[adammcnamara]

Countries like Canada have done exactly this, extending anti-money laundering and terrorist financing disclosure rules to BTC. http://www.coindesk.com/federal-bitcoin-law-canada/

The real benefit is time of transfer. ACH is infuriatingly slow. If you'd like a payroll run to arrive in employee accounts on a Friday, it must be initiated almost a week prior.

BTC could (theoretically) make daily payroll possible. The net benefit to society could be substantial. Payday loan activity would drop considerably. Some, but not all, credit card use would drop. All of the instruments that help "time shift" money could become far less necessary, along with the substantial fees associated with it.

[nmrm]

> ACH is infuriatingly slow.

Tell me about it.

> If you'd like a payroll run to arrive in employee accounts on a Friday, it must be initiated almost a week prior.

Right. It'd love to see BC companies do well and then die off, so that we get reforms in banking without the unnecessary cruft of an intermediate currency intended for nothing except standing in-between fiat transactions. OR the inherent risk to consumers which comes with lack of regulation.

> The real benefit is time of transfer.

To what extent does this benefit come from not being subject to regulation? (edit: not rhetorical; I've no idea)

> If you'd like a payroll run to arrive in employee accounts on a Friday, it must be initiated almost a week prior.

But the check still arrives on Friday, so the benefit is really to the business rather than the employee. This negates the employee-centric benefits you mention in the next paragraph (pay day loans, credit cards, etc.)

That is, unless the business is giving advances on payroll. But I think that's something companies don't do for reasons unrelated to choice of currency and transfer time. (edit: I suppose another alternative is that you could pay your employees more often because the process is cheaper and faster. That would be a big win. But I think other cash flows would in some cases prevent this from happening unless everything is done in BTC.)

edit: Die off is a bit harsh? I don't want fiat->btc->fiat because it's just silly, but of course if btc causes reforms in the banking industry I sincerely hope btc companies make a huge amount of money in the process :-)

edit2: Also, thanks for the link!

[FatalLogic]

>It'd love to see BC companies do well and then die off, so that we get reforms in banking without the unnecessary cruft of an intermediate currency intended for nothing except standing in-between fiat transactions.

>If I just want to transfer some cash to someone, I'd much rather go directly through my bank (quickly and without fees) than route through another currency just for the hell of it.

You've made that point twice in different comments, and I feel it has to be addressed. Firstly, the inefficiencies you've alluded to here are inefficiencies of the traditional banking system. Secondly, and most important, bitcoin IS money, it does not always have to be converted to something else.

Bitcoin is not necessarily an 'intermediate' currency. For example, if a person receives bitcoin and a store they want to use accepts bitcoin, then there is no need for an additional wasteful conversion step. And what if the store's suppliers also accept bitcoin or some of their staff are paid partly in bitcoin? What if these people are in different countries? Goodbye foreign currency exchange fees, remittance fees, bank charges.

This goal may be unattainable, and the current situation is certainly far from it, but each time a company like Dell or Newegg announces it accepts bitcoin payments or a company like Bitwage builds some other part of the ecosystem, bitcoin becomes a little more useful.

I don't think being paid 100% in bitcoin will be a good idea for most people any time soon, because they would just have to convert the bulk of it back to fiat currency. However, receiving a small percentage in bitcoin is quite practical in some places. A person who receives Bitcoin in the US actually already has a huge variety of products and services available, without converting to fiat. For example, have a look at https://spendabit.co and try searching for random products.

[nmrm]

edit: TL;DR: I think the only interesting non-technical discussions about Bitcoin start with a specific use case. We should latch on to technological solutions because they solve problems, not because we agree with the dominant ideology of early adopters. Setting aside politics, if the problems Bitcoin solves are easier and cheaper to solve with a simpler solution, then we should use the simpler solution.

> Bitcoin is not necessarily an 'intermediate' currency

I mean, I started my post acknowledging these claims exist.

So, you can interpret my comments as "suppose that the only justification for bitcoin is its utility as a transfer medium..." and leave political discussions in other threads.

edit: also, this is totally appropriate for this thread, because in most states of the US, actually paying employees in bitcoin would not be legal and employees would need to convert back to usd to pay taxes, rent, food/bar tabs in most situations, etc. So, USD -> BTC -> USD is pretty clearly the intended use case for this product...

> if a person receives bitcoin and a store

The problem with foreign currency conversion isn't small amounts of cash for consumer transactions, at least in my experience. I can convert currency by using an ATM without thinking about it at a reasonable exchange rate, and the fees are often lower than what I would pay in the U.S.

Ditto for online services, but even more so.

The problem is larger amounts of cash, or transfers to third parties you won't visit in person. Queue discussion below.

> A person who receives Bitcoin in the US actually already has a huge variety of products and services available, without converting to fiat.

> or a company like Bitwage builds some other part of the ecosystem, bitcoin becomes a little more useful.

I suppose this is all great if you want to use bitcoin because of your political persuasion.

I'm -- and I suspect most people in the world are -- more interested in the actual underlying pain points than broad-stroke discussions which invariably ground-out in political, ideological discussions about monetary policy.

Ostensibly, personal opinion on national and international monetary policy isn't the best of standards for choosing a payroll provider. edit: also, that's where companies are focusing. For the obvious reason that political selling points, aren't.

And more importantly, that's not how this product sells itself. Nor should it.

[FatalLogic]

>> or a company like Bitwage builds some other part of the ecosystem, bitcoin becomes a little more useful.

>I suppose this is all great if you want to use bitcoin because of your political persuasion.

I expect so. It's also great if you believe that the legacy financial system is inefficient and may improve if it is threatened by external competition. From your comments here, you do believe that, I think?

As you've said, casting this as a discussion of politics or monetary policy distracts from the practical issues. So let's avoid that. Your comment, which I cited above, seems to be assuming that my interest in this is political or ideological. It's not.

In fact, based on that comment, you appear to be assuming that anyone who 'supports' Bitcoin does so purely for political reasons. Is that really how you feel? I think that is far from the truth, anyway.

To be honest, I know very little about Bitwage. I replied to you because I think you've made some very broad assumptions about cryptocurrencies, which differ from reality somewhat. As I have used cryptocurrencies extensively, I've tried to explain how I think reality is more nuanced than these assumptions.

[nmrm]

> From your comments here, you do believe that, I think?

I think bitcoin-as-exchange-medium is reasonable.

I think bitcoin-as-a-currency or bitcoin-as-money per se is not workable, or at the very least is a solution in search of a problem.

> Is that really how you feel?

If it were, I simply wouldn't read bitcoin stories.

> I think you've made some very broad assumptions about cryptocurrencies, which differ from reality somewhat.

What are the material advantages to using bitcoin for anything other than as an exchange mechanism?

All of the pain points of the modern banking system you and others have proposed are mostly about currency conversion and sending money across international borders, and my original post addresses what I believe the likely outcome for this use case is (although, see the thread with baddox as well).

I didn't claim you cannot use bitcoin in other capacities. I just stated the extra intermediate currency doesn't make any sense because there's no competitive advantage to existing (safer) mechanisms. Maybe I'm missing something?

> I've tried to explain how I think reality is more nuanced than these assumptions.

What would really convince me to let go of this assumption is a compelling reason to use bitcoin as money.

[FatalLogic]

>> Is that really how you feel?

>If it were, I simply wouldn't read bitcoin stories.

Then your statement, 'I suppose this is all great if you want to use bitcoin because of your political persuasion', doesn't fully represent your actual point of view about the topic you were referring to (the growth of the bitcoin ecosystem)?

This one of several issues that I'm finding quite confusing. You've said you personally would love to see bitcoin have some limited growth because that might force improvements in the existing financial system[1], but then you've dismissed all other people's possible pleasure at bitcoin's growth as being purely politically motivated[2]. These two positions seem to contradict each other.

>What are the material advantages to using bitcoin for anything other than as an exchange mechanism?

I could give a trivial example, but do you mean the material advantages for you, or for some other person? I wouldn't be so presumptuous as to insist that bitcoin must be good for you personally. It's quite possible that it's worse than useless for you in its current form.

[1] "I'd love to see BC companies do well and then die off" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8079622

[2] "I suppose this is all great if you want to use bitcoin because of your political persuasion." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8081114

[opinologo]

>> It'd love to see BC companies do well and then die off, so that we get reforms in banking

Do you realize that your beloved banks caused the GFC and many huge financial scandals like the Libor in Europe or the HSBC money laundering in USA?

There is no reason why banks cannot use BTC or any other cryptocurrency but the real issue here is who controls the money.

[nmrm]

Strawman.

I'm not advocating for large banks, and even specifically mention non-bank fiat->fiat cash transfer companies as a viable and even more likely alternative to BTC.

> There is no reason why banks cannot use BTC

Yes! Exactly! Bad Things Done By Banks is only an accidental benefit of BTC.

If BTC becomes regulated and banks are the better equipped to deal with these regulations, then BTC becomes dominated by banks or de jure criminals.

Financial scandals and banking reform are primarily a social and legal problem, and cannot be solved by technology.

[opinologo]

>>Financial scandals and banking reform are primarily a social and legal problem, and cannot be solved by technology.

Disagreed, it should be solved/prevented by regulations / laws but it wasn't. BTC don't need regulations.

[nmrm]

> BTC don't need regulations.

Yes, it does. For the same reason that any other mechanism for transferring arbitrary sums of money across international borders needs regulation.

(It's also worth mentioning that I "bank", even international, with a small local credit union. So your choice between huge abusive banks and BTC is false.)

[teh_klev]

>The real benefit is time of transfer. ACH is infuriatingly slow. If you'd like a payroll run to arrive in employee accounts on a Friday, it must be initiated almost a week prior.

In the UK we have a thing called the Faster Payments Service [0]. It has (for now) ten participating banks which cover probably 95% of PAYE UK employees - all the big high street banks are on the scheme. I see my salary in my account in sometimes less than 30 minutes after the company payroll has been run.

I realise there will be edge cases such as employees who work offshore as I did for three or so years, but I kept my UK bank account and that bank's Visa Debit card pretty much works everywhere in Europe (it certainly wasn't a problem in the Republic of Ireland).

The only other caveat to the above is that I work for a SME (Small to Medium sized Enterprise) and SME's do tend to be a bit more agile and run their payroll in-house. Realistically, you probably wouldn't expect to see large enterprises such as BT or Vodafone choosing BitCoin.

I'm not dissing the idea of Bitwage, but in the UK it'd be solving an edge case problem.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster_Payments_Service#Partic...

[Gotperl]

> The real benefit is time of transfer. ACH is infuriatingly slow. If you'd like a payroll run to arrive in employee accounts on a Friday, it must be initiated almost a week prior.

Ya, this isn't true. the ACH spec does say 3 business days, but 2 of those days are for redundancy. In all normal cases a transaction submitted today can and will post tomorrow. Your bank may not allow this for individual transactions, but it isn't because ACH can't accommodate it.

Source: I run a payroll company doing $1B annually in ACH transactions.