I like Bitcoin a lot, but this is just wishful thinking. If you can't trust the bank, the place that has handled your money for decades, why would you trust a magical internet currency app that you can't even easily exchange for cash?
I went to read /r/bitcoin this morning but closed the tab pretty quickly, after reading all the cultish comments. That place is too much for me sometimes. I only go there for the "X now accepts Bitcoin" news, but there hasn't been any of that in ages, and the sites that used to accept it are now even phasing it out.
I remember reading an article that pointed out that despite the large investment in Bitcoin startups and so on in 2014 that the number of non-speculation transactions stayed pretty flat. It sounds like a decent metric and I wonder if that is still the case.
Traffic did grow. Hence the block size debates now playing out. However its growth was not wildly unanticipated or anything like that.
I agree that Bitcoin and Greece have nothing to do with each other. They have a form of "hard-ish money" at the moment in the Euro and Greece's problems would not really be fixed by Bitcoin.
The Bitcoin reddit is pretty cultish at times, yes.
That's sad, I tried to buy a plane ticket the other day and keep reminded how horrible the process is every time. I need to remember the Visa Secure thing password, and charging the CC fails three out of four times for no reason, and I have to restart the whole process again, etc.
Half of it is shitty website UI, but the other half is card-related. I wish I could just scan a QR code and pay. It's amazingly easy with Bitcoin, and integration is very easy, too, especially with Stripe, but it hasn't caught on. Too bad...
All my hotel purchases in last year have been with bitcoin via Expedia, using a credit card form (and trusting it doesnt get "mistreated") feels like something from another era to me.
I am in Europe too, here there is not as much need for Bitcoin now that SEPA exists and not many people care for credit cards but its still has its uses.
You can use sites like https://giftoff.com/ (EU) or https://www.gyft.com/ (US) to get giftcards and spend your bitcoins that way in shops such as Amazon which do not yet take Bitcoin
Actually it is quite easy to exchange for cash, this week I had a localbitcoins meetup and sold 5000 euro worth of bitcoin (most of this I bought out my nerdy interest back in 2011 for peanuts), we met in coffee shop and had a nice geek to geek chat about bitcoin :)
Will use this towards replacing my old car.
Speaking of localbitcoins, the volume of trades just keep on growing and is a good indicator of the general bitcoin "economy"
I am in Ireland, my inner geek has been fascinated with bitcoin since 2011 when Paypal screwed with me (I still do not know why) it has been fascinating watching Bitcoin ecosystem grow (ideas, companies and people) sort of reminds me of the early days of the web.
Dont mind the guys on r/Bitcoin, they get overzealous and there are alot of trolls it being Reddit, and most of them being teens, the more mature voices get drowned out by noise there.
You just learn to skip over the cultish posts and read the more technical/interesting developments in the space such as multisignature transactions, blocksize debate and lightning networks.
Yeah, same here. I just wish I hadn't been fascinated by MtGox :P Or, well, considered it a convenient place to store my Bitcoins. If only I had known of Electrum earlier!
The worry is that you'll go to sleep one night and in the morning you'll find that the government has ordered the banks to convert your Euros into Drachmas at a 1:1 ratio. And if that should happen it'll be easier to exchange Bitcoin for Euros than what's in your bank.
There's no reason to use Bitcoin for any legal good if you're in a normal country. It's when you've got the sort of situation they've got in Greece or you're in China and want to invest your money in overseas or you're in Argentina and worried that the government might seize your bank account that makes Bitcoin look interesting.
As a resident of the US who doesn't use drugs I don't have any reason to touch Bitcoin. But other people are in different situations. I do think that people's hopes of a dramatic rise in the price of Bitcoins are drastically overstated, though.
> The worry is that you'll go to sleep one night and in the morning you'll find that the government has ordered the banks to convert your Euros into Drachmas at a 1:1 ratio.
If it gets to that point, it's already too late. Opening a bank account in another european country is about as time-consuming as getting Bitcoin, though, and generally a much better option.
What Greeks want is the government to not steal/hold/control their money as they are now doing, bitcoin solves that problem and doesnt require stashing money into a mattress.
This little Trezor device sitting on my desk (photo comparison versus plastic credit card shaped card) stores equivalent of dozens of thousands of euro safely and securely ;)
As an investment - brilliant. As a value store - rather too risky. It's not like they can use it like a regular currency with no infrastructure for it.
It is not an investment, it is a tool that addresses some of the problems with legacy payment systems (tho doesnt solve them all bring its own quirks) especially when it comes to borders.
as for infrastructure, it is growing, I have been using bitcoin since 2011 in that time the possibilities for using bitcoin have grown exponentially for me and my company for everything from getting paid from far east cheaply and quickly to booking hotels, to buying petrol to ordering electronics and everything amazon/overstock has to offer.
How are those inside Greece supposed to get their hands on Bitcoin in order to start this process? Seems to require that someone is willing to pay Bitcoin in exchange for olives or cheese, or tuition, or surgery, or whatever you have to offer.
I don't think anyone disagrees with the historical results around the Cyprus disaster.
What makes the debate interesting is Greece vs Cyprus discussions or now vs recently discussions. I'm not sure if there is much if any difference between Cyprus and Greece WRT BTC so that leaves any recent changes in the overall BTC scene, also not much. So the BTC focused greek situation should be very much like the historical cyprus event.
Very theoretical discussions about what people want or wish for are not relevant to recent/current events although they could be interesting in a very abstract, perhaps long term, sense.
25 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 53.4 ms ] threadI went to read /r/bitcoin this morning but closed the tab pretty quickly, after reading all the cultish comments. That place is too much for me sometimes. I only go there for the "X now accepts Bitcoin" news, but there hasn't been any of that in ages, and the sites that used to accept it are now even phasing it out.
I agree that Bitcoin and Greece have nothing to do with each other. They have a form of "hard-ish money" at the moment in the Euro and Greece's problems would not really be fixed by Bitcoin.
The Bitcoin reddit is pretty cultish at times, yes.
Half of it is shitty website UI, but the other half is card-related. I wish I could just scan a QR code and pay. It's amazingly easy with Bitcoin, and integration is very easy, too, especially with Stripe, but it hasn't caught on. Too bad...
You can use sites like https://giftoff.com/ (EU) or https://www.gyft.com/ (US) to get giftcards and spend your bitcoins that way in shops such as Amazon which do not yet take Bitcoin
Will use this towards replacing my old car.
Speaking of localbitcoins, the volume of trades just keep on growing and is a good indicator of the general bitcoin "economy"
http://i.imgur.com/uV6Asfc.png
http://i.imgur.com/sZ5qyel.png
Dont mind the guys on r/Bitcoin, they get overzealous and there are alot of trolls it being Reddit, and most of them being teens, the more mature voices get drowned out by noise there. You just learn to skip over the cultish posts and read the more technical/interesting developments in the space such as multisignature transactions, blocksize debate and lightning networks.
There's no reason to use Bitcoin for any legal good if you're in a normal country. It's when you've got the sort of situation they've got in Greece or you're in China and want to invest your money in overseas or you're in Argentina and worried that the government might seize your bank account that makes Bitcoin look interesting.
As a resident of the US who doesn't use drugs I don't have any reason to touch Bitcoin. But other people are in different situations. I do think that people's hopes of a dramatic rise in the price of Bitcoins are drastically overstated, though.
If it gets to that point, it's already too late. Opening a bank account in another european country is about as time-consuming as getting Bitcoin, though, and generally a much better option.
This little Trezor device sitting on my desk (photo comparison versus plastic credit card shaped card) stores equivalent of dozens of thousands of euro safely and securely ;)
http://i.imgur.com/A8iDEBm.jpg
Some people feel more comfortable with their understanding of physical security than digital security.
as for infrastructure, it is growing, I have been using bitcoin since 2011 in that time the possibilities for using bitcoin have grown exponentially for me and my company for everything from getting paid from far east cheaply and quickly to booking hotels, to buying petrol to ordering electronics and everything amazon/overstock has to offer.
What makes the debate interesting is Greece vs Cyprus discussions or now vs recently discussions. I'm not sure if there is much if any difference between Cyprus and Greece WRT BTC so that leaves any recent changes in the overall BTC scene, also not much. So the BTC focused greek situation should be very much like the historical cyprus event.
Very theoretical discussions about what people want or wish for are not relevant to recent/current events although they could be interesting in a very abstract, perhaps long term, sense.