ITT, we learn that exchanges exhange to fiat for free (with no spread/hidden commission)
ITT, we learn the bitcoin is lower cost because you can go meet a ****ing stranger in person bringing cash and get below market rates.

As for how good my comparisons are, you are dead wrong pontylad on this one - your analysis is just whacked out - and my comparison between the two systems is way more honest/correct than housenuts. Like not even close. Housenuts claimed a minimum 15% fee via fiat to send $200 from the US to Australia. I pointed it's 3.4% via Paypal, 0.4% via a currency exchange (down to 0.1%), and a couple of dollars in special cases like mine (a broker). I also pointed out that actual bitcoin fees USD -> Bitcoin -> Bitcoin -> AUD are about in line with Paypal for most andabout equal to a currency service in the best case.

You come with some riotous bull**** about in-person exchanges (as if your time doesn't have cost, or meeting strangers with cash isn't a risk!!!!) and that you could use Bitcoin -> fiat exchanges twice while incurring zero costs or hidden commissions or spreads (claiming it's only the 6c transaction fee for the miners). And that my 100% accurate and reasonable and fair analysis is somehow bull****.

This is some riotously funny stuff man. I'm convinced that bitcoin bulls are legit stupid/insane at this pont.

Your post above is perhaps my favorite in this thread.

This is comedy gold - thank you my friend. This is like talking to people who claim their bank charges no fee for converting currency!!!

Anyway, I'm out for a couple of months.

No you're not you ****ing liar.

Your post reads like clickbait. Everything is the WORST POST YOU'VE EVER READ!!! And everyone that doesn't have a personal concierge to buy their stock is a POOR CUCK.

A lot of people are confusing inherent disadvantages with Bitcoin with just the overall problem of introducing a currency that has to compete with the dollar (or whatever status quo).

Even if Bitcoin was 100% environmentally friendly and 100% unhackable/safe, you would still have:
1. to deal with exchanges and suffer fees
2. extreme price volatility

If everyone was already using Bitcoin, and a bunch of fiat currency nerds came along touting the banking system you would still have the same problems.

And while I don't think Bitcoin will actually take over the dollar to the point where we don't need exchanges at all, I don't think a world where people mostly don't need to cash out their Bitcoin to be that unrealistic. With subscription services, music, books, gifts, and hobbies I think just your average consumer in western society can easily get up to around $1000 in online purchases a year. Even in just the short term (a few years) I think we can see merchant adoption in those areas. So when you're sending $200 in Bitcoin to your friend in Australia, and its perfectly reasonable to assume he'll just be able to spend it, you have almost 0% in fees for bitcoin (still something small for miners) vs 3% for fiat.

A lot of merchants accepting payments in bitcoin will not exchange them for fiat since its a small % of transactions and a good way to get bitcoins for cheap, most payment processor will ask you what % of the transaction you want in fiat and what % in crypto.
if someone wants to settle a debt with me I wouldn't exchange it for some fiat.
The price volatility if you believe in the technology long term isn't a big issue historically since it's still going up and still has a nice potential for growth.

Businesses have nice incentives to get paid in bitcoins over fiat.

For what it's worth, I've received my annual wage in bitcoin for a year now and I have never paid a fee to exchange BTC to USD, and I have also never paid a fee withdrawing my USD to my bank account. I use GDAX market orders for fee-free trading, and I withdraw directly to my bank account from GDAX for 0 fees. I have always (100% of the time) had my money in my bank account within 24 hours of requesting my withdrawal from GDAX, despite the estimate of 3-5 business days. So in my own experience, BTC has been extremely useful.

Another small example of how btc can be useful: I decide I want to play a big poker tournament a couple hours before it starts. I don't have the cash for it, so I ask a friend who lives nearby if he wants to stake 50%. Unfortunately he's on vacation out of the states. I'm SOL, right? Nope. My friend can just send me some bitcoin, which I can use to buyin to the tournament, or I can go to my local BTC atm and have cash within 10 minutes.

So Toothsayer is claiming there are costs for trading bitcoin because coinbase charges convenience fees for it's quicker methods of transfer? Wow what an idiot. Everyone who uses BTC knows there are several ways to swap it to their local currency and vice versa for free, thus making international transfers cost next to nothing. This is a fact. Meanwhile, I couldn't tell you a single way for an average person to send fiat internationally without being raped by fees. To argue against this is being intellectually dishonest. Stop grasping at straws because you found a few POSSIBLE fees associated with coinbase that rational folks don't use anyway.

This explains the rapid merchant adoption.

God, this is comical. We legit have a clown convention here.
Right, so you need a GDAX brokerage account to access market rates, just like I do to access the interbank forex rate. And you do pays fees with market orders - 0.1 to 0.3% according to Coinbase. If you don't open a brokerage account, you pay 1% fees each way. Advantage : no one

Right, so in the best case BTC is equivalent to any of a dozen mainstream currency transfer services in both time and fees. Advantage: no one.
The only idiot here is you. Unless you have a brokerage account, you pay 1% or more each way, hidden in the conversion rate, which is just like what banks do. And if you have a brokerage account, you also pay zero (the interbank spread is smaller than Bitcoin's and there are no deposit or withdrawal fees). Advantage: no one.
That's because you're a total idiot, and pretty ignorant as well it seems. I outlined above very clearly how many tens of billions of dollars are already being sent internationally through currency transfer services which cost 0.4% for the instant/easy option (crushing Coinbase/bitcoin exchanges) and 0.1% if taking the market rate to which you have immediate access. Both the "average person" and the "smart person" has around the same conversion fees in bitcoin and fiat, ranging from a few percent to zero depending on method. There's no differential here.
No, you just have your facts completely wrong. Seriously, google "currency exchange service", and don't claim someone is intellectually dishonest until you actually know the facts, lest you come out the clown as you have here.
The more I read this thread the more I realize that most of the bitcoiners in this thread are a bunch of broke losers who have no experience with money or international transfers and too dopey to realize that Coinbase hides the conversion fees in the exchange rate (where most don't notice), just like the banks do.

Seriously guys stop beclowning yourself calling me an idiot (when it's actually provably you!) so I can take a break from this thread.

Yo guys how much has the Supreme Court decision on sports gambling been discussed in here? I think the bull case for Bitcoin took a major hit as that is one of the biggest actual use cases for the asset. People on this site understand that as well as anyone how Bitcoin is the vehicle for basically illegal betting. Companies (especially the ones that one to go legit) will prefer to deal in dollars to reduced volatility, takes away some of the actual demand for Bitcoin and crypto in general. The illegal market will always exist but how big will it be exactly going forward?

You clearly don't know what you're talking about here. When you sign up for Coinbase you are automatically signed up for GDAX. You don't have to apply for a "brokerage account". You're wrong about the fees - market orders on GDAX have 0% fees. You can look at my order book if you'd like - tens of thousands in trades, no fees.

The problem with traditional transfer services is that they don't have the core feature of bitcoin: they aren't permission-less. Banks are under no obligation to transact with me, but the blockchain will process my transactions without bias. You may argue that this only useful for quasi-legal gray markets or black markets. I would argue that authoritarian governments (specifically the US, but many others as well) are constantly creating new gray and black markets all the time (gambling in 2006/11, most drugs in 1970's, 1985 mdma ban, research chemical bans in 2010's, etc etc to infinity)

When the government bans things, people still buy them - almost always with fiat currency (though I don't hear too many arguments for banning fiat because it enables illegal transactions, but I digress). There are, however, risks and challenges associated with transacting in fiat. It is difficult to transact with fiat for gray/black market goods unless you meet in person, which is not usually possible, and even in person transactions for these products have great risk. Bitcoin mitigates that risk and allows for transfers of value semi-anonymously for goods and services that have been made illegal or difficult to acquire.

You may think that a permission-less system of tracking value is unethical, and some might agree with that. Any system of money, whether it be fiat, gold or bitcoin can be used unethically. However, for those of us who believe in personal freedom - those of us who believe the government should not be able to dictate what games we can play, what we can put in our bodies, what we can look at, what we can listen to - bitcoin is a liberating force. It grants us freedom from corrupt banking systems and freedom from corrupt authoritarian governments.

re gdax fees, i think you guys are just confusing the terminology. gdax has a maker-taker fee system and if you place a market order that does not get filled immediately, aka a limit order, then its 0% fee. otherwise, 0.1-0.3% depending on volume which by my math is $0.1 every $100, well within the volatility noise... <shrug>

@ Tooth

What currency conversion fee are you even talking about? At what point do they take this supposed fee? Both parties use free ACH to and from their banks, buy and sell their bitcoins on GDAX exchange for free, and send to each other for free. What am I missing here? Do you think people with a clue are actually buying BTC directly from coinbase?

I see someone else has already pointed this out to you. I think your problem is you try so hard to argue points when you clearly don't even use crypto currency much and don't keep up with what's actually happening beyond the negative press you seek out. I mean you were still using "large fees" as your main argument months after coinbase implemented segwit and they went back to normal. You're clearly out of the loop and out of your element. Just stop.

And yes, you outlined ways that traders and large institutions transfer money internationally at little cost, but I clearly said "an average person." Do you understand what that means or are you so out of touch with reality that you think Joe 6-pack has a broker on speed dial?

Seems like a great thing to me. If it were legalized everyone would use paypal and bank transfers instead of BTC.

This is false. You aren't automatically signed up for anything, you have to go through a number of steps. Perhaps you had an old account, but these days you need to sign up separately...you can however use your Coinbase credentials/ID verification for the first stage.
This is false as well. Placing market orders cost 0.1% to 0.3% - the same as currency conversion services. Amazing that you've never realized this. They've taken hundreds of dollars from you while you were completely unaware. Unless you have some special account, but as far as I know there are no exceptions.

Do you live in the 3rd world? China? If you live in most of the G20, these last two sentences don't apply to you. Also, Bitcoin's value and your ability to transact in it is entirely at the whim of the Chinese communist party. That's pretty much the worst of all worlds.

This last bit is where your problem is.
The fees for market taking on Coinbase. You either market take and lose 0.1% to 0.3%, or you place orders outside the market and on average lose that much when it moves against you. There's no free lunch here.
I could say the same about international bank transfers.

Dude, you're making an ass of yourself here. Transferwise, CurrencyFair, a dozen other currency transferers collectively have millions of ordinary, everyday customers, transferring tens of billions of dollars and charge 0.4% (buying from them) or 0.1% or less if you exchange in the market. Most international people I know use these services; they make both banks and bitcoin superfluous.

The service here for local currency to local currency is faster and better than Bitcoin, and lower fees than Bitcoin for the average person. I've told you this twice now and you act like this is elite rich person thing. No. It is fast and cheap to send money internationally, and these services are widely used; you're 10 years behind the times, bro. No wonder you guys think bitcoin is some amazing peerless technology when bitcoin user legit think it costs 15% minimum to transfer fiat money internationally, or that only traders and rich people can get interbank rates on fiat. Jesus. You're living in the dinosaur age. Get with the tech revolution, bro.

Still laughing that you think market orders are free on Coinbase. As a trader that's just priceless. Like they say, it's they guys who sell the shovels who make the money.

I signed up for Coinbase last July and went through the verification step (not sure what steps there are besides ID?). When I went to GDAX I simply used the same credentials, and didn't have to go through any "steps" or additional verification.

You should try out GDAX. It's clear you've never used it. Since you don't believe me, here's a quote from the GDAX website:

Trading Fees

GDAX uses a maker-taker fee model. Orders that provide liquidity ("maker orders") are charged different fees than orders that take liquidity ("taker orders"). Currently, all markets have a maker fee of 0%. Taker fees range from 0.10% to 0.30% based upon the customers trailing 30 day USD-equivalent trading volume.

For the detailed GDAX trading fee schedule, please see https://www.gdax.com/fees.

This sounds similar to the bitcoin betting site Fairlay. http://fairlay.com They allow people to be market MAKERS and set lines, or TAKERS and bet into those lines (at juice set by the market maker). So it makes sense that these type of companies look for market makers because otherwise they couldn't exist, so they incentivize them in this way.

0% maker fees
0.1-0.3% taker fees

if you put up a limit buy/sell sufficiently away from the midpoint that it doesnt get hit right away, you will pay 0 fees.

if you market buy/sell you will incur a 0.1%-0.3% fee.


its been like this since they launched



some sites are different. finex & gemini has maker fees for instance

I think you guys are also conflating many issues here, which is a specialty of TS.


Don't confuse market slippage on btc/usd when buying/selling bitcoin with the transactional fee associated with sending bitcoin around the world. Because both can be particularly variable, with the latter being determined in part by how much data you're adding to the blockchain.


If you need to pass around a couple venmo dollars and find a merchant that accepts venmo, this is probably the best system for you. Same for paypal and all the other payment wallets. If you're lucky enough to be confident that your transactions will never be questioned and never frozen or revoked, then that system is going to work for you 99.5% of the time. Sometimes if you're a business and you're taking all those payments on paypal (and incurring those 2.9-3.9% invoice fees) then that # you guys are discussing about transactional costs doesnt really apply. The moment you need to "withdraw" your paypal $, venmo $, cash $, skrill $, into an actual bank account, this becomes a 3 business day event.

Bitcoin can work a lot better than some of the current solutions because its a frictionless system. There's no login or signup, or waiting 3 days for your 0.22$ bank verification deposits. It's set up and go with transaction finality inside of 10 minutes 24/7/365. Works the same for everyone whether you're sending 0.01btc or 10,000 btc. The friction to send money to some endpoint is so much smaller.


Its really simple: if you're having a tough time understand why bitcoin works better than some of these other systems, explain the notional 24hr $ volume being passed around on its blockchain every day. There arent enough illegal sports betting/drug markets in the world that accept btc/eth to support that kind of volume.

It's so clear that some of you are super emotional about the price of Bitcoin and cryptos.


In the end, everything in your life is basically an investment, and you ought to abstract your emotional bias from some of those decisions.


Bitcoin should be worth _____.

doesnt matter. the market will decide all of it for you. Today its worth $7500, and that's supported by the fact it has a trading volume of about 5 billion usd daily. Best to just sit back and ride the wave up or down. There;s literally nothing you can do to change the price, just embrace it.

btc is not suitable for legitimate day-to-day money transfers because of its volatility and environmental impact

Worth noting that the typical forex fee on credit cards is 2.5%, and it gets a LOT of action.

Since when has the BTC market been tied to anything rational?

External factors that move BTC price:

-Major exchange news

-Fundamental network changes

-Government regulation in important countries


Bad news won't stop a bullrun and good news can't do anything now. There isn't a single realistic piece of news that could start a new run. Given the nature of BTC, almost all news is bad news since fundamentally it can't work, governments don't want it, and exchanges have to run dry at some point.

People should stop engaging with toothsayer and the other accounts that don't really understand how the basics of blockchain and/or btc work. Maybe 1 in 10 recent posts hasnt been garbage.

some fuel for the fire though...

https://bitcoinnews.com/btc-es-vinni...rs-of-bitcoin/

wtf is the point of this post if it doesn't elaborate on the first part and doesn't point out which "1" in "10 posts" isn't garbage?

As someone who is trying to parse through good and bad information and everything in between, your post literally tells me nothing.

To all:

I have a question. What is going to happen to the price of BTC once all 21M coins are out? Moon? Nothing?