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0 pointsbboygravity5y ago0 comments

> BTC has no benefit over central counterparty clearing and settlement.

I can think of a few huge practical benefits:

1. Try to transfer money cross border within the EU/SEPA zone on a Friday. It'll be in the receiving account on Tuesday (and usually not in the morning). That's around 96 hours between sending and receiving. During weekdays this goes to 24 hours. Not even talking about intercontinental transfers. And this is assuming there are no national holidays in either the sending or receiving country during that period. And then there are people that complain that Bitcoin's < 15 minutes is slow, lol.

2. Transfers through central counterparty clearing and settlement sometimes get rejected/delayed for absolutely no reason at all. They can also be rejected/delayed for political or other (good) reasons. BTC doesn't suffer from this.

3. Transfers through central counterparty clearing and settlement can get stolen by attacking the IT systems themselves. Example:https://www.bankinfosecurity.com/another-swift-hack-stole-12.... BTC doesn't suffer from this. Yes, BTC can get stolen through phishing or by attacking end-points, but so can those transfers.

4. Going through central counterparty clearing and settlement requires both the sending and the receiving party to have some type of bank account in the locations that they want to send or receive money to/from. This means dealing with very time consuming local bureaucracy. Especially when the receiving party (for example) wants to receive money in a "new" country that they're not "set up" in yet. Setting this up can take days/weeks of turn around time and hours/days of man-hours. BTC doesn't suffer from this at all.

5. Transfer costs and high exchange rate spreads.

There are probably more issues that I didn't think of.

As a traveler only dealing with relatively tiny amounts of money across borders, BTC has already saved me a ton of time, money and frustration in trying to access my own money across borders. Even I as a nobody can see the benefit, I imagine those benefits only get greater for people dealing with larger amounts (as I assume the bureaucracy and problems go up with the amount of money transferred).

0 comments

tanseydavid5y ago

Thank you for the time-scale comparison on a level with money transfers as opposed to POS Credit/Debit -- it is a more appropriate comparison IMHO.

Here's one interesting angle in POS comparison that I never see mentioned anywhere:

VISA, MC, AMEX set a high-standard being able to very quickly process transactions even under high-load times like holidays.

But they did this in part, because they practically had to...Think of holidays shoppers at physical retail stores lined-up at a cash register -- they need approved or denied answer ASAP.

But with that sales model is dying a noticeable death -- no one doubts it will soon be gone -- which brings me back to BTC and and me finally making my point

If you're making a retail purchase from Amazon and choose Next Day for delivery, does it matter that BTC is going to take 15 minutes or even 30 minutes to clear?

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