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Ending Bitcoin Support

stripe.com

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Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#591

Post by paulmd »

nebulous1 wrote: post #66
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.

If they "cancel" the transaction but it later ends up getting mined, who pays the fee for the return transaction? Regardless of the answer, variable and large fees really do make this sort of transaction a minefield.

With BitPay at least, you pay fees both ways. They'll refund you whatever they got minus the $40 of transaction fees to get it back to you. And of course they charge you the single-transaction rate, while they do a batch transaction that them costs much less (i.e. they are making money off refunds).

Happened to me a few weeks ago - I tried to buy something and it got confirmed, but not fast enough for Bitpay, and they cancelled the transaction. So I was out the fees both ways. It was unpleasant, but not surprising, given how shoddy the whole system is.

Everything is fees with Bitcoin - fees for transactions, fees for exchanges, fees for mining pools, dev fees for mining applications, etc. There are no end of middlemen, and they all have their hand out. Sure, each of them is providing some legitimate service, but it sure makes 3% merchant fees for Visa look positively cheap in comparison. And did I mention the instant transaction times, the fraud protection, and the complimentary hardware token that's accepted by millions of businesses worldwide!? Try a credit card today!

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#592

Post by nerfhammer »

marshray wrote: post #330
nerfhammer wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the modifier "intrinsic" doesn't add anything though. "people intrinsically like" --> "people like"; "gold is intrinsically valued" --> "gold is valued". "intrinsic" seems to imply an innate persistence despite not being able to justify such innateness, just empirical persistence. It just implies things that are arguably not justifiable needlessly. gold has been persistently valuable. The universe doesn't give it an…

'Intrinsic' here means that the property of the object remains even if people's preferences and culture change. Gold's utility for electronic applications is a fundamental property of the number of atoms in its nucleus, whereas there have been cultures that had it readily available yet didn't find it particularly desirable for jewelry.

gold has intrinsic physical properties, yes. that does not imply a particular intrinsic value to humans relative to other things humans could be exchanging things for.

you could say that the reasons for valuing gold probably aren't going to go away anytime soon as far as anyone can guess. though even then, the market value of gold has fluctuated by a factor of like 10 in recent history as the durable abstract reasons for wanting it have not apparently changed as much. did anything intrinsic about gold change from 1980-1981, when the price crashed 82%?

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#593

Post by tessierashpool »

freehunter wrote: post #512
vec wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If money came in after an hour, they would immediately send an email to the customer asking for a refund address. My understanding is that the customer ate the first fee and Stripe ate the second. We ended up offering free shipping to a bunch of disgruntled customers.

>We ended up offering free shipping to a bunch of disgruntled customers. There are actually bitcoin users out there who aren't up-to-date on how long it takes to process a transaction?

Bitcoin’s tech-savvy early adopters phase was years ago. Users like that are probably the majority now.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#594

Post by QML »

avenoir wrote: post #104
koheripbal wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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?

The real threat to privacy focused coins isn’t government — its competition from within the blockchain space. If the lightning network works, it would effectively hide transaction history and activity similar to how TOR works.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#595

Post by rspeer »

campers wrote: post #569
rblatz wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm shocked at how often tumblers come up on this site. It seems very clear to me that using a tumbler is straight up money laundering.

While there's no doubt they are used for money laundering, they also serve an essential privacy purpose. Imagine if every vendor you made a purchase from with your credit card also received a copy of your entire transaction history with that card. The mafia run business, the fetish porn shop, the megacorp, the government agency. While it wouldn't be that easy to connect a wallets previous transactions to the real wor…

It's not that tumblers are just "used for" money laundering, it's that they are money laundering, definitionally.

All the terrible privacy implications of using Bitcoin that you've described are true. The conclusion "so therefore it's okay if I launder money" does not follow. You could instead not use Bitcoin.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#597

Post by nojvek »

hitekker wrote: post #198
pc wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stripe cofounder here. I think you're reading too much into it. We do think Bitcoin is cool. We're just trying to be as plainspoken and clear as possible about why we're doing what we're doing.

I found the blogpost to be genuine, as far as corporate statements goes. In my opinion, the intimations of a "bad breakup" and of festering resentment, are grounded more in the cryptocurrency-community's insecurities than anything specific to Stripe.

Stripe is a payment company. Bitcoin was a way to pay for goods. Now it’s not.

Bitcoin is no longer the kind of coins you trade for a sandwich. It’s a house that you sit on as an assset and take forever to sell.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#598

Post by rspeer »

gamblor956 wrote: post #429
smallnamespace wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course with enough effort and investment you can probably stop many things, the point is whether the increasing marginal costs of enforcement are worth it to the government and society. By that same argument, the US could round up every illegal immigrant and deport them, or every casual drug user and lock them up for life. We don't do that because it'd be ruinously expensive (not to mention immoral) and transform…

The government doesn't need to go beyond finding the tumbler. Here's how a sample investigation would go: Honeypot drug purchase, paid via bitcoin to DumbSeller. DumbSeller routes bitcoins to tumbler. Using the NSA backdoor in TOR, they trace DumbSeller to VPN service, who they then subpoena. VPN service either complies or gets charged as accomplice to money laundering and other crimes and gives up customer as part o…

Let me give you some more parsimonious paranoia: the tumbler operator is likely already working for the government, or accepting money from governments to forward them DumbSeller's transaction history. Why would they not?

Running a tumbler seems like a great racket if you can cope with the amorality (and particularly if you can rationalize the fact that you're sending money to ISIS with probability approaching 1). People pay you fees in exchange for "privacy", and have no way to tell if they got it.

If there exist tumblers that don't sell their customers' transaction history, in the ruthless capitalist world of Bitcoin, they are easily outcompeted by the ones that do. And a tumbler "customer" has no way to shop around for privacy.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#599

Post by emmanuel_1234 »

gamblor956 wrote: post #429
smallnamespace wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course with enough effort and investment you can probably stop many things, the point is whether the increasing marginal costs of enforcement are worth it to the government and society. By that same argument, the US could round up every illegal immigrant and deport them, or every casual drug user and lock them up for life. We don't do that because it'd be ruinously expensive (not to mention immoral) and transform…

The government doesn't need to go beyond finding the tumbler. Here's how a sample investigation would go: Honeypot drug purchase, paid via bitcoin to DumbSeller. DumbSeller routes bitcoins to tumbler. Using the NSA backdoor in TOR, they trace DumbSeller to VPN service, who they then subpoena. VPN service either complies or gets charged as accomplice to money laundering and other crimes and gives up customer as part o…

Why in the world would one host a VPN service in the US?

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#600

Post by whalabi »

hmcdona1 wrote: post #428
eosrei wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW that is the goal of the Lightning Network on Bitcoin: https://lightning.network/

The lightning network will be far less effective than people are hoping. You have to a) pay to open up a channel with each person you wish to use it, and b) each stake capital in that channel for it to be functional. This is useful only in specific scenarios like exchange-to-exchange transfers. Exchanges are going to be very unlikely to ever set up channels to customers. They haven't even implemented segwit yet, ther…

> You have to a) pay to open up a channel with each person you wish to use it

Bitcoin's lightning network doesn't require you to open a channel for each person you want to pay https://unlikekinds.com/t/bitcoin-s-lightning-network-doesn-...

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