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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

#501

Post by tim333 »

tehjoker wrote: post #195
capableweb wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> both things that can disappear overnight I understand what you mean and it's true in theory, but could never happen in reality. Even if a lot of the world stops believing in Bitcoin and the price tanks, there will always be at least two people interested in trading it with each other. If those two people run one node each, they can make it happen. Bitcoin can no longer disappear overnight. It was true in the beginn…

> Bitcoin can no longer disappear overnight. It was true in the beginning, but the network and mind-share is too big now. This is what they said about the housing market in 2008. The question isn't whether bitcoin would operate at least 1 transaction, it's whether it is usable as a stable store of value or a large useful network. > The market seems to value a independent and censorship proof currency differently than…

>The question is ... whether it is usable as a stable store of value

Does it have to be stable? I doubt the people who invested at $100 are thinking shit it's gone to $50k I need something more stable.

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

#503

Post by matheusmoreira »

imtringued wrote: post #420
matheusmoreira wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's impossible with current bitcoin transaction fees. Monero has a better chance at seeing real usage as currency.

The only problem with Monero (and most other privacy/decentralized related projects) is that there is a big illegal industry that desperately needs such a product and it needs it much more than any legitimate user so it has gained a Tor like reputation. The only ones who need superior privacy are those who have something to "hide", at least according to governments.

Why do we have to "need" privacy? That's completely backwards. It boggles my mind how people keep insisting on this argument. It's the government who needs an incredibly good excuse to even consider violating anyone's privacy. Authorities think they're justified in everything they do and are developing increasingly entitled attitudes towards personal information. They can't be trusted so we absolutely should lock them out and make it impossible to violate our boundaries.

Who cares if criminals use it? It doesn't matter at all. Technology doesn't choose its users. Governments wants to catch criminals? They need to send people out there to do real investigative and police work. We're not obligated to make it easy for them by making everything we do part of some public record.

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

#504

Post by briefcomment »

rednerrus wrote: post #490
briefcomment wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The value add is marginal, but people will choose something that’s a little bit better if it exists. That value add is that it’s scarce, and its scarcity is unlikely to be tampered with. This means people don’t have to jump through hoops to keep up with inflation. That’s it.

Why is scarcity a value add? The difficulty and costs associated with getting money into and out of the ecosystem have to offset the scarcity value add. I'm still not convinced that scarcity is valuable. It surely benefits the people who were early adopters but what is the value to new investors? Not to mention how incredibly inefficient all of this is.

Scarcity simply means that someone can't print more units of the store of value, or dig it out of the ground. When someone other than you is doing something like that, your share of wealth is being whittled away. With scarcity, you can maintain your purchasing power indefinitely. You don't have to jump through hoops to find the best rates, or find the best return, etc. Your wealth is simply preserved

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

#505

Post by matheusmoreira »

FridgeSeal wrote: post #294
Priem19 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By which I mean to say: the greedy rich wanting to preserve or increase their wealth at all costs is what got us into this mess. Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency pyramid scheme is going to do bugger all to improve that. No amount of wealth or technology will turn vice into virtue because: “If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you're gonna get selfish, ignorant leaders.” —George Carlin Prosperity boils down to g…

To add to this, crypto communities _appear_ (I’d be pleased to be wrong here if anyone has examples) to be filled with people who are absolutely opposed to any kind of economic governance, if it’s not “let the magic hand of the market decide” they’re seemingly not interested.

I'm not convinced this "economic governance" offers any benefits.

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

#506

Post by NicoJuicy »

ketamine__ wrote: post #281
NicoJuicy wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And which numbers of that growth do you trust? :)

(just saying that you can't really trust their numbers, growing "big" or growing "normal". Who knows :) )

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

#507

Post by lmm »

quesera wrote: post #465
lmm wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Layers 2 and 3 are not real - most networks today merge their functions in the same devices. (In the OSI model switches are illegal, you can only have hubs and routers). 4 and 7 are ceasing to be real - HTTP2 is both a session protocol and an application protocol, and that's before we even get into things like DoH.

You're not wrong, but you are speaking from the perspective of a single implementation stack, i.e. modern Ethernet and the modern Internet. The model is still solid, even if the most common implementation has melted a bit.

I disagree. The model was supposed to be universal but it fell apart as soon as people started doing anything slightly unanticipated with it. It's simultaneously both overengineered and fragile, not providing enough insight to justify its complexity - rather like OSI itself. There's a reason their protocol suite was a failure in the real world.

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

#508

Post by hakfoo »

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.

Fundamentally, we're stuck with conversion and middlemen until we have real products that are priced "natively" and stably in Bitcoin.

People aren't willing to say "this load of bread costs .00004534 BTC" because tomorrow it could be significantly less or more. And conversely, that reinforces the volatility, as there's no anchoring of BTC to real-world purchasing power.

So for the foreseeable future, we're looking at a conversion model and that requires someone to backstop.

So how do we create products priced in BTC? We can't even get, for comparison, shops pricing their goods in grams of gold or silver, a more stable alternative.

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

#509

Post by globular-toast »

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…

Rubbish. Bitcoin had a unique selling point when it was digital cash. We don't need digital gold. Real gold is fine and better. Bitcoin is purely about speculation now.

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

#510

Post by ketamine__ »

NicoJuicy wrote: post #506
ketamine__ wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

And which numbers of that growth do you trust? :) (just saying that you can't really trust their numbers, growing "big" or growing "normal". Who knows :) )

I trust Munger knows what he is talking about even though mere mortals like myself don't have the same network.
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