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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

#351

Post by lmm »

hnrodey wrote: post #190
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…

I'm not here to defend Bitcoin nor respond to critiques. Just not what I'm in to. Full disclosure, I have a financial stake in Bitcoin. My observation on all of this is that the most common themes to bear Bitcoin - can all be fixed! People are quite happy to look at the current landscape and proclaim immediate and indefinite failure. Detractors allow no room for growth. Volatility - you could argue that Bitcoin is st…

> My observation on all of this is that the most common themes to bear Bitcoin - can all be fixed! People are quite happy to look at the current landscape and proclaim immediate and indefinite failure. Detractors allow no room for growth.

On the contrary, I've been watching bitcoin for what, ten years now, and if anything the practical usability has gone backwards. Sellers who trumpeted that they were accepting bitcoin payments quietly dropped it a few years later. Transaction fees rose and rose, and the governance process (such as there is) handled the resulting conflicts remarkably poorly.

Five or ten years ago I was skeptical but interested. Nowadays I see it as a de facto scam, even if it didn't start life as one.

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

#352

Post by lavezzi »

Gustomaximus wrote: post #349
realradicalwash wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Also you are liable for capital gains tax when realised.

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

#353

Post by lmm »

foepys wrote: post #239
rawtxapp wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You are just recentralising everything Bitcoin allegedly decentralized. It's ridiculous. Just pay cash, you are decentralized, are your own bank and can buy everything. Problem solved without Bitcoin. You won't get rich from just holding it, though, and we all know that this is really the only goal of cryptocurrency proponents.

> Just pay cash, you are decentralized, are your own bank and can buy everything.

How do you send cash over the internet though? That part is hard.

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

#354

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

fineIllregister wrote: post #343
smokelegend wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Absolutely yes

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

#355

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

fineIllregister wrote: post #343
smokelegend wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yes

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

#356

Post by intotheabyss »

qeternity wrote: post #220
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…

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.

I take it you've never heard of Maker? You can audit the supply of DAI and the ETH backing it in real time.

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

#357

Post by Geee »

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.

The layer 1 of bitcoin is decentralized. Adding multiple layer 2 solutions isn't centralization. People have choice.

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

#358

Post by heavyset_go »

bostonsre wrote: post #315
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.

It's not really that decentralized now. The largest miner pools can be seen here[1]. All of the larger ones are from China. I would be more worried about authoritarian action over there than some by the book payment processor processing transactions in the US. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/731416/market-share-of-m...

Why would a book payment processor use Bitcoin when the average Bitcoin transaction fee is about the same price as many new books? With Bitcoin, you're looking at spending about $50 if you buy a $25 book.

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

#359

Post by epa »

Aunche wrote: post #293
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…

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 is a tech stock's inherent value? They typically lose money and have a ton of employees. How is bitcoin different? You are investing in a technology with a group of people who are supporting it. As more people agree it is useful, the price goes up. Same thing as a stock.

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

#360

Post by Geee »

tw600040 wrote: post #175

If BTC does catch up, the current inequality of the world will look like an anthill in comparison to the inequality that BTC will create. I can't imagine the world letting that happen..

The truth is complete opposite. Fiat currencies have created insane amount of wealth inequality, because they benefit those who have the power to borrow cash and own assets. With bitcoin, people can maintain their purchasing power and wealth. Bitcoin isn't pegged to CPI which means that it increases in value when economic productivity increases. CPI pegged currencies move purchasing power from labor to capital.
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