Luxury watchmaker Breitling starts accepting Bitcoin for purchases

[Baron]

Do you accept bitcoin as payment?

Yes. Of course. And pretty much any other crypto as well. It would be stupid not to.

Do you price your subcriptions in bitcoin?

No. There's no point in doing that. The population thinks in terms of dollars, so that's how things are priced. That's not going to change anytime soon, and will require a new up-and-coming generation to be able to think in terms of satoshis before things can be priced that way. We'll all probably be dead before that happens unfortunately.

 

[Pekelo]

And this is the system you're saying is so superior?

If it can handle 10K+ TXs per second, yes. As compared to 7 (repeat seven).

Look, I am not against a good payment system, but:

1. BTC ain't it.
2. Nobody is hording BTC for tech purposes.
3. Freaking Litecoin took less than an hour to create 12 years ago and it was already faster than BTC and able to handle more TXs. As a minimum it should have been adopted, if someone cares about those features. And technology has improved since, yet here we are BTC with its clogged mempools whenever there are people actually trying to use it.

From the customer's side, Visa is immediate, and that is all we care. Not to mention that little thingy called chargebacks.

I don't follow all the newer coins, but I think Nano is one that technologically speaking highly superior (faster, more TXs, less energy waste, etc.) So if you are arguing from a tech POV, maybe pick that one... But of course you are pushing BTC, because that is the one you are INVESTED in.

Nano isn't even new and I am sure it has its own problems.

"Nano was launched in October 2015 by Colin LeMahieu to address Bitcoin scalability problem. Solving the problem means that transaction fees and confirmation time under load can be decreased. The currency implements no-fee transactions and achieves confirmation in under one second."

 

[M.W.]

How come the btc advocates in this thread appear to be the equivalent to that hedge fund that added 400 btc to its 19x,xxx already owned coins and makes a big scene out of it? Marketing only works when the underlying story is safe and sound not in the presence of a collapse, hacks, lost transfers, bankrupt exchanges, regulatory crackdown, law suits, an entire country basically bankrupted because of their switch to btc. Whatever advocates say will not convince the masses of btc's utility.

Marketing works to remind people to consider an otherwise worthy product.

 

[M.W.]

Let's assume I buy into all the promises of the utility of bitcoin. How do you solve the problem of the huge bottleneck to settle sufficient number of transactions to ever make btc a viable means to transact on a large scale? My understanding is that you can't just hire a few coders and rewrite some code. The limited capacity to settle sufficient number of transactions seems to be a permanent limitation. How do you get around that?

Yes. Of course. And pretty much any other crypto as well. It would be stupid not to.



No. There's no point in doing that. The population thinks in terms of dollars, so that's how things are priced. That's not going to change anytime soon, and will require a new up-and-coming generation to be able to think in terms of satoshis before things can be priced that way. We'll all probably be dead before that happens unfortunately.

 

[Baron]

If it can handle 10K+ TXs per second, yes. As compared to 7 (repeat seven).

Considering that a single MC/Visa/Amex transaction takes 3 - 5 days to complete, that equates to a whopping zero transactions per second. I repeat. Zero.

From the customer's side, Visa is immediate, and that is all we care.

Yes, immediate with an approval. But that's not a completed transaction and that's what I'm trying to get you to understand. In the analog world, that's like writing the grocery store clerk a paper check and watching him stick it in the bottom of the register. That's just an IOU and in no way is that an actual completed transaction. And since we are on the subject, all credit cards improved upon was giving merchants an assurance that they will eventually get their money in 3 - 5 days instead of the merchant accepting an unverifiable paper check that could come back as NSF in that same time period or longer.

 

[M.W.]

But who cares from a customer perspective? It appears to customers that the money arrived or left the account (or that a purchase was charged) even though it did not settle at the backend yet. And companies don't care to get paid immediately or days later, as long as they know they will get paid for products sold.

I am afraid you are focusing on the wrong thing here. The speed of a transaction is not the primary concern for wide adoption. It's the transaction throughout that is the primary limitation, technologically speaking.

Considering that a single MC/Visa/Amex transaction takes 3 - 5 days to complete, that equates to a whopping zero transactions per second. I repeat. Zero.



Yes, immediate with an approval. But that's not a completed transaction and that's what I'm trying to get you to understand. In the analog world, that's like writing the grocery store clerk a paper check and watching him stick it in the bottom of the register. That's just an IOU and in no way is that an actual completed transaction. And since we are on the subject, all credit cards improved upon was giving merchants an assurance that they will eventually get their money in 3 - 5 days instead of the merchant accepting an unverifiable paper check that could come back as NSF in that same time period or longer.

 

[Baron]

Let's assume I buy into all the promises of the utility of bitcoin. How do you solve the problem of the huge bottleneck to settle sufficient number of transactions to ever make btc a viable means to transact on a large scale? My understanding is that you can't just hire a few coders and rewrite some code. The limited capacity to settle sufficient number of transactions seems to be a permanent limitation. How do you get around that?

It's already been done. It's called the lightning network, which is a transaction layer that sits above the core BTC network and allows for a ridiculous number of transactions.

https://lightning.network/

So the scalability problem has technically already been handled at this point. It's just a matter of adoption.

 

[Baron]

But who cares from a customer perspective?

Who cares? I'll tell you who cares. The person or business selling the goods or services! That's who! You can't just look at the situation from the perspective of one party in a two-party transaction.

 

[M.W.]

OK, at least something to read up upon. Should you be right then this would be one less concern that I or others would have. Yet having worked in banking for a long time, I was under the impression that cryptos are attempting to solve the complexities of transaction settlement. Adding layer over layer is exactly re-creating the existing problem,which is incredibly complex layers of technology because of an adversity towards wanting to start afresh with a network and technology that solves existing problem right from the get go.

It's already been done. It's called the lightning network, which is a transaction layer that sits above the core BTC network and allows for a ridiculous number of transactions.

https://lightning.network/

So the scalability problem has technically already been handled at this point. It's just a matter of adoption.

 

[Baron]

And companies don't care to get paid immediately or days later, as long as they know they will get paid for products sold.

I honestly don't know a single businessman that would agree with that statement. Every business wants to get paid immediately upon delivery of the product or service.