Earlier quoted context omitted.
I disagree; the value provided by credit cards is the 0% APR 1-month unsecured loan that pays your transaction. This creates an ton of flexibility and by definition the rewards cost is returned to the buyer. 3% transaction fee means 0.1-0.2% to visanet, 2% in rewards and more than likely a large portion of the remainder is the cost of originating and serving that loan.
The rewards cost is returned to some, and is an expensive tax on others. If cheap float is desired, deposit account providers can provide it directly (some forward fintechs already do this).
Visa May Add Cryptocurrencies to Its Payments Network, Says CEO
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Re: Visa May Add Cryptocurrencies to Its Payments Network, Says CEO
#112Unless, of course, you use places like Coinbase that pool transactions or bypass the network altogether, but then... what's the point of cryptocurrency?
Re: Visa May Add Cryptocurrencies to Its Payments Network, Says CEO
#113Great, let’s all accelerate climate change even faster.
I hear this argument a lot and have a genuine question. How does Bitcoin electricity usage compare to something that achieves a similar goal? A good example is gold—many people compare Bitcoin to gold. What are the relative electricity costs of the two, and does that justify the cost of either asset? This would take into account the electricity costs of mining, labor, supply chain, storage, etc.
Re: Visa May Add Cryptocurrencies to Its Payments Network, Says CEO
#114Have you used cryptocurrency for payments lately? Unless you want to pay $25 to wait 6 hours while your transaction is confirming, stick to venmo/zelle/paypal/etc... Unless, of course, you use places like Coinbase that pool transactions or bypass the network altogether, but then... what's the point of cryptocurrency?
Re: Visa May Add Cryptocurrencies to Its Payments Network, Says CEO
#115Have you used cryptocurrency for payments lately? Unless you want to pay $25 to wait 6 hours while your transaction is confirming, stick to venmo/zelle/paypal/etc... Unless, of course, you use places like Coinbase that pool transactions or bypass the network altogether, but then... what's the point of cryptocurrency?
Re: Visa May Add Cryptocurrencies to Its Payments Network, Says CEO
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bitcoin allows transactions in the future. Thats effectively the same as a chargeback, since the sender of the money can decide at any point up to the time of the actual transfer to send the money elsewhere. You could theoretically design a hardware wallet (like a credit card) to only sign transactions three days into the future. That would give you three days to 'charge back' anything you don't like. Not sure mercha…
That's not really the same thing. A chargeback is mediated by a trusted third party, and the merchant knows that if they are reputable and do what they're supposed to, they'll get (usually) paid. Future (possibly reversible) payments don't really give the merchant the same risk cap that a credit card authorization does.
You can build more complex schemes where the third party can't just keep the money for themselves too.
Re: Visa May Add Cryptocurrencies to Its Payments Network, Says CEO
#117Re: Visa May Add Cryptocurrencies to Its Payments Network, Says CEO
#118You don’t pay for things from your brokerage fund by cashing out your QQQ shares. You don’t pay for things with the gold in your home safe. You don’t keep funds in a foreign currency in your home country for everyday purchases. There is no use of bitcoin for which this seems well-suited.
All the things you listed are not identical to the new, very different asset class that is Bitcoin, so how can you deduce facts about Bitcoin from them?
E.g. they can't be transferred as easily as scanning a QR code with your smartphone, you can't store them in your brain, they can be de-valuated by governments, and so on.
Re: Visa May Add Cryptocurrencies to Its Payments Network, Says CEO
#119Have you used cryptocurrency for payments lately? Unless you want to pay $25 to wait 6 hours while your transaction is confirming, stick to venmo/zelle/paypal/etc... Unless, of course, you use places like Coinbase that pool transactions or bypass the network altogether, but then... what's the point of cryptocurrency?
Those take much longer than 6 hours to "confirm", no? The sender can chargeback these transactions months after the money shows up in your account.
You don't even need to wait for confirmations unless the sum is huge. It's quite safe to accept most 0conf transactions.
Re: Visa May Add Cryptocurrencies to Its Payments Network, Says CEO
#120Have you used cryptocurrency for payments lately? Unless you want to pay $25 to wait 6 hours while your transaction is confirming, stick to venmo/zelle/paypal/etc... Unless, of course, you use places like Coinbase that pool transactions or bypass the network altogether, but then... what's the point of cryptocurrency?
Nobody forces merchants to stick to requiring block confirmations for e.g. Bitcoin transactions.
They just do it because that's the way it always has been.
Instead of that, for low price purchases, they could also monitor the network for how well-spread a transaction is and once it is sufficiently propagated assume that a double-spend won't be possible anymore because miners will refuse to accept a transaction which conflicts with the one they saw much earlier.
And "well-spread" would be typically the case within seconds because transactions are flooded to all network nodes as they appear.