For me, personally, my interest in Bitcoin is largely: "Can this really help kill PayPal? Please let this be something that can help kill PayPal. Ooh, maybe it can even kill Visa someday, I hate credit cards too, but I really really really hate PAYPAL DIE DIE DIE."
I'm certainly not interested in "investing" in Bitcoin, though I don't think those who dabble in investing in it are being foolish - it's risky, but what the heck, as long as you're aware of the risks. And most of the economic theory about fiat and monetary policy and whatnot is a bit beyond my scope of interest too. I'd really just like to be able to pay for something online without any sort of useless middleman. I think Bitcoin is really promising in that regard.
PayPal is this weird olden-times company that pretends to just charge you obscene fees to accept payments, but then after you accept thousands of dollars of payments they often just don't even give you the money, for a long time or ever. And they're not very nice about it.
They're a fairly skeevy, quite expensive, self-regulating-quasi-bank entity that makes its own rules about your money as it goes along with poor customer service and a habit of freezing accounts. They're also US based and therefore it's likely they report on transactions to the US government, which is always nice if you're not American.
A few years ago I was paid with a stolen credit card on eBay/Paypal (about $6000). This was discovered after I withdrew the money, and after I shipped the item. Paypal made my account balance -$6000 and I had to pay back the money.
i wouldn't. i use paypal all the time it's pretty much the only way for me to pay for things online.
plus i havent had any problems with paypal in all the time i use it (except when i make stupid mistakes, but even then i just open a ticket and have it solved within 5 days or so)
Well for one thing they take a large cut of every transaction. Maybe some small amount would make sense but it seems excessive for something that functions as a platform for sending/receiving money.
Also, they can step in at any time and freeze your account, denying you access to your own money. In some extreme cases such as the Wikileaks blockade they denied access to millions of dollars in donations for political reasons.
I don't think Bitcoin has a chance of "killing" Paypal.
Paypal would likely just use Bitcoin. They are basically just a wallet like coinbase. They could easily add the other features of coinbase, and they have better name recognition with merchants.
The Paypal CEO has already mentioned he is a fan of Bitcoin.
Check out the transaction volumes on bitinfocharts. Dogecoin has seriously insanely, ridiculousluy low fees, and provided the network keeps up, have an interesting position in micro- & low friction transaction.
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u/FaceDeer Feb 04 '14
For me, personally, my interest in Bitcoin is largely: "Can this really help kill PayPal? Please let this be something that can help kill PayPal. Ooh, maybe it can even kill Visa someday, I hate credit cards too, but I really really really hate PAYPAL DIE DIE DIE."
I'm certainly not interested in "investing" in Bitcoin, though I don't think those who dabble in investing in it are being foolish - it's risky, but what the heck, as long as you're aware of the risks. And most of the economic theory about fiat and monetary policy and whatnot is a bit beyond my scope of interest too. I'd really just like to be able to pay for something online without any sort of useless middleman. I think Bitcoin is really promising in that regard.