Re:Transaction Costs and Tethers: Why I’m a Crypto Skeptic
by zxcmx on Tuesday July 31, 2018 @11:08PM
(#17659353)
Sorry, my response was just addressing credit card payments, I hadn't really thought about the crypto aspects of this before.
Totally agree that on a practical basis it would be crazy to try and justify the utility of crypto to the average person based on "lower fees" since they are exorbitant for all but very large transactions.
My point with CC fees was, merchants "pay" but the open question is: are prices in a given market perhaps a bit (even just 1 or 2%) higher than they would be if card transactions were free? If so, exactly how much? Does this differ across different markets / product categories and how much? This is the kind of thing one would need to figure out to know who is "really" eating the fees.
My intuition is that whether the charges can be passed through to the consumer via higher prices is going to depend on the market (say supermarkets vs luxury goods) but I'm not aware of any research on this.
Totally agree that on a practical basis it would be crazy to try and justify the utility of crypto to the average person based on "lower fees" since they are exorbitant for all but very large transactions.
My point with CC fees was, merchants "pay" but the open question is: are prices in a given market perhaps a bit (even just 1 or 2%) higher than they would be if card transactions were free? If so, exactly how much? Does this differ across different markets / product categories and how much? This is the kind of thing one would need to figure out to know who is "really" eating the fees.
My intuition is that whether the charges can be passed through to the consumer via higher prices is going to depend on the market (say supermarkets vs luxury goods) but I'm not aware of any research on this.