Quote from: BitcoinPorn on July 02, 2011, 12:56:12 PM

Quote from: mouse on July 02, 2011, 12:36:54 PM

after the thrill of buying something with a gold-based currency wears off, people rarely use it. Instead they tend to hoard it, keeping it as a store of wealth.

I think this could be said with almost any form of currency that isn't paper or plastic, people will hoard it.

Hell, people hold onto change more than they do their bills, I believe it is subconsciously because it is 'heavier' thus has more value. Or not, whatever, but I believe my joke argument as much as the gold hoarding one, and both theories kind of compliment each other.

I know this is easy to dismiss off hand.

Here is the quote of his that really got me thinking "Why would I spend my gold if some guy I'm trying to pay will actually accept fiat trash".

Just replace gold with bitcoin.

Think about it seriously for a minute - if you really believe bitcoin is better money than dollars, and amazon accepted both, would you spend btc or usd? Initially, you'd probably spend BTC for the newness factor. But after that wore off you'd spend USD, becuase you fundamentally value BTC more. It's catch 22, because if you didn't value BTC more you wouldnt even have any in the first place.

Quote from: qwk on July 02, 2011, 01:02:41 PM

There are a lot of businesses that would work a lot better with a currency like, or based on, bitcoin.

For traded goods, this probably is not true. The dollar, euro, whatever, is quite good at purchasing alpaca socks.

Paying for services on the internet, though, is a completely different thing. Sites like e-lance, get-a-coder, face a detrimental effect from traditional currencies, because the partners in a deal have to settle on method of payment, currency, and they usually face high costs for those transactions, especially when currency conversion is involved.

This is where bitcoins are, well, better.

They may not be perfect, and for many services you may still wish to employ some kind of escrow service. But you could easily cut out the middleman and agree on step-by-step payment based on achieved milestones, which, with a normal currency involved, will raise costs significantly.

Not long ago, i hired coders from another country to have some software developed. We agreed on step-by-step payment, and in the end, even though we had only a handful of steps, the service fees added up to roughly 10% of the total costs.

Bitcoin would have spared me those 10%.

I don't believe payment fees is a problem that bitcoin is actually trying to solve (fundamentally). Anyone can (and have) create a digital token currency backed in say USD, that can be passed around to side step fees, and they can do it a LOT cheaper than having a global network of ATI 6990's running at 100% capacity 24/7. Bitcoin isn't trying to be a easier payment system (becuase clearly, its not easier - and we're relying on new infrastructure to make this a reality), its trying to be a better money. And the problem with better money is that people prefer to spend their crap money first.