What's in it for consumers-

1) No worries about identity theft or credit card fraud
2) Customer may not have credit card
3) Customer may not want purchase showing up on credit card records
4) Possible discount
5) Customer has surplus of Bitcoins and gets a better deal buying things than using an exchange
6) Avoid recurring charges (sign up for a domain, it auto sets up to renew in many cases)

I'd much prefer to buy with Bitcoins rather than sell on an exchange.

Lol in the first video: " and bob can take these numbers and either buy something or get real money".

Well, there are a few benefits for consumers.

First, you don't have to risk your credit card information being stolen. Target comes to mind.

Second, many merchants offer a discount if you pay in BTC, so you save yourself a little bit of money.

Third, the process is much more anonymous. Don't want your gf to know that you bought a 12 inch dildo online? BTC doesn't show up on your CC or bank statements. This goes for grey areas, including online poker.

And finally, many people simply have an aversion to the banking system and don't want to be reliant on them. Whether they dislike the fed, or fractional reserve banking, or whatever, they simply don't want to hold dollars. These people will be a smaller percentage moving forward, but they were instrumental in getting BTC to the place it is today.

Also with better technology, for in-person purchases, it will be faster to simply scan the QR code and pay from your phone rather than deal with carrying around a debit or credit card that could be stolen. This is still a ways off, but we're getting there. (Better security for your BTC is a major hurdle here)

Even my digital pony is too slow

Thanks. I considered 1 and 2 but not the rest. 5 seems great but again the risk of holding bitcoins while the market fluctuates seems problematic.

Convincing points, especially the secret dildo purchases. Thanks.

Well, the value of your dollars is in constant decline, so it seems problematic to be holding those too Instead of asking "How many dollars can I get for my BTC?" you should ask "How many (whatever) can I get with my BTC"

Most things are priced in dollars, but not everything.

Gotta know your audience, like Apples to Apples

Cool, thanks. I think what I need to do is get some and play around with it. Try different methods of holding it before I figure out what I want to use long term. I will watch those vids in the mean time.

True. The current volatility seems a bit much to deal though. Would that concern you at all if you were holding BTC?

Yeah, it's been real problematic for me holding Bitcoins going from 125 to 80 to 1200 to 700

The price will eventually stabilize if adoption increases, or at least not swing as much, and as the market matures, I'm sure there will be ways to protect yourself against a loss (possibly by giving up some of the potential gains). Think about if Wells Fargo gets involved in this more seriously, you have a bank account that holds USD and Bitcoins. They would be convertible for a very minimal fee perhaps. Or even you could have your bank send Bitcoins on your behalf to a merchant, which they would deduct from your account in cash. If it ends up being a superior payment method, these kinds of things are possible, even if you use dollars to store your value.

We have a very immature market right now, and a lot of use cases that can happen simply are not viable due to limited infrastructure, but are at least theoretically possible and eventually could be useful.

It doesn't concern me, personally, because I think that bitcoin is the 2nd most important invention in my lifetime, and I think that groundbreaking technology takes a while to "even out". (Think of a stock like Microsoft, there were wild valuations before it eventually hit the market price) There are things being built on top of BTC right now that just blow my mind. I could see how it would bother some other people who don't believe in the technology as much as I do.

That said, I simply use dollars (or buy btc) when the price swings down, because as more and more people discover the genius of it all, the price tends to rise. However, I would also be perfectly happy if BTC somehow stabilized, because I have fundamental philosophical differences with the banking system.

Ha- well yeah. But what about those looking to jump in now.


Agreed.


In the Wells Fargo example, wouldn't that take away your anonymity?

Couldn't agree more on the potential- seems like a serious game-changer.

WF wouldn't know who they are sending money to, and whoever you are sending money to wouldn't know who you were or that WF is acting as an intermediary. Though WF will likely have subpoenable records to use against you in such a matter. You'd be giving up some privacy in that case, but if you care, you request a transfer of Bitcoins to yourself (much like getting cash at an ATM), and you are good to go.

Makes sense. It sounds like you're willing to make or lose a bit here as just part of being involved in what's sort of a grassroots overhaul of the current system, and I respect that. It also makes me think of bitcoins in a different way. I've seen a couple of the Antonopoulos videos and heard the Rogan podcast and I agree that this is truly incredible.

Philosophical differences (more like animosity) are the main reason I want to get into BTC.

IMO we are still in the very early days of BTC. People complain that they missed the boat, but it's still boarding passengers sitting in the dock, imo.

Not everybody is concerned with anonymity, and once you have BTC it's very easy to continue to make purchases that wouldn't be linked to that account.

I should change every post I make in this thread to "What TomCollins just said 5 minutes ago"

Ok I think I see what you're saying. This is indeed pretty wild. Thanks for the comments. I'm reading through the entire thread and it's interesting to see how things are evolving.

LOL

Maybe they missed the boat in terms of making a killing, but in another sense does it matter what the price is? Let's say some volatility-averse noob is going to buy a car next month. What if he just bought the bitcoins the day of the purchase? Then there would be no risk of losing value (since I'm guessing the seller would be using that day's exchange rate?) and the only cost would be the transactions fees (which might be offset by a seller discount)?

This is not a valid concern, for obvious reasons. Even people that were hacked at the recent Target fiasco did not lose a single penny. It's a minor inconvenience, nothing more. Their identities were not stolen and any losses they may have incurred will be completely refunded. The chance of having your bitcoins completely lost or stolen without recourse is much greater.

If you think identity theft is always a breeze and losses are never incurred by real people, you are mistaken.

I just bought some tulips with my last few bitcoins.

It's not always a breeze but it is always a breeze compared to having your bitcoins lost or stolen.

Having your credit card compromised is also really rare.

cool thing cryto currencies can help solve:

with so many of them now and more popping up everyday, there should eventually be several roughly identical ones with the only variability regarding money supply, ie inflationary or deflationary. after a decent sample size here of which of the two survive, we can finally put the dumb deflationary spiral "problems" of fixed money supply arguments to rest. this can still be done with Bitcoin being the most popular of the currencies.