Ask HN: What's different from paying with bitcoin?

HN,

I've been wondering why it is that the idea of building UI's on top of bitcoin seem all the sudden such a good idea, but what it all comes down to for the greater public, is that they can transfer money to oneanother, when this can for instance also be done with the Paypal api or such services.

So please, tell me what makes it better for people to transfer money to a wallet id then to a bank account.

Thanks for your comments in advance!

2 comments

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RolandasR 12y ago ↗

most obvious benefit at the moment is anonymity. Another good benefit is that is P2P - that means no mid party can intercept your transaction and prevent it from happening.

jadeddrag 12y ago ↗

Besides the freedom and privacy, there are a few more advantages.

Bitcoin transactions are very cheap, and can be free. (however most clients usually require a minimum miner's fee of about 5 microbitcoins, which will probably go down in future versions if the USD/BTC price goes much higher).

For example, a few days ago, someone sent about $140 million (USD) worth of bitcoin, and paid no fee.

Another advantage is that transactions can be as small as 0.00000001 BTC (called a satoshi), which when combined with little or no fees, makes online micro payments viable.