[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

[nmrm]

> I could give a trivial example

Please do, because this thread is hard-to-read deep and the only examples you've given were discussed at length in other subthreads before you even posted them.

> but do you mean the material advantages for you, or for some other person?

I would prefer "here is a problem" and then "here why bitcoin is the best available solution to the problem".

Rather than the more common "here is a problem" and "here's a way that bitcoin could solve the problem", and then completely ignoring hundreds of other less-complicated, safer and some-times even already well-established solutions.

Or solutions that are actually just ways to circumvent regulation, and probably aren't legally sustainable or financially scalable (see post #1).

> I wouldn't be so presumptuous as to insist that bitcoin must be good for you personally.

If you re-read my original post, my reasoning is explicitly selfish. The reasoning goes "I want X to happen because that's best for me."

> but then you've dismissed all other people's possible pleasure at bitcoin's growth as being purely politically motivated[2]

Um, yeah. In the post I'm responding to, you started with the assumption that bitcoin is good, and then reasoned from that assumption that we should use bitcoin in specific circumstances while ignoring arguments that it's not the best technology for addressing those specific problems.

But this reasoning is really silly. Because then every time I point out there's a better technology for solving problem X, you say "yeah, but Bitcoin solves lots of problems! So if we use it as the solution for X, then there's more adoption and we solve all these other problems."

But of course the only "other problems" you've mentioned all have better alternatives. And if even a significant portion problems have much better alternatives, then your argument falls apart and becomes "use bitcoin for X because bitcoin is inherently good", which is a political judgement and not a pragmatic judgement.

[FatalLogic]

Here's my real life example (simplified)

I work for clients in countries A, B and C, who pay me in bitcoins. I subcontract some parts of this work, such as design, coding, or translation, to workers in countries X,Y and Z who also accept bitcoins. I spend the majority of the bitcoins I earn on various products and services, but I keep a proportion long term. (I also do a lot of work that is paid in USD and other currencies).

The advantages that bitcoin offers in this situation are:

Much lower transaction fees than any other payment method. About 5 cents per transaction of any size (Though maybe fees could increase in the future)

No foreign currency exchange fees at all.

All fees are known in advance. This is a big advantage. We never know what fees banks are going to charge. Even the banks can't tell us before they route an international transaction via intermediate banks. So people may get underpaid several percent, and this causes dissatisfaction, and additional fees to make up the missing amount. With Bitcoin we know the upper bound for the fees, so we can account for them easily, and the fees are insignificant, as well.

We know the money will arrive immediately. With banks or paypal, even this is uncertain. International transactions, especially involving developing countries, are often frozen for opaque reasons, for unknown lengths of time, with limited recourse. If their payment doesn't arrive, subcontractors may stop work and the project stalls. Frozen payments are trapped in the system and they cannot be returned back to the sender on request. So we don't even know where the money will go. It depends on the opaque internal review. It could be returned, or it might continue on its journey to the next bank, or it may remain locked up for weeks. The uncertainty of delivery makes everyone reluctant to send large amounts in a single transaction. So they often split the payments into smaller amounts for safety. This raises the fees and time required.

Zero chance of chargebacks, clawbacks or advance fee fraud. I find that other people never understand how major this issue is, if they haven't experienced it themselves. The lack of confidence is a very significant problem with credit cards, paypal, checks and etc. Under the traditional payment systems used by small businesses, you usually need 2 way trust, but with bitcoin, 1 way trust is OK. Trust is expensive. Bitcoin makes it a lot simpler to work with new clients, or to accept payments from higher risk countries, because it deletes that uncertainty. In this case I take payment in bitcoins in advance, and then I know that I have the money, permanently. There's no chance that the funds will be suddenly get removed from the account weeks later.

Ability to work with people who don't have a healthy banking situation. For example, we can quickly and easily pay money to a subcontractor in China or India or the former Soviet Union who has difficulty receiving international remittances to their bank account due to high fees or bureaucratic issues. In reality, I don't know if some of those guys have regular bank accounts. (Apart from saving money overall, fees are currently low enough to provide the useful option of sending regular small payments during the course of the work, which some subcontractors prefer).

tl;dr Having bitcoin as one payment option significantly reduces costs and hassle. I prefer to use bitcoin if the other party will accept it. The benefit is only a small percentage of revenue (a greater percentage of profit of course), but implementation costs have been negligible, so why not take it? It also gives us access to a wider pool of clients and subcontractors.

Disadvantages of bitcoin in this situation:

As we're holding some money in bitcoin, bitcoin's price volatility is the most serious issue. Over the last two years, the long term price rise has been so profitable that short term volatility fades into insignificance as a percentage of profit, but past performance is not any guarantee of future results.

My own options for spending the bitcoins I earn are fewer than I would like. There are many things I need to buy that I cannot buy with bitcoins at a reasonable price. This puts a limit on the quantity of bitcoin-paid work I can accept, because I want to spend bitcoins instead of getting overexposure to the price volatility risk. There's been a big increase in the number of places to spend bitcoins during the last year, though, so now I have more options for spending, which allows me to accept more bitcoin-paid work than before.

Some of my subcontractors have it worse than me, I'm sure. They have very few places they can spend bitcoins. They may need to convert them to other currencies, at an additional cost. Some are keeping a lot of the bitcoins they earn and hope the price increases, I think. That is risky, of course. If the price fell too much in future, maybe some would even stop accepting bitcoins.

Clients who require the security of chargebacks will not use bitcoin. There are a few bitcoin escrow services, but they aren't useful, because they are too new and too small to be trusted. I need to use other payment methods if I want to work with these clients. (It has turned out that the knowledge that a client wants the ability to chargeback is a useful factor when making a decision about working with them. It can be a sign that the client has not clearly planned out reasonable requirements and goals for the project. I think these clients tend to communicate badly and they are far more likely to require work to be amended or redone).

There has been a lot of growth, but only a very small proportion of clients and subcontractors understand or use bitcoin. The potential market size in which bitcoin can be used is 50 or 100 times bigger than in 2012, but still it is a very tiny niche.