[gamblor956]

near zero transaction costs

Ignoring the sizable 3% or greater costs incurred in acquiring the currency, plus the transaction costs associated with prioritizing a transaction for processing.

irreversibility

For merchants. It's a definite killjoy for customers, and customer uptake is far more important than merchant uptake for a new currency.

anyone who sells online and had to deal with Paypal and Credit cards would tell you plenty of nightmares about frozen accounts, chargebacks and chargeback fees and rampant fraud.

Nope. The only nightmares I've heard are from people who did things wrong. Paypal and merchant services make their rules pretty clear, and they even offer assistance to merchants to figure out what they need to do. If you're having problems with Paypal or your merchant service provider, it's because you messed up.

[natrius]

It costs about 1% to acquire Bitcoin using USD. If the merchant wants to receive USD instantly without exchange risk, that's another 1%. Not 3%, which is the typical cost of doing business with credit and debit cards. The last taxi driver I talked to said he pays 5% because he couldn't get approved for Square.

Chargebacks are important for credit and debit cards because you hand over your payment credentials many times each day. You never hand over your Bitcoin payment credentials. No one complains that cash doesn't have chargebacks because it just isn't a problem.

It'll be fun to speculate on both sides of this issue throughout 2014, but there are tens of millions of dollars floating around to convince merchants that accepting Bitcoin is a good idea. If it's cheaper and usable, it's going to work out. Let's see what the world looks like in July.

[wyager]

The fact that buyers can't do chargebacks is a good thing. It matches the real-world model (established sellers who can be assigned a reputation, unestablished buyers who can't) much better than credit cards. For eBay-like situations, m- of-n transactions allow for reversibility.

[Casseres]

I avoid eBay and use Craigslist for selling stuff because I don't want to risk a PayPal nightmare (due to scams which I always hear about). I'd rather have cash in my hand that I can verify is not counterfeit.

[GFK_of_xmaspast]

There's a huge cost to doing business on Craigslist, to wit, you have to deal with people who do business on Craigslist. (there's good, but dang there's a whole lot of flakes and wackos on CL)

[GFK_of_xmaspast]

In fairness, you do tend to hear horror stories about charity drives and such getting shut down by Paypal (and it would be nice if there were actual non-shady competition in that space).