[aianus]

> In a spherical-cow sense bitcoin is better. In practice, if I'm paying with amex I tap my card on the reader and the waitress hands me the cup of coffee in seconds; if I'm paying with bitcoin I'm standing there for half an hour.

This is a myth. Once the transaction has propagated through the network, it's pretty difficult to double-spend, even with zero confirmations. So difficult, in fact, that payment processors like Stripe/Coinbase/BitPay will completely absorb that risk for you and consider the order complete within a second or two of seeing the transaction on the network.

Try buying something online with Bitcoin sometime, it really is faster and easier than using a credit card (if you already own some).

[lmm]

I've watched a friend try and buy a pizza with Bitcoin. It was funny for the first five minutes or so.

[aianus]

Which pizza place? Was this in-person or online? The animation on Stripe's launch page is pretty much what buying things with Bitcoins is like for me: https://stripe.com/bitcoin.

[lmm]

Pembury Tavern. Last time I went there they weren't advertising "pay with bitcoin" any more, only "send us bitcoin tips", which avoids the problem. Maybe the tech's gotten better (this was a year or so ago now), but from here that looks like at least one early adopter who's given up.