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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

#341

Post by alisonkisk »

smokelegend wrote: post #334
joering2 wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Great you get convenience for buying bitcoin but I thought one of the selling points of bitcoin was to keep payments and transactions anonymous. I don't want to have to provide ID just to buy/sell bitcoin, I certainly don't want the government to know about my transactions. I appreciate the privacy bitcoin transaction provide, why do people want to jeopardize anonymity for convenience?

Bitcoin is not anonymous. it's pseudonymous at best. It's a public ledger.

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

#342

Post by ChainOfFools »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #89
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.

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.

and yet this is trending toward precisely the scenario the hyperbitcoinization screed gleefully discussed, where anyone who didn't buy in to the scheme early on would be left impoverished once bitcoin swallowed the entire global financial system.

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

#343

Post by fineIllregister »

smokelegend wrote: post #334
joering2 wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Great you get convenience for buying bitcoin but I thought one of the selling points of bitcoin was to keep payments and transactions anonymous. I don't want to have to provide ID just to buy/sell bitcoin, I certainly don't want the government to know about my transactions. I appreciate the privacy bitcoin transaction provide, why do people want to jeopardize anonymity for convenience?

Doesn't Coinbase already require users to identify themselves for KYC regulations?

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

#344

Post by Aunche »

goodoldneon wrote: post #327
Aunche wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you actually wanted to store value you would buy gold. You can't store value in Bitcoin because it has no inherent value. It's a distributed ledger on the internet. If I hoard 100% of the world's gold bullion, there's a good chance that people would want to buy it from me at a price similar to today's spot. If I hoard 100% of bitcoins, it loses all of its value. Moreover, if hyperinflation does occur, there's a go…

What’s gold’s inherent value?

Aside from its industrial applications, it's dense, rare, chemically stable, and very easy to recognize. These are all qualities that make for a good store of value. You can't replace gold with any other element.

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

#345

Post by ChainOfFools »

raziel2701 wrote: post #113
qeternity wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Bank of America had this[1] to say: “No good reason to own BTC unless you see prices going up. .. it is not tied to inflation, and remains exceptionally volatile, making it impractical as a store of wealth or payments mechanism. As such, the main.. argument for holding Bitcoin is.. sheer price appreciation” I haven't found a reason in favor of owning btc other than "number go up". [1] https://twitter.com/carlquintani…

"number go up"

when did this meme take over from its original incarnation "to the moooon!"?

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

#346

Post by 3np »

graeme wrote: post #300
3np wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> About 70% of transactions are in USDT Source? Because this is very far from any data I have.

What data sources have you got? You can see here Tether’s 24 hour volume actually surpasses bitcoin. It’s used in ETH trading and elsewhere which is why its volume is larger. https://www.coindesk.com/price/tether https://www.coindesk.com/price/bitcoin For the 70% figure I’d have to dig a bit to fully check current volume. It’s been widely repeated in articles, they use data which check flows through exchanges. Binanc…

You're talking about spot trading volume on centralized exchanges, which is a completely different metric than "transactions" (regardless of if you want to interpret that as on-chain or not).

Separately, Binance is a lot of bot-trading, and, outside of BN, USDT-heavy exchanges have questionable volume figures (wash trading and fake trades).

USDT usage has indeed gone down in favor of other stable coins, and while Binance is huge among exchanges, it's just one fraction of the BTC economy.

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

#347

Post by bostonsre »

gruez wrote: post #335
bostonsre wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not too hard to get consensus if you're an authoritarian regime in china. All of the largest miners are in china. https://www.statista.com/statistics/731416/market-share-of-m...

Segwit2x had the miners support, yet it still failed.

It sounded like they required support from the developer community but they didn't have it. Not sure if that support would be needed for a 51% attack, would it?

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

#348

Post by elevaet »

Mc_Big_G wrote: post #320
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…

Give it up man. You’d think HNers would get it but they don’t. Most likely because they hate that they missed the bus. You’ll never convince them. We should just stop trying.

Some of the brightest minds on the internet, and some of the earliest adopters of crypto on here... it would be a mistake to dismiss the very rational critiques here because "they hate that they missed the bus".

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

#349

Post by Gustomaximus »

realradicalwash wrote: post #291
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.

if transactions were done in btc, each transaction would amass the typical fees - which are pretty high at the moment. converting btc to fiat to pay your visa card bill at the end of the month would be one transaction per month. that's a huge difference.

> converting btc to fiat to pay your visa card bill at the end of the month would be one transaction per month.

Given BTC volatility paying monthly could add a bunch of risk (or benefit) to purchases. I imagine most people would want something more stable for their purchasing.

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

#350

Post by gruez »

bostonsre wrote: post #347
gruez wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Segwit2x had the miners support, yet it still failed.

It sounded like they required support from the developer community but they didn't have it. Not sure if that support would be needed for a 51% attack, would it?

Depends on the attack you're pulling off. A 51% attack won't allow you to change the coin generation rate (what peteretep was talking about).
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