Re:Bitcoin is not a Battery – it is a Sink
by nly on Sunday March 28, 2021 @02:18PM
(#26612741)
> Ultimately I pay Visa etc. roughly 3%
It would be the same with Bitcoin. Retailers have no interest in eyeballing the Bitcoin exchange rate and dynamically repricing their goods every 5 minutes. Unless Bitcoin becomes price stable, or the currency in which they pay all their expenses, they'll always be deferring to payment processors.
Bitpay charge 1%, which isn't even that cheap.
> The block rewards are "free", it is hard to come up with a way to account for the cost of something which is invented from thin air.
It's not "free". They spent a fortune in amortized equipment costs and energy to win that reward. The bottom line is the miners need to sell their 12.5 BTC block rewards to cover their real world costs (+profit). So, in a competitive mining environment, the block reward coupled with the market price is a proxy for the minimum cost of running the network. This is one factor in market prices.
It would be the same with Bitcoin. Retailers have no interest in eyeballing the Bitcoin exchange rate and dynamically repricing their goods every 5 minutes. Unless Bitcoin becomes price stable, or the currency in which they pay all their expenses, they'll always be deferring to payment processors.
Bitpay charge 1%, which isn't even that cheap.
> The block rewards are "free", it is hard to come up with a way to account for the cost of something which is invented from thin air.
It's not "free". They spent a fortune in amortized equipment costs and energy to win that reward. The bottom line is the miners need to sell their 12.5 BTC block rewards to cover their real world costs (+profit). So, in a competitive mining environment, the block reward coupled with the market price is a proxy for the minimum cost of running the network. This is one factor in market prices.