You can use it to play poker. US players have been shut out of poker sites since Black Friday in 2011 and with bitcoin you can withdraw from the site daily to reduce your exposure if it goes bust a la Full Tilt.
Also, you get 3% cashback on anything on Amazon by buying with bitcoin through gyft. That's better than any credit card I've seen even if it costs you 1% to buy the btc.
I've been playing poker online over the past year. I did a transfer from my US bank. It is a bit slower to withdraw, takes about 2 weeks for a check.
I get 5% cash back from my credit card when buying on amazon. And any points I earn can be used via amazon without an extra step. And I get fraud protection vs losing a gift card.
Re:Is Bitcoin the Future of Money?
by bottled_poe on Tuesday May 06, 2014 @07:43AM
(#7703823)
It seems that the main situations where bitcoin is a preferable form of payment is when the transfer of funds would break the law. This is the main reason it has any value at all.
> And from my emotional perspective, I resent that the inventors will pocket millions from being at the top of the pyramid.
So you have no real argument, you just can't handle that early investors in anything do better than late comers. It's not a pyramid, it's a technology, and you're simply being emotional and irrational.
Do you really think that the Feds "manipulations" have been clumsy? They've managed to consistently hit about 1% inflation in a strongly deflationary environment. They've done an outstanding job in that respect.
Re:Is Bitcoin the Future of Money?
by FeloniousHam on Tuesday May 06, 2014 @09:19AM
(#7704219)
I was trying to be generous to the anti-Fed types--personally, however broken and corrupt the Federal Reserve systems are (again, being generous to the Zeitgeist), things are pretty good. Occasionally you get cheap money bubbles that are a direct result of Reserve Bank decisions, but on balance, IMO, it's an overwhelmingly positive system.
The increased transaction costs in current cards is transparent, and I get 1.5-5% cash back as a result of those fees. Anonymity is almost never a concern of mine, and if it is, there are simpler ways of moving dollars around, as either cash or one time debit cards.
Inflation is not an unalloyed evil, and as clumsy as Fed manipulations might be, I just don't feel that a free market deflationary Bitcoin wouldn't have as many (but different) downsides.
I can definitely see the value to countries unstable or hyper inflated currencies, but Bitcoin requires a substantial first world infrastructure undergirding it.
And from my emotional perspective, I resent that the inventors will pocket millions from being at the top of the pyramid.