I am cooling off to the idea of cryptocurrencies will soon take over FIAT currencies. Maybe in the distant future, there will be something backing it other than people panic buying. The things I dislike are; Archaic sending and receiving between exchanges. I reduced my exposure to one exchange only coinbase pro. Waiting time for withdrawal - my bank ACH instantly, then when I need my money back I get half and in 3-5 business days. Fees and constant, annoying fees. Some pairs of cryptos do not transfer, then you must change - another fee. Market manipulation with a small number of whales and many pikers (suckers). I am just slowly accumulating gold and real estate. Better than this circus. (That is not to say I would not buy BTC at $20000 or below..)
False. You aren't using Bit"coin" to do jack. Bitrefill.com sells BTC to buy real currency (like USD or EUR), then buys the gift cards with real currency. Bit"coin" can't transfer or store value. What the Bit"coin" network really -- and only -- does is transferring BTC, a digital collectible nobody needs. BTC may temporarily be perceived as valuable even though it's not, and that flimsy link entirely depends on conned third parties that fork over money for buying BTC. A link merely enabled by a confidence trick. May disappear any time because it's completely unwarranted by BTC's fundamental/intrinsic value, which is zero.
In Scandinavia, I can use my cell phone to send money instantaneously to another person for free using my local currency. I can use the same solution to pay for bills and also to pay in an increasing number of stores. It takes about 5 minutes to set-up. Not so long ago, there was a delay of a few hours if the recipient had another bank than yours, but no longer. Instantaneous and for free. https://www.lifeinnorway.net/what-is-vipps/
Yes, you even still use checks. My children don't even now what that is. They pay with cell phone or laptop. Instant payments, no cost.
Here is a tutorial for the Wallet of Satoshi This seems one of the easiest clients as Muun doesnt autoconvert on chain BTC to off chain BTC (lightning). They charge 0.3% for that, which would be about $1.5 for my example. I bet as lightning gets more spread cheaper methods will appear. In fact, it can be done for free if you use Electrum Wallet but most people are not technical enough for that. Once the funds are in lightning they is virtually no fees involved (they are tiny). Point is, the tech can deliver as a payment system and whatever drawbacks exist are getting worked on and in a few years will be nonexistant
I mostly agree, however it does have some intrinsic value which is: -at least the cost of electricity spent to 'mine' it -the underlying distributed network infrastructure of hundreds of thousands GPUs with great computing capacity Future internet economy will build on this network.
This would not happen. Every single time I used bitcoin as a payment method, I was presented with an invoice payable in btc amount that has a timer. As long as your bitcoin transfer (transaction) is in the mempool, the sale contract is complete. If your invoice timer expires before you actually send the bitcoin, don't bother sending, the sale is voided. Never happened to me but I imagine that if you send the btc amount after the timer expired, they have an automated system to send the btc amount back to the sending address minus transaction fee (payable to the bitcoin miners) which is why they don't want you using a wallet that you do not control the private key (i.e. sending from an exchange wallet). The 2 most common bitcoin payment processors are Bitpay or Coinpayments. They probably hedge the bitcoin through an exchange as soon as it hits the mempool for no fiat currency risk. In 2017, I spent over $9,000 on a bitcoin transaction which was for more than 1 btc. Did I overpay? in today's price, yes, but if calculated in March of last year, no When spending bitcoin, it's the same as selling any investment asset for spending. It's like selling Tesla shares in March 2020 to buy a Tesla car, you'd have regrets. So don't think of bitcoin as a currency, first. Think of it as scarce speculative, highly volatile digital investment asset that has a bonus feature of being able to use as a method of payment if you want, if you don't want, then you can simply sell it and put the money in your bank and spend later.
Here is a big list of places that accept Lightning BTC https://lightningnetworkstores.com/ I bet most bears had no idea of most of the info I gave on this thread. They are too biased and full of overconfidence to even bother getting more information. Do your homework you dumbfucks