-What problem does it solve? Many claim that it's a more efficient way to transfer money, but after paying high spreads & fees on illiquid exchanges or a place like coinbase, it doesn't look so good. International wires are expensive but paying 30 bps each way in exchange fees plus enormous spread concessions to trade even relatively small amounts like $1mm USD are much more expensive.
-What backs it other than speculation? Scarcity itself does not imply value. I don't see a significant "bitcoin economy" out there. Yes, you can buy things with them, but most of these things are priced in dollars. Sellers are accepting bitcoins only because they can sell them for USD, EUR, etc. to speculators. They have no particular attachment to bitcoins themselves and could just as easily accept another crypto currency provided speculators were active enough in the market. How many people are paid a salary or renting an apartment for a fixed amount of BTC per month?
-Many bad actors in the market with little regulation. There have been numerous scams and untrustworthy exchanges out there. It's like taking a trip back to the depression-era bucket shops.
-Consumer unfriendly: the average "man on the street" can't secure his wallet file and even many technically sharp people have been ripped off. Non-reversible transactions aren't a positive for most users and requiring traders to use an escrow service further increases costs. Network can't handle high transaction volumes and sellers need to wait for confirmations or risk fraud, so the use case of everyone buying their morning coffee with bitcoin seems shaky.
-Extreme volatility and lack of liquidity make it a poor store of value or unit of record, two things that are extremely important in a currency. Yes most government issued currencies experience inflation, but I can keep my paycheck in the bank for months or years without its value changing wildly, and I know what a loaf of bread costs in USD within a tight range.
Some of these are fixable and I see some growth potential in micropayments or as a money transfer mechanism for people who don't have access to traditional financial institutions, but what is the general purpose use case? What can I do with bitcoin that I can't with paypal or even a bank account (many let you instantly transfer money these days for no/low fees to pay friends, landlords, etc.)?
I'd also add the concern of Bitcoin lacking an inflationary mechanism. I can't see it ever becoming a currency without that. If it's lucky, it may be a transactionary vehicle before the next technology displaces it. But, like you pointed out, it doesn't have much of a utility for that purpose anyway - taking transaction fees, security and usability into account.
Emin Gün Sirer wrote [0] an excellent survey of the Mt. Gox scandal, and a measured evaluation of the problems with Bitcoin. I loved this part:
> What Nigerian scams are to your grandfather, Bitcoin exchanges are to the 20-30 semi-tech-savvy libertarian demographic.
He ends by recommending Dogecoin because the community doesn't take itself too seriously.
> If one must pick a cryptocurrency, the lowly dogecoin, of all things, is doing everything right. It's based on economic principles that provide the right incentives for a healthy economy. The community does not take itself seriously. Most importantly, no one pretends that Doge is an investment vehicle, a slayer of Wall Street, or the next Segway. No one would be stupid enough to store their life savings in Dogecoins. And people freely share the shiba goodness by tipping others with Doge. So, young people who are excited about cryptocurrencies and want to get involved: Dogecoin is where the action is at. Much community. So wow.
I just hope the hoardes of Bitcoin speculators don't ruin it for them.
> What can I do with bitcoin that I can't with paypal or even a bank account (many let you instantly transfer money these days for no/low fees to pay friends, landlords, etc.)?
For all its faults, the cryptocurrency renaissance (based off the Bitcoin protocol) is enabling the Silk Roads to flourish. You can't run those on Paypal. You can't donate to Wikileaks with Paypal either, for that matter.
[0]: http://hackingdistributed.com/2014/03/01/what-did-not-happen...
For Silk Road type uses, people need a cryptocurrency or other pseudonymous way to transfer value, but do not need BTC specifically. Any sufficiently liquid crypto currency would work as a short-term transient store of value. I think that is an interesting use case and something neat about these protocols, but it doesn't explain why BTC is worth more than LTC, for example.
In addition to your stated issues (which actually are probably fixable), there's the computational power requirement. That cannot be fixed. Bitcoin requires thousands of times (or more) more computational power to do a single transaction than any centralized currency system I can think of.
I remember before bitcoin people would say "Oh, I have a couple spare computers... I just threw folding@home on them for now". Now, people are going out of their way to throw cycles at this currency instead of problems that help scientific progress, and thus humanity.
Bitcoin is a cool idea and well implemented for what it is, but I think attention should be drawn to its exceedingly inefficient use of computational resources.
Is that really the case? I'm quite sympathetic to the view that it might be, either presently or in the long run (an arms race where attackers and defenders are on the same footing can't get cheaper due to improved technology), but there are expenses in the current system that bitcoin avoids (and a lot that it doesn't, for sure). I've seen various analyses making various claims, and I'm really not sure what the answer is.
Bitcoin's goal is not to allow financial transactions, it's goal is to allow financial transactions without having to trust a third party.
This is impossible in a centralized system, this is why Bitcoin is the most efficient system of making secure digital transactions without relying on a trusted third party.
With bitcoin, you don't have to have a third party such as Paypal or your bank to transfer money over the internet. You don't have to trust a third party. It's very close to a face-to-face cash transfer, albeit with possibility of being traced by various methods, so not perfectly anonymous. Still far more anonymous than almost any other method.
with coinbase you have to link a bank account. so they essentially have a blank check from you. if you trust them, great. if not...
you can wire money (bank) to bitstamp but they also want scans of verifying documents like a passport or drivers license. is the average person off the street going to jump through these hoops?
buying through localbitcoins is even more confusing.
- "What problem does it solve?" It gives you freedom, true freedom! You send to whomever you wish and freely receive from anyone anytime from everywhere! No red tape involved, no fiscal infrastructure needed, no political settings getting in your way, no many other bigger-than-you problems. Freedom!
-"What backs it other than speculation?" (I'm sorry that I have to sound redundant, but...) Freedom! Anyone wishing to use a free currency will opt for it or something similar.
- "Many bad actors in the market with little regulation." Well, I admit that the other side of the coin named "freedom" is anarchy. It scares you and you seek shelter from the wild west land of virtual currencies, but other see opportunities in there and are willing to take necessary risks.
-"Consumer unfriendly: the average «man on the street» can't secure his wallet file and even many technically sharp people have been ripped off." The friendliness is an engineering problem, and the perception is a psychological one. Both can be addressed just like so many other like it. The average Joe just doesn't think now that the inflation or other aspects of fiat-currency is ripping him off, because the work in this regard was done.
-"Extreme volatility and lack of liquidity make it a poor store of value or unit of record, two things that are extremely important in a currency." After the MtGox exit the market is actually unusually stable! And the depth of the market only gets deeper and with it - the stability of it's price relative to other currencies.
You say you see potential with micropayments, but in the current setting, the "dust" transactions are penalized with transfer fees. According to http://bitcoinfees.com/ if the amount is lower than 0.01 Bitcoin an amount of 0.0001 Bitcoin is perceived. At the current price (~630 USD/Bitcoin) the penalty limit is $6,3 and if Bitcoin's price will go up so will this limit. If the Bitcoin will rise 10 times, that 0.0001 Bitcoin fee will be 63 USD cents which means that even if a Bitcoin is fungible up to eight subunit decimals, it will count only for fine-division of large numbers, not micro-payments.
So you may be skeptical regarding the Bitcoin, but IMHO - for the wrong reasons.
To do an international wire transfer from the US to Canada for example, costs $25-$50 and has a %3 currency exchange fee. Western Union is probably worse to some place like Brazil or the Philippines.
With Bitcoin exchanges, I can buy BTC at a total of %0.5-1 currency exchange fee, wait 10 minutes and pay pretty much no fees outside of that. We can both use our free and relatively bullshit free domestic transfer services to transfer money in and out of the exchanges. Because of the speed of transacting, the spread from delays are minimal.
Anyway, let's say we're at a dollar amount where fees and rates really add up to something substantial. To move $100k from USD -> BTC -> CAD we have to pay:
-Bitstamp exchange fee of 24 bps
-Walk Bitstamp ask book to do $100k USD worth is ~$629 vs. a mid-market price of $627.93: 17 bps
-Walk VirtEx bid book to do $111k CAD worth nets $645 vs. a mid-market price of $672.5: 95 bps
-Pay VirtEx exchange fee: 150 bps
That puts you at 2.86%, plus any slippage on execution due to price moves in BTC while you transfer it, fees to take money out, and risk that one of these exchanges steals your money. You also have risk that the rates between the two markets don't track the exchange rate precisely, since high fees create an impediment to arbitrage that would drive prices to be more efficient. Why take that risk vs. using a regulated bank? For small transfers you might be able to eek out some savings, but your time is probably more valuable than saving 10s of dollars.
And yes, you could work orders on both exchanges or trade in slices to try to avoid paying up the full spread, but that's extra work and incurs more risk. The average guy sending money from the US to Canada doesn't want to play execution trader all day.
This would have an effect of stabilizing the exchange rate, and could replace Fedwire/ACH for a large portion of transactions. However, I'm not convinced the current mining structure is optimal, and would certainly not be suitable for this usage.
I'm sure many Bitcoin advocates would disagree with me, but I believe that there should be some mechanism a la the federal reserve to stabilize the market and allow for reasonable inflation. I have no idea how this would be implemented from a technical standpoint, but I believe with some refinements, cryptocurrencies can serve a place in the economy, but I do not see them replacing the "fiat" by any means.
From a banks perspective there is no reason to change things. They can trust checks from random people as long as the Fed clears the transaction between them and Bank X at the end of the day there in the clear.
2. BTC can be devalued by the actions (or inaction) of other participants in the market and their value changes wildly compared to major currencies. Yes there will never be hyperinflation in BTC terms, but your BTC could easily end up worthless in other ways. Furthermore, I don't think this is a real risk for actual wealthy people. Their wealth is primarily concentrated in ownership interest in businesses, equipment, land, etc., not in currency.
That being said to get back on the technical merits of bitcoin, I agree with the OP that I can't imagine every individual handling their own bitcoin wallet and risk losing everything if it gets compromised (and waiting for transactions to be validated etc...).
So even if the currency is successful we'll end up with bitcoin banks managing the risk for us and visa-like credit cards for day to day transactions. And then I fail to see any advantage over what we have now (besides making a few early adopters extremely rich, of course).
You really think it can't be devalued by the government?
Its value changed when China implemented laws regulating it (and even when there was speculation of it).
If the NSA threw its resources at mining, it could become rich and then dump for cheap, thus crashing it.
The FBI already showed that they can seize some, and they managed to seize such a significant portion that it could be devalued that way.
What you should be saying is "It's not backed by a central authority we have to trust". A third party as powerful as the government can still do significant damage to it.
It's an excellent intermediary currency for purchasing items such as illegal drugs. Or for services such as paying off ransoms, as demonstrated by the CryptoLocker trojan.
Nothing as interesting has come out since 90s, all we had since are "social networks" and "flappy bird" sigh
To pretend that no good tech innovations have come out since the 90s is just willful ignorance.
In this context, Bitcoin has been purported to be an emblem of freedom, liberty, anarchy, libertarianism, decentralization, etc.
This is an all too common mistake, so please don't feel too too bad about it. Bitcoin protocol does have some interesting things to offer us and I'm sure it will be built upon in novel ways.
Bitcoin 'currency' on the other hand is a non-starter and as time goes on we will see it discarded.
I hope more people would concentrate on the protocol but about 99% of what you hear and the energy of people is set on bitcoin 'currency'.
Alternative crypto-currencies are less secure because they have less dedicated mining power and less developer support.
What you end up with is the anemic system that exists right now, where no one is advancing the actual bitcoin cause, everyone is just setting up exchanges to make money from transactions.
I understand fully why one might feel so desperate. Bitcoin may have the potential to be truly revolutionary. Bitcoin solves the problem of orchestrating an international currency in a manner that limits the implementation details to the design, not banking/payment industry/political types who historically - for one reason or another - end up building in significant rigidities to the system.
It doesn't take a PhD in Economics to see the potential benefits of eradicating PayPal and consumer banks (although it may take one to see the potential pitfalls). More than this though, Bitcoin opens the door to truly free capital flow. It is possible to work in the Western world for a month or two and move, say, far East, and live like a king on the savings for a year or more. Why can't we just buy the stuff over there cheaply and consume it at home? One major reason is the rigidities in capital flow - it is hard, risky business in the current system. As a large company in a Bitcoin world you don't have to worry about a great class of risks of international trade, dumping money into the Cambodian economy is no longer a question of FX risk and "can I get it back out?"
This is a great step forward on the way to homogenising international capital stores i.e. ceteris paribus, rich people buy where things are cheapest, like in Cambodia, thereby flowing capital to, and driving up prices in, Cambodia. Cambodians get richer and the West gets poorer. Bitcoin has the vague potential to be the great equalizer.
We have seen some evidence of this at work in the EU with the Euro, if you look past the troubling dynamics of transition. Imagine how very different the US would be if every state had a different currency and payment processing rules, the diversity in income would be profound.
An educated economist will see a great many problems with this utopian vision, but will likely agree the aim is noble and that the basis - Bitcoin - is the closest thing we have so far to a workable solution.
Bitcoin may be as revolutionary as the fanboys want it to be, even if they don't understand why. My personal thought is that Bitcoin will soon be seen as the thing that started it all, but the solution won't be Bitcoin itself. There are too many problems - no matter how many times you read that a fixed supply currency is the greatest thing since sliced bread, it really isn't. It's also woefully easy to steal and the mining/verification mechanism is far too resource intensive and encouraging of looney speculation making its value at any point in time completely impossible to reason about.
If you love BTC today, don't spout bullshit strings of meaningless words in some grandiose display of being ahead of the times. Make it stronger and better because if you don't history will judge this whole thing very severely in 10 years time, when it really is just a way of buying drugs and hitmen.
Right now I can travel to any corner of the globe and make transactions on credit with someone who knows nothing about me and has never seen my face. He's confident that he'll be paid and I'm confident that I have recourse in the event of a bad transaction. I don't have to carry large amounts of cash or worry about being robbed. If my card is stolen my liability is relatively small. That costs something, but people overwhelmingly see value in it and are willing to pay this cost.
I agree with both you and the fanboys on this point, however. Our current system is better than the old, for sure, but at the end of the day it is true that an insane amount of money is paid to these oligopolous firms as fees for doing a very simple job. Payment processing really is a case of moving database rows around, albeit in a highly available manner, yet they demand huge percentages. My bank goes down about as often as my Gmail, and the latter's free and deals with more information than my bank.
The present is better than the old, but very bad compared to what could be.
