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Comment by bouncycastle | Hacker News Reader

You mean those old telegraphic transfers? Why should I use that?

With my PayPal/Mastercard/GooglePay/ApplePay I can do an international order in seconds.

Processing != complete. A credit card transaction generally takes 1-3 days to process. Bitcoin is start -> complete in < 10 mins on average.

Nope. 10 minutes for bitcoin is just 1 confirmation. Most exchanges need 3, but it may take significantly more if you don't put enough fees on the transaction.

Meanwhile Credit cards/ApplePay/GooglePay/Paypal/AmazonPay provide the tap-and-go instant purchase experience, even on international orders.

Then it gets disputed and reverted, up to 1 month after tap-and-go.

Credit issuers insure their transactions. BTC has no insurance. Speed of transaction is instant for both.

oh boy, wait till you hear about wirecard

"Tap-and-go" is an illusion, and like I said the payment is not fully processed for 1-3 days. Low-risk merchants (e.g. under $100) can accept crypto on 0 confirmations (just checking wallet balance) and accept the double-spend risk. This is similar to the chargeback risk merchants take by accepting credit cards (albeit with fewer protections on the crypto side).

I agree BTC fees are high, but for even moderately large transactions (>$25), it is cheaper than credit card/ApplePay/GooglePay/Paypal/AmazonPay fees.

Edit: and even after processing, chargebacks are often viable for up to 60 days.

as a customer, I always like that if something goes wrong, eg. product not delivered, there's always the chargeback option.

There's nothing stopping trusted 3rd-parties (e.g. mastercard/visa) from building wrappers to hold the btc in the meantime and mitigate end-user risk (full circle woo!). Definitely fewer protections from bad-actors with direct btc transactions, but that's by design (e.g. no requirement for a third party)

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