Someday, you may use bitcoin without knowing it

http://qz.com/87556/someday-you-may-use-bitcoin-without-even-knowing-it/

by gamechangr • 13 years ago

41 46 13 years ago

Nursie6• 13 years ago

“Bitcoin is basically based on mistrust rather than trust”

In some ways, but when we're talking about the reversability of transactions we're really just putting trust in different places. I trust the bank waaaaaaay more than I trust any online vendor. Particularly one with whom I don't have an existing relationship, but even then. For the folks that love BTC at the moment that seems to be reversed.

--edit-- I'm also not sure how doing two trades on an international currency transfer is supposed to be cheaper than one....

hnolable2• 13 years ago

Totally agree with you on that. But let's compare your trust of your bank vs your trust of your mattress or your safe or your brain password that no one but you can produce.

Nursie6• 13 years ago

vs mattress - bank wins

vs home safe - bank wins

and I'm always forgetting passwords!

These are places to store stuff though, not transaction systems, which is what I was driving at. Bitcoin as a transaction system requires me to place trust in a vendor (or potentially an escrow service). I trust my bank's payment systems and chargeback facility more than either of those things.

Bitcoin as a store of money? Well I still prefer the legal protections afforded me in a regulated bank.

oleganza5• 13 years ago

Chargebacks are useful to consumers not because of evil merchants who can steal their money (merchants in general are not evil and care about reputation). The real problem is giving away full access to your credit card. Someone can steal your CC number from any shop you used it before and then make a purchase. Since CC is so fragile, Visa offers you a chargeback capacity putting merchants under huge risk of fraud.

With bitcoin you don't show your whole wallet to anyone. You only make a single transaction to a single address. Merchant cannot possibly leak anything that will give someone ability to spend your money. Instead of spreading your identifying information to 1000s of shops you only keep it in a single place that you control directly (but you should be careful here). So you don't need chargebacks if no one can easily steal your money.

To avoid fraud from merchants, people use "reputation" and escrows. Typically, you will be okay to risk paying 3 bucks almost anyone, but you'd pay 300 dollars only to people you already trust (think Apple Store, WalMart etc.) For very rare cases when you need extra security, go to an intermediate escrow service. (E.g. ebay.)

Nursie6• 13 years ago

Umm, no. I exactly want protection from unscrupulous merchants. Stolen CC detail fraud is on the decline thanks to the likes of EMV cards, and I also have legal protection from it via my bank for when that fails.

Reputation and escrows are really no equivalent to legal protection from merchant fraud and instant refunds on dispute. We have centuries of history with shysters and scammers (CAVEAT EMPTOR) to show us why this stuff is useful and it's pretty trivial to fake reputation and to fake escrow.

>> you'd pay 300 dollars only to people you already trust

Nicely cementing the big boys in the market and locking out smaller vendors forever.

I'm sorry people feel so affronted by consumer protections and chargeback, but without them I wouldn't buy stuff off the net at all.

cube13• 13 years ago

>With bitcoin you don't show your whole wallet to anyone. You only make a single transaction to a single address. Merchant cannot possibly leak anything that will give someone ability to spend your money. Instead of spreading your identifying information to 1000s of shops you only keep it in a single place that you control directly (but you should be careful here). So you don't need chargebacks if no one can easily steal your money.

But your wallet is only as secure as the place it's stored at. If it's on an internet connected machine, you need to make sure that you're as protected as possible. If it's on a third party's server, you need to have faith in their security.

Bitcoin wallets are identical to CC numbers in this regard, because if the wallet or CC # is stolen, you can clean out the account.

But with Bitcoin, there is no way to undo the damage once everything was taken. If your system gets compromised and your wallet stolen(or the service you're using to store the wallet gets compromised), you're out of luck.

droopyEyelids• 13 years ago

You know how there are certain words or phrases that make you feel the sands of time wastefully slipping through your fingers? They're hard to notice, because they're coupled with the habit of scanning to the next article, or moving to the next link.

The description of Bitcoin as "untraceable" makes my close-tab reflex trigger like a doctor bumping my knee. Seems like describing a human as invincible because the bodies will forever persist as some configuration of mass and energy.

gcr• 13 years ago

No kidding. If every coin carries its immutable transaction history with it, Bitcoin is the antithesis of "untraceable."

gamechangr8• 13 years ago

Well put. I hadn't thought of it in those terms.

swalsh2• 13 years ago

" dreams of reinventing the financial system based around a currency not issued by governments and not subject to the whims of central banks."

Lets ask Greece how not having control over its currency is going...

Bitcoin is a primitive financial system wrapped up in a high tech envelope.

genwin• 13 years ago

Someone else having control of your currency is a lot different than no one having control over it.

hencq3• 13 years ago

It might be different, but it doesn't seem to matter much in practice. But fine, instead of comparing it to Greece, you could compare it to the gold standard. That didn't work so well either.

swalsh2• 13 years ago

What i'm suggesting is that one solution to some of Greece's issues could have been solved through inflation. Arguably it would have been better received than the measures actually took. However without the control, their options have been pretty limited.

bayesianhorse5• 13 years ago

Actually the greek populace is overwhelmingly in favor of keeping the Euro and they don't really buy into "Make your own currency, devaluate it like crazy and maybe in a decade or to you will have the same wealth as now".

In Argentina this didn't work that well either.

jljljl3• 13 years ago

Switching currencies and devaluing causes a lot of pain and hardship, especially since capital quickly flees the country to avoid the devaluation. This usually necessitates capital controls, and leads to a lot of short term chaos.

Greece would likely prefer to avoid this pain, stay in the Euro, and escape the crisis through fiscal stimulus paid for by the EU, similar to how the US Federal Government provides fiscal stimulus and transfer payments to State Governments.

zemanel• 13 years ago

Every other article describing the nature of Bitcoin, if not all, mention how it is used to sell drugs online (Silk Road), transaction anonymity [as a facilitator of crime] and this one forgot to state how Bitcoin is apparently the preferred currency of dictators, as if oficial currencies are not being used, as i type this, and have been used over the ages to facilitate every crime in the book.

I think this is important because it may be transpiring a very bad image to the less informed, because i see Bitcoin as a tool, which will be used for wrong doing as any other. Wish i had the link to a recent article that bashed Bitcoin into oblivion.

gamechangr8• 13 years ago

Agreed. I think Bitcoin has amazing potential as a tool. It's hard to create no government control without opening pandora's box.

sunsu• 13 years ago

Interestingly, I just had a local law enforcement official ask me to "explain bitcoin" to him yesterday. He said that "it came up" in a case they were working on and he had no idea what it was.

This is just evidence that its becoming a lot more mainstream.

mtowle2• 13 years ago

>If our experts can't agree on the value of bitcoin, why should consumers?

This is quite possibly the dumbest rhetorical question I've ever heard. On like 3 different levels. Replace 'bitcoin' with, like, anything. Oranges. Trees. Cars. What the eff are you talking about, lady.

gamechangr8• 13 years ago

Funny. I posted this and didn't catch that. Good eye. Karma point to u

mtowle2• 13 years ago

In fairness, I thought it was a quality piece otherwise. It was probably just something her editor threw in.

Someday, you may use bitcoin without knowing it

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