Of possible interest, Moon, a company in our our accelerator cohort, lets people pay with crypto on any website that accepts credit cards: https://paywithmoon.com/
Accepting Bitcoin as a Small Business – 4 Years In, No Customers
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Re: Accepting Bitcoin as a Small Business – 4 Years In, No Customers
#12There is still a pretty good chance that with Lightning it will change, because of minimal transaction costs, speed and scalability.
Re: Accepting Bitcoin as a Small Business – 4 Years In, No Customers
#13Bitcoin has the same sort of issues that plague Linux Desktop and why Linux never took off as the defacto standard for PC OS. It’s the lack of user focus. Setting up a bitcoin account, understanding the security implications, hardware wallet, secret keys, the whole enchilada is too big for an average consumer to digest. Somewhere in Jobs’ biography by Walter Isaacson, there is a snippet about how products often fail…
This is a really good comparison that I had never thought of. You are 100% right, the user experience for BTC is terrible and not likely to get a whole lot better. Even coinbase can be a PITA sometimes, it's really the Ubuntu of the crypto-currency world IMHO.
Also quick question: When was the last time you thought about the swipe-fees for your CC? I'll answer for you: Never. Yet with BTC and other crypto's this is a concern. And please, don't even talk about "Oh it's gotten better with the lightning network" or "The new QRS spec will speed this up", it's really just embarrassing.
Re: Accepting Bitcoin as a Small Business – 4 Years In, No Customers
#14Bitcoin is the most expensive method of payment when you factor the difference between exchangers and merchant gateways(i.e try using bitpay). It is more expensive than gift cards. Not to mention that the volatitlity puts the clients in a pretty bad situation.
Re: Accepting Bitcoin as a Small Business – 4 Years In, No Customers
#15Of possible interest, Moon, a company in our our accelerator cohort, lets people pay with crypto on any website that accepts credit cards: https://paywithmoon.com/
Why does it require a Coinbase account?
Re: Accepting Bitcoin as a Small Business – 4 Years In, No Customers
#16There is still a pretty good chance that with Lightning it will change, because of minimal transaction costs, speed and scalability.
I've been hearing about Lightning for a couple years now, is this the new Duke Nukem 3d/Perl 6 or what?
Re: Accepting Bitcoin as a Small Business – 4 Years In, No Customers
#17The only time I ever paid with bitcoin was for likely-illegal pharmaceuticals. And that’s only because that’s all the online pharmacy accepted.
I can’t imagine it’s much useful as a payment system for much other than that.
Re: Accepting Bitcoin as a Small Business – 4 Years In, No Customers
#18Bitcoin has the same sort of issues that plague Linux Desktop and why Linux never took off as the defacto standard for PC OS. It’s the lack of user focus. Setting up a bitcoin account, understanding the security implications, hardware wallet, secret keys, the whole enchilada is too big for an average consumer to digest. Somewhere in Jobs’ biography by Walter Isaacson, there is a snippet about how products often fail…
I have a better analogy: Bitcoin has the same sort of issues as TCP/IP. It's weird that people are expected to interact with it on the protocol level.
I think the term "cryptocurrency" is the "Big Data" of 2018. The term itself has been somewhat tarnished, but the underlying technology is super useful and will find its way into a lot of applications.
And no, I don't mean "blockchain". I mean Bitcoin... it's rather nice as a business or individual to be able to send large amounts of money around the world without snaking through the nightmare that is international banking. Inherent in that idea is the notion that the coin itself has value independent of a particular application.
Re: Accepting Bitcoin as a Small Business – 4 Years In, No Customers
#19There is still a pretty good chance that with Lightning it will change, because of minimal transaction costs, speed and scalability.
I've been hearing about Lightning for a couple years now, is this the new Duke Nukem 3d/Perl 6 or what?
No, Lightning has been released. It works. There are multiple implementations. It isn't perfect. Version 1.1 should fix a lot of the shortcomings.
Re: Accepting Bitcoin as a Small Business – 4 Years In, No Customers
#20I personally never got into, because it's not private. No regular person can verify their transactions without joining a public vehicle that requires a credit card. Even bitcoin atms require a photograph of your face. Mining is a huge loss of value.
Bitcoin itself was simply never a good idea for most people.