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by vectorpush 4110 days ago
Admittedly, my dark web remark was an exaggeration, however, it remains a practical truth for every day life. In the overwhelming majority of locales, bitcoin cannot be used to pay for groceries, insurance, utilities, rent/mortage, fuel, student loans, daycare, tuition, taxes, medical expenses, phone service, car payments or pretty much any of the common expenses someone might need to pay for. Newegg, Tiger Direct, Microsoft etc are all great companies, but for most people those companies only account for a small number of purchases per year.

The reality is that using bitcoin as money is very impractical, that's just a fact.
1 comments
vanzard 4110 days ago
All systems that require adoption are, initially, impractical.

Bitcoin is becoming more and more practical as more and more merchants adopt it. Again: 100,000 merchants accept Bitcoin today, and this number is (so far) increasing rapidly.

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vectorpush 4109 days ago
> All systems that require adoption are, initially, impractical.

I agree with that. It seems we agree that bitcoin is currently impractical, which is the crux of my argument. Bitcoin is not a practical way to send money unless the recipient already has a bank account and a bitcoin exchange account.

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sanswork 4110 days ago
Do you know where that 100k number comes from? I see it said a lot but the only source listed is an ibtimes story saying "an industry source says 100k". Has anyone figured out how it was calculated?
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vanzard 4109 days ago
BitPay alone has 50k merchants: http://blog.bitpay.com/2015/03/10/heartland-payment-systems-...

Coinbase has 38k: https://www.coinbase.com/about

Gocoin has 5.5k: https://ihb.io/2015-01-29/news/gocoin-announces-5500-merchan...

That's already 93.5k from merely 3 american bitcoin gateways. Add the rest of the world (China, etc) and it is clear there are 100k or more.

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sanswork 4109 days ago
Thanks for the sources.

I'd be curious to see what the active merchants per month actually are for Bitpay and Coinbase. Until then I have a hard time believing they actually have those numbers live given the number of stories I've seen of people visiting stores/restaurants that accept bitcoin only to be told they don't do that anymore.

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