>It requires a computer with a connection, they are ubiquitous I understand it, but it's still a very hard requirement
In your example you are paying 4chan. You already have a computer with an internet connection.
>But most of all, what do I do with the crypto if the baker doesn't accept them?
You could sell the cryptocurrency for cash using localbitcoins. Or you could sell it for a gift card. Or you could anonymize the funds and give them to a trusted party to sell at a KYC exchange. Then the cash is withdrawn from the bank and delivered to your organization. As far as I'm aware, there isn't anything illegal about this.
And of course, you could just spend the cryptocurrency as is if the merchant accepts it.
To be fair, it might be quicker to verify cash payment by mail than a crypto payment.
Western union and other money transfer services have been doing it for decades.
Many immigrants in my country use them to send money back home
It's a valid point, but it's like saying e-mail in the 90's was not a good replacement for mail because if you want to forward it to your aunt you still need to print it out and mail it. If adoption improves those problems go away.
My point is also that adoption won't improve because the benefits are limited and most of the times there is no benefit at all
e-mail solved a problem: communicating rapidly
sending letters was slow, costly and error prone
sending an e-mail was immediate, free and if it got lost re-sending a copy was effortless
Bank to bank this can take 3-5 business days (agreed, western union can be faster, but less convenient) and, depending on your payment processor, can easily cost 15% on the transferred value.
So I argue that, similarly like with the mail to email example, money to emoney is faster, cheaper and safer.
They transfer real money, immediately available upon receiving them.
International money transfer follow international regulations, you can make them speedier by breaking rules, which is usually not what you want if you receive or send money abroad legally (imagine a mom receiving money from her son having to explain why she received it from unofficial crypto channels)
International money transfer is insured, lost crypto are lost forever.
International money transfer it's a highly regulated market users have the rights to be informed of the cost of the operation before starting it, costs also include exchange rates (the operator does the operation for you, you send X and the receiver receive dollars or pound or euros directly, crypto don't include that), taxes collected upfront (crypto skips that) and of course service fees.
International money transfer also pass through IRS (or the equivalent agency there is in other countries) for amount higher than a certain threshold, to avoid money laundering.
Crypto skips that.
etc. etc. etc.
That's why it costs more.
But it is also more secure and less suspicious for the authorities.
E-mail had no such downsides.
Just like a Bitcoin transaction (unless you're excluding it from "real money" because of it's low adoption, but that's not a technical limitation).
> International money transfer is insured, lost crypto are lost forever.
Is it insured against your own mistake when selecting the receiver or amount? I doubt it, and that's the only way you'll lose crypto during a transfer.
> International money transfer it's a highly regulated market users have the rights to be informed of the cost of the operation before starting it, costs also include exchange rates (the operator does the operation for you, you send X and the receiver receive dollars or pound or euros directly, crypto don't include that), taxes collected upfront (crypto skips that) and of course service fees.
Actually crypto can do all that (minus the taxes) and it's actually the standard, assuming you're exchanging between different crypto-currencies and not Bitcoin -> Euro. As for taxes it's just a question of making a wallet that automatically pays the correct tax to the taxing agency address.
> E-mail had no such downsides.
E-mail definitely also skips lots of steps of snail-mail:
- It can't send any physical items
- There's no government agency monitoring your mail for tariffs evasion or other unlawful activities.
- You can't just say you don't want to receive ads by e-mail and then sue the companies that don't comply
- There's no registered mail
- Etc, we could probably come up with other limitations
We'll see if that's true the day all the "minor" limitations are solved.
Today bitcoins cannot be spent, due to technical limitations and psychological ones (high fluctuations make it impossible to know how much you are really spending)
Bitcoins can be stolen by simply hacking (or losing) a device, your money can't, unless it's cash.
But you usually don't keep all your money in cash in the same place, as you do with bitcoins.
etc. etc.
Hacking/phishing/social engineering into private bank accounts is quite common, probably more than into cryptocurrency wallets.
It's easy and highly encouraged by every cryptocurrency wallet to backup your wallet seed, so losing a device is not a problem unless you ignore that advice.
> But you usually don't keep all your money in cash in the same place, as you do with bitcoins.
I don't, I have them split into multiple wallets, sort of like my fiat money.
I carry a small amount on my phone but most of the BTC I own in on a cold/hardware wallet. That stays home just like the debit card for my main bank account.
They are not common and you don't lose any money, if they are stolen from banks.
> It's easy and highly encouraged by every cryptocurrency wallet to backup your wallet seed
That's not protection, that's just preparing for the worst, hoping for the best.
> I don't, I have them split into multiple wallets, sort of like my fiat money.
You are not an average user then
And that's why you show symptoms of survival bias
> That stays home just like the debit card for my main bank account.
You debit card cannot easily be used to steal money from you even if someone steals it physically
Also, about how common some scenarios are in the UK: https://www.statista.com/statistics/586715/share-of-cyber-se...
> You are not an average user then
any statistics to back up your claim?
> You debit card cannot easily be used to steal money from you even if someone steals it physically right, because especially since covid-19 you are less and less asked for your PIN when purchasing with debit / credit card
Yes
And it's quite easy
And that's why it's more secure than any crypto currency out there
> Any statistics to backup your claim?
Crypto currencies are used by a small minority of the population and a small minority of them have gone further than trading them
So if you have some stats to backup your claim that "it's easy to have many wallets and backup your seeds" for the general population, I will gladly look at them
Cards are insured, if someone uses your card and it's not you, you simply call and block the card and the amount is refunded
You have up to 180 days
My bank sends me an SMS everytimey the card is used and they call me everytime I use my card in anomalous ways (for example when I'm away from home, it's a red flag for them and they call to ask if it's me using it in another place, of course they must have some kind of model for that, they don't call when I'm away for work)
Can crypto offer that?
If you were in tech before ethernet and TCp/ip (ipx/spx, netware, ring networks, etc) you wouldnt believe hos far we will get.
That's my view of blockchain. Naysayers are just people not knowing better or people with interests.
Blockchain as a current tech may suck (shit... bitcoin is so inefficient...) but there's people doing R&D on this TCP to improve its efficiency and effectiveness.
Except I had my first internet connection in 1994, have worked all my life to help companies transition to digital economy and I believed internet and e-commerce were going to work because they solved a problem
Bitcoin doesn't
> but there's people doing R&D on this TCP to improve its efficiency and effectiveness.
10 years after the only killer app for crypto is avoiding taxation and buying drugs online (if we exclude paying for ransomware, which I don't consider a killer app)
10 years after internet was born (some say it's 1983, some say it's 1990 when TBL release the first version of an HTTP server) had already changed the world and had many killer apps (email, FTP, NNTP, DNS, gopher among the more popular)
P.s. my first experience with networking was in high school, a 1mb token ring local net in the computer science lab filled with IBM pcs with 4MB of RAM running OS/2
P.p.s. my first programs were written in Rexx and C
Cash is still better
This argument comes up everytime blockchain are discussed, but I don't believe it is true
I could theoretically pay 4chan using crypto money,but I argue this is not a solution
First of all, it's not the straightforward, very few people on average can do that on their own
It requires a computer with a connection, they are ubiquitous I understand it, but it's still a very hard requirement
But most of all, what do I do with the crypto if the baker doesn't accept them?
I have to change them into a fiat currency valid in my country and I have to do it in my name (or the company name) because it's illegal to do it in some other people name it's also illegal in many countries if you are a company use a third party to shelter the origin of the money (you pay X who then donates to WikiLeaks)
at that point we are back at square one