
Bitcoin Is Not the Future of Payments – A Glimpse from China’s Digital Wallets - thisisit
http://www.visualcapitalist.com/china-digital-wallets-payments/
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boysabr3
I don't think comparing Bitcoin to Ali/Wechat Pay is fair. One could build the
same payment experiences (qr codes, ride hailing, red packets, etc.) on top of
a Bitcoin wallet app. Bitcoin is a "layer" apart from the payment experiences
the Chinese wallet apps enable.

Building an ecosystem of services and checkout experiences is not an
incredibly hard problem for a company like Coinbase to solve. The reason why
Coinbase (and other Bitcoin wallet apps popular in China) aren't aggressively
cloning the Ali/WeChat Pay experience is probably because a majority of their
userbases hold Bitcoin for investment and speculation — not to make day to day
payments. These wallets and exchanges are better off spending a majority of
their time building for these investors / speculators.

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thisisit
Huh, I don't understand. If it's so easy why don't they do it? Oh the "value
of store" goalpost pivot. Right!

Let me add some reality checks here. Irrespective of the fees problem - I know
Segwit, Lightning network etc will solve everything, the real reason they
don't is because Bitcoin/cryptocurrency is difficult for people to understand
and use.

Most of the discussions about bitcoin et. al forget at the end of the day your
system should be able to cater to a layperson. Currently, looking at Bitcoin
discussions reminds me of this scene from Silicon Valley TV series:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ml92QEqE-
RQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ml92QEqE-RQ)

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boysabr3
Bitcoin is an asset (or a currency). Not a user experience. I think you should
distinguish between the UX of a Bitcoin wallet app (which is analogous to
Alipay and WeChat Pay) and the "asset" Bitcoin (which is more analogous to CNY
or a stock you hold).

Bitcoin can be made user friendly with a user friendly Bitcoin wallet app.
Coinbase could streamline KYC by partnering with banks / regulators, request
Uber rides in-app, or enable QR based merchant payments (basically make it's
app exactly similar to Alipay/WeChat Pay).

None of that has anything to do with the success / failure of Bitcoin. Bitcoin
is failing because it is not a good store of value for consumers at the
moment. It's too volatile and too hard to acquire. It's more of an investment
class asset than a stable store of value I can purchase and not worry about.

The Alipay vs. Bitcoin comparison doesn't make sense — you're comparing apples
and oranges.

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dlwdlw
The killer feature IMO for block chain technologies is their trustlessness.
Mobile payments in China had the benefit of an extremely well built out
cultural infrastructure of QR codes and also because the incumbent method of
credit cards did not have a strong hold. It will be interesting to see if
trust reduced systems translate into powerful global cultural infrastructure.

