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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

#211

Post by matheusmoreira »

Spivak wrote: post #138
kajumix wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The anti-BTC sentiment on HN puzzles me. There is no intelligent critique. The doubts that are endlessly repeated here have been addressed in detail, and are available online. Scaling and transaction throughput, energy consumption, state attacks, protocol weakness and lack of backing have all been responded to, to a sufficiently satisfactory degree.

I don’t think they have which is why they keep coming up again. BTC genuinely uses a stupid amount of energy and there isn’t a terribly good reason for it since we don’t need a completely trustless financial system outside of some libertarian ideal. It would be necessary if establishing trust was impossible but it isn’t. BTC transaction fees and throughput are still an issue. Off-chain transactions that use the main…

> we don’t need a completely trustless financial system outside of some libertarian ideal

Who's "we" ? I certainly do need it.

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

#212

Post by matheusmoreira »

Priem19 wrote: post #199
67868018 wrote: post #179

The number of people commenting who completely misunderstand Bitcoin and crypto is astounding. Bitcoin will never be used directly for payments, it's a value store. Immutable deflationary digital gold. I wrote it off for years too because it was too slow and the fees were too expensive. That was the dream they had, but they couldn't realize it at the base layer. I was still walking around last year believing that's t…

>Also expect a ton of movement to crypto when wealth taxes get implemented to fix economies. They'll use it to hide assets, guaranteed. Money corrupts; bitcoin corrupts absolutely. Disregarding all of bitcoin's shortcomings, a financial instrument that brings out the worst in people—greed—won't change the world for the better. https://www.cynicusrex.com/file/cryptocultscience.html . I used time-travel to uncover thre…

Even if it's used for corrupt purposes, it's not really any worse than the current system. The subversiveness of cryptocurrency is a feature. Governments are as corrupt as can be. They screw up the economy and make ordinary citizens pay for it by raising taxes while refusing to touch billionaires. Maybe it'd be a good thing if they went bankrupt for once.

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

#213

Post by Priem19 »

Priem19 wrote: post #199
67868018 wrote: post #179

The number of people commenting who completely misunderstand Bitcoin and crypto is astounding. Bitcoin will never be used directly for payments, it's a value store. Immutable deflationary digital gold. I wrote it off for years too because it was too slow and the fees were too expensive. That was the dream they had, but they couldn't realize it at the base layer. I was still walking around last year believing that's t…

>Also expect a ton of movement to crypto when wealth taxes get implemented to fix economies. They'll use it to hide assets, guaranteed. Money corrupts; bitcoin corrupts absolutely. Disregarding all of bitcoin's shortcomings, a financial instrument that brings out the worst in people—greed—won't change the world for the better. https://www.cynicusrex.com/file/cryptocultscience.html . I used time-travel to uncover thre…

By which I mean to say: the greedy rich wanting to preserve or increase their wealth at all costs is what got us into this mess. Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency pyramid scheme is going to do bugger all to improve that. No amount of wealth or technology will turn vice into virtue because: “If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you're gonna get selfish, ignorant leaders.” —George Carlin

Prosperity boils down to good policy and governance. Thus, good people. Unfortunately, as far as I've seen, cryptocurrencies have produced some of the worst kind of people.

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

#214

Post by Priem19 »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #212
Priem19 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Also expect a ton of movement to crypto when wealth taxes get implemented to fix economies. They'll use it to hide assets, guaranteed. Money corrupts; bitcoin corrupts absolutely. Disregarding all of bitcoin's shortcomings, a financial instrument that brings out the worst in people—greed—won't change the world for the better. https://www.cynicusrex.com/file/cryptocultscience.html . I used time-travel to uncover thre…

Even if it's used for corrupt purposes, it's not really any worse than the current system. The subversiveness of cryptocurrency is a feature. Governments are as corrupt as can be. They screw up the economy and make ordinary citizens pay for it by raising taxes while refusing to touch billionaires. Maybe it'd be a good thing if they went bankrupt for once.

I think you seriously underestimate how ugly society would get if the government went bankrupt, and how quickly bitcoin would be rendered useless. Moreover, if governments are corrupt on fiat, they'll be corrupt on bitcoin as well.

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

#215

Post by graeme »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #202
graeme wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN isn’t wrong about everything. It was extremely bearing on Groupon in 2011. It was another thing where true believers would say that skeptics “just don’t get it”, but the HN critics had extremely cogent critiques that went without response. Google “Groupon Stock”, HN was very correct. VERY different from the anti-Dropbox sentiment of the famous Dropbox comment. You also have Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Charlie Mung…

> The token backing BTC, Tether, is founded by con artists and was just revealed to not have had the backing they claim. USDT doesn't back BTC. It's just a stable coin people use. There are other coins tracking the dollar. Binance created their own BUSD and it seems to be as legit as it gets with frequent audits of reserves and everything. There's also USDC. BTC is actually backed by the eletricity used to power the…

About 70% of transactions are in USDT, and bitcoin’s price rise has followed increases in Tether tokens. It would appear the price surge has been backed by USDT because currently the bitcoin market accepts USDT as equal to USD, despite evidence USDT is not backed.

Bitcoin itself is powered by the miners, but the fiat value of bitcoin is backed by USDT. If there was doubt about the peg you’d see a run.

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

#216

Post by wmf »

KallDrexx wrote: post #156
wmf wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the case of crypto that analogy doesn't really apply. Just hodling crypto exceeds the returns of building anything related to crypto.

I"m pretty sure Coinbase's S-1 proves otherwise :)

Yeah, Coinbase appears to be an outlier since most of their funding came pretty late.

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

#217

Post by toomuchredbull »

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 have recently started learning about nano coin... have you looked into it? It seems to be what you are talking about but perhaps it is also doomed to failure.

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

#218

Post by matheusmoreira »

graeme wrote: post #215
matheusmoreira wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The token backing BTC, Tether, is founded by con artists and was just revealed to not have had the backing they claim. USDT doesn't back BTC. It's just a stable coin people use. There are other coins tracking the dollar. Binance created their own BUSD and it seems to be as legit as it gets with frequent audits of reserves and everything. There's also USDC. BTC is actually backed by the eletricity used to power the…

About 70% of transactions are in USDT, and bitcoin’s price rise has followed increases in Tether tokens. It would appear the price surge has been backed by USDT because currently the bitcoin market accepts USDT as equal to USD, despite evidence USDT is not backed. Bitcoin itself is powered by the miners, but the fiat value of bitcoin is backed by USDT. If there was doubt about the peg you’d see a run.

> bitcoin’s price rise has followed increases in Tether tokens

I understand this as price manipulation by Tether, not as evidence that BTC is backed by it.

> currently the bitcoin market accepts USDT as equal to USD, despite evidence USDT is not backed

Yeah, it's unfortunate. I don't understand why people won't use BUSD instead.

> If there was doubt about the peg you’d see a run.

Probably. In my opinion, people should exchange USDT for BUSD while it still has value. That way everyone will continue trading normally when all the controversy catches up to Tether.

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

#219

Post by tw600040 »

rawtxapp wrote: post #208
tablespoon wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They can't implement those changes uni-laterally, it would cause a hard-fork. In addition to devs and miners, you need users, network nodes and exchanges to agree to it as well. Sure, but the devs do have the "Bitcoin" name, which would leave them well-positioned to market their changes. Bitcoin Classic may stick around, but like Etherium Classic, it may not be very healthy: https://www.coindesk.com/ethereum-classi…

Nobody owns the "Bitcoin" name, people collectively decide which chaintip to call Bitcoin and that's it. The devs own "Bitcoin Core" which is just one implementation of the network.

This is where the difference between theory and practice comes in. Who is 'people' here? Billions of people today have no idea what bitcoin is and will have no say in 'collectively' deciding which chain tip to call 'Bitcoin'. BTC is decentralized in theory, but with literally .0001% of the population owning like 99% of BTC it can't get more centralized..

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

#220

Post by qeternity »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #202
graeme wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN isn’t wrong about everything. It was extremely bearing on Groupon in 2011. It was another thing where true believers would say that skeptics “just don’t get it”, but the HN critics had extremely cogent critiques that went without response. Google “Groupon Stock”, HN was very correct. VERY different from the anti-Dropbox sentiment of the famous Dropbox comment. You also have Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Charlie Mung…

> The token backing BTC, Tether, is founded by con artists and was just revealed to not have had the backing they claim. USDT doesn't back BTC. It's just a stable coin people use. There are other coins tracking the dollar. Binance created their own BUSD and it seems to be as legit as it gets with frequent audits of reserves and everything. There's also USDC. BTC is actually backed by the eletricity used to power the…

For a crowd that constantly parrot “DYOR”...you should really DYOR.

No stablecoin has even been audited. Zero. None.

Most perform attestations, which doesn’t even come close to an audit.

Tether does neither.

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