Bitcoin's Use in Commerce Keeps Falling

Re:Bitcoin's Use in Commerce Keeps Falling by acdha on Sunday August 26, 2018 @01:10PM (#17846760)

It’s a household name because of speculation, however, and statistically almost nobody uses it for the kind of decentralized transactions for which it was originally pitched. The number of vendors accepting it has gone down over time (e.g. Steam, Microsoft) due to the endemic problems and many of the people who claim to use it (even here) are actually using the credit card network with government currencies for the actual transactions so there’d be very little disruption if it disappeared tomorrow.

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Re:Bitcoin's Use in Commerce Keeps Falling by DINKDINK on Sunday August 26, 2018 @03:43PM (#17847488)

>nobody uses it for the kind of decentralized transactions for which it was originally pitched

You're misinterpreting absence of evidence as evidence of absence which is a logical fallacy. clearly there's enough of a market for trustless wealth storage enough to support a $100 Billion dollar market cap. Maybe you think that the world will need less and less trustless wealth storage in the future and you're short bitcoin; it looks like the market is betting against you though.

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Re:Bitcoin's Use in Commerce Keeps Falling by acdha on Sunday August 26, 2018 @04:54PM (#17847857)

1. Before accusing other people of logical errors, check to make sure you’re not making one of your own, such as assuming that the current market cap of something is completely backed by real value. Pets.com and Webvan had plenty of market cap right until they didn’t - and a pure fiat currency like Bitcoin has a floor of zero because the only value is the network of people who continue paying to operate it.

2. If a significant number of people were using Bitcoin to replace currency usage, as per the original manifesto, they’d leave evidence behind. You’d see retail transactions, it’d show up in financial reports, the network having problems would make the news because of the inconvenience to businesses, PayPal and western union would be reporting lower usage, etc.

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Re:Bitcoin's Use in Commerce Keeps Falling by DINKDINK on Sunday August 26, 2018 @11:12PM (#17849229)

Pasted from another thread: If you think that Bitcoin's value is $0 long term, why not go short and make reams of money? After 10 years the market has shown that owning 100 btc has preserved more purchasing power than owning 100 USD, What's your call for the next 10 years?

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Re:Bitcoin's Use in Commerce Keeps Falling by abrichr on Monday August 27, 2018 @12:57AM (#17849518)

> If you think that Bitcoin's value is $0 long term, why not go short and make reams of money?

"Markets can remain irrational a lot longer than you and I can remain solvent."

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Re:Bitcoin's Use in Commerce Keeps Falling by PretzelPirate on Tuesday August 28, 2018 @02:11AM (#17856872)

Small correction: Microsoft still accepts Bitcoin.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/13942/microsoft-acc...

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Re:Bitcoin's Use in Commerce Keeps Falling by jchw on Sunday August 26, 2018 @03:22PM (#17847397)

I can use Bitcoin today, right now, right here. I actually do occasionally, it's how I pay for VPN service. So is it a failure? No. It's a successful payment network. It didn't cause a libertarian Utopia or whatever, but that's a pretty lofty goal for a conceptual currency based on cryptographic hashing. I have nothing else to say here.

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Re:Bitcoin's Use in Commerce Keeps Falling by acdha on Sunday August 26, 2018 @04:57PM (#17847869)

That nicely demonstrates my point: you’re a supporter and you use it infrequently with apparently one company. That does not sound like the revolution in personal finance we were breathlessly promised.

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Re:Bitcoin's Use in Commerce Keeps Falling by jchw on Sunday August 26, 2018 @06:10PM (#17848215)

I'm a supporter? By what definition of supporter? This may very well be the first time I've ever discussed Bitcoin in a forum. I don't support Bitcoin the same way I don't support Hanes clothing. It's just a thing I causally use. It works. Why are you trying to pigeon hole me personally? Who promised you this revolution, did Satoshi personally?

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Re:Bitcoin's Use in Commerce Keeps Falling by acdha on Monday August 27, 2018 @06:55AM (#17850632)

Oksy, supporter may be too strong. The aspect I had in mind was that even someone who’d gone to the trouble of learning about it and getting setup to use it didn’t really have a need to, whereas for years here and almost everywhere else fanboys were telling us it was going to replace Visa.

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Re:Bitcoin's Use in Commerce Keeps Falling by redisman on Sunday August 26, 2018 @07:30PM (#17848502)

That's also a goal bestowed on Bitcoin by 3rd parties. I don't think the original paper mentioned anything about libertarian wet dreams.

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