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Ending Bitcoin Support

stripe.com

371–380 of 659 posts

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#371

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…

> What future does an asset have if people don't actually buy stuff with it? Does gold have a future? Nobody buys anything with gold. Also, the Bitcoin blocks are full. Somebody is using it for something.

> Does gold have a future? Nobody buys anything with gold.

As an asset or hedge against inflation. Not as a currency.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With South Korea trying to regulate anonymous trading on Korean exchanges, makes me wonder how long we have before regulations become more widespread. And if this happens do you think privacy coins even stand a chance?

Not only they will stand a chance, they will grow substantially as the only way to mitigate the governments efforts to enforce surveillance and regulations. Darknet exchanges will emerge if not there yet. People have been dreaming of real electronic cash nobody can know you have or give to somebody for so long and wont give up easily. By the way this can even happen to be the way to the new kind of economy that relie…

How does money get in or out of such a system. If you're cut off from all sources of fiat what's the point?

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#373
It is amazing the number of shallow comments shouting doom and gloom over news like this and others (Steam, etc). Must be the end of Bitcoin because transaction fees are too high!

And more generally everyone shouting doom and gloom over high transaction fees.

Let's stop and think about this critically for once. Transaction fees on Bitcoin are high. And that's somehow a bad thing?

By that same logic it's bad that Apple can charge so much for their phones. $800 phones are so ridiculous. No one can buy the phones! And Apple is clearly a failing business because of it.

It's bad that Tesla is able to charge $70k+ for the Model S. Tesla is a failing business with no future prospects. The experiment is over. Time to buy Chevy Volts instead. Everyone sell TSLA because the Model S is too expensive!

The interpretation that high Bitcoin transaction fees is somehow bad and signals the end of Bitcoin is just so ludicrous when subjected to even an ounce of critical thinking.

Bitcoin transaction fees are high because Bitcoin transactions are _valuable_. Because people are willing to pay that much to make a transaction on a network that secures their transaction in an immutable, public record stored redundantly on 10,000+ machines.

We should see this as a massive signal that Bitcoin is _successful_. That demand for its technology grew beyond anyone's wildest dreams.

The fact that Stripe and other payment platforms can no longer use the technology is disappointing, but for different reasons. So to re-iterate my point one last time, Bitcoin has succeeded in the same way that Tesla succeeded. It made a Model S blockchain, and people are clamoring over one another to get access to it.

Of course, I would be remiss to ignore one valid complaint about high fees. Bitcoin's goal was to free the masses from the entrenched banking system. Part of the banking system is making small, every day transactions. In that regard, Bitcoin has yet to succeed. Going back to my analogy, we can see that Tesla hasn't succeeded in a similar regard either; we don't see electric cars in the hands of the average person. But that's not because the technology has failed. That's because we haven't gotten there yet. It's a long road yet.

We'll get there. The world doesn't change in 9 years. The banking system won't be overturned in a decade. But we have a beachhead. Bitcoin is just getting started.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#374

A lot of the chatter in this post is about the underlying value of Bitcoin (and blockchain currency generally) as an asset class. I keep telling folks: yes, it absolutely does have value apart from sentiment; holding a blockchain currency gives you access to all the infrastructure built on that product -- regardless of whether that infrastructure is for exchange, or storage, or smart contracts, or whatever. It follow…

Yes, some of the "dark web" marketplaces are starting to accept Monero now in addition to Bitcoin, for the reason you mentioned. I looked into buying Stellar but it was surprisingly difficult to buy, and the Stellar Desktop client was just confusing. I love Stellar conceptually but am not sure it's a good "investment" (if it was hard for me to buy/use I'm thinking it will be hard for others, too).

Hmmm good points. I'll have to think about that one a bit more. Cardano and Monero are both friends I would go to the wall for, though :)

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#375
post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Use bitcoin with lightning.

Money is serious business, why would anyone rely on a network that was released days ago? Also it defeats the main guarantee of Bitcoin - that everything can be trusted. Bitcoin would have had a great future if the big guys werent so greedy and sacrifised a little of their wealth for the benefit of the whole community. Since they refused to do so (=refusing any attempt to make BTC transfers faster and cheaper) the ne…

It does not take days and it's not more than 30 bucks to send.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With South Korea trying to regulate anonymous trading on Korean exchanges, makes me wonder how long we have before regulations become more widespread. And if this happens do you think privacy coins even stand a chance?

Not only they will stand a chance, they will grow substantially as the only way to mitigate the governments efforts to enforce surveillance and regulations. Darknet exchanges will emerge if not there yet. People have been dreaming of real electronic cash nobody can know you have or give to somebody for so long and wont give up easily. By the way this can even happen to be the way to the new kind of economy that relie…

> they will grow substantially as the only way to mitigate the governments efforts to enforce surveillance and regulations

Cash comes with substantial privacy benefits. It's also inconvenient. TL; DR Most people trade privacy for convenience.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly what the authorities will do. In fact it'll be extraordinarily trivial for the G30 to regulate Monero et al. out of common use in larger markets if they want to. If you want to use it, you'll be a financial criminal, 99.9% of people in the G30 will avoid it accordingly.

It's not so simple. You only need one exchange, anywhere in the world, that will exchange Monero for non-banned cryptos, and the market will flow freely.

> You only need one exchange, anywhere in the world, that will exchange Monero for non-banned cryptos

Have you seen how the United States enforces sanctions?

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#378
post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But only a one-way retail value. No diamond dealer will give you anything close to their retail price, when you try to sell them diamonds.

I always wonder about this when I see films where criminals mastermind a plan to steal diamonds.

Maybe they have a diamond shop somewhere.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#379
post #289

Stripe’s entire business is built on credit card transactions. They added half assed bitcoin support and then killed it. This makes sense for a company that has every incentive to prolong a move away from credit cards. As soon as we switch to a decentralized “currency” stripes business will begin its decline.

I run a midsize ecommerce site and, from where I'm sitting, Stripe looks at least as essential in a crypto economy as they are now. We don't want to handle the mechanics of refunds. We don't want to handle the mechanics of disputes. We don't want to get scammed because we screwed up some small detail of our payment layer. We certainly don't want to do our internal accounting in more than one currency, crypto or other…

Wow. The short-sightedness in this comment is astounding. Check out on some of those "advantages" that trusting those thirdparties can mean for you:

https://www.google.fi/search?q=paypal+destroyed+my+business&...

https://www.google.fi/search?q=amazon+destroyed+my+business&...

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#380
post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have a policy of _always_ changing it to match the title of the linked article. Most of the time this is either an improvement or (as in this case) neutral. I do wish they'd allow a little more editorializing, quite frankly. The linked title is not _always_ an improvement.

Ah! That's interesting, I didn't realize it was an official policy. Given that, wouldn't it make sense to generate the post titles from the element of the link automatically?

Title changes are still allowed when the title is too long, misleading, or provides no information about the contents.
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