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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

#161

Post by piracy1 »

MisterSandman wrote: post #145
piracy1 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that true of everything? If you were an early adopter of America you could get free land that today could be worth hundreds of millions.

That's a valid analogy but also on a much longer time frame. Bitcoin increased in value orders of magnitude quicker than the value of land in the US. If somebody who bought a house 5 years ago was selling it for 100 times today, you bet your ass people would be mad.

Do they have any greater claim to being mad though? It makes you see it more clearly but I do not think it makes it worse. Besides, for most people they just were not alive when it was possible to claim land and nobody left them any. You could have seen crypto you just didn't, in most cases. I think that makes people more mad but once again I do not think it makes it more unjust, just the opposite.

Re: Visa May Add Cryptocurrencies to Its Payments Network, Says CEO

#162

Post by pjc50 »

doggosphere wrote: post #37
pjc50 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not protecting from uncertainty with a currency whose value fluctuates against the dollar by 10% daily on a regular basis.

Do you think volatility will be the same 10 years from now? 20 years? If so, why? I think volatility will down as volume and scale increase.

I don't think there are good reasons to use bitcoin, and I think much of the existing interest is a demand for volatility, in the same way as people are piling into GameStop.

Re: Visa May Add Cryptocurrencies to Its Payments Network, Says CEO

#163

Post by colejohnson66 »

arcticbull wrote: post #125
CyberDildonics wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only is that not true, it's against the terms of service of credit card companies for a business to do that. You might only see them in gas stations, but it is much more likely that those are the local businesses you go to the most, since those are the ones working around the credit card merchant contracts.

No, it’s not. It is not against the terms and conditions of any credit card network in the US for a merchant to offer a cash discount. Terms of service which prohibit that are illegal under 15 USC 1666f [1]. This changed a number of years ago (more than 5 but less than 10, I don’t recall which year, but I was working in the payments space at the time [edit it was the FBCA in 2013]). For what it’s worth I believe cash…

So they can’t have a surcharge, but they can just raise everything 10¢/gal then “discount” cash purchases. It’s the same thing, so why is one illegal but not the other?

Not to mention that many government services charge an outrageously large “processing fee” (in the multiple dollar amount) for card purchases. They literally would rather I write them a check and go in person than just go online and use a card. How does that work with the law you cited?

Re: Visa May Add Cryptocurrencies to Its Payments Network, Says CEO

#164

Post by hiq »

eMGm4D0zgUAVXc7 wrote: post #136
hiq wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Miners will refuse to accept a transaction which conflicts with the one they saw much earlier. At the very least there's no guarantee of that. If you send a conflicting transaction with a higher fee, a miner should (rationally) discard the older one. And last I checked (Ethereum, a few years ago), that was indeed what they were doing.

With Bitcoin you have to enable the "replace by fee" flag on a transaction to allow that. Merchants could check transactions for if it is set. If miners did change their Bitcoin nodes to facilitate double spending even with RBF disabled, that would erode trust in Bitcoin and thereby de-valuate it, which is probably not in the interest of miners. They'd damage the thing they're heavily invested in.

> With Bitcoin you have to enable the "replace by fee" flag on a transaction to allow that.

Description of the "replace by fee" mechanism you're mentioning: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Replace_by_fee

This page mentions that it is a "node policy", and from your comment I think we both agree that nothing in the protocol (which roughly guarantees that Bitcoin is fine as long as 51% of the hashing power belongs to benevolent actors) ensures these rules are in place.

Now, you're saying there would be some reputational damage which leads to devaluation which is bad for Bitcoin, so bad for miners, so they wouldn't do that.

This will not happen until such payments represent a big share of Bitcoin transactions. In particular, if a few merchants were to start accepting transactions that are not mined and just propagated, they could easily be "victims" (again, it's economically rational for miners) of double spending and there would be no impact on the valuation of Bitcoin.

Re: Visa May Add Cryptocurrencies to Its Payments Network, Says CEO

#165

Post by Mc_Big_G »

lxe wrote: post #112

Have 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?

This is FUD. I've never waited more than 5 min and paid pennies to transfer funds for a variety of cryptocurrencies.

Re: Visa May Add Cryptocurrencies to Its Payments Network, Says CEO

#166

Post by Mc_Big_G »

xirbeosbwo1234 wrote: post #43
shanecoin wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Bitcoin is in the same league as all datacenters in the world combined . Datacenters use about 205 TWh/year. https://www.networkworld.com/article/3531316/data-center-pow... Bitcoin uses about 75 TWh/year. https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption Visa operates out of just two datacenters. They are famously secretive about their operations so I don't know how much power they use. The most I've found is that…

What about all the cascading costs to run all non-crypto financial systems? Not just data centers, but everything related like infrastructure, real estate, credit card readers, point of sale systems, office furniture, salaries, etc... The list goes on and on. If crypto was used globally, much of these costs and energy waste would disappear.

Also, some currencies like Ethereum are moving to proof of stake, which requires less energy.

Re: Visa May Add Cryptocurrencies to Its Payments Network, Says CEO

#167

Post by doggosphere »

thrashh wrote: post #96
doggosphere wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think volatility will be the same 10 years from now? 20 years? If so, why? I think volatility will down as volume and scale increase.

I think the fact that no one controls Bitcoin is actually a major downside. The Fed does a lot of work to keep USD stable (alongside being part of a a stable government). I trust the USD as long as I trust in the institution.

Everyone trusts their government when things are going good.

When you stop trusting the USD/central bank, what will you turn to?

Re: Visa May Add Cryptocurrencies to Its Payments Network, Says CEO

#168

Post by doggosphere »

delaaxe wrote: post #77
daptaq wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Digital crypto assets like Bitcoin or Ethereum will exist alongside them. Bitcoin can be an asset like gold, of which users keep a portion of their networth to protect from economic uncertainty. Seems improbable, as it is far less stable than Gold. From what I see, it is almost never used as a currency, and almost always as a speculative asset. The main indicator for me is that Bitcoin is always measured in Dollars…

Gold is also almost never used as a currency. BTC's product market fit is store of value, not medium of exchange

Gold was a currency. It evolved from rocks in the dirt, to gold coinage, to paper coupons, to whatever the hell instrument it is today.

You stored your gold in a bank, and the bank gave you paper coupons to redeem it. People traded the coupons because it was easier than trading the gold. This is the birth of modern day banking.

Re: Visa May Add Cryptocurrencies to Its Payments Network, Says CEO

#169

Post by arcticbull »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #163
arcticbull wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it’s not. It is not against the terms and conditions of any credit card network in the US for a merchant to offer a cash discount. Terms of service which prohibit that are illegal under 15 USC 1666f [1]. This changed a number of years ago (more than 5 but less than 10, I don’t recall which year, but I was working in the payments space at the time [edit it was the FBCA in 2013]). For what it’s worth I believe cash…

So they can’t have a surcharge , but they can just raise everything 10¢/gal then “discount” cash purchases. It’s the same thing, so why is one illegal but not the other? Not to mention that many government services charge an outrageously large “processing fee” (in the multiple dollar amount) for card purchases. They literally would rather I write them a check and go in person than just go online and use a card. How d…

> So they can’t have a surcharge, but they can just raise everything 10¢/gal then “discount” cash purchases. It’s the same thing, so why is one illegal but not the other?

That was the case prior to 1666f. Now, both "credit surcharges" and "cash discounts" are permitted.

It was just a perspective thing, card brands didn't want to have cards feel "disadvantaged" relative to cash. Instead they had cash "advantaged" related to credit. It was never illegal to do either, this change just rendered terms of service which included them unenforceable.

Re: Visa May Add Cryptocurrencies to Its Payments Network, Says CEO

#170

Post by machiaweliczny »

tal8d wrote: post #160
freeone3000 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's absolutely failed as a currency because nobody actually wants to accept it as payment for services. Digital gold? Sure, complete with late-night advertisements -- and nobody actually owning actual gold. The fundamentals of bitcoin are completely orthogonal to its current purpose as a speculation vehicle.

Oops, that is the other one - "digital gold". The litecoin people really latched onto that one, declaring themselves to be silver. There was already a digital gold a few year before bitcoin (something about an eagle, or the Liberty Bell...), it was a gold backed paypal that was quickly destroyed by the feds. So no, bitcoin isn't "digital gold".

According to Hayek fed wont ever allow such thing as long as they have power over it, so I'm not suprised. Maybe they don't have enough power over bitcoin?
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