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mircea_popescu: well bitcoin's problem is that it doesn't have who to put an entrance fee.
mircea_popescu: keeps the expensive people out and so saves our resources.
mircea_popescu: just as it was best for mpex that all the glbse idjits hated it
mircea_popescu: people don't know the people they should be talking to, don't know how to find them, don't dare approach them
mircea_popescu: but for now the focus on small busionesses is simply the tell-talle effect of incompetence and impotence in the bitcoin camp.
mircea_popescu: obviously once we build scale and capital and knowhow we'll be able to dislodge larger and larger chunks
mircea_popescu: and keep fucking over small business owners and customers.
mircea_popescu: once it becomes the standard there it will trickle down
mircea_popescu: bitcoin exists so a guy in china can be paid for 10 containers of tvs
mircea_popescu: bitcoin has not the subsidy of the state, and can't offer either safety for the merchant or reversibility for the customer.
mircea_popescu: cc companies offer all these, and rely on the state to police it all.
mircea_popescu: merchant wants ensured funds, customer wants reversible transaction and balance protection
mircea_popescu: the most expensive customer in the world is the guy buying a 3-9 dollar trinket over the internet.
mircea_popescu: they will make more expensive customers accessible,w hich will sink you.
mircea_popescu: but to go into this when they hold the upper hand is folly.
mircea_popescu: they might destroy you even if you have 10x their margins
mircea_popescu: in general it's irrational to expend your resources at a comparative disadvantage.
mircea_popescu: im sorry, you must be from an alternate universe. why would i be doing something at a competitive disadvantage ?
mircea_popescu: small businesses are either a) going bankrupt (happens to 90% ish of them) or else in a new niche.
mircea_popescu: and even those have been taking a beating of horror past 10-20 years.
mircea_popescu: go try and complain to your phone company, as a fuine example.
mircea_popescu: under the crushing pressure of the huge costs of the 3-9 dollars transaction.
mircea_popescu: no namworld. the reason is that people can't afford to stay in business
mircea_popescu: think in terms of girl looking for a husband. does she care if he;'s lucky or smart ?
mircea_popescu: kakobrekla the problem with macroeconomy is that those terms aren't distinct.
mircea_popescu: there's a reason for chains and franchises and payment processors being centralised
mircea_popescu: this feat costs exponentially more the dumber they are.
mircea_popescu: such as, for instance, explaining to those idiots on that article quoted why they're wrong
mircea_popescu: that further means you will be spending your time doing the impossible.
mircea_popescu: what matters is how much dealing with people ACTUALLY costs.
mircea_popescu: it doesn't matter what the payment "costs" in your estimation.
mircea_popescu: JohnGalt it has been proven not to work > 20 times so far.
mircea_popescu: no gambler can pick up the phone and complain about damaged deliveries.
mircea_popescu: and s.dice takes small gamblers because it's very easy to provide the service to them.
mircea_popescu: Namworld the hosting industry may be the one single place where my above judgements may be shown mistaken
mircea_popescu: this obviously is unavoidable, seeing how they couldn't afford to hire me to tell them this, and wouldn't have made sense of it anyway.
mircea_popescu: 90%+ of all small businesses that tried bitcoin discovered this on their own timeand dime
mircea_popescu: all im saying is that the average small biz does not find itself in a position to do this.
mircea_popescu: note, im not saying that by 2050 or w/e all these fabulous economies of scale baked in by design won't be working full bore
mircea_popescu: you need to be a multi-billion corp to process sub 10 dollar transactions effectually.
mircea_popescu: in principle, for every degree of magnitude the transaction goes down, your fixed costs go up one and a half.
mircea_popescu: the fact that asic fab plants are designed to make custom chips
mircea_popescu: the fact that it is designed to do it does not mean you are the one to do it.
mircea_popescu: but you lack all the many tools that the banks use to turn this green.
mircea_popescu: if you aggregate one billion of them you can squeeze a little profit
mircea_popescu: the 3-9 transactions work on an economy of scale model
mircea_popescu: it doesn't really depend. we have centuries of accumulated experience in trade. by now things are pretty well known
mircea_popescu: because, Namworld, the costs of administering this sort of business exceed your profits from doing it.
mircea_popescu: nobody does eitgher, but that's besides the point. we don't,.
mircea_popescu: point remains. we don't want the average joe and his 3-9 dollar transaction.