transfer the medium of exchange. For example, PayPal facilitates exchanges in dollars and other local currencies. PayPal is a means to transfer a medium of exchange - the dollar. Bitcoin and satoshi are a medium of exchange, while Lightning Network is one of the means to transfer bitcoin from one person to another. When a person runs an online store, he adds different means of payment to expand the clientele, but these means of payment may include different media of exchange. For example, PayPal offers transfers in fiat currencies as well as cryptocurrencies.

We already have such a stablecoin https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_renminbi But it doesn't solve any problems inherent to fiat currency.

well put it this way if you wanted to bet me at 50:50 odds i would take that bet all day long that gusd will be here in 9 years. or usdc. take your pick. in 100 years though that's different. they might be done stick a fork in it by then.



You can verify alot of things about GUSD. For example: https://etherscan.io/token/0x056fd409e1d7a124bd7017459dfea2f387b6d5cd

it will show you all the transactions using gusd. you can also see the "Circulating Supply Market Cap" if you're interested in how many gusd there are in existence. the only thing you can't see is how many us dollars they have backing all of that up. for that you have to go to their bank and ask to see the bank statement showing how many us dollars they have on reserve. Compare those two things and see if they are equal. If so then that means things are running how they are supposed to. now the thing is, i don't know if you can just go to their bank but as I already mentioned, they have an accounting firm that does. so you don't have to. but if you wanted to, maybe you could.

the thing is though. even if everything checks out, you don't have any guarantee that when you go to hand in your gusd and get usd that they will agree to do that for you. you have to trust. have faith. they got you by the balls type of thing. that's how all crypto is though. wanna sell btc or monero? find an exchange you trust to give you usd when you hand them your crypto first.


Well their website makes it sound different though:

The Gemini Dollar is fully backed at a one-to-one ratio with the U.S. dollar. The number of Gemini dollar tokens in circulation is equal to the number of U.S. dollars held at a bank in the United States, and the system is insured with pass-through FDIC deposit insurance as a preventative measure against money laundering, theft, and other illicit activities.

If someone buys gusd to try and get paid 7% apy from gemini then they should realize that gemini can't just let their deposit sit there collecting dust. they have to use it to generate return. that involves taking risk. risk involves the posibility for loss. you  can't shed a tear for someone in that situation if things go sour. they gambled and lost.

if someone buys gusd just to have something tied to the usd in value without trying to earn interest with it then i would hope that gemini wouldn't be risking their money. and have it sitting nice and tidy in a bank account somewhere in greenbacks. ready to be redeemed whenever they want it.

These coins have both existed for 3 years. Assuming that they will still exist in 9 years is a indeed a huge assumption. I would bet most people couldn't even name a single altcoin or a single exchange which was operating 9 years ago.

Exactly my point. If I use fiat, then the bank can freeze the fiat. If I use a centralized stablecoin, then the bank can freeze the fiat AND the stablecoin issuer can freeze the stablecoin. Additional risk. If I use fiat and my bank goes bankrupt, then my fiat is protected by the FDIC. If I use a stablecoin and my stablecoin issuer goes bankrupt, then I lose everything. It's all additional risk.

Two things. Firstly, that's not proof. That's trusting that what you are being told is true. This is fundamentally different from bitcoin. I can run a bitcoin node and absolutely verify for myself the exact number of bitcoin in circulation and where every single last satoshi is. With a centralized stablecoin, you can only choose to believe what you are being told.

Secondly, Gemini admit that this money is being held in money market funds. Money market funds invest in commercial paper. Commercial paper is an unsecured IOU. This is absolutely not the same as GUSD being backed up 1-to-1 with USD. It is a risk that every GUSD holder bears, all so Gemini can use your money to invest and make themselves more profit. You shoulder the risk, they take the profits.

And yet, the fundamentals of bitcoin will not change. The price may take a hit, yes, but it will recover. And bitcoin will continue to function just fine, as it did for years before stablecoins even existed.

collateralized stablecoins don't come and go all that frequently. not things like usdc and gusd. but i know you disagree they are collateralized 1:1. i don't think the "huge assumption" has anything to do with whether those coins will be here in 9 years. the huge assumption is about the business that is paying 10% on the usdc.

Maybe. But I think it hurts bitcoin users even more since it artificially inflates the price of bitcoin to be buying it with fake money. Then when everyone realizes it is fake money, the bitcoin price takes a tumble. Because there really wasn't that much demand to begin with. it was fake demand. And with all the fake demand gone, there's nothing left to prop up the bitcoin price.




you can always convert your usdc or whatnot into fiat. immediately. transaction fees for stablecoins i think are really bad so i don't know why anyone would use them for paying anyone anyway. the only use of them is for earning interest. but there's a risk of doing that as we already mentioned.

If I only choose to transact with people who provide me a digital signature that says they do, then yeah. I can prove that all channels are pegged with BTC. Some network, whose name's out my mind at the moment, does it using the channel_announcement message.

If you can return to the chain without their permission, since you'll have had their digital signature beforehand, yeah, they're yours.

That is one possible solution for the issue presented by OP. Furthermore, there are websites dealing with bitcoin which don't charge expensive fees, because they are used to send large batches of transactions all day long and there is also the possibility to choose between fast or slow transaction speed. The second option demands cheaper fees. Perfect for those who don't want to spend too much and aren't in a hurry to complete their transactions.

About the hacking issue, there are many security mechanisms used nowadays to prevent this. Strong passwords containing letters - numbers - symbols, 2fa, deactivated withdrawal (until the setting is changed by the user, what takes few days to be done)... And in case of typing the receiver address wrongly, the person can always save an address on his favorites, so he just copy and paste it. After doing this few times there are no mistakes. But of course attention is always a must.

Bitcoin may be accepted as an alternative means of payment without any problems. Say you run an online store. If someone pays with bitcoin and you don't want to hold it, you can use services that automatically convert to your fiat of choice. You don't lose anything and get more sales. If they choose to pay with fiat that's also fine. You always win. Why not give yourself that additional 1% in sales from bitcoiners? If your revenue is 100k a year, that's 1k USD for free.

Very cool instance that you brought here. People die in rood accidents and it doesn't stop people from using road again. The best is to learn how to secure your coins and then will be safe.
But the problem we have is that we have so much trusted our fellow men to secure our money for us. So it is as if we cannot secure it ourselves again.
Bitcoin is a good opportunity to reclaim our lost freedom.

Crypto taxation might be tricky in some point as if cause some confusion on identifying transaction if it's used for business transaction or a regular transfer transaction.

Anyways, the "tx" that the OP mentioned is not the same with taxes but rather it is short for Transaction. About that, I guess I somehow agree that it will be hard for an average joe to use Bitcoin as a currency itself due to transaction delays, fee and many more. However, I think other crypto such as stable coins might be a possible as transaction fee and delays are much more lower and faster with those.

quoting for historical sake. o_e_l_e_o knows why.
1. can you prove that all channel pegs are always, all, 100% backed by confirmed locked btc.
2. when it requires another party to sign.. are they really yours
(i did not mention certain network by name. nor mention anything but two simple questions)

Well it depends on how the countries are regulating the assets, either they want to tax the profit or even for the capital but since we are talking about the mode of payment then we actually don't have taxes for fiat then it should be same for cryptocurrency as well.

Are you talking about the taxes or the transaction tx charges?

There should be no difficulty in collecting and calculating taxes when crypto is legalized. You will be taxed on the profit earned on your business and it does not matter if the mode of transactions will be crypto or fiat.