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Comment by compil3r | Hacker News Reader

Bitcoin was never intended to reduce the cost of Banks, but rather supply an alternative.

Banks are an excellent piece of infrastructure, as it stands. If you don't need to use Bitcoin, or you actually care about what happens to your money, just use a bank.

> "Banks are an excellent piece of infrastructure, as it stands."

Not very excellent if you ever need to get money to/from the States and a foreign country.

...which is where you use Bitcoin, as these crooks figured out.

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2016/09/money-mule-gangs-turn-to...

Again, Bitcoin is a great alternative to banks where banks fail. Just, you know, I wouldn't advise using it as your first choice.

The number of people saying BTC is cheaper than Paypal continues to be huge.

If you are able to receive BTC and pay for your costs with BTC, it's cheaper by quite a bit. The last transaction I sent using BTC cost me $.09.

If you have to exchange BTC to USD to pay for your costs, then sure, it's going to cost more than PayPal.

> The last transaction I sent using BTC cost me $.09.

And you denominated that in $$ instead of BTC why?

Because the value of BTC fluctuates so much that its worthless to denominate goods in terms of BTC. Only USD is stable enough to actually denominate the value of goods with.

And its not like USD is rock solid: we've got an inflation-based government pushing the value of USD down ~2% each year. But that's a lot more stable than BTC.

As long as BTC remains more volatile than my freaking stock portfolio, it is worthless to trade goods with it directly. Everything will need to be converted to and from USD if I'm actually to run a business. BTC could double in price (or half in price) in the next year and no one would be surprised.

Another plausible reason why he used the USD amount instead of 0.15 mBits, is because the Hacker News readership has had years to associate an internal "feeling" for what $0.09 is worth.

The Swiss Franc is also very stable and has similar qualities to USD. Would you not have complained if he cited the figure in Swiss Francs?

Hands up everyone here with a memory longer than that of a goldfish who remembers the Bitcoin promise "no fees!" The one they don't seem to make any more.

BTC always had a fee for the miners otherwise the whole system doesn't work.

It doesn't need to reduce costs. If it performs so poorly that it's not a viable alternative, there's no alternative.

Banks are alternatives of each other.

Don't like Paypal? Use Dwolla. Don't like Dwolla? Use Bank of America for direct transfers. Don't like BoA? Use Venmo.

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