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Ending Bitcoin Support

stripe.com

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Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#181

Post by ImSkeptical »

piyh wrote: post #85
0xcafecafe wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gold as a metal has an inherent value though. If not only for jewelry, it also has important uses in electronics. The value associated with bitcoin seems purely sentimental.

Jewelry doesn't have inherent value. Guns, cars, food and shelter has inherent value. Gold has been a luxury good long before it had any practical applications.

If you want to make this argument, then guns, shelter, food etc have no inherent value, if you don't value survival. Gold, and jewelry, have been appreciated for millennia as pretty objects. Pretty objects improve life quality - and so, if you care about life, you can say that gold has some inherent value.

Finally, you could also reduce it to the fact that possession and distribution of pretty objects can increase your likelihood of reproduction. From an evolutionary standpoint, access to reproduction is an inherently valuable thing.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#182

Post by Klathmon »

underwires wrote: post #140
Klathmon wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A full-scale LN needs one transaction to get on the network, then loading and unloading can happen entirely on the network, as well as keeping the channel open indefinitely. Obviously getting to that point will take quite a lot of work, but there is no reason why you ever need to close a payment channel unless someone is trying to break the rules (and if that happens, you'll be happy, because you'll end up with all o…

But (correct me if I'm wrong) payment channels are connected to particular sets of recipients, but not necessarily any and all recipients. Your money is locked into that channel until you close it. You might need to open a different channel to reach your actual recipient.

No, you are missing the "network" part of "Lightning Network" it uses an onion-routing-like protocol to allow you to pay "through" other people.

So if I have a channel with you, and you have one with coinbase, I can buy bitcoin from coinbase through you without ever opening another channel, entirely counterparty-risk-free.

And in that scenario if you "refuse" to relay my transaction, or you try to do something sneeky like broadcast an old transaction that we made where I had .1 BTC and you had .9 BTC, that's breaking the agreement we have made and I can broadcast a counter-transaction to the blockchain proper which gives me all of the money in the channel (1 BTC).

And if I try to backstab you by broadcasting the "give me all the money" transaction when you haven't done anything wrong, you have a "counter-counter-transaction" you can broadcast that forces all the money in the channel to you (1 BTC). (and the counter-counter-transaction only works if you HAVE NOT broadcast the original transaction)

There is a bit more complexity to it, but that's the gist.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#183

Post by Meekro »

nvk wrote: post #8

They should have replaced it with Lightning Network, is amazingly fast and cheap and works on top of Bitcoin. I'm running a test node, this stuff really works! > Lightning is a decentralized network using smart contract functionality in the blockchain to enable instant payments across a network of participants. In case you are curious https://lightning.network and another good resource here https://www.reddit.com/r/B…

The lightning network will not work. Yes, you can run a node and connect to ACINQ's lightning hub (called endurance), and you can even buy coffee at https://starblocks.acinq.co, their lightning demo site, but that demo was designed to be misleading. The only reason it works is because the endurance hub has locked up its own funds in a channel with Starblocks -- and it's no surprise that it did, since both are owned by the same company.

Let's say I wanted to set up a competing coffee shop, Starbricks (now with a brick of coffee in every cup!) I could certainly connect my own lightning node to the endurance lightning hub, but no one could pay me through that hub because the hub would first have to commit its own funds to its side of a payment channel with me. It won't do that, and I have no way to even ask it to, so I can't get paid unless every buyer opens a channel with me directly. And if they did that, it would be slower and more costly than just sending a Bitcoin transaction in the first place.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#184

Post by masklinn »

emodendroket wrote: post #174
EnFinlay wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading your comment finally made it click to me why cryptocurrencies (specifically Bitcoin) are distinct from a gold bar or other non-currency stores of value. A gold bar is going to remain a gold bar forever, people's perception of its value will change even though the supply will remain mostly steady, but it will stay a gold bar no matter what. Bitcoin may change in value based on perception, it's supply will rema…

To be fair, people could also stop thinking gold is worth much. Maybe a modern-day alchemist finally figures out the formula. I don't know. Probably far less likely than the Bitcoin scenarios though.

> To be fair, people could also stop thinking gold is worth much.

They've already noted that:

> people's perception of its value will change

But as they say, a gold bar will remain a gold bar, until and unless it is actively destroyed. Not so for bitcoins, which only remain so as long as they're actively maintained (not just individual coins but the mining networks which allows the creation of new transactions)

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#185

Post by sincerely »

blueprint wrote: post #135
munchbunny wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"In testing phase" is probably not good enough for Stripe to roll out to their customers. I think what they meant was "we're just not seeing enough usage of Bitcoin payments to justify the costs of supporting it." Which is perfectly fair.

That's why I said "wait". Do you know how long it's been in testing? Do you know how close it is to readiness?

Lightning has been close to readiness for what seems like an eternity. It's an exciting prospect to be sure (centralization worries aside) but I think it's important to keep our expectations reasonable. The long term future of cryptos is harmed by baseless hype.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#186

Post by sonoffett »

emodendroket wrote: post #174
EnFinlay wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading your comment finally made it click to me why cryptocurrencies (specifically Bitcoin) are distinct from a gold bar or other non-currency stores of value. A gold bar is going to remain a gold bar forever, people's perception of its value will change even though the supply will remain mostly steady, but it will stay a gold bar no matter what. Bitcoin may change in value based on perception, it's supply will rema…

To be fair, people could also stop thinking gold is worth much. Maybe a modern-day alchemist finally figures out the formula. I don't know. Probably far less likely than the Bitcoin scenarios though.

Or asteroid mining

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#187

Post by root_axis »

EnFinlay wrote: post #164
nulagrithom wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What future does an asset have if people don't actually buy stuff with it? I look at it (maybe naively) like a solid gold bar. You're not going to walk in to a convenience store and pay with a bar of solid gold; you might flee the country with one though. Beyond that, I totally agree with your read on the post. Linking the pull request[0] was especially backhanded. It feels like there's some underlying frustration…

Reading your comment finally made it click to me why cryptocurrencies (specifically Bitcoin) are distinct from a gold bar or other non-currency stores of value. A gold bar is going to remain a gold bar forever, people's perception of its value will change even though the supply will remain mostly steady, but it will stay a gold bar no matter what. Bitcoin may change in value based on perception, it's supply will rema…

> it's supply will remain constant after it has all been mined

Even this could change if the miners and thought-leaders decide that it should.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#188

Post by nikanj »

montrose wrote: post #15

This reads a bit like the sort of things people say when breaking up so as not to upset the other person too much. You're a great person, but you're just more of an asset than a medium of exchange, and what I need in my life right now is a medium of exchange. What future does an asset have if people don't actually buy stuff with it? That is not a purely rhetorical question; cryptocurrencies change things a lot. But t…

I never bought anything _with_ real estate, stocks or gold. I always traded them for fiat currency first.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#189

Post by masklinn »

CPLX wrote: post #159
marshray wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very little though. If the demand for gold were merely industrial it would not need to be mined in such quantities as it has throughout history. I would put jewelry in the 'sentimental' category as well. Not only is Bitcoin purely sentimental, it represents has huge costs in the form of raw energy. Bitcoin's only claim to value is that it is an artifact of an act of ritual sacrifice. One might imagine a precedent in…

Gold has "real" demand though in jewelry. It's distributed and longstanding and it has utility. People wear it and use it in real life and value it and wish to keep it in order to look at it and possess it. That's as tangible as anything else. Nobody would say that there's no demand for musical instruments, or baseballs, because they are optional parts of life that aren't food or shelter. Gold has intrinsic value in…

marshray never denied any of that, they just pointed out that the intrinsic value of gold is significantly lower than their valuation.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#190

Post by neosavvy »

notatoad wrote: post #153
criddell wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the secondary use of all the shares of AMZN one might have in their eTrade account? That's also just data, right?

the value backing AMZN shares is the value of the utility that amazon, inc provides to society.

I agree, I was discussing the total market cap of all coin offerings in general as being around $500B which is just over half of the value of Apple.

I'd take ownership in Apple all day over any coin, as I suspect more people out there value the Apple Stock over the ever-increasingly tough to exchange Bitcoin.

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