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Shopify accepts Bitcoin

ecommerce.shopify.com

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Re: Shopify accepts Bitcoin

#71

Post by tjoff »

wcummings wrote: post #69
panarky wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've also had good experiences using Bitcoin for online transactions. Fast, cross-border, nearly free. But I assume the transactions are getting analyzed by any number of government and corporate entities. There's a lot to be learned from the public blockchain, especially if any transaction in the chain can be linked to your identity (such as sending/receiving with exchanges or online wallets). I assume that authorit…

Pseudo-anonymity is still loads better than a CC transaction from my point of view, but your point is taken. Of course, you can always buy Bitcoin with cash (:

Many purchases requires that you reveal your whereabouts or otherwise identify yourself (physcial address, mail, phone number, google/service-account). And bam, you and all your transactions with the bitcoins you bought with cash are once again public.

Re: Shopify accepts Bitcoin

#72

Post by wcummings »

tjoff wrote: post #71
wcummings wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pseudo-anonymity is still loads better than a CC transaction from my point of view, but your point is taken. Of course, you can always buy Bitcoin with cash (:

Many purchases requires that you reveal your whereabouts or otherwise identify yourself (physcial address, mail, phone number, google/service-account). And bam, you and all your transactions with the bitcoins you bought with cash are once again public.

I think most people are familiar with what pseudo-anonymous means, no need to keep restating it in different ways.

Re: Shopify accepts Bitcoin

#73

Post by nikolak »

wcummings wrote: post #58

It's obvious to me that many of the Bitcoin critics in this thread have never actually used it. I prefer Bitcoin for online purchases, if a vendor accepts it, I'll use it. Purchases aren't tracked, or being sucked up by some SIGINT program, no fees (even in exchanging, if you do it right) and I don't have to give my CC # to the vendor.

>It's obvious to me that many of the Bitcoin critics in this thread have never actually used it.

I've used it, not much though - maybe $100 worth of bitcoins.

>Purchases aren't tracked

List of transactions from your wallet is visible to anyone.

>being sucked up by some SIGINT program

As far as you know, but I wouldn't be surprised if your transactions are "sucked up" by some SIGINT program. Or maybe they aren't because there are websites that enable anyone to easily view transactions.

>no fees (even in exchanging, if you do it right)

I'd love to hear more about this. How can you buy bitcoin online without fees? Meeting with someone and buying them in person kinda defeats the purpose, you could go out and buy the items you want with cash - there are no fees for that either. And is the effort really worth the small transaction fees? Not to mention that by the time you get back home from cash-purchase the price may have gone down and you can't even buy the item you wanted now.

>I don't have to give my CC # to the vendor.

That one is true.

Also, when paying with bitcoin you (in most cases) don't have absolutely any customer protection.

Re: Shopify accepts Bitcoin

#74

Post by tjoff »

wcummings wrote: post #72
tjoff wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many purchases requires that you reveal your whereabouts or otherwise identify yourself (physcial address, mail, phone number, google/service-account). And bam, you and all your transactions with the bitcoins you bought with cash are once again public.

I think most people are familiar with what pseudo-anonymous means, no need to keep restating it in different ways.

I'd argue that, in a shopping context, using your credit card and real name is more anonymous than using bitcoin.

And I'd never even consider calling either pseudo-anonymous.

Re: Shopify accepts Bitcoin

#75

Post by jedunnigan »

panarky wrote: post #65
d4vlx wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me that means that it's time to start selling. There is no fundamental reason why Bitcoin is rising so fast, it seems like speculation to me. I'm not one of the Bitcoin haters either, I've been heavily involved the last 6 months, I just don't see any major reason for this spike other than the usual speculative arguments. If Bitcoin shouldn't be spent then what use are they?

Yes, it's speculative. Yes, there's no intrinsic value. Yes, the exchange rate could fall by 90%, or expand by 10,000%. It's also true that Bitcoin has survived and thrived far longer than experts predicted. Acceptance is increasing rapidly, and globally. Pretty cool how all of these things can be true at the same time.

> Yes, there's no intrinsic value.

I always find this argument silly, as I see intrinsic value in finance as a logical fallacy, but I'll entertain the idea anyway. From Wikipedia:

>In commodity money, intrinsic value can be partially or entirely due to the desirable features of the object as a medium of exchange and a store of value. Examples of such features include divisibility; easily and securely storable and transportable; scarcity; and difficulty to counterfeit.

I see Bitcoin as three things: a commodity, a 'trust-less' payment network and a distributed ledger. Now, those are all value-worthy features in my book, especially the latter two.

If you live in a bankless country without a stable currency, Bitcoin is a very powerful tool that has 'intrinsic' value in its capacity to serve your financial needs where other instruments have failed or are entirely absent. Same goes for folk stuck in countries with severe capital controls or vicious austerity measures.

If gold has "intrinsic value", so does Bitcoin. In fact, Bitcoin has more value from that perspective; since when you could you divide gold infinitely? It's also counterfeitable; Bitcoin, not so much. That's what all these clowns like Joe Weisenthal don't seem to understand because they are so caught up in their own ideas of sound money that they can't see the value that Bitcoin brings to the table. Their loss.

Re: Shopify accepts Bitcoin

#76

Post by grey-area »

rmc wrote: post #67
d4vlx wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me that means that it's time to start selling. There is no fundamental reason why Bitcoin is rising so fast, it seems like speculation to me. I'm not one of the Bitcoin haters either, I've been heavily involved the last 6 months, I just don't see any major reason for this spike other than the usual speculative arguments. If Bitcoin shouldn't be spent then what use are they?

> There is no fundamental reason why Bitcoin is rising so fast Sure there is. The goal of BitCoin is to be as popular as USD and EUR. There are maximum of 21,000,000 bitcoin. Imagine owning 1/21,000,000th of all the USD!

There are maximum of 21,000,000 bitcoin.

I find this limit a really interesting part of the bitcoin experiment.

What sets the limit though? Is it technically possible for the developers to revise this limit at a later date, thus causing a drop in value for existing holders?

Re: Shopify accepts Bitcoin

#77

Post by grey-area »

snitko wrote: post #38
atmosx wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but no one will spend a non-inflationary currency when he can spend an inflationary one.

It is really a sad state of things that people misunderstand deflation. They have this idea that no one will spend, but it doesn't stand any scrutiny, really. Please read these articles, we made a real effort here to explain why deflation wouldn't be a bad thing: http://blog.oleganza.com/post/66215430631/deflationary-spira... http://snitko.ru/blog/the-beauty-of-deflation.html

There are many examples from history that Bad money drives out the Good[1].

This is why people think a little moderate inflation is good for an economy, and deflation is bad. A currency needs to be spent to be of use, but if it is going to always increase in value, the sensible thing to do is to spend something else and keep the increasing currency as a nest egg. Unless you can mandate everyone only transact in Bitcoin, people will tend to spend other things and hoard bitcoin if it keeps increasing in value.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gresham%27s_law

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