Let me spare you some trouble. Here's what this article says:
* 10-15% of all transactions are fraudulent. In other words, something like $150Bn-$200bn/yr, or up to 2 times the entire market cap of Cisco Systems, is being lost every year to online fraud.
* Banks are investing in multifactor authentication systems to try to do away with passwords.
* But that won't work, so the only solution is to scrap the entire financial system and start over...
* ... with Bitcoin, for which there is "no payment fraud", "no paper work", "no merchant accounts", and "more privacy".
This argument isn't even coherent enough to be wrong. The types of mainstream attacks modern banking authentication systems are trying to deal with assume customer machines are actually owned up by attackers. They'd be happy just to find a way to make it harder to automatically extract value from accounts using standardized malware. This isn't a problem Bitcoin contemplates.
Banks are investing in multifactor authentication systems to try to do away with passwords.
The bitcoin ecosystem are also converging toward that. Or rather, any serious bitcoin payment processor will also be exploring any real security solution, even if it comes from traditional banks.
This isn't a problem Bitcoin contemplates.
Think of bitcoin technology as the OS which bitcoin banks run on. There are advantages and disadvantage to using bitcoin as cash, or storing bitcoin with your bank, depending on situations you may encounter.
it's unfortunate that many of bitcoin's proponents (of which i am one of), are unable to critically explain why bitcoin might be better than regular money.. the result being articles like this one.
however, this does not mean bitcoin isn't actually a pretty useful system, and with some trade-offs from traditional currencies, has some very good benefits.
I would like to see a major player accept bitcoins as a method of payment.
Just imagine for a moment, Google accepting bitcoins as floating currency, to be used in its Google Play service, or with its Android devices with NFC enabled Google Wallet. That would blur the line between digital currency and digital/real goods and services.
As a developer who's been following (albeit not too fastidiously) the progress of Bitcoin since it's emergence, I still have no idea how to accept Bitcoin payments. Is there something like authorize.net (or better yet, Stripe) for this? Bitcoin API bindings for the languages du jour would help adoption I'm sure. Though, maybe there are libs out there already and I'm just not aware of them
I think that Bitcoin payment services hold the most promise in third-world countries where credit cards haven't really become the de facto payment standard for non-cash transactions. Any company that could tie Bitcoin with low-end mobile systems available in these countries would be of great service.
I don't know if emerging markets are the right place for an inherently deflating currency. That is a lot of continuous forecasting for a financially un-sophisticated population to do, let alone one that generally needs to take on debt to jump classes within a generation.
they already have a mobile SIM card that acts as a credit card..this is why Smartphones will take longer to uptake there due to the different SIM card not necessarily the phone device price.
I feel like the basic premise is right – there is clearly a lack of regard for the threat posed by the potential for disruptive innovation... AND there is clearly a lack of regard for consumers and merchants (both are users of banking products, of course and both are essential for banks to continue).
If not a completely radical solution like Bitcoins, even some low-margin, relatively more secure solution seems to be more of a question of "when", not "if".
[+] [-] tptacek|14 years ago|reply
* 10-15% of all transactions are fraudulent. In other words, something like $150Bn-$200bn/yr, or up to 2 times the entire market cap of Cisco Systems, is being lost every year to online fraud.
* Banks are investing in multifactor authentication systems to try to do away with passwords.
* But that won't work, so the only solution is to scrap the entire financial system and start over...
* ... with Bitcoin, for which there is "no payment fraud", "no paper work", "no merchant accounts", and "more privacy".
This argument isn't even coherent enough to be wrong. The types of mainstream attacks modern banking authentication systems are trying to deal with assume customer machines are actually owned up by attackers. They'd be happy just to find a way to make it harder to automatically extract value from accounts using standardized malware. This isn't a problem Bitcoin contemplates.
[+] [-] Metapony|14 years ago|reply
Oh man, that's a great line.
[+] [-] kiba|14 years ago|reply
The bitcoin ecosystem are also converging toward that. Or rather, any serious bitcoin payment processor will also be exploring any real security solution, even if it comes from traditional banks.
This isn't a problem Bitcoin contemplates.
Think of bitcoin technology as the OS which bitcoin banks run on. There are advantages and disadvantage to using bitcoin as cash, or storing bitcoin with your bank, depending on situations you may encounter.
[+] [-] foxhill|14 years ago|reply
however, this does not mean bitcoin isn't actually a pretty useful system, and with some trade-offs from traditional currencies, has some very good benefits.
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] bpd1069|14 years ago|reply
Just imagine for a moment, Google accepting bitcoins as floating currency, to be used in its Google Play service, or with its Android devices with NFC enabled Google Wallet. That would blur the line between digital currency and digital/real goods and services.
[+] [-] iheartmemcache|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wmf|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jaipilot747|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JumpCrisscross|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shareme|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] incongruity|14 years ago|reply
If not a completely radical solution like Bitcoins, even some low-margin, relatively more secure solution seems to be more of a question of "when", not "if".
I'm excited to see what happens, personally...