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Paypal President: We're thinking about adding Bitcoin (2:50) [video]

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Re: Paypal President: We're thinking about adding Bitcoin (2:50) [video]

#91

Paypal would do very well buying and selling Bitcoins. Buying bitcoins with Paypal is a very common request, which most sellers won't do because Paypal makes it very easy to rip off the seller.

>Buying bitcoins with Paypal is a very common request, which most sellers won't do because Paypal makes it very easy to rip off the seller.

Where are you observing that it's a common request? Could it be a common request because it's easy to rip off the seller, in the same way that assistance transferring a dead relative's funds out of Nigeria is a common request?

Re: Paypal President: We're thinking about adding Bitcoin (2:50) [video]

#93
post #8

"We're thinking about it" - They better be, because if decentralized payments hit the mainstream, PayPal's 3.9% fee is going bye-bye.

Paypal takes 3.9% ? No, you have to see how much credit card companies take and how much paypal takes. They likely get less than half that.

Re: Paypal President: We're thinking about adding Bitcoin (2:50) [video]

#94
This along with comments from Western Union have surprised me. But it does make sense. These companies would be foolish not to stay open to pivoting with market demands. Right now it is "we're aware of it", if it starts to take off I expect them to integrate it into their business models to capture part of that growing value.

Remember that in the gold rush you got rich selling pickaxes. WU and Paypal stand to profit from bitcoin with very little risk if they play it right.

Re: Paypal President: We're thinking about adding Bitcoin (2:50) [video]

#95

Is everyone forgetting that Paypal just sucks in general?

At least it can probably handle more than seven transactions a second, unlike the Bitcoin network. Future of currency indeed.

The network is P2P, there is no limit to the amount of transactions per second it can handle. MtGox is not the network.

Re: Paypal President: We're thinking about adding Bitcoin (2:50) [video]

#96
post #71
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amount of gold in circulation has never stopped increasing.

The amount of effort required to find gold has more or less increased over time, and barring an unpredictable discovery of a huge amount of gold somewhere, the mechanics of increasing the gold supply aren't all that different than bitcoin. Or, to put it another way, I don't think the steady but slow increase in the gold supply is a substantial contributor to the current gold market.

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Re: Paypal President: We're thinking about adding Bitcoin (2:50) [video]

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least it can probably handle more than seven transactions a second, unlike the Bitcoin network. Future of currency indeed.

The network is P2P, there is no limit to the amount of transactions per second it can handle. MtGox is not the network.

Incorrect. From the wiki:

Today the Bitcoin network is restricted to a sustained rate of 7 tps by some artificial limits. These were put in place to stop people from ballooning the size of the block chain before the network and community was ready for it. Once those limits are lifted, the maximum transaction rate will go up significantly.

Of course, a significant increase from 7tps still might fall well short of what is required for real commerce. If you look at this graph of the daily transaction rate, you can see that the actual performance of the network is somewhat less than 1tps:

http://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions

For comparison, there are probably more than seven transactions per second going on in any small to medium sized city, let alone worldwide.

Re: Paypal President: We're thinking about adding Bitcoin (2:50) [video]

#98
Why wouldn't Paypal invent its own Bitcoin (i.e. Paycoin) and have complete control of the system? Why would they want to use Bitcoin at all?

I mean, they're the 800 lb gorilla of online payments. They'd be smarter to invent their own thing than to use someone else's if they can.

Re: Paypal President: We're thinking about adding Bitcoin (2:50) [video]

#99

Why wouldn't Paypal invent its own Bitcoin (i.e. Paycoin) and have complete control of the system? Why would they want to use Bitcoin at all? I mean, they're the 800 lb gorilla of online payments. They'd be smarter to invent their own thing than to use someone else's if they can.

Yeah, and for that matter, why would anyone partner with Facebook, when you could easily build another social network? I mean look at Google, they clearly pulled that off without a problem.

Bitcoin is used and has value. The same could most likely not be said about a hypothetical currency created by Paypal, specially considering one of the most important assets Bitcoin has is its decentralized and unregulated nature.

Re: Paypal President: We're thinking about adding Bitcoin (2:50) [video]

#100
post #54

If Bitcoin does succeed, I don't see a regular person wanting to manage his own wallet and security let alone understand all the complexity that is bitcoin. I see Bitcoin becoming the underlying infrastructure on which companies like Paypal, Square, Banks and other financial institutions trade. If Paypal does invest in adding Bitcoin, it would be right step ahead for Bitcoin and for Paypal.

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