Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ending Bitcoin Support

stripe.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

521–530 of 659 posts

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#521

Post by tuna-piano »

ActsJuvenile wrote: post #71
vec wrote: post #18

For what it's worth, we just spent two weeks trying and failing to get Stripe's Bitcoin integration working on our site. The short version is that Stripe guaranteed a USD BTC exchange rate for an hour, after which they would automatically cancel the transaction. Given that most transactions now take well over an hour to be verified on the blockchain, that means basically every transaction fails.

I am curious why you wanted Bitcoin on your site. It has been dead as a payment mechanism for a long time. BitPay is a dead man walking, save for all the mining hardware purchases denominated in Bitcoins.

The PR value! People write stories about you when you accept Bitcoin!

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#522

Post by tptacek »

ujal wrote: post #519
tedunangst wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes I wonder what percentage of the people talking about all the things one can do with bitcoin in Zimbabwe have been to Zimbabwe and done those things.

In this case I was the child of my parent. But given that people over there are selling their cattle with bitcoins it seems not too far off.

Are they transacting in bitcoin, or simply using bitcoin as a device to evade capital controls? There are lots of ways to get around capital controls, and bitcoin may very well be an effective way to do that, but that's not evidence of bitcoin's utility as a mainstream currency.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#523

Post by dcarmo »

hndamien wrote: post #513
dmoy wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gold has value because it's shiny, doesn't oxidize, is malleable enough to easily form conspicuous jewelry, is much rarer than base mining elements, and is not cheap to extract. The not oxidizing and rarity are key. E.g. platinum is also not cheap. Aluminium is close but it's orders of magnitude more common, and still oxidizes a little.

Value as a currency.

Because it's rare.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#524

Post by tuna-piano »

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.

Even the mighty platinum has fallen:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/platin...

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#525

Post by vkou »

nol13 wrote: post #481
vkou wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those darknet markets are only used to buy illegal things, or circumvent currency controls. I understand using a darknet to buy heroin and assassinations, but why on earth would I want to use a darknet market to buy a car? To pay my rent?

So all the spammers/scammers can't see what car you just bought and how much you paid for it and use it for spear phishing?

They can't see how much I paid for a car when I paid with a cheque either. This is not a problem that I, or 99% of human beings have.

Again - what is the darknet supposed to protect me from?

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#526

Post by nikcub »

spookthesunset wrote: post #515
nikcub wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You have to a) pay to open up a channel with each person you wish to use it This simply isn't true. You open one channel and then payments are routed over channels to your destination. It's no different to TCP/IP in this way and the reason why that analogy is used a lot in describing the network Having a one channel single destination can be done with Bitcoin alone and the new timelock transactions - the purpose of…

> If you've been kicking yourself about not getting into Bitcoin early - you have a new opportunity with Lightning now. Why not just delete the rest of your post and just leave this? This once sentence is what really drives all of the rest of your breathless hype. Naked greed. It's the only thing the entire crypto "space" has. Lightning network is pure vaporware. It was "coming any day now" when Mt Gox collapsed. It'…

You'll be happy to hear then that a lot of progress has been made on Lightning since MtGox imploded

I probably should have linked to these from my original comment - rather than removing anything

Specifically with lnd the lightning daemon[0], BOLT's (the equivalent of Bitcoin BIP's) 1 through to 11 have been implemented in the core daemon[1]

There is also the Neutrino light client[2] (screenshot [3])

Far from being vaporware - you're only a few docker commands away from trying it out yourself[4]

[0] https://github.com/lightningnetwork/lnd

[1] https://github.com/lightningnetwork/lightning-rfc

[2] https://github.com/lightninglabs/neutrino

[3] https://blog.lightning.engineering/assets/images/app-chans-g...

[4] https://github.com/lightningnetwork/lnd/tree/master/docker#c...

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#527

Post by skellera »

spookthesunset wrote: post #515
nikcub wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You have to a) pay to open up a channel with each person you wish to use it This simply isn't true. You open one channel and then payments are routed over channels to your destination. It's no different to TCP/IP in this way and the reason why that analogy is used a lot in describing the network Having a one channel single destination can be done with Bitcoin alone and the new timelock transactions - the purpose of…

> If you've been kicking yourself about not getting into Bitcoin early - you have a new opportunity with Lightning now. Why not just delete the rest of your post and just leave this? This once sentence is what really drives all of the rest of your breathless hype. Naked greed. It's the only thing the entire crypto "space" has. Lightning network is pure vaporware. It was "coming any day now" when Mt Gox collapsed. It'…

Bitcoin is the multi-level marketing of millennials.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#528

Post by travisjungroth »

marshray wrote: post #137
eropple wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could also replace it with money, which one can readily and easily, through systems with well-understood protocols that are agreed upon by participants in those systems, exchange for goods and services. (Even the Lightning Network people don't think you should use it with money. Not that that's likely to be a problem, what with it being for Bitcoin and all. Stripe also doesn't support any other commodities as me…

In fact, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange live cattle futures contract is deliverable, whereas the Bitcoin contract is settled in US dollars. I.e., the biggest US commodities exchange literally considers live cattle to be more practical to deliver than Bitcoin. To me this suggests Bitcoin is not actually a good medium of exchange. http://www.cmegroup.com/rulebook/CME/II/100/101/101.pdf https://www.cmegroup.com/conflue…

I think this is not overvaluing the utility of Bitcoin, but undervaluing the utility of cattle. I, for one, am very bullish on bovine-based exchange.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#529

Post by hluch »

koheripbal wrote: post #49
vec wrote: post #18

For what it's worth, we just spent two weeks trying and failing to get Stripe's Bitcoin integration working on our site. The short version is that Stripe guaranteed a USD BTC exchange rate for an hour, after which they would automatically cancel the transaction. Given that most transactions now take well over an hour to be verified on the blockchain, that means basically every transaction fails.

I honestly don't know what use-case remains for Bitcoin. If you have large value transactions you'd probably choose something with privacy like Monero, and if you want something cheap and fast, maybe Bitcoin Cash. In both use-cases, you have a few competing alternatives. In no circumstance is Bitcoin preferable to one of the mature alternatives. ...and if no one is using it as a transaction medium, then acting as a s…

There are several use cases.

1. Paying merchants who don't accept any other cryptocurrency (which is the majority of the available ones; typically they accept fiat in some form, plus Bitcoin since it's been around so long, but have barely heard of others).

2. Donations, same as above.

3. As an onramp from fiat to other cryptocurrencies, where those are accepted and Bitcoin BTC transaction fees for 1 confirmation in a reasonable time are an excessively high portion of the transaction amount.

4. For cryptocurrency payments which need the very highest possible level of security against double-spends, which is provided by Bitcoin's hashrate and decentralization, arising from there being a mature community around it. As far as I can tell, none of the other currencies have equally good metrics, though they do approach it.

Plus a few more.

And not forgetting that Bitcoin Core could in future raise the block size, making each unit increase sharply in utility and value, beyond its natural deflationary increase.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#530

Post by [deleted] »

jugchock wrote: post #485
stanmancan wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a few different ones that have made huge jumps forward; RaiBlocks can apparently do around 7,000tx/s.

Steem regularly processes 1.5 million transactions per day and is at 0.13% capacity[1]. If my math is right, that comes out to the ability to process 14k tx/s. [1]: http://www.blocktivity.info

[deleted]
Post reply on HN