Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Visa Plans to Enable Bitcoin Payments at 70M Merchants

btctimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 530 posts

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

#71

Post by Tepix »

kevinak wrote: post #26
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 :)

Why use an outdated planet-killing tech such as butcoin underneath your level 2 bolted on solution when you can use something modern and do it directly on-chain?

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

#72

Post by toomuchtodo »

notyourwork wrote: post #61
purple_ferret wrote: post #57

Misleading Title. Visa says it will allow for Bitcoin to be converted to fiat, and the fiat can be spent using a Visa Card in the same way debit cards already work. This is already done with the Coinbase card, Gemini card, etc The statement is very vague in terms of who is covering the conversion.

It's such an anti-pattern for the world to adopt this approach. Sadly most people don't care nor should have to but the decentralization is effectively moot when payment processors like Visa get involved. Sadly, I'm less and less hopeful that crypto will be what the movement conveyed over last 10 years.

Just as with social media, convenience was more important than sovereignty via decentralization.

Can’t change the wind, have to adjust your sails.

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

#73

Post by k1rcher »

qeternity wrote: post #42
k1rcher wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% agree with you on all points. As a valid replacement for currency, it is inherently flawed. As an investment? A very solid choice. Many seem to have difficulties differentiating between the the two distinct concepts, myself included.

> As an investment? A very solid choice. What’s the thesis?

That's a very good question, one that I don't have an answer to. "A very solid choice" was a very poor choice of phrasing. I was intending to generalize the reasoning behind the recent surges in value and popularity.

My statement was more intended to be a critique on the current perception to the layman. I believe bitcoin and crypto as a whole should be looked on as a currency, rather than a get-quick-rich investment that absolutely anyone with a spare penny can leverage for their own profit.

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

#74

Post by [deleted] »

thebean11 wrote: post #28
postalrat wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

#75

Post by Tepix »

mrkramer wrote: post #38
baby wrote: post #6

Why is everybody betting on bitcoin for payments when there are faster and more stable alternatives in the crypto space? I’m thinking that this is more about a proof of concept to get into the space.

Satoshi said in 2009: "The existing Visa credit card network processes about 15 million Internet purchases per day worldwide. Bitcoin can already scale much larger than that with existing hardware for a fraction of the cost. It never really hits a scale ceiling. If you're interested, I can go over the ways it would cope with extreme size." "By Moore's Law, we can expect hardware speed to be 10 times faster in 5 years…

Then came the bitcoin core wars. Today bitcoin is a technological dead end, unable to evolve.

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

#76

Post by bpodgursky »

notyourwork wrote: post #61
purple_ferret wrote: post #57

Misleading Title. Visa says it will allow for Bitcoin to be converted to fiat, and the fiat can be spent using a Visa Card in the same way debit cards already work. This is already done with the Coinbase card, Gemini card, etc The statement is very vague in terms of who is covering the conversion.

It's such an anti-pattern for the world to adopt this approach. Sadly most people don't care nor should have to but the decentralization is effectively moot when payment processors like Visa get involved. Sadly, I'm less and less hopeful that crypto will be what the movement conveyed over last 10 years.

The tax treatment of crypto as an asset makes it hard to avoid, right?

Otherwise, you have to note the current price of coin in USD each time you use coin to pay for something, because you owe capital gains or losses on whatever currency you liquidated to make the purchase.

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

#77

Post by dizzant »

lottin wrote: post #21
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.

This take on Bitcoin -- not backed by anything in the physical or virtual world -- is misinformed. You're correct that coin isn't specifically backed by anything in the sense that you can't trade it in for a an equivalent asset like gold. But neither is the US dollar. BTC's value is backed at least by the billions that have been spent on mining architecture by companies like MARA and RIOT, large mining pools, producers of mining ASICs, etc. Huge amounts of physical and virtual infrastructure have been created to achieve the current global hash rate, and the stakeholders in that infrastructure have vested interest in the value of Bitcoin remaining high. China is transitioning to digital currency, which lends legitimacy to the technology. There is also a growing collection of institutional owners, such as MicroStrategy, Square, and Tesla's notorious $1.5B buy in.

The USD is backed by "the full faith and confidence of the US Government" since leaving the gold standard. Bitcoin is backed by collective faith and confidence in the security and utility of the underlying blockchain. As more opportunities arise to transact in Bitcoin, its value will tend to stabilize.

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

#78

Post by midasuni »

flatline wrote: post #51
ketamine__ wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's magic until you realize you need to spend $15 to get off chain to buy a coffee. And then you realize you aren't ready to commit a bunch of cash to a speculative currency (or investment) so that you can buy coffee. Also, you will need to file taxes for your coffee if your bitcoin goes up after you bought it. Fun!

You may have been downvoted for a snarky tone, but this is the first time I've seen it mentioned here - bitcoin is taxed as a commodity in the US, each exchange is a capital gain or loss.

If you buy euros with dollars, keep them, then buy dollars back, is that lunged as capital gain/loss?

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

#79

Post by centimeter »

Tepix wrote: post #71
kevinak wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :)

Why use an outdated planet-killing tech such as butcoin underneath your level 2 bolted on solution when you can use something modern and do it directly on-chain?

I assume this is a bad-faith question, given how much it begs the question, but: there is no known solution to the double-spend problem that achieves the same security properties as proof-of-work without consuming energy.

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

#80

Post by centimeter »

CyberDildonics wrote: post #65
kevinak wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :)

That doesn't solve anything, it still has to be synced with the chain so that the balance can be useful to anyone else. The average transaction is around $20 USD and has been around this much for a while. Opening and closing second layer channels is even more expensive than an average transaction. There is no universe where 1.5KB/s in transactions makes sense. Any other cryptocurrency works better, ethereum and bitco…

It doesn't sound like you're familiar with how lightning works. It doesn't have to be "synced with the chain" except during channel opening and closing, which occur infrequently (like on the scale of weeks or months).

> ethereum and bitcoin cash already have more transactions than bitcoin

The eth blockchain is untenably huge (good luck running an ethereum full node), and ethereum fees are often higher than Bitcoin fees.

Post reply on HN