Bitcoins

ill def make super sure to check myself before stepping to the bit god hurting again tho

he has read some blog posts by delusional nerds

xp yes they are called the costs of being a bank

lol oh i thought the costs were associated with third third party verification guy

a random dude with a website can't even get that. It's not just like hiring a "guy" to verify, it's being a part of the international banking system.

Well Hurting's not wrong in that interbank transfers are handled by the

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_Clearing_House

I'm not sure it's supposed to make any money tho

Domestic US interbank transfers, I think

And it's one of several I think

I'm opening up Wikipedia pages as fast as I can

a random dude with a website can't even get that. It's not just like hiring a "guy" to verify, it's being a part of the international banking system.

― signed, J.P. Morgan CEO (Hurting 2), Wednesday, January 22, 2014 9:38 PM (7 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

so what youre saying now is that its not some transfer fees that prevent the banks from competing with bitcoins ability to move money around for "free" its that banks have too much overhead

Where is the post where I said that it's "some transfer fees" that might make it harder for banks from competing with bitcoin?

Because ordinary banks and international money transfer services don't have a way to, like, magically make money disappear and reappear halfway around the world.

― signed, J.P. Morgan CEO (Hurting 2), Wednesday, January 22, 2014 8:46 PM (33 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

again, where is the part where I said it was "transfer fees"?

oh sorry you need an example of you using those exact words lol

Bitcoin is tearing us apart

not just saying things that amount to that over and over

it costs money to have the ability to transfer money around the world, you can't just do it because you have "computers"

now you are beginning to see

but the marginal cost of a bank moving a dollar around the world is 0

But you can't do it unless you are a bank, and it costs money to be a bank

well if the only thing you did as a bank was move money around the world you might have a point

if every bank was paypal say

The marginal cost of time warner allowing the internet to work on my home cable is zero too, why does it even cost money?

They just beam the signal over their lines, boom, zero cost.

thats not really true but lets pretend it is, cable is their primary product its how they make their money, the marginal cost of operating an atm is actually non zero but my bank still lets me use it for free, do you think if some crypto currency was threatening banks financial services domination they would have any problem lowering their prices to compete, they would not

this is of course accepting all of bitcoins ridiculous assumptions re regulation and cash in/out

the point is bitcoin doesnt do anything banks cant do

a big international bank could provide a service at a large net loss to compete. that doesn't mean it wants to or is going to.

None of this is to speak of western union, which pretty much does only do this.

it wouldnt be a large net loss is the whole point it would be no loss at all, money transfers arent their main business and the cost is effectively 0

btw banks don't charge you for atms because you are letting them hold your money

yes banks want to handle yr money they want you to open accounts and take out loans deal with them altogether

and some crypto banking network is a threat to that

but the whole argument is stupid in the first place cause if the only thing you have going for you is the ability for individuals transfer cash internationally youre never going to reach the critical mass that something like this needs to work, how is the vietnamese villager going cash out the bitcoins their son sent from germany, if there is some way for them to do it is it really gonna cost less than the 3% paypal charges

and some crypto banking network is a threat to that

― lag∞n, Wednesday, January 22, 2014 10:25 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I never said anything remotely suggesting bitcoin is a threat to the banking system. I pretty clearly said the opposite. I just think that the built-in anti-doublespending/self-verifying properties of bitcoin may have some potential uses.

basically you need a bank account and a smartphone at least to even use bitcoin, once you have those things you have access to reasonably priced financial services that bitcoin could only ever compete with on price if it became ubiquitous enough that it didnt need to be exchanged for local currency in order to buy things eeeeexcept that will never happen because bitcoin will never be a stable store of value

i wasnt be sarcastic about the threat stuff if bitcoin starts doing some of the things banks do now then by nature its a threat and they will react, i mean its not an existential threat, but banks arent just gonna sit by and let competitors do whatever they want

i do also wonder if ppl will lose their life savings when their house burns down, computer gets stolen, etc... in a way isnt this a return to stuffing money under the mattress

yeah thats one of the most lol things about it, yr fancy cyber future money that has to live in a physical place

the winklevos twins keep theirs on thumb drives in safe deposit boxes lmao

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-FMNW1dq8Jvo/UqhfwAMI5BI/AAAAAAAAOKg/OMVCqqIgp3U/s1600/bitcoin%2Bpie%2Bownershp.png

if this keeps up itll be moot theyll all be purple

how do they divide up which individuals are in which slice of the pie

i guess roughly by quarters

xp for one thing, just spitballing here, you could have storefront local currency exchange shops that do bitcoin transfers, i.e. I go to bucket shop in Chicago, I give them cash, they send bitcoin to bucket shop in vietnam, vietnam bucket shop gives my uncle cash. Again, I am talking about potential uses and in the future if at all, and would not work unless bitcoin price was at least kinda stable, (b/c bucket shop in vietnam would not want to be stuck holding the bitcoin if it was super volatile).

I am a major stan of central banking and I hate libertarian techno-nerds as much as anyone, but I still think the technology is interesting and has potential.

i feel like if you did htat you'd end up paying as much as you do now to send money somewhere

maybe. I have neither changed money in a long time nor done a WU transfer ever, so IDK

yup and bitcoin by its nature will never be a stable store of value

the bitcoin technology is amazing as technology (not that im some computer scientist but this much seems true i trust the comuter peoples opinons on computer things), as economics/commerce its idiotic, im sure the underlying principals of bitcoin technology will be repurposed for useful things at some point

Suggest Bitcoin

although if the bitcoin part of the transaction lowers the cost for the exchangers, it would lower the fees they'd need to charge to make it profitable

but yeah, I also lean towards "will never be a stable store of value"

the thing about western union is they take advantage of people who dont have bank accounts, yr concept of the store front bitcoin exchange doesnt sound totally unreasonable but theres a tremendous about of competition to bank the unbanked of world rn, a lot of it through mobile technology, so i kinda doubt western union is long for this world anyway, and once people can just move money around via their phones they dont need the bitcoin storefront

phone-money could be bitcoin based too obvs. I ultimately do not have the wherewithal to evaluate whether it would be cheaper to (A) run a global phone-based payment network that relies on the traditional banking system, or (B) run a global phone-based payment network that relies on bitcoin and currency exchange, where I guess you'd have to pay for some expensive hedging instrument against bitcoin fluctuation (they do this for currency exchange risk but the fluctuations are generally much smaller obv).

you dont need any global phone based network or currency hedges, you transfer the money via paypal or square or w/e then its converted into yr local currency when you deposit it into yr bank account, just like would happen if you sold something on ebay to someone in england, the whole thing costs like 4%