Bitcoin: the Berlin streets where you can shop with virtual money

Bitcoin: the Berlin streets where you can shop with virtual money

www.guardian.co.uk

The digital currency is rising in popularity among traders in the rebellious Kreuzberg area of Germany's capital

Nadim Chebli remembers well the first of his customers who decided to pay for the records they bought with virtual currency rather than cash or credit cards.

"I'd only just agreed to accept Bitcoins," said the 36-year-old owner of the Long Player record shop, "and the first sales I made in it came pretty quickly, from a guy about my age who bought Tom Waits's The Big Time and a young woman who bought a Beatles compilation from 1967.

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The worldwide street currency is taking to the streets and gaining in popularity. People are finding it easier and cheaper than using credit cards.

Using Bitcoins takes power away from the banking which in my eyes is a good thing and looking at the way banks can take your money off you they look safer too.

www.guardian.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

One thing is for sure; this currency is not going away. Paypal, Western Union and Moneygram are all looking into adopting it.

reply to post by purplemer

Using Bitcoins takes power away from the banking which in my eyes is a good thing and looking at the way banks can take your money off you they look safer too.

how, the value of it is still based in a currency of some sort.........whether it be dollars, euros, or whatever.....

reply to post by ManBehindTheMask


The value of Bitcoins is independent and not based on any currency. The less we use money backed by the central banks the weaker the banks become. Nor can the banks or government take money off you that they do not know you have.

99.9% of virtual currency ends up in your local and therefore national economy. If one was for example to have a huge customer base in Japan and went on to relinquish all of that virtual income on US goods, bills, local stores, expenses, family or even your local friendly weed dealer, then surely the winner is... the US, Japan not so lucky. And so forth.. Good luck to them really. I wish I had the balls to get into that business 10 years ago.

At the moment bitcoin is a nightmare, its value is all over the place. 2 weeks ago it was at £39 then it went to £107 and now its back down to £84 as i type this post.

You wouldn't want your wages paid in it , you might not have enough to pay your weekly bills 1 day after getting it.

Originally posted by purplemer


The worldwide street currency is taking to the streets and gaining in popularity. People are finding it easier and cheaper than using credit cards.

Using Bitcoins takes power away from the banking

Except for the fact these merchants have to immediately convert the bitcoins to Euros in order to pay taxes, rent, utilities, suppliers, etc. That requires an exchange and a bank, or a processor and a bank. Credit cards also require a processor and a bank, cash just requires a bank. Bitcoin merely replaces the well-developed, heavily-regulated credit card middleman with the brand new, untested Bitcoin middleman.

Merchants also have to hope the price of BTC hasn't crashed, as it is wont to do, before they get a chance to sell theirs. Fiat currency in developed nations has a fairly predictable value from day to day. Bitcoin is all over the place. And whenever it starts to plummet, the major exchanges go offline and claim they were being DDOSed, so good luck getting out of BTC before they lose half their value.

Then there's the bitcoin holders themselves. It's a deflationary currency, meaning while it lasts it increases in value over time. Bitcoin holders are therefore more likely to hold on to it than they would national currencies. Merchants don't want people to hold their money, they want people to spend their money. And the non-reversible nature of bitcoin transactions means no one with any sense will make large purchases with bitcoin. There's a reason spend-centric card issuers like AmEx load their cards up with purchase protection features--they know that people are more willing to spend money that way. You can't do that with Bitcoin.

As a gimmick, this will work for a little while. It's kind of like accepting Ithaca Hours or Disney Dollars or some other promotional scrip. It gets you in the news, and it gets a few people in your store who might not otherwise have come. But it doesn't signal a worldwide revolution in money.

reply to post by FurvusRexCaeli



As more and more people start selling and buying in bitcoins there will be less of a need to change them back into analogue currencies. You can spend them in some shops now. You can buy web space with them. Buy things online. Some chap bought a car last year. It looks to me like they are becoming an independent currency.

Originally posted by purplemer
reply to post by FurvusRexCaeli

 

As more and more people start selling and buying in bitcoins there will be less of a need to change them back into analogue currencies. You can spend them in some shops now. You can buy web space with them. Buy things online. Some chap bought a car last year. It looks to me like they are becoming an independent currency.

Yeah, but the one thing that desperately needs to happen is for the loop to be closed via employers paying employees in bitcoin. Once that happens, the economy can be truly self-contained without the need to switch between dollars and bitcoins every so often.

Bitcoins are great in principle, the reality is radicaly different, bitcoin exchanges are compromised on an almost regular basis, personal bitcoin wallets are emptied with great regularity the more popular it becomes, the worse this will get, back in the day they were great to make a passive income, still are if you know when to sell them but due to such hyper inflation it is very difficult now to make money from them, unless you steal it.

The only use I have for Bitcoins is moving money around when I do not want it to be traceable to myself, I HAVE MY REASONS. Bitcoins are great for that, money laundering, but you have to be very fast as again they are subject to ridiculous amounts of depression and inflation.

Unfortunately currency of any kind, does infact need regulated, but then that kinda defeats the purpose of them eh.

Something to be wary of guys with a currency of one kind, it is a one currency being possibly adopted world wide in the hope of replacing all the different currencies that exist, sound familiar?

Lets have a one world government too.

I'm only saying that TPTB have the power to quell anything they deem unfit for their purpose, so just keep glancing over your shoulder once and a while.

reply to post by multichild


Well this is simply the early stages of a one world virtual system where all currencies will be replaced with "credits" makes sense.

I find different currencies a complete nuisance, If i want to go to somewhere that does not accept my countries currency I need to get it changed, then pay a tax on that, because someone has decided to profiteer of the transaction of buying and selling currencies. Its stupid and unnecessary.

Yes I agree, I think credits will be the future, once we move away from cash, we are almost there in a way as the digits that appear in your bank accoutn are only that credits, it only transfers to cash when you take it out of the cash point or take it out of the bank.

Yes it will be easier when abroad to just use one form of currency, but what I'm saying is that its being looked at as a credit thats sticking two fingers up to the banks, but in actuality its being allowed to develop as we move towards a single currency and possibly and hopefully away from a carbon based fuel economy too.

reply to post by multichild


The currency is not being embraced worldwide by government. The US government for example is trying to prosecute the guy that made the programme. Even though they do not know who he is. It is illegal in the US to make a currency that is in direct competition with the US dollar.

Is bitcoin the global currency we have been talking about and many of us dreading for so many years?

Originally posted by Tuttle
reply to post by multichild

 

Well this is simply the early stages of a one world virtual system where all currencies will be replaced with "credits" makes sense.

I find different currencies a complete nuisance, If i want to go to somewhere that does not accept my countries currency I need to get it changed, then pay a tax on that, because someone has decided to profiteer of the transaction of buying and selling currencies. Its stupid and unnecessary.

I don't find it a problem. When I visit Canada I can just withdraw Canadian currency from the ATM.

reply to post by purplemer

The less we use money backed by the central banks the weaker the banks become.

And the stronger those become that control the "central bitcoin bank".

Originally posted by lampsalot
I don't find it a problem. When I visit Canada I can just withdraw Canadian currency from the ATM.

This. The whole 'one world currency' thing is a pre-internet idea. The internet/computers/digital/etc did pretty much all the desirable, good things the one world currency was supposed to do.

Indeed, fewer currencies is LESS control, not more.

Originally posted by octotom
reply to post by purplemer

 

The less we use money backed by the central banks the weaker the banks become.

And the stronger those become that control the "central bitcoin bank".

There is no central bitcoin bank, that's the whole point of bitcoin. The issuance is controlled by an algorithm and enforced by a peer-to-peer network.