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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

#281

Post by ketamine__ »

NicoJuicy wrote: post #277
kajumix wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

China is the disruption. China is where the big growth is happening. Just ask Charlie Munger.

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

#282

Post by ketamine__ »

rawtxapp wrote: post #102
bpodgursky wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Presumably there will be tools to automate that, but I agree with you it would be a pita.

There are tax tools now. They cost $200+/year.

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

#283

Post by peteretep »

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…

As Ethereum has shown the immutable part is up to developer whim. The “hard limit” is literally a config value.

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

#284

Post by petertodd »

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.…

> About 95% of Bitcoin is controlled by just 2.4% of the accounts

Bitcoin doesn't have accounts. It was txouts, which have addresses attached. AFAICT they're counting this by address, which is silly: most wallets use each address once. So in practice, this means an average person who uses Bitcoin regularly will have lots of small value txouts as coins get split up. There is no reliable way to associate addresses to individual people.

On top of that, there have been spam attacks in the past that created large numbers of very small value txouts.

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

#285

Post by quesera »

3np wrote: post #260
quesera wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OSI layers 1, 2, 3, 4, and 7 are very real. Roughly, e.g.: 1:Fiber, 2:Ethernet, 3:Routing, 4:TCP/IP, and 7:HTTP.

Isn’t IP commonly considered L3?

Yep, and TCP is L4. So TCP/IP is L4/L3.

The usual criticism of the OSI model is that there are grey areas and dependencies, where a lower layers bleed into higher layers (e.g. L2 switching which can work a lot like routing in modern hardware), and higher layers that are tightly bound to lower layers, making the distinctions unclear.

The purist in me wants to agree, but I think the model is too useful to disregard casually.

The value comes from the abstraction, and like Newtonian physics, it is a great model -- until it isn't.

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

#286

Post by qeternity »

tylersmith wrote: post #64
ed25519FUUU wrote: post #20

Nothing like using a credit card and paying a $15 fee for a transaction that takes 2 hours and can’t be reversed.

Visa would be providing 0 value if it exposed these drawbacks of Bitcoin's transaction network to users. Making cheap, fast transactions with fraud protections is exactly what a company like Visa has to offer.

So Bitcoin, without the Bitcoin.

Brilliant, why didn’t anyone think of this before.

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

#287

Post by joering2 »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #279
tiborsaas wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Absolutely. Unsure how far Visa execution is but it could derail Coinbase IPO. Coinbase charges enormous amount to buy or sale (convert) my cash to digital coins. Its all digital anyways. If I could eliminate middle man and use cards I already have - including debit cards that Visa oversees, Coinbase would literally lose 99% of wallet holders. I mean only idiot would want to pay more to buy or sell digital currency. Besides Visa has much better and more sophisticated fraud and abuse detection network than Coinbase could ever imagine because only in USA they sit on everyones social security number that is already verified thru reporting burreaus.

It will be game changer - one button in my bank online profile to hold bitcoins/other wallets all branded and protected by Visa. Coinbase needs to IPO yesterday to offload stock to the last person to turn the lights off.

Disclaimer: I am long V holder since $48/share.

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

#288

Post by toomuchtodo »

nonameiguess wrote: post #278
kajumix wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tha…

Zelle disrupts central banks more than Bitcoin in Venezuela.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-11-11/zelle-has...

"I lived in Venezuela. Almost no one uses crypto or cares about crypto. The fees to send bitcoin alone represent a sizeable chunk of money to most Venezuelans."

https://www.reddit.com/r/Economics/comments/jsw96e/zelle_has...

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

#289

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#290

Post by gruez »

chrisseaton wrote: post #262
tekproxy wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is a bitcoin account?

An address that owns Bitcoins.

An "address" can mean anything - a person can have a wallet with multiple addresses, or an address could belong to an exchange with holds it on behalf of multiple people.
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