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Comment by Semaphor | Hacker News Reader

Well… Cost:

a) BTC-BTC Transfer: Only BTC transfer fee. Beats TransferWise by a large Margin.

b) BTC-USD: Depends on many variables, including if the receiving country taxes BTC to fiat. Considering how expensive transferwise is, it's probably a wash.

Speed depends on if GP literally meant Cash. If so, BTC is obviously far faster and easier as you still need to get you cash into your bank account. Otherwise… Transferwise takes a few hours, BTC 10-20 minutes I think?

Privacy: The Banks and TW know who sent how much to whom. With BTC everyone knows that A sent X to B, but not necessarily who A and B are. As this transaction is public forever, I'd probably prefer TW from a privacy perspective, this of course changes with something like Monero.

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Nobody takes BTC in exchange for goods and services, absolutely nobody. In this context it's at best an intermediate representation with huge FOREX risk. That means (a) is a false equivalence as unlike (b) it only represents a small slice of the transaction.

That's not true, there are large retailers that directly accept BTC, like Newegg [1] and Overstock [2]. There are also services like Bitrefill to purchase gift cards using various cryptocurrencies for use at places that don't directly accept BTC: Amazon, Ebay, Walmart, Best Buy, and Target to name a few of the 750+ supported [3].

[1] https://promotions.newegg.com/nepro/16-6277/index.html

[2] https://help.overstock.com/help/s/article/Bitcoin

[3] https://www.bitrefill.com/?hl=en

There are more that did and stopped than do. And to your own point of the ones that do, the vast majority do so via intermediary like bitpay because they dont want BTC they just want money. The trajectory of acceptance has a negative slope. Even Overstock doesn't accept BTC on mobile according to their help page.

Further, since you've got to foot the transaction fee (~$1.50) instead of the merchant and the merchant has already padded their prices for a 3% credit card fee, you're getting royally screwed. I pay with my 2% cash back credit card, get all sorts of warranties and protections, and you pay 3% + $1.50 and get nothing but losing your ability to file your taxes with TurboTax because they dont support crypto on Form 8949.

> Nobody takes BTC in exchange for goods and services, absolutely nobody.

I was simply trying to show that your original statement was hyperbole, as there are clearly notable retailers that do.

Also as a consumer, I don't see why your point about intermediaries is relevant (barring the marginal price difference between them). If you are planning on purchasing something from a business you don't really care if they are using Intuit or Square to process credit cards transactions, just that they accept credit cards for payments.

My point about intermediaries is that you are paying more to use Bitcoin than I am to use my credit card, and getting a lot less for it.

COGS: $10.00, retail after CC markup: $10.30. I get a 2% rebate, so I paid $10.09, and for that $0.09 I get a one-month interest free loan, chargeback abilities and numerous warranties.

COGS: $10.00, retail after CC markup: $10.30. You have to buy the $10.30 from an exchange for $10.51 (assuming 2% fee). You then pay another $1.26 for the BTC transaction and get back nothing, for a total of $12.07. That means your total fees paid are 23X the total fees I paid. No chargebacks, no warranties, no loan, 23X higher fees. Then, you have to report your cost basis to the IRS and can't do your taxes easily. That makes your payment method inferior for any normal, legal purchase. That's one of the reasons buyers don't want it. Sellers don't want it because it exposes them to enormous FOREX risk.

Yes, it's hyperbolic, however the fraction of businesses accepting BTC is already practically zero and falling, it's not unfair to round it to zero. Otherwise we would just be happy with Overstock.com gift cards as a medium of foreign exchange. After a 2% cash back rebate on a credit card their cost is negative.

Eh, if you really want to take cherry pick examples, let's take the lower 0,4% fee I pay to buy BTC. I get 0% cashback for my credit card (cashback is an exception in Germany, not the rule), and Coin Tracking Unlimited for one year is 0.037BTC (~$180.6525) instead of $185 paying with USD. And suddenly the point is 100% reversed and BTC is the clear winner and obviously far superior to Creditcards -.-

IMO I was picking a representative US example, but working one in Germany yields very comparable results. The difference is the interchange is capped 0.3% which means that the cash-back portion is irrelevant.

COGS: $10.00, retail after CC markup: $10.03. In Germany I would get a 0% rebate, so I would pay $10.03, and for that $0.03 I would get a one-month interest free loan, chargeback abilities and numerous warranties.

COGS: $10.00, retail after CC markup: $10.03. You have to buy the $10.03 from an exchange for $10.07 (assuming 0.4% fee). You then pay another $1.26 for the BTC transaction and get back nothing, for a total of $11.33. That means your total fees paid are 44X the total fees I paid. No chargebacks, no warranties, no loan, 44X higher fees. In Germany no tax liability is incurred AFAIK when using it as currency. That makes your payment method inferior for any normal, legal purchase. That's one of the reasons buyers don't want it. Sellers don't want it because it exposes them to enormous FOREX risk.

Companies that offer crypto discounts are unicorns. Why would they? It's more expensive and more risky to offer it. The only reason I can think of to offer a crypto discount is if you're not reporting to tax authorities like cash-only restaurants. Your one counter-example is by no means representative, and in Germany, you're even worse off than in the US in the average case, by double.

> Why would they? It's more expensive and more risky to offer it.

How? Risky? When the customer has literally zero way of doing a chargeback? And most businesses instantly transfer the received amount to cash, so there is no wallet complication.

> Sellers don't want it because it exposes them to enormous FOREX risk.

No, because the time they actually hold crypto is measured in seconds to fractions of them.

A streamer I watch allows you to donate with crypto and buy food for people. The Paypal way gives you less resulting money to buy food for people with because of tx fees. Crypto for them is safer and cheaper.

> In Germany no tax liability is incurred AFAIK when using it as currency.

I wish. You have to hold for 1 year, then whatever you do is tax-free. Before that, anything you do (incl. trading) counts for your income tax.

And FWIW, a) I don't buy anything with BTC, if anything I'd pay with ETH, Nano or any of the alts that have fast and cheap TXs but I'd buy things with a CC anyway because I find it too be simpler. b) Where I work the best tx fee we can get for CC Payment for 10€ is 0.395€

The risk is in holding it for any length of time due to its wild fluctuations and the fact seller taxes are due based on the amount of the purchase at the time it happens, not when the crypto converts to fiat. If they convert it to fiat via payment gateway crypto barely factors into this for them doesn't it? If there was a gateway that accepted goats and gave sellers cash, I mean, it doesn't really matter to the seller. They never see the goats anyways.

Re: the streamer, I don't think you're doing the math right. With a 0.4% + $1.26 transaction fee, PayPal's 3% would break even at ~$45. Whether they buyer or the seller pay the fee is irrelevant, the fee is paid. Either the buyer asks for more or the seller sends less, the net is the same. The difference here is fixed vs. percentage fee payment which reaches a break-even point pretty high up there for most purchases.

I based my tax treatment implications on this article: https://www.bna.com/germany-reaffirms-crypto-n73014476891/ ("But when the digital currency is used as a means of payment, or when it’s exchanged or sold, it will be exempt from Germany’s 19 percent VAT.") but I guess the capital gains still need to be paid?

The alts have even more risk due to their even more wild fluctuations and dreadful past performance.

USD-BTC and BTC-USD (or any currency) have a cost and a delay as well

Yes, I mentioned that.

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