71–80 of 86 posts
Wait, since when did OKCupid start charging? They were free when I was on there (before the match.com takeover)
This is interesting but really more in the cool/cute/novel category than the practical needs one. I'm pretty hopeful and positive about bitcoin but that's one of the things that makes me still very suspicious of it. Seems that the places adopting it are doing so for fun, ideological or theoretical reasons rather than to solve some problem they have. I'm waiting to see online retailers requiring bitcoin payments for h…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Funny things happen when companies get acquired. They stop acting like a startup and they start acting like large, slow companies, which is unfortunate. That blog was single-handedly what drove their traffic more than anything. Everyone I talk to said they found out about OkCupid through that blog. OkCupid knows this. The founders said they almost quit and that blog was their saving grace. Is it any coincidence that…
> Is it any coincidence that the blog stopped around the same time they were acquired? It served its purpose and ran its course. They're done innovating in the space. We'll have to let startups lead the next wave of innovation in online dating. First, I used to work on the OkTrends team, but I'm speaking for myself, not on behalf of OkCupid. OkTrends didn't shut down after the acquisition - in fact, they made two pos…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Is it any coincidence that the blog stopped around the same time they were acquired? It served its purpose and ran its course. They're done innovating in the space. We'll have to let startups lead the next wave of innovation in online dating. First, I used to work on the OkTrends team, but I'm speaking for myself, not on behalf of OkCupid. OkTrends didn't shut down after the acquisition - in fact, they made two pos…
Perhaps, instead of bringing someone in to crunch their numbers and look for interesting correlations--they might rather be willing to license their data out to some think-tank or newspaper/magazine or something, who would do that analysis for its own (readership's) sake?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
To play the devil's advocate, I'll point out that anyone selling in multiple currencies has to deal with hedging fx risk. For example, USDJPY has been pretty nuts thus far in April (not BTC nuts, but intraday swings of 1-2%). If you were 1) very determined to sell in BTC and 2) could buy USDBTC options you could probably sell in BTC and limit your exposure to the fx risk.
I'll point out that anyone selling in multiple currencies has to deal with hedging fx risk Yes, and anyone whose business involves juggling chainsaws has to pay an awful lot for workplace insurance, but Bingo Card Creator doesn't involve chainsaws. Bitcoin proponents love to say "No transaction fees! Can your credit card processor do that?" while perhaps forgetting to mention that the actual mechanism for achieving t…
Do businesses that accept bitoins for payments typically immediately cash it out on exchanges or do they actually carry the "FX" risk? edit: since MtGox only charges a fixed %age fee for transactions, automating a conversion into USD wouldn't cost any more than doing periodic larger transactions (other than the development and maintenance cost of such a system
Generally (I can't speak for the concrete case), when a business accepts payment in different currencies, it's because they intend to hold that currency, typically because they can settle liabilities in that currency. Pure speculation, but this could simply be a case of OKCupid wanting to support the Bitcoin ecosystem by providing a service that can be paid for directly in Bitcoin, thus raising the attractiveness of…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It would be interesting to have a site (dating or HR or commentary) where you could have specific facts/tags in a profile and some serious checking of those specific facts. e.g. for a dating site you'd have "less than 300 pounds", "graduated from Stanford", "not married", "hivfree" for an HR site you'd have "not a CISSP", "graduated from Caltech in 2000 in CS", "US Citizen", "worked for Google 2000-2004", etc. Indivi…
This is something that needs to exist, and I'm very excited about it. We may build this at CupidWithFriends. I've thought about tags for a while now, the problem is you don't have an identity layer to actually verify whether the tags are true or not. Think LinkedIn endorsements, but for dating. Lying is a huge problem, 81% of all online dating users will lie about some aspect of themselves. I wrote this comment befor…
Do businesses that accept bitoins for payments typically immediately cash it out on exchanges or do they actually carry the "FX" risk? edit: since MtGox only charges a fixed %age fee for transactions, automating a conversion into USD wouldn't cost any more than doing periodic larger transactions (other than the development and maintenance cost of such a system
Do businesses that accept bitoins for payments typically immediately cash it out on exchanges or do they actually carry the "FX" risk? People in the Bitcoin community believe that these options are mutually exclusive, but they're not . If you're doing a dual currency transaction in a period of high volatility, somebody is paying for that exchange risk. It's either the customer, the payment processor, or the merchant,…
If it works out like that, neat play for them. If it doesn't -- "oh well, startups are risky". Fair game for teams that have such stamina. ;)
When it comes to BTC, right now, all bets are off.
Do businesses that accept bitoins for payments typically immediately cash it out on exchanges or do they actually carry the "FX" risk? edit: since MtGox only charges a fixed %age fee for transactions, automating a conversion into USD wouldn't cost any more than doing periodic larger transactions (other than the development and maintenance cost of such a system
Do businesses that accept bitoins for payments typically immediately cash it out on exchanges or do they actually carry the "FX" risk? People in the Bitcoin community believe that these options are mutually exclusive, but they're not . If you're doing a dual currency transaction in a period of high volatility, somebody is paying for that exchange risk. It's either the customer, the payment processor, or the merchant,…
In theory how it would work is that your payment processor would get a price from an FX broker who would guarantee it for a fixed period of time (say 15 minutes) but would offer a worse FX spread with the difference between the offered spread and the market spread being their compensation for taking the risk.
The FX broker would mitigate some of their risk internally (against other customer who want to transact in the opposite direction) and through purchasing spot/forwards/options. As the volatility of the market increased the broker would widen their spread so as to avoid being over-exposed at any point. The business of the FX broker would fundamentally be one of risk-management.
So from a customer view point they'll get a crappy exchange rate compared to what they'd get from a BTC exchange, but they'll be able to do the transaction.
In reality this is quite similar to what happens in multi-currency transactions anyway, if you're buying something priced USD with a EUR credit card you'll typically:
1) Get a "frozen" rate (i.e. you'll get charged a specified amount of EUR) which is worse than market rate (as described above) .
2) Get charged the USD price at whatever the market rate is (-ish, there's still some markup on this) at the time the transaction goes through.
(some smaller vendors just have fixed prices in different currencies; this means that the vendors themselves are taking the currency risk)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is something that needs to exist, and I'm very excited about it. We may build this at CupidWithFriends. I've thought about tags for a while now, the problem is you don't have an identity layer to actually verify whether the tags are true or not. Think LinkedIn endorsements, but for dating. Lying is a huge problem, 81% of all online dating users will lie about some aspect of themselves. I wrote this comment befor…
Who is going to post on a dating site that their friend is really fatter than they're claiming? I imagine most people would consider that unthinkably mean.
So the natural consequence is assuming the absence of a verified fact for "is under 300 pounds" is "is over 300 pounds" with equally high certainty, if you have a well structured system which covers everything.