
It’s easier and cheaper to use bank wires than Bitcoin - sonkol
https://medium.com/@rogomonz/the-disaster-that-is-bitcoin-97f08f99a73e
======
shawnb576
You can't separate the currency from the ecosystem for anything but academic
purposes. The ecosystem is a mess. A commonly cited benefit of crypto-
currencies is that they'll eliminate friction and fees in the system, and I
think this is only because the systems don't exist. People want security,
verifiability, and reversibility when dealing with money. There has to exist
companies to do this whether they are Citibank or Coinbase, and they're going
to charge money.

So you can take the Gov't control out of the equation, but I still have yet to
hear a scenario that crypto-currrency itself makes better than fiat - it's
always about the cost, complexity, and regulation of the services on top.
Eventually, those will reappear because people and business want them.

~~~
agumonkey
This reminds me of Uber and Ryanair. They scrape out of sight properties and
claim lower prices when it's just playing on words. Later when people realize
they quite wanted the full thing, the magic disappear. A decade of memory loss
disguised as innovation. Not even a new error.

~~~
kelnos
I get what you're saying with Ryanair (a sub-standard product sold cheaply),
but I don't see the link with Uber. It's cheaper than taxis, and is a much
much much better product. I consider Uber/Lyft "the full thing" these days,
and taxis are archaic. Unclear if Uber's pricing is long-term sustainable, but
even at higher prices I'd choose it every time over a taxi.

~~~
agumonkey
Uber is selling unorganized, uninsured, unchecked drivers. I believe no legal
taxi company can do that since they're liable would anything happen to you. If
Uber had to form, insure, optimize, thus manage, they'd require additional
workforce, time, costs, and wouldn't give it to you for free.

The customer interface is (was? I don't know if taxi companies competes on the
app side) way above and that's the value here. Better information and
information model, almost no idle time.

~~~
charrondev
In Montreal there has recently been a giant upheaval of the taxi system as a
result of Uber. The taxi industry here was incredibly broken and
dysfunctional. They were n unchallenged monopoly, with not enough taxis to go
around as the the population began growing again.

Uber came in and was very clearly illegal here, but they offered significantly
better service and had more drivers available. A couple years on after
fighting the government for a long time, Uber finally came to an agreement
with the government and new regulation was passed. Rides sharing vehicles will
now require nearly all the same regulations as a taxi, but the larger affect
is more competition to traditional all taxis.

~~~
agumonkey
Pretty nice. Thanks, I didn't know the situation there.

------
imagist
The new title is worse than the first.

Sure, it's easier and cheaper to wire USD to another country than it is to
exchange USD for BTC, send BTC, and then exchange BTC to USD. Just like it's
cheaper to wire USD to another country than it is to exchange USD for
_literally anything_ , send that literally anything, and then exchange that
literally anything to USD.

If you insist on using BTC as a transfer mechanism for USD, you're going to
incur most of the fees and risk you would if you used GBP, CAD, AUD, Yen, or
any other currency as a transfer mechanism for USD. I'm not sure why anyone
would expect anything different.

However, if you compare apples to apples, transferring BTC which is
denominated in BTC throughout the transaction is much easier and cheaper than
transferring USD which started is denominated in USD throughout the
transaction.

~~~
3pt14159
My question is why aren't there transfer companies that just use Bitcoin as an
alternative to Swift? Like, you want to send $50 USD to me. You give person A
$50, he sends person B $50 worth of Bitcoin, and person B gives me $50 worth
of USD.

Why do _you_ even need to know about Bitcoin at all? Why isn't it just a
cheap(ish) financial resolution layer?

~~~
quirkafleeg
AIUI, it's because the expensive part is not basically updating an internal
database when money changes hands (no sending of BTC required), the expensive
part is, to take WU as an example, operating half a million brick and mortar
locations in 200+ countries.

~~~
3pt14159
Well what I'm saying is that it doesn't have to be the internal database. It
can be a completely decentralised system. I send you $50 and you open an app
and just walk up to the first money guy that you see on the street. Why do we
need physical banks?

~~~
quirkafleeg
What do you mean by a "money guy" on the street?

------
brassic
He is missing 55 cents because WB21 appear to be miscalculating the fee. They
add 1% to the transfer amount ($5500) to get a total ($5555), and then take 1%
from that ($55.55) as their fee.

In other words, their fee is really 1.01%. If the author can be bothered he
should explain this to them and ask for his 55 cents back.

~~~
daveloyall
Superman 3

------
uobytx
I don't think USD -> Bitcoin -> USD is really the way to go on this. If you
are trading in USD, why would you move it into bitcoin and back again? You
already had it in USD.

If you need to buy some groceries in the US, you wouldn't trade your USD for
CAD (Canada money), then bring CAD to a grocery store that also accepts USD.
You would only bring CAD if you already had CAD.

~~~
revel
The point of the article is really that using bitcoin means using a lot of
wildly dysfunctional intermediaries. USD to bitcoin and back again is, almost
certainly, the most liquid market there is. It's a scalding indictment of
bitcoin when part of the promise of bitcoin was that it would be quick, easy
and cheap to perform these kind of transactions

~~~
empath75
to be fair to bitcoin, the primary point of bitcoin is that it's a
decentralized ledger not under the control of a government or bank. Ease-of-
use was an afterthought.

(but then again, it ended up not being very decentralized, either)

~~~
mywittyname
> to be fair to bitcoin, the primary point of bitcoin is that it's a
> decentralized ledger not under the control of a government or bank.

Which, as we can see, costs a lot of money and doesn't add much value for
legal uses.

------
nicky0
Interesting article. But none of the problems described are actually with
bitcoin. I see criticisms of CoinBase, WB21, TradeZero, Bitpay. All the
problems were due to issues with exchanges & intermediaries and with handling
USD. It seems the actual bitcoin part worked fine.

~~~
zajd
Interesting article. But none of the problems described are actually with fiat
currency. I see criticisms of the Fed, Banks, Credit Card Companies, Credit
Unions. All the problems were due to issues with exchanges and intermediaries
and with handling USD. It seems the actual fiat currency part worked fine.

~~~
AsyncAwait
> It seems the actual fiat currency part worked fine.

I don't think Bitcoin is made _at will_ out of thin air like flat currency
routinely is. You can still argue that this is not a problem with flat
currency itself, but the problem is, unlike Bitcoin, the laws regarding
printing and production of flat currency are not governed by hard-to-break
math.

~~~
zajd
Unfortunately for Bitcoin all of the issues 99% people have with fiat currency
today have literally nothing to do with how money is created. Yes, it's a
difficult problem to solve. No, Bitcoin has not solved it. Piggybacking on the
electrical grid to turn "fairness" into "how much electricity you can
afford"... how is that fair?

~~~
AsyncAwait
I haven't said it's "fair", only that there's a proven algorithm behind it,
which I'll trust more than the goodness of human nature alone.

~~~
zajd
I don't trust the goodness of human nature, I trust the legal and financial
system that we've collectively built over the past millennia. Which actually
does (at least attempts to) enforce some level of fairness. Why should I sign
up to have the future of the financial system be controlled by an "algorithm"
that is built on a technology (non-quantum crypto) that could be dead in less
than 50 years?

~~~
EdHominem
> I don't trust the goodness of human nature, I trust the legal and financial
> system that we've collectively built over the past millennia.

I don't like X, I _love_ X.

Your distrust of human nature has caused you to double-down on trusting human
nature. Those elaborate systems to counter human nature are built on, get
this, more human nature.

> the future of the financial system be controlled by an "algorithm" that is
> built on a technology (non-quantum crypto) that could be dead in less than
> 50 years?

Well, it's only one coin, with one algorithm, and people are pricing that into
its value. But show me a better system. Not even the USD has a 50-year
guarantee. Not only are your dollars likely worth 10% of their current value
in fifty years, but there's an even chance that something has wiped their
value out completely.

You're just irrationally afraid of crypto risk and irrationally accepting of
human risk.

> Why should I sign up

Oh, I see your issue... Don't worry, nobody wants your permission any more
than they do with USD. You don't need to, and can't, do anything.

~~~
Mickydtron
Regarding the trustworthiness of social institutions, there are mechanisms for
creating more trustworthy systems on top of less trustworthy parts. A simple
example is TCP. It is a leaky abstraction at times, yes, but it is more
trustworthy in the face of adversity than UDP is.

This is not to say that our current batch of social institutions are even as
trustworthy as TCP, just that it is possible to build institutions that are,
and that we have a lot more experience as a civilization with debugging social
institutions than we do debugging software. Thus, I do not think it is
paradoxical to lean on social institutions to reign in raw human nature.

------
youdontknowtho
Sounds like someone hasn't tried to buy a pound of meth with a bank wire!

No seriously, though. Who knew that the libertarian cyberpunk dystopian future
would be full of people trying to scam a nickel off you every couple of
seconds...oh wait, everyone ever. That's the market, man. Don't taunt the
market. Don't even look at it funny. It's sentient and can hear your insults.

------
sonkol
I found this article after the author argued against my post _How to Pay
Freelancers in Upwork with Bitcoin, Ethereum, or any other Altcoin_ [1]. The
problem with his argument is that it is based on his very tiny vision of the
world based on the country where he lives. This is not the "user experience"
the rest of the world currently have and that's why cryptocurrencies offer an
alternative, even with a lot of limitations.

[1] [https://medium.com/@sondre.kolaautomat/how-to-pay-
freelancer...](https://medium.com/@sondre.kolaautomat/how-to-pay-freelancers-
in-upwork-with-bitcoins-or-any-other-altcoin-8f5b39ca9745)

------
zitterbewegung
The article illustrates a number of issues with services on bitcoin. One issue
with doing things with any cryptocurrency is that it takes awhile for a
transaction to occur. I had the preconcieved notion it would be as fast as
sending an email but it really takes 30-40 minutes sometimes. Also, it seems
the author is treating bitcoin as cash when its really more like you buying
gold with cash and then transferring it back into cash to the other account
that you want to transfer.

------
delegate
$236 is small change compared to how much bitcoin I've personally lost in the
various hacks - MtGox and others.

Even so, I still think bitcoin is a brilliant tech and valuable experiment.

It is wrong to think of bitcoin as a direct competitor to fiat.

Just like mp3 / bittorent did not destroy the music / movie industry, bitcoin
isn't going to replace fiat currency. Not now and not in it's current form.

But it's going to be around as an alternative to the centralised banking
system and as a very interesting social experiment and self-governance
technology.

In time, both techs are going to merge - meaning that banks will implement all
kinds of 'blockchain technologies', while virtual currencies will implement
all kinds of services which the banks currently provide.

~~~
Mickydtron
In order for it to be a legitimate alternative, as opposed to only being of
interest to ideologues and academics, shouldn't it actually be competitive
with existing technologies in areas like fees, user experience, or speed? If
it was better at some and worse at others, it would provide a legitimate
alternative with a different set of trade-offs, but for it to lose in every
category doesn't really make it seem like it can be an alternative to the
centralized banking system in a real and useful way.

~~~
andirk
As Satoshi's whitepaper harps on, and, in my opinion, the biggest difference
between fiat and BTC is that BTC doesn't answer to a government. That may have
a premium or a discount attached to it. But if that's not an attractive reason
for someone to use BTC, then yeah, we need to look at fees like you are
talking about.

------
tommynicholas
The things that will determine whether Bitcoin "wins" or not will not be the
use cases where Bitcoin is supplementing existing infrastructure, but rather
whether or not it can sustain and grow use cases where it replaces it. Even if
those are fringe or even sketchy, that is what matters.

"Blockchain" initiatives at banks are just about implementing cryptography as
part of solving larger technical challenges they have. Using Bitcoin as
"rails" isn't there yet. Using Bitcoin in places where only Bitcoin makes
sense will make it a cockroach, and open protocols that survive tend to become
important.

------
Animats
All this to open a day trading account in the Bahamas with a company so flaky
that they can't offer accounts to US persons or even to Bahamas persons. It's
one of those "trade offshore with high leverage" companies. "High leverage"
means high interest charges, which means the return on investment drops.
(Their site is vague about interest charges. Not a good sign.) For day
trading, the "house edge" is improved. This racket is more commonly seen in
foreign exchange and in "binary options" (which are a total scam).

~~~
ascorbic
FATCA means plenty of legitimate financial institutions want nothing to do
with US persons.

~~~
Animats
That doesn't mean that financial institutions that won't deal with US persons
are legitimate. They don't deal with Bahama persons either, even though they
are licensed to do so. That might get them in trouble with local regulators.

~~~
ascorbic
Of course it doesn't mean they're legitimate, but it's also not even a hint
that they're dodgy. Likewise a lot of tax havens treat companies that trade
locally differently, which is why many refuse to do business with citizens of
their domicile. So once again, they may be dodgy but this isn't any indication
about that.

------
stephanheijl
While I agree that those fees are extravagant and the underlying process
should have been much easier, it probably would have been prudent to
investigate the process first, before starting it. I can't imagine being
unaware of fees associated with using Coinbase before perusing their services.

~~~
juliangoldsmith
His overall loss, including the drop in BTC price, is 4%. I wouldn't call that
extravagant.

~~~
stephanheijl
Specifically in the context of the usage (that is, transferring USD), the fees
were about 6 times what they would have been if he were to use a bank account.
In the big picture I do agree with you, though. 1% fees on individual services
are not a lot, even when they stack across different services.

------
Uptrenda
It's falling apart even more than anyone cares to admit:

* Blocks are now so full that transactions have stopped flowing and there's no solutions that will address any of this without forcing any of the thousands of systems already built on top of Bitcoin to migrate = slow confirmations = massively higher fees

* Slow confirmations for every day payments = credit card use-case somewhat ruled out

* Double-spending is now a feature of Bitcoin = 0 confirms are now less secure (I understand the logic but its black and white. Instant payments should be possible but obviously zero confirms aren’t the way to do it.)

* Horrible black and white thinking for seemingly everything in Bitcoin -- especially security -- whereby nobody can imagine a fail-safe system and the community blames anyone who loses their coins even though the Bitcoin protocol is inherently unsuitable for building fail-safe wallets.

* Terrible user-experience on the protocol, infrastructure, and application levels. So much so that Bitcoin will likely never experience mainstream adoption for this reason.

* Community has become a toxic circle jerk of investors who ignore any of Bitcoin's problems in favor of its myopic benefits in the hope that they can still ride the blockchain to the bank (somewhat literally.)

* A hostile dev community that is so utterly clueless when it comes to real world business that their choices have managed to cripple the entire system.

* Community is an echo chamber of ignorance that blindly believes that all advances outside of Bitcoin are traitorous, incorrect, and not worth knowing about; Outright hostile towards new users with an air of technology snobbery that makes the Linux community seem like a welcoming party at an Apple store.

* The technology is inherently unscalable -- in fact, the only currently good plans for scaling Bitcoin involve not using it (No, I'm really not joking, that's literally what “off-chain” means) But the real problem here is really the fact that the development team have refused to increase the block size even though this was always intended in the design of Bitcoin by Satoashi and even though there are plenty of resources to do it.

* Bitcoin is now more centralized than any dictatorship -- the development team have become controlled largely by a single corporation (meaning a single CEO -- we all know who) and mining pools have become so large that at any time the miners can collude to reverse recent transactions.

Bitcoin has failed at every goal that it set for itself and the biggest issue
out of all of this is the fact that the system can be so easily controlled by
standard social engineering. If a decentralized system can be circumvented
through moronic human and political means then it loses any advantage that it
might have had by being decentralized. So philosophically and practically –
Bitcoin has failed as both a consensus system and as an idea.

In fact -- probably the biggest advance that Bitcoin made was in the use of
smart contracts to enforce agreements which actually already existed prior to
Bitcoin. So I think going forward banks will end up using Bitcoin-inspired
technology but they will ignore its consensus system completely (which frankly
sucks) and instead use what is now being referred to as "smart signatures" (or
programmable signatures) as a way of enforcing complex agreements between
institutions.

Tl; dr; Bitcoin was an experiment that proved that certain things could be
done better but it failed at a lot of things. It turns out that Bitcoin
probably won't be the next Internet but it did make for quite an interesting
ARPANET ...

~~~
EdHominem
> The technology is inherently unscalable -- in fact, the only currently good
> plans for scaling Bitcoin involve not using it (No, I'm really not joking,
> that's literally what “off-chain” means)

You understand that there's more data in the world than is practical for all
of us to store... The solution is to pick and choose which pieces need to be
globally visible (ie, on-chain) and which do not. When I play poker I don't
wire-transfer the result of each hand, that's what the chips are for.

> Blocks are now so full that transactions have stopped flowing

You mean, near-zero fee transactions... Because blocks are being published,
and they're full of transactions.

Nobody ever said it was going to be free, it's just been small enough to
tolerate the odd free-rider. That phase is coming to an end.

> But the real problem here is really the fact that the development team have
> refused to increase the block size even though this was always intended in
> the design of Bitcoin by Satoashi and even though there are plenty of
> resources to do it.

If transactions were _free_ why wouldn't I backup my photos into the
blockchain?

If we expand the blocks now we'll just end up with the same amount of waste
and the same whining. If we let the fee rise first, _then_ expand the blocks
to balance both fee and network cost, we'll end up with something stable.

Also, Satoshi was wrong about some things. Why are you trying to treat "him"
like a god?

> A hostile dev community that is so utterly clueless when it comes to real
> world business that their choices have managed to cripple the entire system.

No, that's exactly backwards. Bitcoin is an open system, not a startup
incubator. It's not bitcoin's responsibility to support your business, it's
your business' responsibility to function on the infrastructure available.
Going to large blocks would benefit some companies who don't like paying for
infrastructure. It'd keep their free-ride going longer, but at the cost of all
the other players.

> Community is an echo chamber of ignorance that blindly believes that all
> advances outside of Bitcoin are traitorous, incorrect, and not worth knowing
> about; Outright hostile towards new users with an air of technology snobbery
> that makes the Linux community seem like a welcoming party at an Apple
> store.

Well, if you're judging by the response you've gotten, there may be
confounding factors your analysis has missed... What reaction should an anti-
vaxxer receive at a medical-policy conference when they stand up and declare
that science has failed, etc?

------
daveloyall
I'm interested in seeing a step-by-step explanation of how he _should_ have
done it.

~~~
coryfklein
If he's trying to deposit USD into an account, he should have just wired it
rather than converting USD -> BTC -> USD.

If, on the other hand, he already had $5-6k worth of Bitcoin somewhere, he
could have eliminated one of those conversions and it would have cost about
the same. Alternatively, he may have been able to find an exchange that
accepts Bitcoin directly rather than through some intermediary with a
conversion fee, in which case his total deposit fee would have been < $1.

~~~
daveloyall
Which one? I don't know what these service providers do.

I have a GNU/Linux server. Which service providers can I eliminate?

Using my own server, suppose my neighbor has a bunch of BTC and I have a bunch
of cash. If I want to buy BTC from her (by physically handing over the cash),
what service providers do we need to use? Suppose my neighbor uses the same
providers (or some subset) the author of this article uses.

~~~
coryfklein
> If I want to buy BTC from her (by physically handing over the cash), what
> service providers do we need to use?

This is the easiest to answer so I'll start here. You don't need any service
providers beyond:

1) Any one of the many free bitcoin clients out there to

    
    
      a) create a wallet for you, and
      
      b) send the bitcoin to that wallet
    

In the article, the author wanted to trade stocks on TradeZero and he wanted
to send TradeZero $5-6k to open a new account. TradeZero provided two options
to send that cash:

1) Wire it from the bank

2) Convert your dollars to bitcoin, send that bitcoin to BitPay, which will
send it to WB1, which will send it to TradeZero. Oh, and everyone will take a
fee out in the process.

My suggested alternative, is that if the author _already has_ bitcoin, is to
find a stock-trading company that will just let him fund the account with
bitcoin. Then the options would be:

1) Wire cash from the bank

2) Send some bitcoin to the company's bitcoin wallet

In that case, the fees incurred from 1 would be $25-50, and the fees incurred
from 2 would be approximately 5 cents.

Given all that, I have no idea if there exists even a single stock brokerage
that just accepts bitcoin directly, so that likely isn't a real option.

------
compil3r
Bitcoin was never intended to reduce the cost of Banks, but rather supply an
alternative.

~~~
striking
Banks are an excellent piece of infrastructure, as it stands. If you don't
need to use Bitcoin, or you actually care about what happens to your money,
just use a bank.

~~~
charlesism
> "Banks are an excellent piece of infrastructure, as it stands."

Not very excellent if you ever need to get money to/from the States and a
foreign country.

~~~
striking
...which is where you use Bitcoin, as these crooks figured out.

[https://krebsonsecurity.com/2016/09/money-mule-gangs-turn-
to...](https://krebsonsecurity.com/2016/09/money-mule-gangs-turn-to-bitcoin-
atms/)

Again, Bitcoin is a great alternative to banks where banks fail. Just, you
know, I wouldn't advise using it as your first choice.

------
homakov
Bitcoin is useful when you already have it. There's no point to go and buy it
solely for purpose of transferring it (via some weird wb21). Neither you nor
tradezero use it properly.

------
chejazi
> $85 + $95 +$55 +$0.55 +$0.45 (still in WB21) = $236 in fees

Bitcoin has been around for 8 years, and general awareness has really only
kicked in over the last 4. These Bitcoin companies are the first generation. I
think it's reasonable that in the next 10 years the tasks you performed will
be more seamlessly orchestrated, and greater competition will drive the price
down. It would take an order-of-magnitude improvement to undercut the wire fee
($35) which may well happen.

------
davidw
I used TransferWise last time I had to move some money internationally, and
had a good experience. Significantly faster and cheaper than wiring the money.

~~~
zzleeper
+1 for TransferWise, a simple solution for wires and it worked quite well for
me

------
throw2016
On one hand there is a global focus is on reducing energy waste. On the other
we have hundreds of thousands of people merrily wasting electricity mining
bitcoin and other assorted crypto currencies. This is a bit of a dissonance.

To make matters worse crypto currencies like bitcoin appear to incentivize
early adopters to act in bad faith like a pyramid scheme. That they are open
to monopolization by those who have disproportionate access to cheap
electricty and resources can't help build trust.

So the early adopters have every incentive to spin it and on cue they talk it
up deceptively on decentralization, anonymity and control as if the protocol
develops itself and is not under the control of an inner cotorie.

Aren't governments and financial systems supposed to work for us and if they
aren't is the solution to make sure they do, or a flawed technology workaround
that benefits early adopters and concentrates power and influence in the hands
of a few? The cure seems worse than the disease.

------
jboggan
Bitpay and other payment processors exist to buy and hold Bitcoin in the event
of mainstream adoption and price explosion; that is their entire investment
thesis. They also happen to spend a little time performing activities that
purport to make Bitcoin useful and appear like they are building a real
product and business.

------
smokeyj
With a title like "The Disaster that is Bitcoin" we really shouldn't feed the
trolls. It's true bitcoin doesn't compete with traditional fiat for many
purposes. Calling bitcoin a disaster for it is trolling people who see
potential in the technology. The disaster that is clickbait.

~~~
kosievdmerwe
What you are doing isn't much better. You calling them trolls (in other words
asking that people completely discount their opinions and views because they
weren't made "seriously") and I suspect you're largely doing because you
disagree with the message.

------
bsder
The only people really interested in BitCoin are only interested in the
"untraceability" of it.

Consequently, nobody really cares about the fees as it's all about the ability
to move your money around while avoiding government scrutiny. And these fees
are what they are willing to pay to accomplish that.

~~~
CalRobert
People in places without functioning banking systems may also appreciate it.

~~~
bsder
Okay, that's a fair point that I hadn't considered.

------
wyldfire
> Look, it’s the whole ecosystem that is fucked. All these fees, complicated
> steps — it just doesn’t work for the normal Joe.

Yeah, cooperative/reversible financial fund transfer systems that interoperate
with bitcoin are at enormous risk during these transactions, so they charge
large fees and create red tape to avoid/mitigate fraud. It's probably been
bitcoin's biggest stumbling point since forever. I don't think that it's a
disaster though.

> The Bitpay invoice has a 15 minute timer. So I wait and wait ... last few
> minutes on that timer so I start to get a bit nervous.

This problem could've actually been one to blame on bitcoin. It might be due
to bitcoin's low transaction throughput. I haven't followed the blocksize
debate but IIRC there have been lots of talk about slow transactions.

------
adrusi
Transferring bitcoin when all relevant parties are using bitcoin is more
efficient than transferring USD when all relevant parties are using USD. If
people are presenting bitcoin as a good alternative to wire transfers then
they are being misleading.

~~~
aidenn0
If bitcoins can't compete with wire transfers, then how will bitcoin ever
become mainstream? The world isn't going to switch to bitcoin overnight, so
there will be a period of time in which bitcoin will need to be converted to
other currency at one or both ends.

~~~
coryfklein
> how will bitcoin ever become mainstream?

I doubt it ever will become mainstream, but one path to "mainstream" is when
merchants, banks, companies, and payment providers just accept Bitcoin rather
than:

1) Pretend to accept bitcoin 2) Pay a sub-par service with high fees to
convert any received BTC into USD immediately 3) Encourage customers that
don't already hold BTC to pay in BTC, adding another conversion step from USD
-> BTC

If 90% of the people I give money to just accept Bitcoin as payment, then it
makes sense for me to have a "Bitcoin account", as payment fees could be
lower.

~~~
aidenn0
> when merchants, banks, companies, and payment providers just accept
> Bitcoin..

That's not a path to becoming mainstream, that _is_ mainstream.

------
joefourier
Using Bitcoin strictly as an intermediate to transfer between two US dollar
accounts is not the most typical usecase. The fees and waiting times are due
to the US dollar transfers and the companies involved.

There is however, valid criticism of the various middlemen that have propped
up to take advantage of the hype surrounding Bitcoin.

------
alex-yo
Or rather "The Disaster That Is Bitcoin Services Around Bitcoin". I'm
wondering if there would be the same kind of article that dollars is very bad,
because bank wants some money for wireing them e.g. to Europe, and the
exchange rate between dollar and euro could change overnight.

~~~
imron
It's right there in the same article. He mentions bank transfers are bad so he
went with Bitcoin - only to find Bitcoin was even worse.

------
aresant
Bitcoin transactions are not easy enough for general consumption.

I think in the Bitcoin lifecycle a number of these early services exist at the
pleasure of serving pioneering Bitcoin users / miners who have a lot of
digital currency already.

------
andrewvijay
"Look, it’s the whole ecosystem that is fucked." Should have been the title.
This post actually makes me replan a bit of my investment plans. The future is
now but it is expensive.

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KyoChunho
Comparing with Bitcoin is easy. I'd want to see a comparison between FIAT and
an advanced cryptocurrency, something like Monero, DASH or Ethereum.

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znpy
I am quite sure that if you want to buy and so stuff with currencies other
than the one you usually use, you are going to pay some conversion fees.

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akhatri_aus
Some countries have real time transfers for free.

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arisAlexis
Astonished by the amount of downvotes of many comments itt. Some people are
really passionate here

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justinzollars
Turning anything to cash is an expensive proposition. Try selling a house.

~~~
dragontamer
> Turning anything to cash is an expensive proposition.

It costs me $7 to change my stocks into cash and vice versa. Frankly, turning
BTC -> USD -> BTC is harder than turning Apple stock -> USD -> Apple stock.

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Mendenhall
Misleading title. Its easier and cheaper to use bank wires when sending USD.
What he did just seems foolish to me.

I have had people from across the globe send me BTC in minutes with a few
button clicks and no additional parties involved.

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arisAlexis
Easy money transfer is not bitcoin's value proposition though

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jwildeboer
Duh.

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d33
Excuse me, but how much is it a Bitcoin problem as opposed to being a Bitcoin
ecosystem problem? You can't blame Bitcoin for every problem with each
exchange.

~~~
eriknstr
What good is Bitcoin if the ecosystem is bad?

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nicky0
If everybody used bitcoin for everything, then there would be no need for
exchanges, payment gateways and the like. This stuff is added cruft.

~~~
tarancato
If my granny had wheels, she'd be a bicycle.

~~~
nicky0
You could add some ham and it would be a sort of British carbonara.

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adgasf
This article doesn't have any real discussion of Bitcoin itself, only the
services that currently exist around it.

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zajd
This article doesn't have any real discussion of Banks itself, only the
services that currently exist around it.

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pixelbath
This article should be titled "The Disaster That Ensued When I Forgot to Look
Up Fee Schedules." And this is from a self-professed day trader?

I'm guessing this also makes me a "Bitcoin defender."

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iblaine
What an ignorant article. It's unrealistic to expect cryptocurrencies to
behave as flawlessly as wire transfers. The technologies need to mature. But
for those with patience, they're pretty awesome.

~~~
dragontamer
> It's unrealistic to expect cryptocurrencies to behave as flawlessly as wire
> transfers.

Wire transfers are $35.

You'd think that BTC would be able to be cheaper than that.

~~~
alexmat
To be fair, BTC transfers cost a couple cents at most. If we're going to
compare apples to apples.

If you do an international wire and change currencies you'll pay much more
than $35.

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exstudent2
There seems to be a trend in articles claiming some technology is bad/a
disaster/dead when really it's just someone uneducated in the platform trying
to use it incorrectly or with misinformed assumptions.

Bitcoin is still an emerging technology. You can do things with it you can do
with _anything_ else. You can create 100 wallets _right now_ and start
receiving bitcoin to them. Please show me how to do that without interacting
with anyone with traditional bank accounts.

Bitcoin is here to stay and we're going to continue to discover interesting
use cases for it. Sorry this guy is bailing before he learns what it's all
about.

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brhsiao
Incidentally, if you're like me, and know nothing about stocks, but still want
to get rich off companies you believe will succeed, I highly recommend
Robinhood. It's like stock trading for chimpanzees. Install an app, fill out a
brief profile, click a big shiny button to deposit money, select your stock,
and click another big shiny button to buy.

I don't have any affiliation with them. I just always thought trading stocks
was schleppily difficult, and was delighted to discover it was not so. I
believe some company will do well; I'm not interested in understanding
spreadsheets or hiring anyone; here's my money; how do I buy shares? What is
the Uber-like, magic-button product here? Robinhood, it turns out.

[https://www.robinhood.com/](https://www.robinhood.com/)

~~~
loeg
And if you love the simplicity and lack of informed investment Robinhood
represents, you'll love slot machines too. Put money in, pull lever, boom.

If you don't know enough to stock pick, buy the index.

~~~
vonmoltke
> If you don't know enough to stock pick, buy the index.

While I am in general agreement with your position, I see statements like this
frequently when stock trading comes up. References to _the_ market or _the_
index. There isn't one, monolithic tradable "market". Rather there are dozens
of different index views of the broader market, some of which are better than
others. If you know so little about stock trading that you think a service
like Robinhood is a good idea you probably don't know enough to choose a good
index either.

~~~
loeg
Yes, that was an oversimplification. I had typed it as 'buy indices' but
decided that would require explaining which indices, and I didn't want to get
into that rabbit hole. And I didn't want to look like a shill for some
particular vendor's fund. In any case, some concrete examples are VTI, VXUS,
and BND/VTEB.

