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How To Use Bitcoin – The Most Important Creation In The History Of Man

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mhaze said:
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There's a problem with this, though. I'm not paying anything in PayPal bucks. I'm paying with USD. I don't need to use PayPal to pay for anything - but it's a convenient method of transferring funds from one account to another. For nearly any transaction that I could use PayPal for, I could use any number of ways to transfer funds - cash, check, money order, credit card.

I don't have to buy Paypal bucks in order to make payments through them, nor do I have to worry and fret about the exchange rate of PayPal bucks to USD. Not to mention, the buyer doesn't pay any fees to PayPal in order to use the service - the buyer does. Finally, PayPal is not subject to wild price fluctuations, since they do not use their own imaginary PayPal bucks currency. Now, if PayPal DID in fact have their own special currency that you had to buy, then that would be worth discussing.

The PizzaForCoins site updates their prices daily, which means that on any given day you could potentially be paying either a very high price for your pizza, or a very low price for your pizza. The problem is that the price of Bitcoin fluctuates on a minute-to-minute basis, and, as already established, it takes time to process and confirm Bitcoin transactions. In that time the exchange rate could be quite different.

I could just as easily pay CHEAP TOOLS directly with my credit card or send them a check. It could take longer for them to process the transaction, but I don't have to worry about the price changing between the time that I order the SOCKET WRENCH and the time that they process my payment. Heck, I can do the same with international orders. I buy from the UK every now and again. Sure, I pay a cross-border fee on my debit card, but that's for the convenience of having my bank do the exchange between USD and GBP. Given the stability of the exchange rate, I can be comfortable in knowing that I'm going to be paying ~1.63 USD for every 1 GBP, within a few cents. Just tonight, I've seen BTC go from ~1100 to 999 within the span of a few hours.

Heck, I could probably pay for my UK goods through international check, money order, or even cash if I were foolish enough to mail that. Given that the exchange rate is extremely stable over a long period of time (the average over a 5-year period is only $0.06 lower than the current rate - 1:1.57 instead of 1:1.63), I can count on the price of my Forge World models to remain about the same, inflation notwithstanding.
 
Anders Lindman said:
So, bitcoin is useless for micro payments then, eh? Then what good is it? What's the use of that kind of limitation in the information age?
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There is a check box in most bitcoin wallets, check if you want to pay transaction fee. So don't check it.
 
Vermonter said:
There's a problem with this, though. I'm not paying anything in PayPal bucks. I'm paying with USD. I don't need to use PayPal to pay for anything - but it's a convenient method ....
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No kidding???? It's a CONVENIENT METHOD????

Guess you've answered your own question about why people are headed to bitcoin for payments.

Let me add one thing. I really, sincerely do not like giving my credit card number out over and over to people on the internet. Sooner or later, that will have bad consequences. That is the main reason Paypal is a preferred mechanism. That is a similar characteristic of Bitcoin. FYI.
 
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jhunter1163 said:
Here's a link from a few pages ago:

http://www.coinometrics.com/bitcoin/btix

This link shows that there were about 80,000 BTC transactions in the last 30 days. A significant fraction of those transactions were on SatoshiDice.com (between 25 and 50 percent, from the arstechnica link above). So, between SatoshiDice, transactions between wallets, and a few speculators, the real-world use of BTC would seem to be quite minimal.
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You may be confused between transaction count, and transaction volume. Satoshidice transaction count is high - lots of people clicking over and over - but their volume in $ usd or btc is low.

I'd love to see micropayments to charitable causes take off in bitcoin - but that, also, would create massive numbers of transactions. The block chain is designed to be able to handle that sort of exponential growth and bandwidth issues.

Not sure what you are trying to prove, though....tell you what, why not just throw out every possible negative about bitcoin in one sentence, a true jeremiah of your beliefs?

Meanwhile, I'm certainly enjoying my Hulu+ subscription. What's the normal price of this thing, anyway? Isn't it like 10-15 USD a month or something?
 
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Belz... said:
Let's make it official: before which date must this happen ? Otherwise you'll consider retracting your comment ? Then, let's see if Psio agrees to that.
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Why would I retract my comment? Let's just see what happens, dates are worthless. It's yoyoing wildly again. Anytime the volume picks up the candles get really large. That is never a good sign with commodities and stocks. It may be different here, TWT. I can wait.
 

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mhaze said:
There is a check box in most bitcoin wallets, check if you want to pay transaction fee. So don't check it.
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That's really user unfriendly. And:

"When will the last Bitcoin be mined?

The estimate is 2140 based on the block reward halving frequency of four years. According to math and knowledge that there are 32 halving events, in 2136, the block reward will yield 0.00000168 BTC per day, which is 0.00000042 BTC per block. That's 42 satoshis." -- http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/10486/when-will-the-last-bitcoin-be-mined

The year 2140! That means transaction times of 10 minutes during this whole century at least. How is that supposed to work for micro payments even if users uncheck the transaction fee box? And also, are users supposed to adjust their transaction fee limit manually? That's double user unfriendly.
 
Anders Lindman said:
The year 2140! That means transaction times of 10 minutes during this whole century at least. How is that supposed to work for micro payments even if users uncheck the transaction fee box? And also, are users supposed to adjust their transaction fee limit manually? That's double user unfriendly.
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I'm guessing that problem will be solved by third party intermediaries who will accept the payment risk in exchange for a fee.
 
Tippit said:
I'm guessing that problem will be solved by third party intermediaries who will accept the payment risk in exchange for a fee.
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Or the problem will be solved by legal UN coins steamrolling in making Bitcoin an illegal underground currency for shady interests. :D
 
Question for Bitcoin skeptics: How high would the price of Bitcoin have to get before you admit that you are wrong and Bitcoin really is The Most Important Creation In The History Of Man?

:boxedin:
 
Puppycow said:
Question for Bitcoin skeptics: How high would the price of Bitcoin have to get before you admit that you are wrong and Bitcoin really is The Most Important Creation In The History Of Man?

:boxedin:
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It's actually quite easy to estimate. Let's say that Bitcoin becomes so popular that it reaches 10% of the currency market. Then take 10% of the trillions of dollars of money supply in the world and divide it by the number of bitcoins in existence. The result will be like millions of dollars for one bitcoin!

Yet even with such success, I think Bitcoin has too many problems (such as those I have posted about earlier) to ever be a good enough currency. That's why I propose a new legal and internationally agreed upon crypto peer-to-peer currency to be introduced before the price of bitcoin reaches ridiculously high levels. Bitcoin should not be turned into a monopoly currency for digital transactions.
 
Puppycow said:
Question for Bitcoin skeptics: How high would the price of Bitcoin have to get before you admit that you are wrong and Bitcoin really is The Most Important Creation In The History Of Man?
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You don't get it. The higher the price of bitcoin, the further the proof that it is just a bubble and any moment now it will all just go away.
 
wrs said:
Why would I retract my comment?
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It's customary to admit when you're wrong, so you look like a reasonable person.

The point of setting a time limit is to make sure you don't cop out if the crash doesn't happen. If you say "within 6 months" and it doesn't happen, your opposition can say "you were wrong". Otherwise your claim becomes unfalsifiable, and we tend to not like that here.
 
psionl0 said:
No.
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Just to be clear, are you denying that BTC is used for speculatory purposes ? Or did I misunderstand your objection ?

The higher the price of bitcoin, the further the proof that it is just a bubble and any moment now it will all just go away.
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It might not be that simplistic, but the very fast rise of its value is not indicative of stability.
 
Puppycow said:
Even if it is just those three things, that's a pretty large part of the economy, don't you think?
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Well, come to think of it...that pretty much describes Las Vegas....

BAD! BAD! BAD!

uh...wait...isn't that where JREF meets up every year?

hmm.....
 
Puppycow said:
Question for Bitcoin skeptics: How high would the price of Bitcoin have to get before you admit that you are wrong and Bitcoin really is The Most Important Creation In The History Of Man?

:boxedin:
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Okay, let's do this differently. See, here is what I figure. There are a lot of pretty smart people here but they all come from different points of view and so forth. So any one that ACTUALLY WANTS TO UNDERSTAND BITCOIN (and I don't really care if you want to understand it to talk it up, or down) go get a wallet. Coinbase, Blockchain.info, Amory, etc.

Then post a public key to JREF, and I will put $1.00 in that wallet.

Until and if you do that, and get some actual experience, you most likely are going to simply be in the category of people that don't know what you are talking about. Not your fault, it's just sort of like riding a bicycle.

So here is the way you do it, you simply post a receive address:

19LmQApGB5j3XRBXUTGSvGYz9Xv1rBmPZ4

Or you can post the QR



It should be clear how to post the QR from within the wallet.

Then we'll do four things.


  • Receive funds
  • Send funds
  • Use a QR code
  • Print a paper bitcoin
After which, if you want you can delete the wallet.


Let's see if anyone takes my challenge.

:)
 
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