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by fat0wl 4577 days ago
Same. I've tried to warn them about this whole mess (even if the value is appreciating I think it's at best a risky investment and at worst partaking in an immoral scheme).

This article reiterates 2 of my favorites points --

1. the lack of real-world transactions, coupled with

2. the fact that these transactions are usually done via 3rd party processor or immediate conversion back to USD. If vendors had faith in it as an actually currency, they wouldn't feel the need to do so. This is not true adoption, this is simply an attempt at expanding one's market by accepting a tradable item.

Glad to see some more sobering articles emerging as I've been wondering why no one has coherently written these things. Most of the negative BTC articles on HN are poorly written and used as a straw man.

1 comments

Re: #2 - Vendors need to pay rent, suppliers, and employees - all of whom presumably don't accept BTC. So that's probably why you see Coinbase, BitPay, and others that default to converting BTC to fiat the moment of transaction.
i see what you're saying but if they have profit margins they could opt to keep some BTC. i think the issue at this point is that if one decides to hold onto BTC they are put more in the position of an "investor" rather than a bank-account owner.

business owners can't all be expected to drink the kool-aid, so they don't really seem to be assisting Bitcoin adoption outside of making it a choice in their payment processor