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Visa Plans to Enable Bitcoin Payments at 70M Merchants

btctimes.com

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

#81

Post by kevinak »

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 does. You don’t need to leave the L2 solution. Why would you when you have the possibility to transact for free? Liquidity on LN is growing by the day and as more and more people join there will be fewer and fewer reasons to settle.

Define works better. Has larger blockchains? All transactions don’t need to live in the blockchain.

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

#82

Post by lucb1e »

centimeter wrote: post #79
Tepix wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why use an outdated planet-killing tech such as butcoin underneath your level 2 bolted on solution when you can use something modern and do it directly on-chain?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

Dumb out-of-the-loop question: then what's this talk of Ethereum moving to proof of stake? Whenever someone brings up that PoW is bad, people say Ethereum; whenever someone says why PoW, someone says because PoS isn't safe.

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

#84

Post by ipaddr »

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's 20 dollars now. Over the last year 50% of the time it's a few dollars.

It has been 20 or more dollars 5% of the time this year.

https://ycharts.com/indicators/bitcoin_average_transaction_f...

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

#85

Post by fny »

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.

I mean... what do you expect with a currency with an annualized volatility of 100%. The risk is way too damn high.

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

#86

Post by lucb1e »

staplers wrote: post #41
imglorp wrote: post #3

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

I don't initiate a wire transfer when I buy a coffee. I use my bank card.

You don't think that if the transaction settlement method cost a tenner to settle a six euro item, you could buy it with your special card that uses this settlement method for six euros? If you use bitcoin, someone somewhere is moving those funds even if you are just "using your card". You're telling the payment provider to initiate a transfer to the merchant. How did you imagine this would work otherwise?

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

#87

Post by polyomino »

lucb1e wrote: post #82
centimeter wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Dumb out-of-the-loop question: then what's this talk of Ethereum moving to proof of stake? Whenever someone brings up that PoW is bad, people say Ethereum; whenever someone says why PoW, someone says because PoS isn't safe.

Short answer is it doesn't work now and is not known to be able to work.

Much easier to make promises than keep them.

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

#88

Post by kevinak »

nonameiguess wrote: post #66
kevinak wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea is to never go off-chain, so no need to close your channel(s). And aren't you already committing cash if you're "in" bitcoin? The tax filing doesn't sound so bad in the long run. I'm sure someone will write some nifty tool to extract whatever payments you've done.

Arguably, the tax filing sounds like the single worst part of it. Imagine if you really used Bitcoin for every purchase you make in a normal tax year. Suddenly how much you pay in taxes depends on the path integral of the exchange rate over the entire period. That's an absolute accounting nightmare. Now you have a huge incentive to batch all of your purchases at market low points to minimize tax burden and you're stu…

Fair enough, that’s why I wrote ”in the long run”. Also, there’s always the option of moving somewhere that doesn’t have this issue. Well, unless you’re from the US and must file taxes even when you’re not even in the country, I suppose.

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

#89

Post by PragmaticPulp »

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.

If we’re talking about 100 or 1000 crypto-rich people buying coffee with Bitcoin to prove a point, sure.

But the tens of millions of people who buy coffee every morning have no desire to spend extra for the same product. They already have a credit card in their pocket that has no fees (or maybe negative fees if it’s cash back.). They’re going to use that card.

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

#90

Post by Goronmon »

dizzant wrote: post #77
lottin wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, produce…

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.

The utility of a country, it's people/resources/military/economy/etc, is pretty obvious. What is the utility of the blockchain outside of the value of Bitcoin itself?

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