Crezth
i knew you were a real man of the left
I didn't know it was so much work to hand someone a $5 bill.
Seriously though, I can't discuss with you if you won't even make points. For shame.
What are your thoughts on BitCoin?
- Thread starter aimeeandbeatles
- Start date
I didn't know it was so much work to hand someone a $5 bill.
Seriously though, I can't discuss with you if you won't even make points. For shame.
Darkflight
Prince
You don't accept his one pizza baker in the Netherlands as proof that you can buy groceries with bitcoins?
When my local supermarket and the online stores I buy computer games from start putting up bitcoins as an equal alternative to the Norwegian krone, I might consider thinking about it for a while. For now there is a pizza baker in the Netherlands, a car store in California and a whole lot of heroin sellers that use it, and I don't intend to buy anything from them.
This is actually the largest chain* of food delivery services in the Netherlands. I just checked, they've got 38 restaurants in the area that would deliver to my house, bringing everything from spare ribs to oriental food.
* Well, they're sort of an intermediary between small private fast food restaurants and customers.
Crezth
i knew you were a real man of the left
Finding the nearest ATM sucks though
Credit cards are a thing.
Handing someone a $5 in any currency other than CAD is non-trivial.
Crezth
i knew you were a real man of the left
Handing someone a credit card, however, is exactly trivial.
Archbob
Ancient CFC Guardian
Yes, because its totally feasible to fly to the Netherlands to buy groceries.
Bitcoin has fewer fees than credit cards.
Crezth
i knew you were a real man of the left
Ho, buddy, we're talking about ease of use, not cost. Don't go moving those goalposts on me.
You can consider the fees the cost of doing business conveniently, or at least being assured that a blip won't erase your life's savings.
That's true to an extent. But the download requirements are only going to increase exponentially as bitcoin transactions increase. I also figure I'd need to upgrade my connection speed to help the transactions clear more quickly. I'm also concerned that I could lose more in a single transaction because of how volatile the currency is and the time-window between the trade being executed and cleared than I would gain in savings on a credit card transaction. I could of course make a gain i.e. pay less bitcoins than I intended but I'm not convinced that upside is worth the potential downside. Granted, it might balance out. But that's would require a lot of transactions to achieve and a single really adverse trade could make it really difficult to average out, especially if bitcoins became rather more like the currency they claim to be.
Mise
isle of lucy
My internet costs £2.50 per month. You're getting mugged off mate.
Finding the nearest ATM sucks though
Credit card != 5 dollar bill
Out of the entire thread, this is the most astonishing thing I've read. Are you serious?
I used to silently laugh at the poor internet plans you guys had in the age of dial-up. Now I guess the tables have turned.
I cannot unbundle it from cable, so it's at least 10x that more here in Canada.
I think Zelig is making a good point regarding portability. It's a pseudo-liquid investment, like gold. You cannot buy anything in gold, but you can arrange to exchange gold for local currency.
The problem with investing in 'value-storing' commodities is that you're inevitably trying to time bubbles. You can do very well if you're both wise and lucky, but it's tough to come out in the long run. The real question is 'what side of the bubble are we one'. Joe Sixpack isn't buying Bitcoins yet, but he's likely bought gold. Once Joe starts buying something, it's often time to sell very soon (though it's tempting not to). But, will Joe buy Bitcoins? It might be worth a $1000 gamble, or so.
I think Zelig is making a good point regarding portability. It's a pseudo-liquid investment, like gold. You cannot buy anything in gold, but you can arrange to exchange gold for local currency.
The problem with investing in 'value-storing' commodities is that you're inevitably trying to time bubbles. You can do very well if you're both wise and lucky, but it's tough to come out in the long run. The real question is 'what side of the bubble are we one'. Joe Sixpack isn't buying Bitcoins yet, but he's likely bought gold. Once Joe starts buying something, it's often time to sell very soon (though it's tempting not to). But, will Joe buy Bitcoins? It might be worth a $1000 gamble, or so.
Symphony D.
Deity
Your entire argument is based on "convenience" and your response to losing 30%+ of the value of your "currency" on an ill-timed transaction is "meh, no big deal, it'll average out?" Hilarious.
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