Topic: The average joe would never accept bitcoin as means of payment due to tx fees - page 4. (Read 1485 times)

That has nothing to do with bitcoin and everything to do with whatever exchange you are using blatantly ripping you off. You should stop using that exchange.

I have never ran in to this situation despite spending bitcoin regularly in person for 5+ years. A few hundred bucks will cover almost everyone's daily spending money. If you are going out with a plan to buy something more expensive like a tablet or a laptop, then you can load up a bit more in advance. If you still want to carry more around with you, then do so with a hardware wallet. Simple.

No, I was talking about in person shopping as well. My argument is that people accept credit card transactions all the time, which take exponentially longer to finalize than a bitcoin transaction (180 days versus 10 minutes), and are significantly easier to reverse during that time (a simple phone call versus trying to convince a miner to include a malicious double spend of a non-RBF transaction). Accepting a zero confirmation bitcoin transaction which is non-RBF and pays an appropriate fee for something low value like a coffee or some fast food is less risky than accepting a credit card transaction for a large purchase, and yet the latter is ubiquitous.

Oh, I remember the CLU-CLUNK sound of those damn things very clearly. As an aside, this is why credit cards used to have raised numbers on them - so they would imprint on to the carbon paper.

Look at Bitcoin as the Money of the Internet.

Now here is what I think about Bitcoin bank notes.

For now I think there is no way to safely transfer Bitcoin through 'bank notes' unless a central, trusted entity produces them and we trust their words, their work and the employees.  They can implement QR codes to verify balance and serial numbers, they can have scratch to reveal or peeling private keys in case you want to invalidate the bank note and take the balance off it but just because it requires a TRUSTED third party it immediately makes pretty much no sense to produce them.  That is because if you have no internet there is no way to validate the bank note's legitimacy anyway, and if you have internet then you do not need the bank notes in the first place.

On the other hand.  A positive note would be how easy you can remain private with the bank note, similar to cash.  But for me, the trade-offs are too large and against Bitcoin's core principles.  But since you say Gold is for barter, if Cash became inexistent or worthless right now how many average Joes do you think would have Gold in their house to buy food with?  Gold is not as popular as it used to be for the average person and the ones to benefit would be once again the rich, the billionaires, the one percent of the population.  When Cash becomes worthless, for the average population barter will more likely happen between goods and not between precious metal and goods.  During hard times like that people become hungry, but for food and not for Gold.  The only ones who will be hungry for precious metals are the ones who today decide our fate and freedom.

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Regards,
PrivacyG

So you have not heard about lightning channels I think as there are many people making payments through it and it's instant while if we also say about fees it's not too much for an average transaction.The fees also don't depends on the amount but size of transactions and many average Joe's are paying with it don't know how you come up with this.

Interesting, that's a real cash advantage. I don't even know what crypto can do with that...

Achilles heel! And you want to know how many hacks MasterCard has sustained on ts network in total? Over 300 thousand!

Banks with even worse security than Windows XP are getting hacked all the time but you know why the customers get reimbrusement? Because the government compensates them with taxpayer money.

So either way, you still got milked out of your money. One was just done outright, the other by means of an "extortion racket" that is federal taxes in general.


Hopefully BTC infrastructure will evolve to such a point where LN becomes the primary means of BTC payment thuse Joe won't have to understand these terminologies. (But I still feel uneasy that your having a LN node depends on your ability to create a Tor hidden service as clearnet IP address nodes are out of the question).


That's not what Satoshi had in mind when he put "Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks" in the Genesis block.

The way I look at it is every country has it's own money and central bank. Now the internet has it's own money and central bank: Bitcoin.
You want to buy a cup of Joe in your town with Bitcoin?
In my book that's like trying to buy a New York hot dog with Japanese Yen. The Yen was not designed to do that, neither was Bitcoin

In think we should focus on Bitcoin's use case and design purpose: internet money. Not Japanese or American money, internet money.

Asking Bitcoin to become physical is like asking PornHub actresses to kiss you through your screen. Neither were designee to do that.

You want money you can touch, but you already have that. Let it be the money you can touch. Biitcoin finds you creepy with your grubby hands trying to grope it.

Maybe at some point Bitcoin will be 'street money' you can use at your coffee shop. But I think we are getting ahead of ourselves here. We are at the very early stages of adoption. Let Bitcoin be internet money and keep your greasy fingers in your pocket. Bitcoin doesn't like to be fondled like that.
 

if you think bitcoin is bad with fees, try using ethereum. people on there can pay thousands of dollars in fees sometimes for a single transaction. and they don't complain (too much).

but that does bring up a good point which is that bitcoin needs some type of cash equivalant (non-electronic pure physical) that you could just hand to someone as a means of payment without the transfer being recorded on the blockchain. that would then have no fees. unfortunately they don't invent that yet. probably never will. that's what gold is for in other words. bitcoin can't do that.

You keep your fiat money in your "wallet". There is a chance you can get robbed on the street or lose your wallet. Does that mean you will stop using your fiat money? You have to keep your wallet safe. The same way, you have to protect your crypto wallet. If you follow the basic security steps and don't be stupid, no once can hack your wallet. If you store your crypto wallet properly and back up all the required things, you won't lose your wallet.

Do you know all the transactions you do with your credit card, you have to pay the fee? The merchant usually pays the payment processing fee which is usually 0.5% to 1.5% of the total amount. Compare this with your btc transaction fee and you will see that the fee is actually much more cheaper.

Not bank cards, credit cards.
Credit cards were around before bank cards. And before the internet too. I am 59 years old. When I worked at a gas station as a kid, we had to request an ID, put the card in a contraption to "scrape" it to show through triplicate carbon copies.Than I would fill out the date and amount, and the customer would sign it. I kept two copies, he kept the third one.

@PepeLapiu

Fees taken by Visa and the gangs are not hidden, it's rather people who don't care since it's included in the price item. At best, they can ask any merchant and they will answer.
But if we told people "if you pay cash, you get a 2% discount +0.20 cents" believe me they would use the cards a lot less

I don't know how old you are to have known the time when you needed an ID card to use a bank card, but you must be a dinosaur ,
I have never heard of such


@ranochigo @o_e_l_e_o @PepeLapiu

You're debating on different stuff. You're confusing shopping on the internet and shopping IRL. @ranochigo was more referring to using BTC IRL (i.e to pay for a coffee) than using it online. While it's easy to shop online with it (and he agreed with it), it's another story to do it at the bakery for example (unless LN is adopted as @o_e_l_e_o then argumented)

@o_e_l_e_o and @PepeLapiu were more considering it for online cases but that's not how we should use it. I mean, it's supposed to be used for our daily lives, I don't live on the web, I don't eat virtual food, I eat real chickens lol.

And yes about LN, but the time when it will be massively used is very far. Perhaps, we won't be alive, since it will take decades after Bitcoin is accepted everywhere (if it is)

I am in Canada. I bough an aircraft parts kit in the USA 5 years ago. They told me they will give me a 2% discount if I don't use a credit card. And when I mentioned I was paying cash, they offered me an other 3% discount on top of the original 2%.

Granted, it's not worth paying coffe with cash to save 2%. But the point is it's baked into the price of everything. Along with inflation which is also an other hidden fee.

Than you have to consider stores, banks, and payment processors don't work for free. They have to tabulate all these transactions, and invoice the next middle-man until it gets to you seemingly for free. A.k.a baked into the price.

Well, the big difference here is that bitcoin fees are up front and transparent for everyone to see. But fiat fees are hidden and baked into the cake so most people are not aware of them even paying those fees.
.inflation is a hidden fee baked into the cake. And all digital fiat payments come with their own fees, almost all of them hidden and baked into the price of everything.

Most of those fees ate charged to the merchant who accepts the payment. So it's included into the price of everything. Credit card payments and banking card payments all require some sort of paperwork and separate accounting. Than you have your bank fees and you credit card fees and interests.
It goes on and on..... People have just no idea what % of they transactions go to various fees. So they just assume it's all 'free'. But it ain't.

I would argue fit payment fees are much higher than with Bitcoin, just not as honest

You do really got the point but in return with the fees you do pay is on having;

1. Anonymity
2. Decentralized

which is something that you cant really be having when you do have or dealing with fiat.
What would be those fees for or bothering yourself with that if you could really have these kind
of benefits. Pro's outweighs its con's so i dont see much of an issue. Let adoption and recognition
move normally or naturally.Also, fees now arent that high for you to bother yourself. 

I'm not aware of a single person who had his coin stolen out of his hot wallet. I'm sure it has happened, but not something frequent.
With my hot wallet, you will have to steal my phone, crack the phone unlock, crack the wallet password, and take the coin from there.
If you can do all that, you deserve to have my bitcoin 'fortune'.

Let's be realistic here. Hacking individual wallets is too much work for not enough rewards. They don't hack individual wallets, they hack exchanges.

Your coin is far more safe in your hot wallet than it would ever be in any bank vault.

I think this wrong concept, from my view because it seems that in any transaction or fiat currency kind of payment their is atoms of transaction levied performed, if you pay through your debit card for the countries that uses debit card, their a charge of each transaction, and if your country is using credit card, same thing is applicable. Don't think that it's only bitcoin or cryptocurrency that charge for fees if you make payment through cryptocurrency. Banks charge when you withdraw money from fiat ATM machine, so its the same charge as same of any cryptocurrency levied. Flashback you will comprehend my scenario.

Speaking from the average Joe's perspective, I would say No btc won't be used by them to transact. Let's keep the transaction fees aside and look at the security aspect, the probability of an average Joe getting hacked and losing funds is very high.
Everyone needs a device and working Internet to transact with btc, lots of average Joe's don't know how to be security conscious, people use their smartphones to visit all kinds of sites and download anything they find interesting which is a major limitation.

And if you go by some suggestions that say keep the majority of your btc in a cold wallet at home (since you can't carry your laptop or hardware device about) and only load your device with what you need, that's a tough thing to do, how would you know what you will need! there are unexpected situations that will occur and requires funds, what will you do! Run back home to reload?
The truth is it is not as simple as some btc enthusiasts want it to be, there are lots of processes and procedures which will definitely prevent an average Joe not to use btc for everyday transaction.

Even though bitcoin transactions fees currently have dropped significantly compared to what they used to be, I still agree with you, and this is because I used myself and my experience as a yardstick or something to base my argument on.
I remember a time I stopped buying and holding bitcoins because I didn't have plenty money majorly because when I buy bitcoins and withdraw it to my private wallet, more than half is taken by the exchange as a withdrawal fee, and when I wanna send out the coins, I spend almost half again on transaction fees, I practically stopped buying bitcoin because of that, though things have changed a bit now cus transactions fees have become quite low, but I still feel it's not low enough for the average business men and women to want to accept it as a means of exchange.

Precisely why PayWave and contactless payment are growing so rapidly. Because you no longer have to do anything like that. Do stores really add on any percentage to your transaction when you pay by card vs cash? My experience is that it has always been factored-in the item price and it doesn't make a difference whatever payment method you use.
You're missing the whole point of my argument. I'm not saying you cannot use Bitcoin to pay for your coffee. Duh, you can. I've been using Bitcoin to transfer funds, pay for my servers for the past 10 years. I've never disputed this.

The whole thread is about Bitcoin in a specific use case, when compared against other payment methods. If you like to use it, please do, by all means. All I'm providing is an alternative point of view, or criticisms of what Bitcoin has to improve on. Ditto on the LN part, I've addressed it in my other post.

You sound like a credit card naysayers from 45 years ago.
If I told you in the future credit cards will be used to buy coffee, you would have called me insane. Who's going to show an ID to buy a cup of coffee, sign a triplicate carbon copy of the transaction, and get charged 10% on all transactions? You?

First you would do well to think of the internet as it's own sovereign country. While every other country has it's own central bank and currency, now the internet has it's own central bank and currency.

You tell me my internet currency is not well suited to buy a cup of coffee in your country? Well, your country fiat is not well suited to buy a cup of coffee in my country either.

When you are in your own country, if you have a stable currency, use that. And use my country's currency when you are in mine. And soon you will be able to use Bitcoin in it's native country too: the internet.

And in you still insist on using a foreign currency (BTC) in your country to buy a cup of coffee, don't be an ass and use LN. No waiting 10 minutes, no paying $1 of miner fee.

I've addressed the scalability of Bitcoin as a network and with the use of lightning, I don't think you can possibly support mass adoption with lightning without having to increase on-chain capacity eventually but that becomes a slippery slope. It is a topic for another day.

But the point is that transactions cannot be non-RBF. If you have a non-RBF transaction, then what happens to the customer when the transaction gets stuck (over a sudden surge of fees)? I've paid more than sufficient fees (est. conf within 2 blocks) more than once, and had to deal with a sudden surge of transactions on the network and ended up having to wait hours. The point with chargebacks is that there is always an intermediary investigating for the legitimacy of such claims and more often than not, the banks would side with the merchants. I'm speaking from my own experience, but perhaps the place where you are at might have different policies.

Depending on where you live, having double spends on Bitcoin might not necessarily be considered a crime worth investigating.