Western Union to begin accepting Bitcoin (WSJ) - page 2.

lebing

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Enabling the maximal migration

Quote from: greyhawk on April 03, 2013, 08:21:53 AM

Quote from: lebing on April 03, 2013, 08:02:01 AM

Quote from: greyhawk on April 03, 2013, 07:58:30 AM

Quote from: caveden on April 03, 2013, 01:41:56 AM

Quote from: Rincewind on April 03, 2013, 01:33:13 AM

ultimately come to the conclusion that WU would be taking a huge leap of faith on ... well ... basically Gavin, right? The SatoshiDice tx dust flap is the elephant in the room. Can Bitcoin scale?

Bitcoin can surely scale. It can be larger than Visa in less than 5 years, if there's enough demand.

Quote from: Visa

130 million transactions per day

Good luck with that.

In simple terms, what exactly is the issue assuming the max size can be increased as necessary?

The blockchain right now grows about 30 MB per day. That is at a daily volume of 60000 transactions.

Scaling up to Visa's level of transactions would translate to blockchain growth of 65 GB per day.

Median download speed for the US is 3 MB/sec. Downloading a 65GB file at that speed takes about 36 hours.

This argument is akin to saying that we will never be able to watch movies on the internet when we were running dial up. Both bitcoins pruning ability and other technology will be upgraded (we are still in beta, remember) and the internet's pipes are going to get MUCH larger (As soon as google decides to roll out their internet to the rest of the US/world). Additionally, your entire argument hinges on decentralization by people, not corporate entities, which in a worst case scenario would be entirely acceptable to keep the blockchain going strong.

RodeoX

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The revolution will be monetized!

... and then you win.

greyhawk

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Quote from: lebing on April 03, 2013, 08:02:01 AM

Quote from: greyhawk on April 03, 2013, 07:58:30 AM

Quote from: caveden on April 03, 2013, 01:41:56 AM

Quote from: Rincewind on April 03, 2013, 01:33:13 AM

ultimately come to the conclusion that WU would be taking a huge leap of faith on ... well ... basically Gavin, right? The SatoshiDice tx dust flap is the elephant in the room. Can Bitcoin scale?

Bitcoin can surely scale. It can be larger than Visa in less than 5 years, if there's enough demand.

Quote from: Visa

130 million transactions per day

Good luck with that.

In simple terms, what exactly is the issue assuming the max size can be increased as necessary?

The blockchain right now grows about 30 MB per day. That is at a daily volume of 60000 transactions.

Scaling up to Visa's level of transactions would translate to blockchain growth of 65 GB per day.

Median download speed for the US is 3 MB/sec. Downloading a 65GB file at that speed takes about 36 hours.

lebing

legendary

Activity: 1288

Merit: 1000

Enabling the maximal migration

Quote from: greyhawk on April 03, 2013, 07:58:30 AM

Quote from: caveden on April 03, 2013, 01:41:56 AM

Quote from: Rincewind on April 03, 2013, 01:33:13 AM

ultimately come to the conclusion that WU would be taking a huge leap of faith on ... well ... basically Gavin, right? The SatoshiDice tx dust flap is the elephant in the room. Can Bitcoin scale?

Bitcoin can surely scale. It can be larger than Visa in less than 5 years, if there's enough demand.

Quote from: Visa

130 million transactions per day

Good luck with that.

In simple terms, what exactly is the issue assuming the max size can be increased as necessary?

greyhawk

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Quote from: caveden on April 03, 2013, 01:41:56 AM

Quote from: Rincewind on April 03, 2013, 01:33:13 AM

ultimately come to the conclusion that WU would be taking a huge leap of faith on ... well ... basically Gavin, right? The SatoshiDice tx dust flap is the elephant in the room. Can Bitcoin scale?

Bitcoin can surely scale. It can be larger than Visa in less than 5 years, if there's enough demand.

Quote from: Visa

130 million transactions per day

Good luck with that.

Piper67

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Quote from: caveden on April 03, 2013, 07:32:32 AM

Quote from: Piper67 on April 03, 2013, 07:21:11 AM

While I agree with you, Bitcoin doesn't need to scale to suit WU's purposes. A lot of the transfers could be WU to WU, and never even touch the blockchain.

I find this "enhanced-SWIFT" aspiration for Bitcoin so limited compared to everything it can do.... but anyway, I'll stop here in order not to derail this thread.

I agree, btw, was just referring to the need to increase the block size as a necessary condition for WU adopting Bitcoin.

caveden

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Quote from: Piper67 on April 03, 2013, 07:21:11 AM

While I agree with you, Bitcoin doesn't need to scale to suit WU's purposes. A lot of the transfers could be WU to WU, and never even touch the blockchain.

I find this "enhanced-SWIFT" aspiration for Bitcoin so limited compared to everything it can do.... but anyway, I'll stop here in order not to derail this thread.

Piper67

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Quote from: caveden on April 03, 2013, 01:41:56 AM

Quote from: Rincewind on April 03, 2013, 01:33:13 AM

ultimately come to the conclusion that WU would be taking a huge leap of faith on ... well ... basically Gavin, right? The SatoshiDice tx dust flap is the elephant in the room. Can Bitcoin scale?

Bitcoin can surely scale. It can be larger than Visa in less than 5 years, if there's enough demand.
True, some people seem determined to do what they can to prevent that from happening. I think we'll end up having a fork at some point. Some people will remain on the old fork where no more than 7tps can happen, and others will migrate to the new, scalable Bitcoin. WU would have to be on the scalable branch, of course.

While I agree with you, Bitcoin doesn't need to scale to suit WU's purposes. A lot of the transfers could be WU to WU, and never even touch the blockchain. Again, I'm not saying this will or even is likely to happen, I think corporations suffer from a distinct inertia problem that prevents them from this kind of reinvention, but if any company can, it should be WU. After all, they started off by sending messages on horses, didn't they?

lebing

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Enabling the maximal migration

Quote from: ColdHardMetal on April 03, 2013, 04:02:07 AM

Maybe it explains this: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/this-is-hilarious-159585

lol

ColdHardMetal

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Maybe it explains this: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/this-is-hilarious-159585

caveden

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Quote from: ?? on ??

At that point a WU office could be an ATM or a cyber cafe... same functionality, less 1800s feel.

All "WU offices" I've ever seen were either cyber cafés or post offices.

caveden

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Quote from: Rincewind on April 03, 2013, 01:33:13 AM

ultimately come to the conclusion that WU would be taking a huge leap of faith on ... well ... basically Gavin, right? The SatoshiDice tx dust flap is the elephant in the room. Can Bitcoin scale?

Bitcoin can surely scale. It can be larger than Visa in less than 5 years, if there's enough demand.
True, some people seem determined to do what they can to prevent that from happening. I think we'll end up having a fork at some point. Some people will remain on the old fork where no more than 7tps can happen, and others will migrate to the new, scalable Bitcoin. WU would have to be on the scalable branch, of course.

Rincewind

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Quote from: caveden on April 03, 2013, 01:25:46 AM

Quote from: marcus_of_augustus on April 02, 2013, 05:20:33 PM

This makes obvious sense for WU but i thought they would be too stuck in their ways with admin inertia to jump on this wagon. It must be the old pioneering spirit of the railroad coming out.

The BIG win that WU could achieve here is to use bitcoin network as their backbone for transferring payments around and do away with their legacy infrastructure. Their WU affiliates in every office all over the world now only needs a bitcoin enabled PC running to send/receive payments.

WU would become the p2p fiat exchange for the masses with all their installed infrastructure ... and oh yeah, if you want to take buy/sell bitcoin from local WU office can do that too.

Exactly what I thought. But it's indeed hard to believe such a large corporation would have the guts to restructure itself this way. Many internal branches would have to be cut. There's lots of politics inside these large corporations. The people in charge would have to be very bold and ready to make lots of people very unhappy.

I've thought about the WU piggy-backing P2P to subsidize its infrastructure angle too, and I ultimately come to the conclusion that WU would be taking a huge leap of faith on ... well ... basically Gavin, right? The SatoshiDice tx dust flap is the elephant in the room. Can Bitcoin scale?

As a Bitcoin bull, sure it's exciting, but if I were a WU shareholder I'd have serious reservations.

lebing

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Activity: 1288

Merit: 1000

Enabling the maximal migration

Quote from: caveden on April 03, 2013, 01:25:46 AM

Quote from: marcus_of_augustus on April 02, 2013, 05:20:33 PM

This makes obvious sense for WU but i thought they would be too stuck in their ways with admin inertia to jump on this wagon. It must be the old pioneering spirit of the railroad coming out.

The BIG win that WU could achieve here is to use bitcoin network as their backbone for transferring payments around and do away with their legacy infrastructure. Their WU affiliates in every office all over the world now only needs a bitcoin enabled PC running to send/receive payments.

WU would become the p2p fiat exchange for the masses with all their installed infrastructure ... and oh yeah, if you want to take buy/sell bitcoin from local WU office can do that too.

Exactly what I thought. But it's indeed hard to believe such a large corporation would have the guts to restructure itself this way. Many internal branches would have to be cut. There's lots of politics inside these large corporations. The people in charge would have to be very bold and ready to make lots of people very unhappy.

True. But if the CEO is smart and under alot of pressure from shareholders... its not uncommon for heads to roll.

caveden

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Quote from: marcus_of_augustus on April 02, 2013, 05:20:33 PM

This makes obvious sense for WU but i thought they would be too stuck in their ways with admin inertia to jump on this wagon. It must be the old pioneering spirit of the railroad coming out.

The BIG win that WU could achieve here is to use bitcoin network as their backbone for transferring payments around and do away with their legacy infrastructure. Their WU affiliates in every office all over the world now only needs a bitcoin enabled PC running to send/receive payments.

WU would become the p2p fiat exchange for the masses with all their installed infrastructure ... and oh yeah, if you want to take buy/sell bitcoin from local WU office can do that too.

Exactly what I thought. But it's indeed hard to believe such a large corporation would have the guts to restructure itself this way. Many internal branches would have to be cut. There's lots of politics inside these large corporations. The people in charge would have to be very bold and ready to make lots of people very unhappy.

marcus_of_augustus

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Eadem mutata resurgo

Quote

I wouldn't be at all surprised if Western Union became a sort of Bitcoin processor. There are lots of demand for instant payments, and while BTC transfers are fast, they aren't quite instant. Instant is needed for buying groceries in a timely manner, and people will probably pay some for that service. Its hard to buy BTC with USD. They could bridge that gap. If nothing else they lend their legitimacy to BTC and walk away with a few extra coins in their pocket for the favor.

This.

Western Union are well-positioned to be BitInstant's worst nightmare if they move into this space.

BitInstant could look at expanding into the other side of the trade also to compete with them I suppose?

"Just going to pop down to the BitInstant office and pick up some money XXY is sending me."

Kazu

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I honestly can't believe that people here dislike Western Union.

Western Union was like, last generation's bitcoin. While it was not as completely revolutionary as Bitcoin has the potential to be, it was loads better than anything offered at the time and even now remains loads better than most other 'normal' ways of sending money, aside from things like Liberty Reserve that are entirely online.

Yes they charge high fees, but this is a capitalist society, they are supposed to charge as high a fee as they can get away with. At least they are honest, unike 'real banks.'

I wouldn't be at all surprised if Western Union became a sort of Bitcoin processor. There are lots of demand for instant payments, and while BTC transfers are fast, they aren't quite instant. Instant is needed for buying groceries in a timely manner, and people will probably pay some for that service. Its hard to buy BTC with USD. They could bridge that gap. If nothing else they lend their legitimacy to BTC and walk away with a few extra coins in their pocket for the favor.

I don't see anything particularly dishonest or ignoble with what they are doing. It makes business sense, and its perfectly fine. (Assuming they actually do what I think they plan to do.)

gogxmagog

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Ad maiora!

It will be lovely for all of us if WU starts accepting BTC, but you will notice, the article states that they are "looking at alt-currencies like BTC" which could very well mean "they are watching BTC and taking notes and trying to figure out how to take all that BTC is and make their own version which gives them a cut right off the top of every transaction and is also easier to use and has been branded (by them) as being safer and more secure. even though I understand about the security of the BTC network, many potential users dont. yesterday my brother, who studies these forums almost as much as I do, said to me..."oh yeah, and the blockchain can be hacked and everyone loses their BTC..." to which I had to spend about an hour explaining how incorrect he was. The point is, people aint got the clear view of the full picture with BTC and some fat-cat corp. like WU or paypall or ebay will leap on these vagaries and create a version that people like better. sadly.

so I'm not sure if these type of stories are actually good news or more likely storm-clouds on the horizon. I wish I knew more about R&D for software etc. cuz I would be all over these problems, but unfortunately I am just an Unfrozen caveman, and your cryptocurrencies confuse and amaze me...

Minor Miner

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Quote from: marcus_of_augustus on April 02, 2013, 05:20:33 PM

This makes obvious sense for WU but i thought they would be too stuck in their ways with admin inertia to jump on this wagon. It must be the old pioneering spirit of the railroad coming out.

The BIG win that WU could achieve here is to use bitcoin network as their backbone for transferring payments around and do away with their legacy infrastructure. Their WU affiliates in every office all over the world now only needs a bitcoin enabled PC running to send/receive payments.

WU would become the p2p fiat exchange for the masses with all their installed infrastructure ... and oh yeah, if you want to take buy/sell bitcoin from local WU office can do that too.

These guys know exactly what needs to be done to make this happen on global scale tomorrow.

Good Luck to them ... they are one company that has stuck it out against the banking elite in the payments space for over a century.

I do not think they are saints. Look at their fees. They basically rip off illegal immigrants who are sending money home to their families.

moni3z

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Bitcoin confirms too slow they'd have to use something like LTC or their own coin, because WU offers instant transfer pickup.

WU is also firmly the banking elite, and not against them. Try sending a few transfers in one week, watch them hold everything ,report you to IRS, report you to FBI, and seize your money. Their customer service is now a guy in the Philippines pushing a macro response button to everything, and it takes 60 days to get your money back if anything goes wrong with the transfer.

WU should die, btc/ltc should replace them and every other money transfer business that's been screwing us over in giant fees for last 3 decades.

Topic: Western Union to begin accepting Bitcoin (WSJ) - page 2. (Read 8141 times)