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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

#371

Post by seibelj »

screye wrote: post #309
hnrodey wrote: post #108

One of the reasons I'm bullish on Bitcoin over the next decade is precisely because of the anti-BTC sentiment on this board.

What sold me on Bitcoin wasn't the strength of bitcoin itself, but the weakness of gold. Bitcoin is an incredible store of value (albeit volatile). Being able to store a huge amount of assets in an inflation resilient trust-free resource that can't be faked is incredibly useful. The other thing that sells me on it is the institutional buy in. At this point, nough rich people are going to lose big if bitcoin doesn't s…

You start with a small percentage, then you wait a few years and it is a large percentage! Or so it has been thus far.

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

#372

Post by graeme »

3np wrote: post #346
graeme wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Bin…

Could you elaborate on your methods or sources for determining actual volume of transactions?

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

#373

Post by stephen_g »

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.

Well, I mean, bitcoin isn't really decentralised... Not just because most of the circulation is held by a small number of accounts, and not just because most mining is heavily concentrated too. The real centralisation is the development of the client software. As long as that team can keep at least 51% of the network on their software, they can change the rules and control things as much as they want. Past experience has shown that trying to fork it doesn't get much traction, so the network remains basically entirely centrally controlled by the official bitcoin client's dev team...

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

#374

Post by bdcravens »

rdtwo wrote: post #317
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.…

How does tax work? BTC is an asset not a currency. It’s like paying for your credit card with gme stocks

https://www.irs.gov/irb/2014-16_IRB#NOT-2014-21

"If the fair market value of property received in exchange for virtual currency exceeds the taxpayer’s adjusted basis of the virtual currency, the taxpayer has taxable gain. The taxpayer has a loss if the fair market value of the property received is less than the adjusted basis of the virtual currency."

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

#375

Post by bdcravens »

gnicholas wrote: post #328
rdtwo wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does tax work? BTC is an asset not a currency. It’s like paying for your credit card with gme stocks

This is an interesting question. You'd need to keep track of cost basis and gain, and specify whether you want to work on a FIFO or LIFO (more likely) basis.

There are online services that will do these calculations for you at tax time, like bitcoin.tax or cryptotrader.tax

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

#376

Post by lmm »

lxgr wrote: post #227
rawtxapp wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can just borrow against it to spend it. No tax whatsoever and you hold on to your asset.

How do you eventually repay that loan (or at least pay interest)?

Guessing: you can sync up once a year (or even once every 5 or 10 years) and pay taxes on that transaction at that day's price.

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

#377

Post by throwawaysea »

vicvvv wrote: post #370

Isn’t the whole idea of decentralized digital currency systems to eliminate intermediaries, maximize privacy and reduce transaction costs? The visa network stands to lose the most, get seriously disrupted, more they are scrambling to stay relevant and frame this as a value added service.

Yea it not clear to me if Visa’s involvement is a good thing. I would want cryptocurrencies to break the Visa-MasterCard duopoly, to grant privacy from prying eyes (both companies and governments), and increase financial efficiencies by eliminating middlemen profiteers. This feels like a takeover of something with that potential that is meant to prevent that very outcome. Can someone with more expertise tell me why I’m wrong?

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

#378

Post by throwawaysea »

alisonkisk wrote: post #341
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?

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

Is there an alternative that is fully anonymous?

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

#379

Post by strgcmc »

Aunche wrote: post #344
goodoldneon wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

By this argument, you'd think we'd still be using CDs and Walkmans, instead of moving to mp3s and iPods/iPhones.

Gold will have its place as an analog store of value. But you are simply missing the point about how to evaluate a digital store of value. Think about which digital properties a digital store of value would need to have, since concepts like density and chemical stability are literally useless to evaluate a digital entity against; once you have a list of digital characteristics that define what a digital store of value would need to have, you can start to check your checklist against the properties of Bitcoin (or other cryptocurrency if you want)... I'm not saying you'll automatically be convinced, but you should at least use the right checklist to compare.

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

#380

Post by Mc_Big_G »

elevaet wrote: post #348
Mc_Big_G wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Time will tell. If we’re going all “brightest minds” then I guess I can use Elon as my anecdote.
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