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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

#271

Post by lambda_obrien »

rawtxapp wrote: post #210
foepys wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Channel factories do not work globally as far as I understand them. They only work within a group of addresses that know they won't close the channels every other hour or everybody would have to create yet another channel. It sounds very similar to a credit union. Watchtowers are what I meant with payment processors. You need to pay them to watch the chain in case the other party tries to literally steal from you. Yo…

Exchanges could act as channel factories, for example, today they batch a bunch of withdrawals into a single transaction, there's really no reason why they couldn't simply open a channel for each person in that. It can be a third-party or you could also run one yourself, there's nothing stopping you. I wouldn't be surprised to see counterparts, just like email is "mail on the internet", but there are also fairly nove…

Yes, it seems like flash loans are super legit...

https://www.coindesk.com/the-defi-flash-loan-attack-that-cha...

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

#272

Post by NicoJuicy »

waheoo wrote: post #204
notyourwork wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't expect anything other than businesses will do what businesses do. Its just sad that mainstream media consumers will interpret this very differently from reality.

I think you're the one messing with reality here. Bitcoin needs to be stable before it can be used widespread for transactions. Visa doing this increases its adoption, increased adoption, even if used in this way will stabilise the currency. That is huge. It's just a required stepping stone.

Not that huge. A lot of payment providers implemented bitcoin in 2017 and then removed it again.

It will be huge if it stays. But who wants to pay a 20$ transaction fee ( when it's a bit busy)

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

#273

Post by DennisP »

pshc wrote: post #265
zionic wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lightning, technically speaking, is garbage. 10k transactions per second ETH2 layer 1 + zk roll-ups providing throughout multiplication threatens VISA.

Sorry, 10k tx/sec on sharded ETH2 sounds really high to me, is that really the goal or a typo?

Zkrollups plus sharding will do more than that, without security or usability compromises. Rollups can handle a couple thousand tx/sec on Ethereum today and data sharding increases that by 23X initially.

https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/01/05/rollup.html

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

#274

Post by Nition »

throw0101a wrote: post #228
notyourwork wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Sadly most people don't care nor should have to but the decentralization […] "Decentralization"? Bank of America Global Research just released a report today that said: > 1. Concentrated Ownership: About 95% of Bitcoin is controlled by just 2.4% of the accounts, and distribution is heavily skewed towards the largest accounts. By comparison, the latest Fed data suggests that the top 1% of Americans control about 30.…

I wonder what percent, of that 2.4%, have lost their password.

Satoshi's accounts alone supposedly contain nearly 6% of all bitcoin.

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

#275

Post by 3np »

rawtxapp wrote: post #226
tw600040 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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..

> Who is 'people' here? People in the Bitcoin ecosystem. For example, when the Bitcoin/Bitcoin Cash split happened, you had people dumping one for the other to manipulate the price in their favor, you had miners that decided which one they wanted to mine, exchanges that decided which one they wanted to put under BTC ticker and some people that just stayed on the sidelines waiting to see which chain would prevail. For…

Nitpick, Cash was the “original chain” as the split happened because what became the BCH portion of the network declined to adopt a proposed update

Just goes to show it’s not necessarily clear cut what’s considered “original” at every point in time.

Canonically, Bitcoin considers the longest chain in terms of accumulative difficulty (roughly translatable to hash power) the “real one

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

#276

Post by briefcomment »

kart23 wrote: post #269
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…

I agree that Bitcoin is never going to be used for payments again. But I still don't know about value store. Its hard to convert back to fiat (without paying taxes) unless you're going completely P2P with cash, which likely isn't feasible for large scale transactions. Is bitcoin's value negatively affected by difficulty cashing out, or am I overthinking it?

Overthinking imo. Compared to a bar of gold, it’s a breeze.

Convertibility to fiat is kind of a low priority for a store of value. Auditability, barriers to rehypothication, and ability to self custody are probably much more important for a store of value.

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

#277

Post by NicoJuicy »

kajumix wrote: post #110
notyourwork wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Bitcoin disrupts central bank, not payment networks. Lightning [1] as layer 2 on top of Bitcoin adheres to trustless and p2p ideals, and is actually the competition for Visa. [1]: https://lightning.network/ Edit: added link

Who would put his assets in a bank controlled by chinese miners and where you can literally lose your money.

Bitcoin is not a disruption. But blockchain is a useful tech.

Bitcoin is just an implementation of blockchain.

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

#278

Post by nonameiguess »

kajumix wrote: post #110
notyourwork wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Bitcoin disrupts central bank, not payment networks. Lightning [1] as layer 2 on top of Bitcoin adheres to trustless and p2p ideals, and is actually the competition for Visa. [1]: https://lightning.network/ Edit: added link

I'm sorry but I just laughed like crazy reading this. The US Fed showering the wealthy with more cash than they know what to do with is the only reason Bitcoin continues to exist and anyone holds it. Bitcoin can't disrupt the Fed any more than house flippers in 2006 disrupted the mortgage underwriting industry. Bitcoin completely depends on the Fed. Holding it is a bet that the helicopter will never land.

I guess that's a little unfair as I suppose Bitcoin can help disrupt the central banks of places like Venezuela, giving the elite an easier means of fleeing a collapsing country without losing their wealth. Sort of defeats the purpose of economic collapse if it no longer even serves as a great leveler, but oh well, I guess. As long as the rich can never lose.

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

#279

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

tiborsaas wrote: post #257
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.

> converted to fiat, and the fiat can be spent using a Visa Card That's an accounting detail most people won't care about. Perception matters more than technicalities.

What does this mean for exchanges like coinbase? Will they lose out new customers to visa?

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

#280

Post by alexfromapex »

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.

Yeah it would be different if Visa didn’t already have a history of blocking merchants they don’t like
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