Quote from: jaysabi on August 16, 2018, 07:42:32 PM

Quote from: Pan Troglodytes on August 14, 2018, 11:52:51 AM

Quote from: Elwin_Dog on August 12, 2018, 04:01:54 PM

Quote from: jaysabi on August 12, 2018, 03:47:54 PM

We'll likely have a mostly cashless society, but that doesn't mean anything for Bitcoin. Digital cash denominated in US dollars will rule the US economy, as it currently does, and Bitcoin will not meaningfully penetrate into day-to-day commerce or business transactions. Compared to digital cash, Bitcoin is clunky, slow, and needlessly complicated. Centralization is not nearly the problem Bitcoin proponents want to make it out to be. Everyone hates PayPal, but PayPal works exceedingly well and Bitcoin really can't touch it because most people want a centralized authority they can trust manning transactions in case the other party commits fraud or acts illegally. A trustworthy central authority (the payment middleman, like PayPal, MC, Visa, etc.) is far superior to a decentralized system where payments can't be reversed in cases of fraud.

The centralization of Bitcoin may seem at first like a threat to its existence, but it's probably the only way to effectively accomplish the things that you mention. Bitcoin doesn't really have the ability to be widely used as a currency at this stage like you said, but it has features of anonymity and tax evasion that will continue to attract people to use it. I can't exactly see it being widely used for day to day transactions, however.

Cash will still reign I think because it is what makes things get done. You can get better prices, faster service, more favorable conditions with most vendors if you pay in cash. Digital money is still clumsy as well in my opinion.

It changes, especially in Europe. Sweden currently is almost cashless, when you pay in cash they look at you like you stole it and even beggars on streats have card terminals, and Poland is a leader in terms of contactless payments. Meantime, banks do what they can to promote those new ways of payment and make it harder to use cash (they impose limits on ATM withdrawals, etc.).

So before you know it you may one day wake up in a cashless world. It will not be better and probably it will not be easier either, and VISA will know details of what you had for breakfast and what courses your kids took.

Visa doesn't get details of what you buy, only where you buy it. The inventory of what merchants sell to consumers is not part of the data that is critical to running the payment platform.

There are certain companies that are poised to do very well as cash continues to die. PayPal, Square, Visa, MasterCard especially. All of these facilitate digital payments or deal with digital cash, and as physical cash becomes less and less common, these centralized platforms have outgrown the general market and are poised to continue doing so. Bitcoin isn't really an improvement among any one of them, it's far easier and reassuring using one of these services because people have faith that if something goes wrong, there's someone there to fix it. If something goes wrong with a crypto transaction, you're out of luck.

I generally agree with you, one comment if I may on the fragment I changed color to red: please observe that as the infrastructure grows, there are points of contact that can undo what went wrong - there are customer services at exchanges and in payment operators. So it is not completely as black and white as you paint it, there just might be someone to help you out even if something went wrong with Bitcoin payment.