Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

PayPal Freezes Mailpile Campaign Funds

mailpile.is

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 366 posts

Re: PayPal Freezes Mailpile Campaign Funds

#91

Post by matznerd »

pc wrote: post #88
ig1 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of Paypal's competitors weren't wiped out by Paypal being good, they were wiped out because they weren't as good as handling risk and fraud as Paypal. They got wiped out by criminals. Paypal is risk averse, which means you shouldn't use them for cases where you're taking a large amount of money up front and not delivering in the near future (i.e events, crowd-funding), or alternatively get pre-approval from Payp…

> I've no idea what the current fraud level against Stripe is, but as they become more mainstream they're going to need to employ more anti-fraud and anti-risk measures as their exposure increases. I'm one of Stripe's cofounders. For what it's worth -- we already process billions of dollars a year. (More than PayPal when it was acquired.) There'll always be more we can do on the fraud/risk side, but we're already ope…

Stripe rocks :)

Re: PayPal Freezes Mailpile Campaign Funds

#92

Post by BitMastro »

M4v3R wrote: post #70
gaius wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What should they use - Google Checkout? https://support.google.com/checkout/sell/answer/3080449?hl=e... For better or worse, Paypal has survived and looks like it's going to go on surviving, that's why people if they only support one method, choose it.

People can get tired of other people telling this, but really, they should use Bitcoin. There are several advantages of this: accountability (you can verify with the block chain that they really received your payment), ease of use (utilizing 3rd parties like Coinbase, BitPay and others you don't really have to know how Bitcoin works to pay with them) and most importantly - irreversibility - once you receive Bitcoin t…

There is something I don't understand about Bitcoin: right now there is a lot of instability in the exchange rate of Bitcoin and everyday currency like dollars, euros, or pounds, from the graph I checked from here[1].

How can it be a viable alternative, when its value can change by 40% in a month? Gaining or losing value is not important (if it's increasing value, I have to delay exchanging to dollars as much as possible thus withholding funds), but as long as a vast majority of the population is not using it to pay or get paid, it poses a serious problem to its adoption.

The only solutions I can think of are: either it becomes stable, and so everyday people can exchange other currencies in Bitcoin, or people get paid in Bitcoin by employers, so they can spend it whenever they want, but neither of them look like they're going to happen soon.

Am I wrong in my analysis? I'm not an expert in finance so maybe I might have missed something.

[1] http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxEUR

Re: PayPal Freezes Mailpile Campaign Funds

#93

Post by matznerd »

Avoid Paypal as often as you can, simple as that. I am forced to use them for certain transactions, but anytime I can avoid them I do. I hate that they force me to verify my account, they force you to use Paypal credit (if you have it) instead of a CC, etc. I really don't like their one-sided policies...

Re: PayPal Freezes Mailpile Campaign Funds

#94

Post by sudomal »

Kiro wrote: post #32
ycombinatorcom wrote: post #24

Mailpile is about encrypted email that NSA may not be able to access. Mailpile also referred to Edward Snowden in their indiegogo campaign. Mailpile also accepts bitcoin payments. Do you need anymore reasons to why this happened ???

Get real.

It's not without precedent to see payment systems leaned on to disable their clients. This is a shiny new webmail client with a focus on encryption, but these shady groups probably aren't attacking projects this early in their life... probably.

Re: PayPal Freezes Mailpile Campaign Funds

#95

Post by MacsHeadroom »

Samuel_Michon wrote: post #86
M4v3R wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People can get tired of other people telling this, but really, they should use Bitcoin. There are several advantages of this: accountability (you can verify with the block chain that they really received your payment), ease of use (utilizing 3rd parties like Coinbase, BitPay and others you don't really have to know how Bitcoin works to pay with them) and most importantly - irreversibility - once you receive Bitcoin t…

> irreversibility - once you receive Bitcoin there are no chargebacks. Unless I receive the goods before paying, I would never buy anything with Bitcoin online. There’s no buyer or fraud protection whatsoever. I don’t understand how any legitimate merchant would be alright with that. If a merchant would only accept Bitcoin, that would come across just as sketchy as a merchant who wants me to mail him a cashier’s chec…

Merchants have a reputation to keep. Most people will trust a merchant who has proved themselves trustworthy. Merchants who haven't built trust will be forced to use a trusted escrow service, of which there are many.

There are more than enough options for buyer protection with Bitcoin. The good thing is that they're all optional. Buyer protection is a trade off. Sometimes it is unnecessary. But with card companies and businesses like PayPal, merchants don't get a choice. They're liable for charge-backs for 90days and for having their accounts frozen indefinitely.

MailPile has already received over $6000 in Bitcoins, by the way. It is their only donation received which is currently liquid.

See https://blockchain.info/address/13z55AGS14pSPiPpMqAAFHb576tS...

Re: PayPal Freezes Mailpile Campaign Funds

#96

Post by [deleted] »

M4v3R wrote: post #70
gaius wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What should they use - Google Checkout? https://support.google.com/checkout/sell/answer/3080449?hl=e... For better or worse, Paypal has survived and looks like it's going to go on surviving, that's why people if they only support one method, choose it.

People can get tired of other people telling this, but really, they should use Bitcoin. There are several advantages of this: accountability (you can verify with the block chain that they really received your payment), ease of use (utilizing 3rd parties like Coinbase, BitPay and others you don't really have to know how Bitcoin works to pay with them) and most importantly - irreversibility - once you receive Bitcoin t…

[deleted]

Re: PayPal Freezes Mailpile Campaign Funds

#97

Post by derefr »

BitMastro wrote: post #92
M4v3R wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People can get tired of other people telling this, but really, they should use Bitcoin. There are several advantages of this: accountability (you can verify with the block chain that they really received your payment), ease of use (utilizing 3rd parties like Coinbase, BitPay and others you don't really have to know how Bitcoin works to pay with them) and most importantly - irreversibility - once you receive Bitcoin t…

There is something I don't understand about Bitcoin: right now there is a lot of instability in the exchange rate of Bitcoin and everyday currency like dollars, euros, or pounds, from the graph I checked from here[1]. How can it be a viable alternative, when its value can change by 40% in a month? Gaining or losing value is not important (if it's increasing value, I have to delay exchanging to dollars as much as poss…

Just don't keep BTC. I'm surprised the default method of using bitcoins isn't "I give send USD to my transfer agent, they make a BTC transfer to your transfer agent, and your transfer agent immediately deposits USD in your account", with the entire process occuring with a defined instantaneous exchange rate.

Re: PayPal Freezes Mailpile Campaign Funds

#98

Post by contextual »

Samuel_Michon wrote: post #86
M4v3R wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People can get tired of other people telling this, but really, they should use Bitcoin. There are several advantages of this: accountability (you can verify with the block chain that they really received your payment), ease of use (utilizing 3rd parties like Coinbase, BitPay and others you don't really have to know how Bitcoin works to pay with them) and most importantly - irreversibility - once you receive Bitcoin t…

> irreversibility - once you receive Bitcoin there are no chargebacks. Unless I receive the goods before paying, I would never buy anything with Bitcoin online. There’s no buyer or fraud protection whatsoever. I don’t understand how any legitimate merchant would be alright with that. If a merchant would only accept Bitcoin, that would come across just as sketchy as a merchant who wants me to mail him a cashier’s chec…

Out of the half dozen times I've purchased with bitcoins, I was ripped off every single time. I stopped using it.

I'm a supporter of bitcoins and want it to succeed, I just don't trust a lot of the vendors that use it.

Re: PayPal Freezes Mailpile Campaign Funds

#99

Post by cliffu »

tzs wrote: post #85
pyalot2 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin ftw. Sure, not everybody can contribute in bitcoin. But on balance, bitcoin beats paypal by a factor of infinity. Why infinity? Well, with bitcoin you could at least have some contributions, i.e. > 0. With paypal you get 0 contributions. (N>1)/0 = infinity.

> Sure, not everybody can contribute in bitcoin. Why would anyone WANT to contribute in Bitcoin? From a contributor point of view, Bitcoin leaves them massively vulnerable to fraud--it is almost as bad as mailing an envelope full of cash.

They are crowdfunding a speculative application. That's already mailing envelopes of cash. Although the users read that they are funding development and not buying software, Paypal grabbed it all and said they're worried about fraud.

Bitcoin lets the user assert that they trust the recipient. Or they could trust a third party escrow recipient. There's no payment processor to restrict who a crowdfunder wishes to trust.

Re: PayPal Freezes Mailpile Campaign Funds

#100

Post by Rovanion »

pyalot2 wrote: post #26
M4v3R wrote: post #7

This is not the first time Paypal did that [1] and it most certainly won't be the last time. That's one of the reasons Bitcoin was invented. I hope that events like this will drive its adoption as a safe alternative for crowd funding and online shopping. [1] http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-04-23-skullgirls-... and probably there's more of this

Bitcoin ftw. Sure, not everybody can contribute in bitcoin. But on balance, bitcoin beats paypal by a factor of infinity. Why infinity? Well, with bitcoin you could at least have some contributions, i.e. > 0. With paypal you get 0 contributions. (N>1)/0 = infinity.

Anything divided by 0 is undefined.
Post reply on HN