| > Go forth and compare https://blockchain.info/charts ignoring that the fact that they didn't mention sales at all is a pretty good indication. These charts do NOT show Bitcoin Black Friday sales, but all worldwide Bitcoin transactions. But even assuming they showed BBF sales, they prove you wrong, as they show a nice increase over time: https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions-excluding-popu... So for the 5th(!!) time: you have no data proving sales went down. > A random statement about a random metric does not indicate growth The OP gave not 1 but 10 metrics showing growth: http://avc.com/2014/10/bitcoin-adoption-metrics/
You discarded some of them as "vanity metrics", but regardless, that's better than the how many metrics you gave that presumably showed a decrease of Bitcoin's adoption? Oh yeah, zero. > There are 10s of thousands of bitpay/coinbase accounts. That doesn't meant they are all still accepting bitcoin. Wrong. There are millions of wallet accounts on bitpay/coinbase (see http://avc.com/2014/10/bitcoin-adoption-metrics/).
Out of them, there are 10s of thousands of vendors accepting Bitcoin. These are widely accepted numbers. No one debates them. So the "multiple vendors" (less than a dozen) you claim who saw fewer sales on BBF 2014 than on BBF 2013 are a completely insignificant number compared to 10s of thousand, or 10 thousand, or even 1 thousand. > And given they change their numbers reported every few months I don't believe for a second it has stabilized. I'll wait for their year end. Sales vary from month to month, so the numbers reported vary from month to month. Shocking! > Yes, in face to face transactions bitcoin would be a good solution if cash wasn't already easier. Except Bitcoin can be easier/faster/more secure than paying in cash. Ever seen how annoying it is to split a restaurant bill with multiple people when no one has the right amount of change? You can always transfer the exact amount with Bitcoin. Ever been waiting at the cashier's line when a guy in front of you is wasting time looking for the exact change to pay the cashier? A Bitcoin hardware wallet could pay in an instant with an NFC tap. Ever had a wallet full of cash stolen? A Bitcoin hardware wallet could be PIN-protected and could have a backup at home. > The problem is consumers aren't willing to give up their customer protections to improve the rate of fraud for merchants. All the merchants in the world could accept bitcoin and that fact won't change. Why would you be willing to increase your own fraud window just to decrease the merchants? You assume that customers who pay in bitcoins had to "give up" credit cards. This isn't necessarily true. Bitcoin opens up new markets for customers who didn't even have the ability to use a credit card before. For example Overstock couldn't sell in many countries because these countries weren't supported by their credit card processors. But accepting Bitcoin lets Overstock sell in any country in the world. So customers in some random country are now happy to see a new option to shop at that just didn't exist before. Also, I think there are quite a few reasons why customers would be willing to give up the credit card protections. For starters, some merchants offer Bitcoin discounts, like Air Baltic who removes a 5.99 euro fee when paying in Bitcoin (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BtWPJVvCMAAPgzG.jpg). Other merchants can waive the 2-3% fee that credit card processors usually charge. Other merchants don't take credit cards when the amount is less than a certain amount. And in other cases, the customer might want to NOT give his CC number because he does not want to risk it having stolen (read any of the numerous stories of restaurant waiters cloning and skimming customer's cards: http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Dave-Busters-Waitress-A...) You cannot deny that these are all very good and valid reasons for preferring paying in bitcoins. > I didn't say that. I said that they were a trusted merchant and they repeatedly screwed up. And the customers had no easy recourse like they'd have with credit cards. Everything I read indicates they screwed up by mistake, not by malice. > What happens if you lose your phone/laptop while on vacation with bitcoin? Bitcoin hardware wallets can be PIN-protected and backed up. > Given that bitcoin doesn't allow for automatic pull payments you have to remember all your accounts and manually pay them every month anyhow. This isn't an improvement. More and more hosted wallets let you set up recurring payments. > Bullshit. No company is going to do this without contacting you and fraudulent? Seriously what world do you live in. This would never happen. Yes it does happen. > Notice you haven't shown a single example of any of this? Because it is fantasy. Yes it can happen. A friend of mine had a credit card that she was not using anymore that was stolen. The only reason she noticed the theft is because one day she was looking to get a car loan. The financing company ran a credit report, and it ended up returning a credit score lower than what my friend expected. The report showed that one of the factors that lead to a negative score was listed as "AMOUNT OWED ON DELINQUENT ACCOUNTS". The detailed history showed that a thief used the stolen credit card for an expensive purchase a few months back. My friend never received the credit card bill because she had moved and never updated her billing address on her credit card account (so the bill presumably went to her old address). So she thought she had a zero balance on this credit card, but in fact a high balance was due for multiple months which lead her account to be tagged as delinquent. It took her about 3 months of phone calls and writing letters to get this sorted out, and get her credit history fixed up. I have no way to prove it, but I swear this is a true story. I wish people like you would stop clamoring how amazing the consumer protection feature of credit cards are, because although they work well in some cases, there are stills tons of scenarios where financial theft causes majors hassles and annoyances that credit cards DON'T solve. You don't even have to look very far for other fraud problems that credit cards don't solve. Heck, with most credit card issuers, if you happen to catch a fraudulent payment made more than 60 days ago, you typically don't have any recourse because it's too late to file a claim... > If a virus steals my CC details and spends on them I get the money back in my account. But the attacker still has your CC details and if you file a claim for a fraudulent charge, the attacker can place other ones, as many times as he wants. So you have to keep cancelling fraudulent charges all the time. After a point you get sick of it and cancel and replace your CC. But the virus will steal again the replacement credit card number, hereby making it impossible to use ANY credit card on this virus-infected computer. The attacker will in effect have permanent authorization to spend your credit card funds, until you remove the virus or until you stop using this virus-infected PC for internet purchases. So for the 2nd time: how will credit cards somehow solve magically this virus problem? They can't! > Does that happen now with bitcoin that I'm not aware of or do you lose your money for good? Bitcoin can completely solve this virus problem, with proper processes and wallets: have the private addresses stored on the hardware wallet (inaccessible by the virus), and verify the payment address by an out of band mechanism. For example if you suspect the PC where you were about to complete the purchase may be infected by a virus, use a smartphone or another PC to verify the payment address the merchant wants you to send the bitcoins to. If both show the same address, send the transaction from the hardware wallet. So the ECDSA-signed transaction exits the wallet, and the virus will have no chance to steal the bitcoins as it would involve modifying the transaction bytes and breaking the signature. > What happens if we set up the transaction and I don't send you anything? Your funds are now trapped at no cost to me. But you have no financial incentive to do this. History shows that malicious economic actors in the VAST MAJORITY of the cases act maliciously to gain something from it, not just for the hell of it. Therefore this two-party escrow system works well enough in almost all cases, except in the 0.001% of cases where a malicious actor acts maliciously just for the hell of it. And, as I said earlier, Bitcoin doesn't have to solve everything to be successful, it just has to satisfy the majority of use cases. Remember that our discussion about escrow systems started by talking about how to deal with untrusted merchants. That's exactly a case that would be solved by this two-party crypto escrow system. A malicous merchant doesn't set up an online shop with fake items, and go through all this effort just to lock bitcoins up in the ether. A malicious merchant wants to make financial gains, and this two-party crypto escrow prevents him from being profitable running such a scam. PS: Merry christmas! |
