1. The world’s easiest bank account to open
Thank you very much, but I am a welcome visitor in any bank, and I have no difficulty in opening accounts. Perhaps it might be tougher for an illegal immigrant, but it's their problem.
2. Appreciate the appreciation
What's the point? All pyramid schemes have appreciation built in. The earliest investors make money, the later investors lose money. We are in the "later" stage, where BTC holders are frantically searching for fools someone who will purchase their BTC for an "old and obsolete" stack of US dollars.
3. Launch your Business idea without the need for bank approval
Oh, great - you think it is that easy? I don't even use Facebook or Twitter. Aside from that, there are already services that specialize in such things - and they don't require Bitcoins. They gladly take whatever currency you have.
4. Quickly gain access to the rest of the digital currencies or altcoins
Shades of late night sales pitch. Not only you get this piece of junk, we will also give you these two pieces of junk, valued at a hundred trillion bananas each, entirely for free! Besides, BTC is not "a multi-billion dollar industry," no matter how hard BTC owners would love it to be true. BTCs are just numbers; they don't have value until someone purchases such a number for real money.
6. Two words: Bitcoin IPOs!
You can't be serious. IPO is not a joke, and not an experiment. The guy doesn't even understand what he is speaking of.
7. Programmable money has its advantages over fiat currencies
Yeah, I see that some helicopter parents would love to program where their child can shop - instead of teaching the child to shop in decent places. Go ahead, use technology to program your children, this will work just fine for both of you :-)
8. ‘Smart contracts’ provide many business options
None that I see useful. Except that yes, I'd love to give the bank the right to lock me out of my car whenever the bank chooses to do so.
8. Crowdfund your business or project even in the most remote area
That is funny:
What if you’re in an impoverished, 3rd-world nation? You don’t live near a metropolitan city. You live 30-50-100 miles from the nearest bank. You don’t own a car. Your local dirt road is flooded out by rain 3-4 days a week. Your nation’s currency is going through inflation at close to 10% annually, and you don’t get much of it to begin with. You support your family from a small farm you own that provides food to live on, but could provide more if you could invest in grain, materials, and more land. You know one person several miles away with a computer and an internet connection. You can get to him once a week when you shop near his location. He lets you use a computer if you need. Bitcoin’s unique abilities give you the means to transact worldwide. Now, you have options you’ve never had before.
If you are an impoverished peasant, living knee deep in mud in Lower Elbonia, it does not matter if you can receive BTC for your goods. You don't have any goods worth selling, and you have no means to ship them.
9. Don’t like your government or central banking system? Bitcoin makes a financial and political statement
Oh yes, the best way to make amends if your government or the banking systems are off course is... to isolate itself from that society and to set up your own economy, with your own toy money. A truly excellent idea :-) Do not bother trying to fix the country for your neighbors, for your children, for the world. No, just walk away and live your own life (apparently, within confines of one's own head.)
10. Bitcoin’s speed makes a wire transfer seem like a steam ship
Funny as well:
Have you ever tried to take more than US$10k out of a bank? These days, you will have a conversation with the branch manager, and the transaction will be sent to the government, regardless of where you are. You are on somebody’s list.
Had it ever occurred to you, young padawan, that the bank and the government are already fully aware that you have $10K or whatever that is in your bank account? One can withdraw whatever he wants, whenever he wants, and those armored cars (Brinks etc.) that you sometimes see in the street are employed in exactly that business. The sob story about difficulties of handling money is very appealing to those who don't have access to that kind of cash. However those who do are, actually, treated as kings.
Sending a wire transfer takes days! Why waste the time? Plus, you’ll have to answer twenty questions as to who you’re sending it to and why. If you want to send a million dollars in bitcoin to someone overseas, you can send it fully-encrypted to any address you like, without an interrogation by a bank, or fear of reprisals.
Obviously, the guy who wrote that had never seen a form for a wire transfer. There is nothing further to say. BTW, the form is free, and he could have looked at it at any bank.
They’ll receive it in seconds, and get it verified within the hour.
And if they don't receive it, or say that they haven't received it? Who do I complain to? Where is the paper trail? Dear padawan, there is more to a wire transfer than meets the eye. Businesses *insist* on meticulously kept documents. As matter of fact, it happened once that my wire transfer was returned because the account on the other end got closed. I'm ecstatic that I haven't used Bitcoin for that transfer, because there would be no chance of getting the money back!
People have been trained and conditioned to think physical money is a great asset, but when it is time to move that physical asset, this favored trait becomes a major liability. Bitcoin doesn’t have such problems. You are in full control of your money anytime, anywhere, with access to any amount. Now that’s control over your finances.
Why do I get a feeling that this was written by a young creative person in a corner of a Starbucks store in SF? The author does not comprehend the possibility that the Internet may one day stop working; or that there are places in the world that do not have cell phone coverage at 4G speeds.
This is just a working sample of what Bitcoin is doing now and will do in the very near future. Bitcoin is not a conjured-up online experiment. It is a new digital ecosystem that will allow people to have the same flexibility and economic power as nation states. The privacy that is currently being stolen at an exponential rate is infinitely enhanced through encryption.
The author refuses to understand that currently cash transactions are entirely untraceable; and bank and card transactions can be traced only by the banks and governments. However Bitcoins are a public system that is based on the fact that everyone, everywhere has a complete list of all purchases by every single user. The users are hiding behind numbers of their wallets, but it's not rocket science to unravel this by starting somewhere and then mining the database (blockchain) of all current and past purchases and transfers. BTC is a wide open book for anyone who is willing to read it. BTC has no privacy, and it is not even supposed to provide one. The nearest analogy is that you can get a bank card with an alias on it, and spend it thinking that nobody in stores will know that "John Doe" is actually $your_real_name_here.
Bitcoin is an interesting technology, but it is mired in problems that range from technical (it does not scale; purchases require up to 15 minutes to confirm) to social (who are the initial miners who secretly mined 1/4 of the BTC mass while nobody was aware of the BTC?) The BTC is a dead end. The idea of digital currency is not a dead end, but it needs to be rebuilt from scratch, using the lessons obtained from the BTC experiment. It must be put to trial in various countries, and the deficiencies fixed. Only then it can become usable. Until then... there is nothing wrong with the money that we have today. There is no urgency to fix it - unless, of course, like the secretive BTC creators, you want to profit from selling your own fiat currency to the world.
Thank you.
You seem pretty biased. But to claim there is “nothing wrong” with fiat is a bit silly, don’t you think? Or is the totalitarian imposition of an arbitrary fiat currency subject to manipulation at the whims of central bankers now thought to be consistent with the goals of Free Republic?
I suppose there are still a few poor souls buying stamps and trenchantly sending out all their mail via the post office too. But for the rest of us, email has proven a better alternative. I expect the same for the battle between banks/government fiat and cryptocurrency as well.
Everyone knows cash is more-or-less untraceable. Bitcoin combines pseudonymity with the convenience of digital transfer. You are right in your description of the total transparency of the blockchain, but identifying the real persons connected to each account will vary from simple to impossible depending on the care they take.
There are both good and bad reasons for such anonymity. Crime is an obvious reason, but on the flip side companies will not want to have all their transactions viewed by competitors. So anonymizing technologies and altcoins like Dash, Monero, Bitcoindark and many others are helping fill this niche.
As I mentioned, thousands of developers are building the bitcoin infrastructure. Calling it a dead end is as stupid as calling the Internet past its prime in 1995.
And yes, there are now hundreds of alternative cryptocurrencies in competition with bitcoin. All this competition will help make the winners better and every more highly optimized for every financial niche. What innovation is going on in the world of fiat by comparison? Shall I snigger at that question? ;-)
Complaining that early miners benefited because bitcoin has turned out to be a raging success is no different than complaining about Steve Jobs or Bill Gates or any other inventor or early adopter who took a risk and has reaped great reward. What are you, a Bernie Sanders plant here on Free Republic?
Sending a wire transfer takes days? Did a liberal Dem idiot write this article?
I can send money instantly to anyone I want. I can wire money to another customer at my bank over the computer. I can use PayPal if they have an account.
+1