In way this is not true Roger Ver believes transaction fees should be low for the poor people and Gavin wants transaction fees to be low. By consensus of a group transaction fees are determined. Maybe later they will want to increase block rewards to help the network.

http://www.coindesk.com/gavin-andres...-poor-bitcoin/

In this talk he talks about changing the code to increase block size to keep transaction fees low. What about the small guy with the blockchain on his home computer?

What about him? What about the pick and axe gold miner?

Bitcoin has a lot more than the userbase going for it. When you say userbase, what you're really talking about is the network effect; something that users of altcoins grossly underestimate. The current hashrate of the Bitcoin network is also underestimated.

2.0 rubbish only begins to look good when you ignore the biggest features of Bitcoin itself.

The moment Bitcoin came into existence, gold became immaterial.

It no longer matters that goverments trade gold back and forth in order to supress the price. It no longer matters that the biggest holders of gold are governments as they are the only ones capable of storing it properly.

I guess you might say Bitcoin is gold 2.0.

Suppose someone owns ETH, XRP, or PPC. They write software automatically to convert it to bitcoin. Thus all digital currencies can be used to buy stuff at overstock dot com as if they are bitcoin. Thus, the only coins that will have value longterm are the ones that rise in price. Since bitcoin is based on zero inflation it might be ok, we will see but if a coin can be found that is guaranteed to increase, people will switch. Even if cryptocurrency use increases 100x there is no guarantee bitcoin rises in price since other coins can be used.

So you think that governments from different countries are colluding to control the price of gold?

OK, so some reg at my table last night (casino $1/$2) was wearing a shirt that said "will work for bitcoins" w/ one of those square bar codes. Someone else at the table asked him about bitcoins which launched the whole table into a 1.5-2 hour conversation about bitcoins. Of the 9 players at the table 3 had never heard of it and 3 had a very vague understanding of it so this wasn't a high level convo.

He claimed to have been buying it since 2009, he has about 30ish% of his net-worth in bitcions, he buy/sells online and in person, and seemed overall to have a slightly above average understanding of bitcoin and finances in general. I say above avg understand of finance (compared to the general public), but for the record I don't think he has a good understand of personal finances, commodities, or investments.

What is the average % of one's networth that bitcoin-nuts (or what ever people who are obsessed w/ bitcoin call themselves) have in bitcoin?

He also claimed that bitcoin would replace the dollar as the most used unit of wealth in everyday life and that it would replace banks too. What % of bitcoin-nuts believe either of these?

Quite a few bitcoin nuts will have a considerable amount of their net worth in Bitcoins, mainly because they got in when it was $1 or less, and if they got $1000 worth then, it's worth $500K now, and if they lose it, they figure they only lost $1000. A good portion of the early adopters are also overly optimistic fanatics, which ties into #2, where they think it will replace fiat. If the nuts, I'd say its a common sentiment. But there's a large number of users who would find it very successful even if it was 1% of the world's store of value/currency. The more fanatical about "this cannot go wrong" and "will take over the world", the more likely you are to tie your entire net worth in it. Also, the demographics are going to be quite young for Bitcoin, so it doesn't take much to get a large % of net worth, and losing it all doesn't mean much since you are young and can regroup.

Arnt there some early adopter fanatics that don't believe in Btc-$ ratio so they still pay 30 Btc for something that cost 50$?

Thanks you. If you invested $1k in bitcoin and it is worth $500k now it seems crazy not to cut down some of that exposure but I guess that craziness is what got them to $500k in the first place.

You're probably right about the majority of bitcoin owners being young thus making a high % of ones met worth less significant. FYI- the reg was late 50's.

I forgot to mention that he also said bitcoin was going to replace paypal (along w/ paper currency and banks). He said bitcoin is huge in china (which to him meant everything in the world) and that his wife, who is from Thailand, and all her friends use bitcoin to send money back to their families. He said bitcoin can be used in any country where PayPal can only be used in 20 countries (a bit of an exaggeration but still a point to be made?).

Do you all believe bitcoin has a chance to become a serious competitor to PayPal in the next 10 years? Why or why not?

I put 10% into BTC, but a portion of that goes to seals with clubs.

tomcollins,frankthetank,bucktotal,bitcoinboom or anyone that understands,

Is this a reasonable method to securing/holding players funds?

Otherwise we wouldnt invest in it. Bitcoin has lower fees, faster transactions, is programmable and, most importantly, is neutral. So over time it should take market share from paypal unless they find some way to improve their product. Which I think they can't.

I didn't think there were any fees for bitcoin transactions, is that not the case?

Faster transactions? I thought paypal was instant.

What do you mean by programmable and neutral?

Thank you for answering my previous questions and sorry for more possible stupid questions. By the way, I have started reading a few things on it and watched some youtubes.

Bitcoin has transaction fees and on top of that miners get 25 bitcoin for every block which is also a transaction fee although indirectly. Because the block reward is still high compared to the transaction fees miners don't demand fees and will include free transactions.

Faster transactions is debatable. In the long term I don't think there will be a significant difference between the two when it comes to speed of transactions. Bitcoin is currently not able to process the amount of transactions PayPal processes so any comparison is unfair anyway.

Neutral means that there is nobody that controls what you use your bitcoin for. Unlike Paypal that can block you from using Paypal for something they don't agree with. A bit like credit card companies not allowing transactions to wikileaks. With bitcoin there is no way to do that as there will always be a miner willing to include your transaction and eventually it will get included when that miner solves a block.

GreenSmoke85, - it sounds good. however, note that point 4) discarding old addresses, has the issue of people accidentally/lazily depositing to old addresses. it seems the btc will be lost in this case but offline addresses generation and priv key storage is the way to go if implemented well.

bahbahmikey - last year, it would not be that crazy to find the fanatics holding >50% of ones net worth in bitcoin. like Tom said, if you're the type to invest in 2010-2011 and let it ride (buy and hold), the ~10,000% gains could easily get you there. at todays prices im ~66% crypto (a large reduction for me from last year for those following along).

It's complicated:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Transaction_fees

Transaction above 0.01BTC don't need fees. Otherwise you need to attach a fee of 0.0001=$0.05. The fee is voluntary, I usually attach a fee of 0.00001=$0.005 which usually guarantees me to be included in the next or next few blocks.

This is much smaller than Paypal which charge 2.9% + $0.30 plus hidden fees.

It depends. Some people have to wait months to access their paypal money. Bitcoin is pretty much instant also, but you have to wait ~10minuts before a transaction is final, but after 1second it is usually 99% confirmed.

I mean that my car can use it, try signing up a Paypal account for you car or cat and you will run into issues. And buying the wrong stuff you might get your account locked. Bitcoin don't care what you do, thus bitcoin is neutral.

For programmable, watch this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mD4L7xDNCmA

Paypal is free when sending person to person, and faster since it's instant and bitcoins need to wait to be included in a block. If you are buying something through a merchant, it is still free for the consumer, but has that fee for the retailer -- though that's just the highest fee, as it does get cheaper with more volume. There's a fee to buy and sell bitcoins on exchanges too, but nobody ever talks about that apparently.


Who is waiting months to access their paypal money? It is faster in every way when compared to bitcoin.

Really? I generally have to pay. I think it used to be free, but not anymore.

It has always been free to send and receive money between personal accounts. It has also always been free to send money to retail accounts, while retail accounts pay the fee.

https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/paypal-fees

To quote their website: "Buying is free.
How do you feel about zero? We like it too. Buy it all for nothing when you buy something in the US. The seller pays a nominal fee for your trouble.
Buying online or in stores Always free"

"Sending money to friends and family is free for you and the recipient in the US when you fund the transfer with your bank account or PayPal balance. You can also use a debit or credit card or make an international transfer for a small fee."

Ah, okay, I'm not in the US and I always end up using a credit card so get stuck with a fee. Thanks for the info.

Makes sense. I make no defenses about paypal abroad, and that's where bitcoin can be beneficial over existing services. However in the US, bitcoin as a domestic transfer method is still behind the current services offered, and people stating misinformation should be corrected. Paypal trumps bitcoin in the US, for now, and I think all but the most naive of US bitcoiners would agree with that.

So miners essential get paid to process your transactions w/ the possibility of winning a block and the more transactions they process they better their chances are of getting a block?

Although paypal may block you from buying bombs and **** don't a lot more merchants accept paypal than those that accept bitcoin?

Why would a cat or a car have any use for paypal or bitcoin. I've never owned a cat so that may be a stupid question. Do cats buy a lot of stuff online?

Thanks for the video, I'm going to watch it tonight.

Cars for example could automatically pay tolls. The idea is that two or more "computers" now have a way of paying each other without the need of a human intervention.

The early adopters believe (at least a lot of them), that the Bitcoin revolution is inevitable and will take over the world. I think this is possible, although unlikely. If you are that much of a True Believer, you are a fool for not dumping everything you have into it. Yes, it's incredibly foolish to tie everything up, but they are waiting for the dollar to completely collapse any day now.

Remittance is a huge use case and this helps tremendously there. P2P transfers replacing Pay Pal could also happen, I think that has a good possibility. PayPal seems to be paying attention and might integrate it into their backend, so replace is a tricky word. There are a lot of pieces missing to get to that point.

This seems somewhat reasonable, the whole generating a new address seems a bit weird for the timing, they want to be sure not to destroy old keys in case of accidental deposits. There are easier ways to do this with having a new deposit address every time, keeping it offline, and using deterministic wallets for each player. But assuming they are doing what they are saying, I don't see any real issues.