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Shopify accepts Bitcoin

ecommerce.shopify.com

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Re: Shopify accepts Bitcoin

#81

Post by TylerE »

oleganza wrote: post #55
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.

Imagine if you spent $1000 for bitcoins a year ago and now they are worth $40000. Wouldn't you enjoy spending a little bit of it here and there, spread the word etc? If you are a hard believer, then you'd probably wait till it's worth $100000 and maybe then, you'd spend a little here and there?

Last year 3.5x the US money supply was spent by consumers (not even counting b2b transactions, which I suspect are at least as high). So in your hypothetical example, holding $40k in bitcoins, you would need to spend _$150k_ in bitcoins yearly to match that level of liquidity.

Re: Shopify accepts Bitcoin

#82

Post by gibybo »

grey-area wrote: post #76
rmc wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

This limit is set by miners and the reference client (and the various clients that copy the reference client's limit).

I'm not sure of the exact minimums necessary to change the limit, but roughly speaking if you could convince more than half of active bitcoin users and enough miners to control more than half of the network hash rate, you could change the limit.

However even this wouldn't necessarily change the limit in the way you expect. It would create a hard fork where you would have two versions of bitcoin. All coins made before the fork would exist in both versions, but coins made after would only exist in their respective version. So you'd have A-bitcoins with a limit of say, 1 billion, and B-bitcoins with the old limit of 21 million. Whether anyone would still use B-bitcoins depends on how many clients/miners decide to stay on the B-bitcoin branch.

Re: Shopify accepts Bitcoin

#83

Post by vbuterin »

JohnTHaller wrote: post #68
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.

Well, except for the fact that all bitcoin purchases are very publicly tracked for everyone to view.

http://blockchain.info/wallet/send-shared

Re: Shopify accepts Bitcoin

#84

Post by oleganza »

TylerE wrote: post #81
oleganza wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine if you spent $1000 for bitcoins a year ago and now they are worth $40000. Wouldn't you enjoy spending a little bit of it here and there, spread the word etc? If you are a hard believer, then you'd probably wait till it's worth $100000 and maybe then, you'd spend a little here and there?

Last year 3.5x the US money supply was spent by consumers (not even counting b2b transactions, which I suspect are at least as high). So in your hypothetical example, holding $40k in bitcoins, you would need to spend _$150k_ in bitcoins yearly to match that level of liquidity.

US cash is a depreciating asset fuelled by cheap artificial credit. This level of spending is not a genuine liquidity, but a economy on heroine. It will not end well because while people are buying all these plasma panels, printed money is being spread in to actually productive economies where it will cause inflation and massive losses. So either, say, China goes into depression and production halts and everyone loses, or China throws their USD back into U.S. causing massive inflation there. Short-term liquidity figures do not tell this story and they are not to be matched. Everyone needs to invest in hard assets and save instead of spending: invest in education, profitable businesses, friendly neighbours, bitcoin.

Re: Shopify accepts Bitcoin

#85

Post by crassus »

JohnTHaller wrote: post #68
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.

Well, except for the fact that all bitcoin purchases are very publicly tracked for everyone to view.

hopefully not for much longer[1]

[1] http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/bitcoin-dark-wallet

Re: Shopify accepts Bitcoin

#86

Post by crassus »

atmosx wrote: post #23

BitCoin can be better viewed as gold . If you would use gold to buy something then you will use BTC (illegal markets apart of course). But peercoin could stand a chance to become a sort of online trading currency because of it's inflationary[1] policy. Something BitCoin should also have in order to become a widely accepted currency instead of a hoarding mechanism that gives the early adopters huge advantage over anyo…

I like the mining design of Peer Coin much better. I worry that bitcoin mining will become too centralized/unprofitable due to declining block rewards. I'd feel more comfortable using a coin with a continuous small inflation tax paid to miners (say, 1% a year), than a coin that depends on fees becoming higher/more popular in the future.

Besides, I hate fees in my coin, it hurts microtransaction applications.

Re: Shopify accepts Bitcoin

#87

Post by crassus »

grey-area wrote: post #77
snitko wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Bitco…

A little moderate deflation is not bad. There was continuous economic growth with deflation in the USA after the American Civil War for ~2 decades.

Macroeconomists really have no idea what they are doing - except, I believe them that a sudden drastic drop in the money supply is bad

Re: Shopify accepts Bitcoin

#88

Post by crassus »

snitko wrote: post #66
atmosx wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My argument is about currencies not inflation or deflation. The primary service provided by a currency is facilitating the exchange of goods. Being inflationary is imperative for the population to use it. It is true that currencies are forced upon population by governments (or any form of governance) and it's true that anyone would rather be holding an asset that will not lose value over time compared to one that wil…

>Inflation is an indirect motive to spend money today and not hoard. Why is spending good? If I spend money on the things I don't really need because I'm afraid I'm gonna lose otherwise, why do you think it's good for the economy? Some spending is good, some spending is bad. If everyone spends money on cars while they don't really need that many cars, why is it good? Inflation might create some jobs, but those jobs w…

Pretty much the whole of modern economics is built around justifying the existing cultural regime

Re: Shopify accepts Bitcoin

#89

Post by shit_parade »

TylerE wrote: post #81
oleganza wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine if you spent $1000 for bitcoins a year ago and now they are worth $40000. Wouldn't you enjoy spending a little bit of it here and there, spread the word etc? If you are a hard believer, then you'd probably wait till it's worth $100000 and maybe then, you'd spend a little here and there?

Last year 3.5x the US money supply was spent by consumers (not even counting b2b transactions, which I suspect are at least as high). So in your hypothetical example, holding $40k in bitcoins, you would need to spend _$150k_ in bitcoins yearly to match that level of liquidity.

Silk road did what, 10 million btc over two years?

Re: Shopify accepts Bitcoin

#90

Post by crassus »

pbreit wrote: post #4

Will be interesting to see if Shopify (or anyone in general ecommerce) ever reports on the popularity of Bitcoin as a payment method considering there is no sense at all to use Bitcoins to purchase legal items in the vast majority of countries.

It's a pure international currency. That's useful for customers without USD access.
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