> Unfortunately, Bitcoin does not solve a problem for consumers.
That's not true. It took a while to convince my friends, but now we normally use bitcoin to settle restaurant bills and other debts that used to be difficult to keep track of and error-prone. It's not a godsend from heaven, but it works and is much better than what we used to do.
I don't know, those services are probably good, but Bitcoin works perfectly and we don't mind the volatility, and I kind of enjoy it.
There are plenty of minor reasons to prefer Bitcoin, like how nobody can prevent you from accessing your funds for something like "suspicious activity".
But there are a some bigger reasons - if you're good with your security, you don't have to do things like check another statement every month to see if someone stole your account information.
Venmo is unavailable outside the USA (or at least, it's not available in my area).
Splitwise appears to be just a web2.0 accounting type app? I didn't see any mention of actually moving money around. Bitcoin isn't actually that great for splitting bills at the moment because wallets don't have Splitwise type features. But in theory once added it should be quite convenient, assuming you can tolerate the usual Bitcoin downsides.
I think you're right that currently there's not a whole lot of incentive for people to use Bitcoin in the USA, especially for local transactions. But the system is still very new. It's hard to know how things will work out in future. All we do know is that the payments market, especially the American payments market, is extremely stagnant. The USA is stuck in a timewarp from most of the worlds perspective despite a proliferation of little startups that try and do something hip with magstripe cards. I mean, this is a country where people still routinely use cheques. So it may well be that Bitcoin, as it matures and adds features, finds a way to be competitive against credit cards, especially now the rules forbidding price differentials are being struck down.
The IRS decision is a problem for sure, but it's also specific to one geography. The UK tax authority decided the same thing (Bitcoin is not a currency) and then changed their mind shortly afterwards. Bitcoin quite clearly IS currency by any reasonable definition that doesn't boil down to "a currency is whatever the government says a currency is", and so hopefully at some point the IRS decision would be changed in favour of common sense.
Could some of the multiple people who down voted battani's comment please explain why?
For the application in question (settling restaurant bills among a group of friends), Venmo looks ideal. No transaction fees, easy to use and flexible, no exchange rate issues, it's operated by a company that is actually licensed as a money transmitter in every state of the US, and no tax collection or reporting issues.
And when BTC's price changes by 20% to 30%, do yall still pay each other back in BTC or do you convert into USD before paying each other back?
Or... you can be like everyone else and just have a guy go to the bank and grab a bunch of $5 and $1 bills when you know your group is getting together. CASH is the easiest way to settle debts and keep track of payments.
That's not the problem, it's more about remembering debts later, or needing to split the bills (wasting extra time) and/or not having the right cash denominations.
And there are plenty of other situations where you might owe each other money.
If the problem is sending money to your friends electronically (otherwise I'm nto sure how Bitcoin solves the problem of remembering debts or splitting bills), this is a solved problem for some people.
My credit union lets my transfer money to any other member of the credit union instantly with no fees. As it happens, nearly all my friends are members of this credit union (it's local and offers a much better deal than the banks) - and they have a mobile app so you can do it from your phone.
They've just added a general ACH function to it, to transfer to any account, but I haven't used it so I don't know if there are any associated fees. It doesn't mention any, but I associate the word ACH with some kind of fee.
So to me, this isn't a "find a new currency and financial system" problem, it's a "find a better bank" problem.
That's not true. It took a while to convince my friends, but now we normally use bitcoin to settle restaurant bills and other debts that used to be difficult to keep track of and error-prone. It's not a godsend from heaven, but it works and is much better than what we used to do.