[codexon]

Bitcoin will not change the entire financial world, and I am saying this as someone who owns some and tried using it as an actual currency.

- Waiting 1-2 hours for a transaction is unacceptable. Don't tell me about oddballs like Namecheap that sells products that are free to copy and can be revoked at any time.

- Getting money in and out is a hassle and doesn't seem to get better. Who is to say next week the US doesn't ban exchanges from allowing you to cash in or out? It already happened to Mtgox.

- When I tried to get people to pay with Bitcoins, they were all turned off by how slow it is to get money in and to perform a transaction.

Another crypto-currency might solve these problems, but it won't be Bitcoin. I doubt many of the speculators today have ever tried buying and selling things with it and use it only to get rich.

[SwellJoe]

"- Waiting 1-2 hours for a transaction is unacceptable. Don't tell me about oddballs like Namecheap that sells products that are free to copy and can be revoked at any time."

First confirmation is plenty for most transactions, and you're more likely to actually see that money than a credit card transaction (which can be charged back later). And, that usually takes a few seconds. If you're paying a small fee, you're very likely to get confirmations even faster.

The only reason to wait for many confirmations is for something particularly expensive. Food at a restaurant? No need to go overboard; one confirmation is plenty. Even no confirmation is probably fine in most cases. Dine and dash is more of a fear for most restaurants than someone paying with a bogus card (or bogus Bitcoin payment), I suspect.

Anyway, I've never had a transaction where I included a fee (even a fee of less than a penny) take more than a few minutes to receive ten confirmations.

"- Getting money in and out is a hassle and doesn't seem to get better. Who is to say next week the US doesn't ban exchanges from allowing you to cash in or out? It already happened to Mtgox."

Certainly a valid concern and fear. Coinbase works great for me. But, if Bitcoin succeeds, why would you ever need to get "money" out? If Bitcoin succeeds, Bitcoin is the money you want. It's better money than the "money" you're talking about. I want to be paid in Bitcoin, and I want to pay all of my bills in Bitcoin. I never want to have to see another US dollar.

"- When I tried to get people to pay with Bitcoins, they were all turned off by how slow it is to get money in and to perform a transaction."

If you were telling them it takes two hours to send someone Bitcoins, I don't blame them.

[codexon]

"First confirmation is plenty for most transactions, and you're more likely to actually see that money than a credit card transaction (which can be charged back later)."

Plenty according to who? Like I said before, don't keep telling me about oddballs like Namecheap. It really doesn't matter when the vast majority of bitcoin vendors force you to wait 1-2 hours.

"Anyway, I've never had a transaction where I included a fee (even a fee of less than a penny) take more than a few minutes to receive ten confirmations."

I have included fees of many multiples of a penny and every confirmation takes on average 10 minutes as it is supposed to. I have no idea how you are getting 10 confirmations in a few minutes.

"Certainly a valid concern and fear. Coinbase works great for me. But, if Bitcoin succeeds, why would you ever need to get "money" out? If Bitcoin succeeds, Bitcoin is the money you want."

Have you not heard all the people saying they ordered from Coinbase just to have Coinbase tell them their order failed 4 days later when Bitcoin went up, and only when it goes down does their order go through? Coinbase isn't even large enough to be put under scrutiny by the US government.

I tell people bitcoin transactions take 1-2 hours because for 99% of the vendors taking bitcoin that is how long it takes.

[SwellJoe]

"Plenty according to who? Like I said before, don't keep telling me about oddballs like Namecheap. It really doesn't matter when the vast majority of bitcoin vendors force you to wait 1-2 hours."

I consider payment made on one confirmation for both of my businesses that accept Bitcoin payments. It takes a few minutes.

If by "majority of Bitcoin vendors" you mean exchanges, then sure...they make you wait roughly an hour for 6 blocks to confirm, I guess. But, that's not a normal thing; it takes me a lot longer than that to get USD into or out of my stock account at TD Ameritrade. You seem to have a serious beef with exchanges, and I understand that. That was a point of frustration for me, too. But, it's not Bitcoin that's a problem there. It's that the Bitcoin industry is brand new. It's such a tiny thing right now, and there's so much room for growth and improvement.

"I have included fees of many multiples of a penny and every confirmation takes on average 20 minutes as it is supposed to. I have no idea how you are getting 10 confirmations in a few minutes."

You're right, actually...I looked back at my transactions...only LTC was confirmed that quickly (which makes sense as it has a 2.5 minute cycle instead of a 10 minute cycle like Bitcoin). Bitcoins take about an hour to get 6 confirmations, but that's far more confirmation than one needs for any small transaction. I don't call my customer's bank when they hand me a check, and I don't have to wait around forever to find out if their Bitcoin transaction is good. I've never thought about the time for confirmations as I've never been in a situation where it was an issue.

"I tell people bitcoin transactions take 1-2 hours because for 99% of the vendors taking bitcoin that is how long it takes."

I believe you should re-think the necessity of waiting for 6 (or more) confirmations for the average PoS use case. As a business owner, myself, I'm fine trusting that my customer isn't going to go to great lengths to cheat me. If I were a restaurant owner, I'd take payment, go make the food, and check for confirmation before handing the customer the food. No big deal.

There's a number of business opportunities for solving the need for more speed and more security with rapid PoS transaction (and if Visa and Mastercard were smart, they'd already be working on it). Bitcoin is still a low-level protocol. Better/faster than ACH, but still needs some buffer layers for some use cases.

Not a big deal, just some software to be written and some infrastructure to be built. Huge opportunities for those who want to build it.

[codexon]

If it isn't such a big deal then why isn't everyone doing it?

Most people aren't selling web apps or licenses that you can just revoke after the transaction turns out to be fake.

The only way to make transactions faster is a fundamental change in the bitcoin protocol.

[foobarqux]

> you're more likely to actually see that money than a credit card transaction (which can be charged back later).

Chargebacks are a positive attribute for consumers (and possibly indirectly for merchants if the comfort of chargebacks makes consumers more likely to spend).

[SwellJoe]

And, Bitcoin has a superior feature: m-of-n arbitrated transactions.

If you need chargeback capabilities, you can get it.

[foobarqux]

m-of-n is cool but is it useful to many people? Is it substantially more useful than chargebacks? It isn't for me.

[SwellJoe]

Hmmm...I must be missing something. It is, at least, as useful as chargebacks, because a chargeback is a subset of m-of-n. I suspect companies will spring up to provide the service (and probably instant payments and other stuff) for cheaper than credit card companies currently charge, and with less intrusive credit history checks and such.

[foobarqux]

You can do chargebacks much later and for a far greater range of reasons than you can practically do with m-of-n transactions.

[SilasX]

Let me say first of all that I agree bitcoin is inferior for many use cases, in part by design and in part due to immaturity. However:

>Waiting 1-2 hours for a transaction is unacceptable. Don't tell me about oddballs like Namecheap that sells products that are free to copy and can be revoked at any time.

Two hours is not the time that bitcoin transactions require. It is, rather, the time until full irreversibility, and it compares favorably to the same figure for conventional transfers like wire, ACH, and depositing a check.

Do you claim credit cards are useless because merchants have wait ~30 days before they get their money for sure? Or checks given that they take 7 days to clear? No, because intermediaries and protocols are layered on top of them that facilitate sufficient trust for quick confirmation.

So you're right that the protocol by itself is insufficient for PoS, and right that there aren't mature payment systems for bitcoin, but that's no different than most non-cash payment systems.

>Getting money in and out is a hassle and doesn't seem to get better. ... [People] were all turned off by how slow it is to get money in and to perform a transaction.

That's a problem for users but only because it inherits the problems with the rest of the financial system to the extent that you want to interface with it.

[robinhoode]

All of the problems you mention are solvable and present another business opportunity for an entrepreneur on HN.