Maybe the current difficulty of buying LR is already the limit of how easy it can get in that direction.
Every conventional payment method has refutability as their way to cope with their lack of passwords and crypto. The system is wide open to copying plaintext credit card numbers and account numbers, and they deal with it by reversing the transaction after the fact. The system works for physical goods that have to be delivered somewhere, and services which can’t be resold. It’s a problem when it interfaces with precious metals and currency conversion.
The first step of being easy in one direction, bitcoin->LR or anything of established value, goes a long way. Even those who don’t use the conversion still benefit from knowing that they could. Trading bitcoin becomes an easier way to trade the ability to claim LR, similar to how paper money was once the right to claim gold. Nobody has to ever actually claim the LR to get the benefit of having the option that they could if they wanted to.
A lot of times you just need a minuscule amount of online currency. The hassle of buying the other online currencies is too much for buying a small amount. The ease of getting a small amount of bitcoin may help bootstrap an ecosystem of sellers of micropayment sized online goods selling to that market. If the sellers can get LR for bitcoins, they’re happy, and that may be subsidized at first by investors who want to buy bc in large lots.
The main thing holding online currencies back is the lack of an easy way to get a small amount of currency. Bitcoin opens that up. It’ll be the only online currency that’s both easy to cash out and easy to get a small amount. It’ll just be the usual harder difficulty to buy a large amount.
mmalmi@cc.hut.fi wrote:
Liberty Reserve sounds good. I could first make a service that only accepts LR, and add more options later. The weakness is that buying LR is an extra step of inconvenience when the customer just wants to get Bitcoins. But maybe I don’t have too much choice here.
Do you have electronic transfer or paper cheque in your country? (even if only within Europe)
Yes, electronic bank transfer is available. During 2010 most European countries will become a part of SEPA (Single Euro Payments Area), which means that all payments within Europe are to be considered domestic. Banks will have to apply the same fees and standards to all domestic transfers, so they’ll probably all be free of charge and complete in one bank day. For international transfers there’s the SWIFT/IBAN system, which usually costs some extra.
A longer term project for my exchange service would be to see what kinds of integration options the banks have to offer. Bank transfers would reach nearly as many customers as credit cards do.
Source: Published by Martti Malmi on GitHub in February 2024 as part of his testimony in the COPA v. Wright trial. The full correspondence archive is available at mmalmi.github.io/satoshi/.