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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 3/19/25 08:15, Chris Frey wrote:<span
style="white-space: pre-wrap">
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<blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:Z9rfrF1xn1KYhftF@foursquare.net">
<pre wrap="" class="moz-quote-pre">Lots of interesting points, but what I see is a conflating of escrow-type
services with payment services. Just because credit cards mix payment
and dispute resolution doesn't mean it always must be that way.
And your (plural) objections about internet commerce are somewhat true,
but it is not inclusive of all business.
A vendor like IBM can ship a million dollars worth of equipment to
a customer on the trust of an invoice that doesn't need to be paid for
30 days or more. Do you think that kind of relationship and trust
cannot absorb a few technicalities like bitcoin? I'm sure it can.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<p>IBM and the customers to whom it extends million-dollar lines of
credit are a different case. They have existing relationships,
signed contracts, and dispute resolution methods in place before a
transfer of funds is ever made. Paying in bitcoin would be no
different from that POV than handing over a suitcase full of
cash. Which, to be clear, they do not do and will never do,
because cash, like bitcoin, is far too easy for someone to
irrevocably "misplace."<br>
</p>
<p>They will always use a check, or purchase order, or some other
instrument selected specifically because every step of
transferring it and converting it into value creates a record
linked to real-world ID, into the evidentiary record for a dispute
resolution process. If something "goes wrong" with a
business-acceptable form of payment in that scenario, you have
layers of access to human beings: Who authorized the payment? Who
transmitted it? Who received it? Who endorsed it? Who redeemed
it? Any form of payment used for business transactions will be
able to answer all of these questions and the answers will enable
actual people to be brought into court if need be.<br>
</p>
<p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap">
</span></p>
<blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:Z9rfrF1xn1KYhftF@foursquare.net">
<pre wrap="" class="moz-quote-pre"> and we have e-commerce (credit cards currently win over everything
because dispute resolution is baked in). Mixing all these together
and declaring bitcoin a loser is not true, in my estimation.</pre>
</blockquote>
<p>Don't mistake my apathy for hostility here; I don't want bitcoin
to fail, I just don't care whether it fails. It seems to have
found a niche as a vehicle for speculation, and that may be enough
for it to "succeed" according to some criteria for success. But
as someone who's not particularly interested in speculation, I
don't care whether it does or not.<br>
</p>
<p>I'm pointing out that blockchain-protocol coins including bitcoin
are not suitable for a completely different niche - as a payment
method. I'm thinking about why they're not suitable for that and
what kind of digital money would be suitable for that. <br>
</p>
<p>Block chain coins are unsuitable for payment methods generally
because the block chain has horribly limited bandwidth and is
prohibitively expensive to use for small transactions. The
"bucket shop trading" that is the only way to transact outside the
block chain re-creates every single problem anybody ever had with
banks, including the invasions of privacy and excessive fees, in
the less-trustworthy space of relatively unregulated exchanges,
while providing almost none of the benefits. And if you're going
to face those problems anyway, you have no reason not to go
through banks. <br>
</p>
<p>I think bitcoin is unsuitable as a payment method for business
use for the same reasons that suitcases full of cash are
unsuitable for business use. Using it in any straightforward way
puts authorization and irrevocable settlement in the same hands,
and large businesses simply don't have employees whose hands they
trust that much. The only way they can use it is to build an
entire infrastructure that collects information about everybody
involved in the transaction, the same way their current payment
systems are built. And they already have built that
infrastructure. It's called "banking."<br>
</p>
<p>I think bitcoin is unsuitable as a payment method for e-commerce
use because it does not serve the trust needs of law-abiding
buyers and legitimate sellers previously unknown to each other in
establishing trust to conduct small, infrequent transactions. </p>
<p>These are people who have legitimate business to transact but
don't want to sink the time and attention and expense into each
transaction that the existing business infrastructure ("banking")
provides for large businesses and large payments. Card settlement
provides for some of these needs, particularly access to people
for dispute resolution. But it does so with some undesirable
tradeoffs. I'm thinking about whether we can do better with some
kind of digital money, and if so how.<br>
</p>
<p>Bear</p>
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