Bitcoin is your cash reserve, its like tour bank account and you dont go to the bank every day. There are multiple solutions to the speed issues. The real issue is that crypto is incompatible with any taxation system everywhere
I don't know what you mean by the bank account analogy. I don't go to the bank everyday, but I can interact with my bank account several times per day. I can make free money transfers to any SEPA account, so this is also part of what micropayments should be. It's just tedious, and the money takes two to three days to arrive.
That's sort-of not true anymore, SCT Inst is a thing and allows transfers between participating banks within seconds around the clock, every day of the year. It's just that some banks don't seem to see the need, and some think it's somehow a premium feature that you can charge for, some even multiple EUR per transaction (outbound, I don't think anyone charges extra for receiving SCT Inst transfers). But then, many banks seem to understand that that is bullshit and offer it at the same price as regular transfers, which for many banks means free of charge for non-businesses.
I can only hope the former will notice that offering ancient technology is not a good way to keep customers.
> It's just tedious, and the money takes two to three days to arrive
So then it's not free. Instead of charging you a transaction fee, they charge you "time", since time is money, and they can make money off the in-flight money (via interest, ostensibly).
i mean that bitcoin has de facto become a store of cash rather than cash at hand. It's indeed not like a bank since there are no chargebacks, no insurance nothing. It's different. But there are also multiple solutions to the speed issue, so speed is not really what s holding back widespread adoption.
SEPA is bank transfers with delays of entire days - that makes them completely unfit for micropayments.
In Australia, our regular banking system lets you register your mobile phone number (or business/company number or email) as a 'PayID' and then that's all the info you need to send somebody an instant payment... Even our older system usually only takes until the next afternoon or morning on a business day (I believe the older inter-bank payments are settled in two batches per business day).
There is certainly no technical reason for the delay, a transfer should just be a transfer of a few bytes of information.
I think the usual explanation is that this system gives banks a pool of money that they are always free to invest in the time that it's neither in the original owner's nor the recipient's account.
The Wikipedia page says "Area served: Sweden" and points out that even Norway and Denmark use similar systems. So this is quite limited. But sure, would be good to have something like this globally.
A sibling comment says there's a similar system in Australia - I don't think the Wikipedia "see also" section is anywhere near exhaustive on this topic, so no idea how many countries are covered.
I agree it would be great to have something like this globally. Or at least to begin with inside of the SEPA (which recently introduced international instant payments)
it's not cash though (and not global). the promise of cryptocs is that we 're getting back the versatility and anonymity that we had with physical cash
I don't actually know if that is feasible in, say, the Netherlands. I've never heard of paying taxes cash, for instance. And jobs pay wages to bank accounts.
Why would someone not have a bank account? Having a large unbanked population seems like one of those U.S.-centric problems which is rooted in something deeper.
I've been interested in GNU Taler for that reason; it feels like it could be a useful tool for online payments while still being taxable. (Still feels pretty early in development though.)
