Visa Plans to Enable Bitcoin Payments at 70M Merchants • Hacker News Board

Re: Visa Plans to Enable Bitcoin Payments at 70M Merchants

#21

Post by lottin » Wed, Mar 17, 2021, 8:34 PM UTC

imglorp wrote: post #3

Why? Nobody's going to spend the transaction fee, currently about $US16, to buy a coffee. For big items maybe?

People are paying good money for owning a serial number with no connection whatever to anything in the physical or in the virtual world. Don't be surprised if they also gladly pay a ridiculous fee to buy a coffee.

Re: Visa Plans to Enable Bitcoin Payments at 70M Merchants

#22

Post by latchkey » Wed, Mar 17, 2021, 8:34 PM UTC

"Other than Bitcoin, the payment processor also plans to allow for the use of stablecoins."

Re: Visa Plans to Enable Bitcoin Payments at 70M Merchants

#23

Post by cblconfederate » Wed, Mar 17, 2021, 8:34 PM UTC

Call it what you want. Visa is now a second layer and btc is the first haha

Re: Visa Plans to Enable Bitcoin Payments at 70M Merchants

#24

Post by freeone3000 » Wed, Mar 17, 2021, 8:34 PM UTC

RyanShook wrote: post #4

Bitcoin transaction costs are very high so I’m assuming all these payment processor transactions will be off-chain. Do you think that having so many off-chain transactions that are essentially converting USD reduces the perceived value of BTC or raises it?

It sounds more like Visa will let you settle your statement in BTC than actually using it as a processor.

Re: Visa Plans to Enable Bitcoin Payments at 70M Merchants

#25

Post by tryonenow » Wed, Mar 17, 2021, 8:34 PM UTC

I have very little long term faith in BTC at this point. It is effectively centralized, has limited capacity, outrageous fees when the network is busy, and then there are growing concerns over environmental impact...but I'm still holding on to my stash as the growing institutional momentum over the last year or so seems like it might have a significant positive influence on price, before BTC is eventually abandoned.

It's a gamble but it wouldn't surprise me if we saw $100k at this point, might as well let it ride if you've locked in whatever you originally paid for it.

Re: Visa Plans to Enable Bitcoin Payments at 70M Merchants

#26

Post by kevinak » Wed, Mar 17, 2021, 8:36 PM UTC

RyanShook wrote: post #4

Bitcoin transaction costs are very high so I’m assuming all these payment processor transactions will be off-chain. Do you think that having so many off-chain transactions that are essentially converting USD reduces the perceived value of BTC or raises it?

It's just on-chain layer 1 transactions that are somewhat expensive. The lightning network solves this and works great, can do thousands of transactions per second and has close to 0 fees. Feels like magic to use it :)

Re: Visa Plans to Enable Bitcoin Payments at 70M Merchants

#27

Post by tylersmith » Wed, Mar 17, 2021, 8:36 PM UTC

imglorp wrote: post #3

Why? Nobody's going to spend the transaction fee, currently about $US16, to buy a coffee. For big items maybe?

Almost certainly Visa would be acting as a (centralized) transaction aggregater that uses the settlement-layer pattern. There's no value for Visa to provide anywhere else really, other than to use their transaction network to transact the bitcoin asset.

Re: Visa Plans to Enable Bitcoin Payments at 70M Merchants

#28

Post by thebean11 » Wed, Mar 17, 2021, 8:37 PM UTC

postalrat wrote: post #17

thebean11 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would it reduce the value? Off-chain transactions are something the core Bitcoin team are very much in favor of.

That sounds like they are in favor of not using bitcoin.

They are in favor of not using the L1 Bitcoin blockchain for small payments. L2 solutions, both decentralized ones like the lightning network and centralized ones like Visa are still "using Bitcoin" as a currency, even though they are not using the L1 blockchain.

Re: Visa Plans to Enable Bitcoin Payments at 70M Merchants

#29

Post by foepys » Wed, Mar 17, 2021, 8:38 PM UTC

imglorp wrote: post #3

Why? Nobody's going to spend the transaction fee, currently about $US16, to buy a coffee. For big items maybe?

High Bitcoin transaction fees are exactly what's good for Visa. Visa most likely wants to get your Bitcoin first and settle in the merchant's currency. They then sell Bitcoin from different purchases in large on-chain transactions.

Visa can essentially make the fee of a Bitcoin-to-merchant transaction $16 and still be on par with Bitcoin's own transaction fees. Only that you can buy stuff easily.

Re: Visa Plans to Enable Bitcoin Payments at 70M Merchants

#30

Post by gervwyk » Wed, Mar 17, 2021, 8:39 PM UTC

Not directly related, but has anyone looked at Kin [1] recently. Besides btc and eth, they are the only guys with SEC clearance. And given that they are running on the Solana chain, as far as I understand, makes micro transactions possible. Also from a dev point of view, their weekly reward engine payouts is quite attractive! I’m really interested to hear what others think of Kin?

[1] - https://kin.org