Bitcoins/Litecoins/Virtual Currencies

Caliane

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I've been a bit disappointed that crypto hasn't become an effective way to make transactions. I don't even know how hard it'd be to trade BTC for a pizza in 2024, or if a website like Coinbase has a "centralized BTC trading" mechanism that would transfer "extra virtual BTC" very fast.
well, one of the best things about crypto is you don't need coinbase.

you can transfer btc directly person to person.

The idea is you would have a hot wallet on your phone. you keep lets say $200 worth of BTC on that phone, and either generate a QR code you can swipe in front of their phone, or register.
 
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Tuco

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Making payments with Bitcoin is trivial. Install Strike or Cashapp, set up ACH, scan payment QR code, send BTC. Done. It will pull $$$ from checking account, convert, and send. Saying its hard because you've never done it is foolish, its not hard at all
Sorry for the confusion, my disappointment is that it hasn't become more ubiquitous as the price of BTC has increased. I don't know if there are areas outside the USA where it's more popular though.
 
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Flobee

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Sorry for the confusion, my disappointment is that it hasn't become more ubiquitous as the price of BTC has increased. I don't know if there are areas outside the USA where it's more popular though.
Understood. So peer-to-peer transactions are a lot more common in countries with inflation issues and/or capital controls. Places like Nigeria, Venezuela, Turkey, etc, have incredibly high p2p transaction volume (proportionally) vs someplace like the US where we have functional USD and banking rails to use. The functionality is there and improving every year from a user experience standpoint, we just don't really need it much in the US right now.

An exception to this is the remittance industry which has been completely upended by the ability to send BTC essentially for free (lightning) or for just a couple dollars of value (on-chain transaction) vs something like Western Union scalping 20% and the local thugs standing outside that Western Union location to scalp even more.

As financial privacy becomes a bigger issue in the west I expect this will change
 
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Tuco

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Understood. So peer-to-peer transactions are a lot more common in countries with inflation issues and/or capital controls. Places like Nigeria, Venezuela, Turkey, etc, have incredibly high p2p transaction volume (proportionally) vs someplace like the US where we have functional USD and banking rails to use. The functionality is there and improving every year from a user experience standpoint, we just don't really need it much in the US right now.

An exception to this is the remittance industry which has been completely upended by the ability to send BTC essentially for free (lightning) or for just a couple dollars of value (on-chain transaction) vs something like Western Union scalping 20% and the local thugs standing outside that Western Union location to scalp even more.

As financial privacy becomes a bigger issue in the west I expect this will change
Very cool.

From a quick google it looks like Vietnam is one of the leaders. Five reasons why Vietnam’s crypto usage is so high with 17% of the population using crypto mostly for the reasons you described.
 
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Tmac

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Making payments with Bitcoin is trivial. Install Strike or Cashapp, set up ACH, scan payment QR code, send BTC. Done. It will pull $$$ from checking account, convert, and send. Saying its hard because you've never done it is foolish, its not hard at all

BTC being “hard” to use on a transactional basis is most people’s experience. “BITCOIN IS EZ HURRDURR” is the maxi’s obnoxious retort.

Even beyond the inconvenience/awkwardness of using it on a transactional basis, the fees involved in BTC transactions and exchanging are going to inhibit its widespread use.

I do think they’ll figure it out though.
 

Flobee

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BTC being “hard” to use on a transactional basis is most people’s experience. “BITCOIN IS EZ HURRDURR” is the maxi’s obnoxious retort.

Even beyond the inconvenience/awkwardness of using it on a transactional basis, the fees involved in BTC transactions and exchanging are going to inhibit its widespread use.

I do think they’ll figure it out though.
The ease or difficulty of a BTC transaction is context specific. If you're just trying to pay an invoice to someone in Bitcoin with cash from your bank account, that can be trivially done as I pointed out. If you're holding BTC in a self-custodied wallet and you want to send it there are additional complexities, but it isn't anything crazy, it just requires some requisite knowledge. We agree that this will only improve with time.

Bitcoin transaction fees are also highly contextual.

If you're buying something for $5 USD and you want to make an on-chain transaction to do it, yea that's not practical from a fee standpoint. If you use a Lightning wallet however it is essential free (fee less than $0.01) and instant.

If you're trying to send $10 million USD from US to Tokyo you can do that with an on-chain transaction and pay a fee of... lets see as of right now with 19 sat/vB.... about $2. You can expect initial settlement within ~10 minutes and safely consider it finalized settlement within an hour. There is no one to tell you no, freeze your funds, or penalize you in any way. Good luck doing that with a bank.

This may or may not apply to you, but a lot of 💩coiners are mad because their favorite vapor investment's use-case has been eaten by the "pet rock". Folks in this space spend so much time getting fed lies and garbage by scammers they never spend the time to understand what real innovation and use-cases exist with Bitcoin. I get it, I fell for the same crap too. It's time to pivot though, we were wrong but there is no point in staying wrong. The amount of money someone loses in this space seems to correlate directly with how stubborn they are about admitting they were wrong.
 
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Ravishing

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<3 Page 1 of this thread when BTC was $39/coin.
If we only knew!!!

I've been waiting for this halving for 4 years now.
Give it 4-6 months for the dust to settle, BTC will be deep into 6 digits.
I think we are likely to see a 50% crash but it'll be something like 240k to 120k.

In 11 years we've gone from $39 to $72,000, next decade = ??
 
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Tmac

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<3 Page 1 of this thread when BTC was $39/coin.
If we only knew!!!

I've been waiting for this halving for 4 years now.
Give it 4-6 months for the dust to settle, BTC will be deep into 6 digits.
I think we are likely to see a 50% crash but it'll be something like 240k to 120k.

In 11 years we've gone from $39 to $72,000, next decade = ??

I took profits at $66k. Waiting to get back in when everyone hates BTC again.
 
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The_Black_Log Foler

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Buying a cold wallet. Gonna DCA some BTC. Any suggestions on a platform that doesn’t rape you with transactions fees like Coinbase or is that my best option? Strike? Binance? Kraken?
 
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Flobee

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Buying a cold wallet. Gonna DCA some BTC. Any suggestions on a platform that doesn’t rape you with transactions fees like Coinbase or is that my best option? Strike? Binance? Kraken?
For that use-case I would go with Strike personally. You might get lower fees with something like River but I haven't personally used them
 
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Burns

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<3 Page 1 of this thread when BTC was $39/coin.
If we only knew!!!
I doubt anyone here would have the stomach to diamond hands 39 dollar coins for this long and anyone who does is probably going to hold them till it (they) die.
 
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Tuco

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I doubt anyone here would have the stomach to diamond hands 39 dollar coins for this long and anyone who does is probably going to hold them till it (they) die.
I always joke that I'll sell the one bitcoin I bought (At $600 or something) when it hits $1 or $1million, and I'm not sure which is more likely. It's like anything with unrealized gains, it's effectively a $600 loss until I take a profit and buy cheeseburgers and a GPU with it.
 

reavor

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Flobee

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Suggestions on ways to store recovery phrase? Is one of these metal plates the gold standard?

If you're holding a significant amount and want to invest in the engraving tools to protect against fire then sure, buy the seedplates. Otherwise yea, just write it down somewhere you won't lose it.

There is a progression in security and privacy standards specifically with holding Bitcoin yourself. How far you take them is going to depend on your preferences, amount invested, and willingness to deal with inconvenience.

Both privacy and security can be thought of on a scale with one extreme being the most private and/or secure and the other being the most easy and/or convenient. The progression from the easy end to the more complicated should, IMO, be taken a step at a time as one understands what they're doing and what risks they're comfortable with. No need to overcomplicate it at the start.
 
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The_Black_Log Foler

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If you're holding a significant amount and want to invest in the engraving tools to protect against fire then sure, buy the seedplates. Otherwise yea, just write it down somewhere you won't lose it.

There is a progression in security and privacy standards specifically with holding Bitcoin yourself. How far you take them is going to depend on your preferences, amount invested, and willingness to deal with inconvenience.

Both privacy and security can be thought of on a scale with one extreme being the most private and/or secure and the other being the most easy and/or convenient. The progression from the easy end to the more complicated should, IMO, be taken a step at a time as one understands what they're doing and what risks they're comfortable with. No need to overcomplicate it at the start.
So you’re saying I shouldn’t do what this man is doing, yet? 🤔🤔

 
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