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Bitcoin's Shared Ledger Technology: Money's New Operating System

forbes.com

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Re: Bitcoin's Shared Ledger Technology: Money's New Operating System

#91

Post by wpietri »

2drew3 wrote: post #66
wpietri wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me see if I can give some useful goalposts, ones commonly used with other technologies. Consider the classic technology adoption curve, which is the focus of industry classic "Crossing the Chasm": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_adoption_lifecycle Oversimplifying, the Innovators, a few percent of a market, will buy anything just because it's cool. An obvious example there is Google Glass. Or a personal e…

Like most disruptive technologies, it's not quite clear why Bitcoin / blockchain are better than incumbents, namely credit cards / centralized databases. At Purse, we use blockchain escrows to unlock value from Amazon gift card balances. This was previously impossible (gift card exchanges can't transact Amazon), and the liquidity premium powers the discount. Escrows and other complex transactions are difficult using…

Ok, so if I understand you correctly, there are some people who have gift cards and want cash. They're willing to take a substantial hit to do that. And a quick Google search shows that there are plenty of people in that business. But your unique angle is that other exchanges can't handle Amazon cards. Could you say more about why, and how Bitcoin makes that different for you?

Re: Bitcoin's Shared Ledger Technology: Money's New Operating System

#92

Post by sn »

Meekro wrote: post #60
vectorpush wrote: post #41

Bitcoin and blockchain enthusiasts have been claiming that bitcoin (or etherum) is going to take the world by storm any day now, yet all I ever see anywhere are big claims (revolutionizing payments, disrupting remittance, ending wars, freeing the people, destroying the banks etc, ad nauseam) with very little substance and lots of scams, frauds and dead-end ventures. Dark markets, internet gambling and a handful of ot…

You're not an idiot -- the things you described are very real. I've heard about tons of scams and quite a few dead-end ventures. The 21inc thing sounds pretty bizarre to me as well, but there is more going on in the bitcoin world than just that. I'm involved with a VPS hosting company called ChunkHost, and we've accepted bitcoin for many years. We're not criminals, and we don't tolerate criminals on our network, and…

We at prgmr.com started accepting bitcoin recently via bitpay, and I think that a payment gateway like bitpay which allows you to accept bitcoin without actually having to hold bitcoins at any point make a huge difference. In the US, bitcoin counts as property which means you can have a capital gain or loss when it is exchanged later, which can become an accounting headache.

The reason we first started really thinking seriously about bitcoin was because existing customers weren't able to get very many US dollars anymore due to economic restrictions in their home country, and without offering bitcoin they couldn't pay us. As long as these sorts of economic constraints exist, there will be a market for bitcoin.

Re: Bitcoin's Shared Ledger Technology: Money's New Operating System

#93

Post by Animats »

chillydawg wrote: post #79
Animats wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Bitcoin seems to be a vehicle for Chinese BTC miners to trade cheap electricity for VC money." I suspect that some of the Chinese BTC mining is simply a way to convert yuan to dollars. That's hard to do from inside China, because the People's Bank of China imposes currency controls. Back in 2013, it was possible to buy Bitcoin with yuan transferred through the banking system within China and sell it outside China fo…

I'm not sure how flooding the market with bitcoin trying to buy USD would drive the USD price of bitcoin up. I think you have something backwards here.

It has nothing to do with driving the price of Bitcoin up. It just turns yuan into dollars or euros, which is otherwise quite difficult.

Re: Bitcoin's Shared Ledger Technology: Money's New Operating System

#94

Post by hollerith »

sn wrote: post #92
Meekro wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not an idiot -- the things you described are very real. I've heard about tons of scams and quite a few dead-end ventures. The 21inc thing sounds pretty bizarre to me as well, but there is more going on in the bitcoin world than just that. I'm involved with a VPS hosting company called ChunkHost, and we've accepted bitcoin for many years. We're not criminals, and we don't tolerate criminals on our network, and…

We at prgmr.com started accepting bitcoin recently via bitpay, and I think that a payment gateway like bitpay which allows you to accept bitcoin without actually having to hold bitcoins at any point make a huge difference. In the US, bitcoin counts as property which means you can have a capital gain or loss when it is exchanged later, which can become an accounting headache. The reason we first started really thinkin…

Economic restriction imposed by the government of the home country or imposed by Western governments?

Re: Bitcoin's Shared Ledger Technology: Money's New Operating System

#95

Post by laurashin »

Hi, I'm the writer who wrote this story. Someone on Twitter alerted me to the conversation. Thanks, Paul Pajo! I didn't get to read the whole thread as I am heading out on a flight today but I just wanted to say that I am coming out with a story tomorrow morning Eastern Time that addresses some (though not all) of the initial question. This is the Forbes page where you can watch for the story. http://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/

One thing I will mention quickly is that the main thrust of my story is that Wall Street is interested in using it to make their own processes more efficient. In a developer economies, because or existing systems work so well, we will have a slower road to consumer adoption than developing economies will. One of the sidebars to the story goes into this a little bit. Plane is pushing back from the gate, so I have to go. But I hope hats helpful.

Re: Bitcoin's Shared Ledger Technology: Money's New Operating System

#96

Post by scintill76 »

2drew3 wrote: post #71
scintill76 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

German police searched a house and seized stuff for months in one case[1], Amazon reversed gift credit in another[2]. Obviously this is no proof that fraud is rampant, but I still lean toward thinking fraud is too likely for me to want to be involved with using purse.io, especially if I wanted a good deal (big discount = more likely it's a carder cashing out a stolen card.) If nothing else these stories show there's…

Restrictions on buyers (unverified users are limited, 6 levels), social verification, behavior analytics (sift science), among others. User was made whole, police dropped the case, and we introduced $10,0000 guarantee. Not an excuse, but we were a team of 2 when that transaction happened, and it was 3 months after we started while we were in an accelerator.

I have to admit, I asked the question rhetorically expecting that nothing has changed, but it's good to know some progress has been made.

Re: Bitcoin's Shared Ledger Technology: Money's New Operating System

#98

Post by laurashin »

This is my followup story, which answers some of the questions about how we'll end up using Bitcoin, and how people in developing economies will likely deal with it more directly than people in developed economies -- at least at first: http://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2015/09/14/bitcoin-blo...
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