Quote from: dave111223 on June 20, 2013, 07:27:43 AM

Quote from: Epicurus on June 20, 2013, 06:42:06 AM

That's because today there is no competitive advantage to bitcoin. For one, you're telling consumers to use a payment method that is objectively worse for them. There is no insurance at all for the consumer with btc payments currently. If they use Visa/Mastercard/Paypal to buy stuff from me, Visa/Mastercard/Paypal will protect them to some degree. As a merchant, that is incredibly valuable, because I'm not Amazon. I don't have a reputation large enough to precede me, and so I depend on the payment protection that Visa/Mastercard/Paypal offer my customers to ensure that the first time they buy with me (ie before trust is established), they can feel indisputably safe.

As an example, I just bought a $1300 camera from a store in Taiwan over Ebay. I'd never have paid them in BTC, because if they screw me over, I have no recourse. With Visa I have recourse, and Ebay adds an extra layer of protection for me on top of that.

That's the kind of thing that bitcoin needs to explain to consumers. If it's not there, then there's no reason at all for most consumers to use bitcoin, and it will remain a niche currency that isn't useful for most purchases.

It's interesting that you refer to yourself as "a long-time online merchant" yet you seem to only understand the consumer side of the equation?

I have a company, if customers are worried about me being a scam artist they can search for my company, they will soon find people of various forums, and social media talking about how good my company is and how they ordered...
Customer now can trust me..pretty easy...

Now say "johnsmith@hotmail.com" orders from me...how exactly can I check if he's trustable? I search for him...no results...

It's easy to verify the trust in a merchant/company, very difficult to verify the trustability of a customer...so why then are all our existing financially systems setup so protect consumers at the expense of merchants?

I understand the customer side of the equation because that's the side that matters. I make money when customers feel safe in spending their money with me. Happily, Visa/Mastercard/Paypal assist both us and the customers by providing a trusted, regulated intermediary. We can certainly be ripped off by customers, and sometimes are, but that's our business to manage. If someone should bear the burden here, it should be the person whose enterprise is this, rather than the person who just needs to buy something. The merchant is more equipped to deal with the consequences of trust, in other words, in those cases where the third-party intermediary (visa/mastercard/paypal)'s guarantees aren't sufficient.