I'm denying the ones I've commented on are important.
>implying that Bitcoin's usage is either stagnating or declining
I think it is but thats not what I'm implying. I'm implying that people heavily invested in bitcoin tend to use vanity metrics like this.
That said the things I look at that make me believe bitcoin is stagnating/declining are things like the continued slide of the price over the year, Bitcoin Black Friday 2014 being a huge failure, Overstock missing their bitcoin sales expectations by 17 million dollars. Basically every vendor I've seen comment on sales has said there have been pretty much none this year. The fact that 2014 was meant to be the year of bitcoin and there has been no breakout in the general public. Everyone seems vaguely aware of bitcoin but no one is investing any time in learning anything about it because it solves problems that most people don't care about(freedom) and creates problems they do(security).
Now I just see people in the community rallying around remittance and the killer app that will save bitcoin but the actual transfer of funds isn't the expensive part of remittance the compliance around the transfer of funds is and the existing services that do remittance cheaper using bitcoin only work now because they are ignoring compliance completely. They will either get more expensive or be shut down in the near future.
No, BBF 2014 was a huge success: "we saw an 82% increase in the number of merchants who completed transactions compared to last year’s BBF", "Both Gyft and NewEgg experienced their best day of bitcoin sales ever" - http://blog.bitpay.com/2014/12/09/bitcoin-black-friday-2014-...
> every vendor I've seen comment on sales has said there have been pretty much none this year
You are wrong, which is why you quote no source. 2014 was the best year ever for bitcoin sales. See the BBF numbers above. CheapAir recently passed $1.5 million in bitcoin sales (http://www.coindesk.com/cheapair-litecoin-dogecoin-flights/). Newegg, although they quote no numbers, was sufficiently pleased with their Bitcoin sales that they decided to accept them in Canada in August. Same thing for Overstock who decided to expand bitcoin acceptance to their international market.
> Bitcoin solves problems that most people don't care about(freedom) and creates problems they do(security).
Bitcoin solves a lot more than that. You must not be very familiar with it. I will give you 2 basic examples. The most important problem that Bitcoin solves is fraud: a merchant who receives a payment in bitcoins can be assured it won't be "charged back" or "cancelled" due to fraud, because Bitcoin payements are cryptographically irreversible. So once a merchant receives a payment in Bitcoin, the product or service can be shipped or executed ASAP with no risk of fraud. And conversely, Bitcoin solves the problem of financial theft for customers: if Joe Schmo decides to pay a trusted merchant like Dell in bitcoins (as opposed to using a credit card) he can be assured that if Dell is hit by hackers who steal CC data, they won't be able to financially steal from Joe, because the payment he made in bitcoins authorized cryptographically a certain amount of coins to be transferred, nothing more. Whereas if Joe had given his credit card information to Dell, hackers would have been able to initiate any number of other transactions.
Now, I do recognize that Bitcoin is not automatically easy and secure to use. But there are plenty of smart people working to make this happen: cryptographic 2-party escrow to deal with untrusted merchants (which is superior to 3-way escrows used by the traditional financial system: removing the third-party escrow simplifies the trust model), hardware wallets to deal with wallet security, etc.
> the actual transfer of funds isn't the expensive part of remittance the compliance around the transfer of funds is
That's false. Compliance in the financial industry is mostly automated: it is just software checks like who sends what to who, and data logging/retaining records. The most expensive part of the business is the requirement to have physical presence --offices and employees-- to deal with the need to be able to handle cash deposits and withdrawals. Bitcoin services make this cheaper because they don't need physical presence. https://www.sendbitcoin.mx for example accepts deposit by sending coins to their service, and they rely on the ATM network of an established bank for withdrawals. They are cheaper than Western Union for the same reason why simple.com is cheaper than traditional banks: they don't have physical presence.
sanswork|11 years ago
I'm denying the ones I've commented on are important.
>implying that Bitcoin's usage is either stagnating or declining
I think it is but thats not what I'm implying. I'm implying that people heavily invested in bitcoin tend to use vanity metrics like this.
That said the things I look at that make me believe bitcoin is stagnating/declining are things like the continued slide of the price over the year, Bitcoin Black Friday 2014 being a huge failure, Overstock missing their bitcoin sales expectations by 17 million dollars. Basically every vendor I've seen comment on sales has said there have been pretty much none this year. The fact that 2014 was meant to be the year of bitcoin and there has been no breakout in the general public. Everyone seems vaguely aware of bitcoin but no one is investing any time in learning anything about it because it solves problems that most people don't care about(freedom) and creates problems they do(security).
Now I just see people in the community rallying around remittance and the killer app that will save bitcoin but the actual transfer of funds isn't the expensive part of remittance the compliance around the transfer of funds is and the existing services that do remittance cheaper using bitcoin only work now because they are ignoring compliance completely. They will either get more expensive or be shut down in the near future.
timeal|11 years ago
No, BBF 2014 was a huge success: "we saw an 82% increase in the number of merchants who completed transactions compared to last year’s BBF", "Both Gyft and NewEgg experienced their best day of bitcoin sales ever" - http://blog.bitpay.com/2014/12/09/bitcoin-black-friday-2014-...
> every vendor I've seen comment on sales has said there have been pretty much none this year
You are wrong, which is why you quote no source. 2014 was the best year ever for bitcoin sales. See the BBF numbers above. CheapAir recently passed $1.5 million in bitcoin sales (http://www.coindesk.com/cheapair-litecoin-dogecoin-flights/). Newegg, although they quote no numbers, was sufficiently pleased with their Bitcoin sales that they decided to accept them in Canada in August. Same thing for Overstock who decided to expand bitcoin acceptance to their international market.
> Bitcoin solves problems that most people don't care about(freedom) and creates problems they do(security).
Bitcoin solves a lot more than that. You must not be very familiar with it. I will give you 2 basic examples. The most important problem that Bitcoin solves is fraud: a merchant who receives a payment in bitcoins can be assured it won't be "charged back" or "cancelled" due to fraud, because Bitcoin payements are cryptographically irreversible. So once a merchant receives a payment in Bitcoin, the product or service can be shipped or executed ASAP with no risk of fraud. And conversely, Bitcoin solves the problem of financial theft for customers: if Joe Schmo decides to pay a trusted merchant like Dell in bitcoins (as opposed to using a credit card) he can be assured that if Dell is hit by hackers who steal CC data, they won't be able to financially steal from Joe, because the payment he made in bitcoins authorized cryptographically a certain amount of coins to be transferred, nothing more. Whereas if Joe had given his credit card information to Dell, hackers would have been able to initiate any number of other transactions.
Now, I do recognize that Bitcoin is not automatically easy and secure to use. But there are plenty of smart people working to make this happen: cryptographic 2-party escrow to deal with untrusted merchants (which is superior to 3-way escrows used by the traditional financial system: removing the third-party escrow simplifies the trust model), hardware wallets to deal with wallet security, etc.
> the actual transfer of funds isn't the expensive part of remittance the compliance around the transfer of funds is
That's false. Compliance in the financial industry is mostly automated: it is just software checks like who sends what to who, and data logging/retaining records. The most expensive part of the business is the requirement to have physical presence --offices and employees-- to deal with the need to be able to handle cash deposits and withdrawals. Bitcoin services make this cheaper because they don't need physical presence. https://www.sendbitcoin.mx for example accepts deposit by sending coins to their service, and they rely on the ATM network of an established bank for withdrawals. They are cheaper than Western Union for the same reason why simple.com is cheaper than traditional banks: they don't have physical presence.
illuminate|11 years ago
That's exactly what they're stating, that the metrics do not capture real-world usage.