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Stripe: Bitcoin Sign-up

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Re: Stripe: Bitcoin Sign-up

#91

Post by vijayboyapati »

hendzen wrote: post #76

Awesome. Now to see how their integration works with regards to confirmation time. The best solution IMO is to use a risk analyzer to determine the number of needed confirmations. 0 conf for small payments for a merchant with a low fraud rate, with increasing confirmations needed as the size of the payment grows. I would look at BitPay's checkout flow to see the state of the art here. Also hoping they implement the p…

+1 to BIP70. Very exciting that a payment company as capable as Stripe is entering the bitcoin space. Much better for everyone if the Stripes of the world are at the center of the bitcoin ecosystem rather than the Gox's.

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin Sign-up

#92

Post by amorphid »

hnnewguy wrote: post #15
tomasien wrote: post #4

The concept that Stripe may be moving away from strictly supporting Credit Card payments (which are awful, but necessary for now) and into alternatives is so exciting to me that I am literally shaking. We're building infrastructure to make bank-to-bank transfers palatable to consumers and drive their cost toward zero, but it's only if thought leaders like the Collisons embrace the move away from CC's that the move wi…

> which are awful, but necessary for now As a consumer or business? Because as a consumer, I've never had a complaint about my CC, ever. With the NFC chips built into all new CCs (at least here in Canada) I tap my card and leave. You can't get more convenient than that. As such, I don't think credit cards are going anywhere.

I recently tried buying a something online with a credit card, and the transaction was declined due to a fraud alert. I happened to have a few bucks worth of BitCoin, and the merchant accept BitCoin, so I used BitCoin to make the purchase. Making the purchase felt like cash, and it felt oddly satisfying.

For some purchases, there is MasterCard. For everything else, there's BitCoin.

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin Sign-up

#93

Post by voxic11 »

[deleted] wrote: post #87
netcan wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 1st order effects are on business. It's mostly the 2nd order effects that consumers feel. Marginally higher costs that inevitably pass to consumers . Merchant refusal to ship to "high risk" locations. More difficult international transactions generally. Fewer online vendors (=less choice & higher prices) of high risk (easily resellable) items. Then there are the effects of having such a thick intermediary, a duop…

[deleted]

No bitcoin will fix that because you can't reverse the charges. So there is no risk in shipping because you are 100% positive that you have the money you expect you have.

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin Sign-up

#94

Post by deegles »

srdev wrote: post #51
ejfox wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you had the option to tap a Bitcoin card and have the same experience, but save 3% on the transaction, would you?

It depends on a lot of other factors. Are my bitcoins on the card insured against loss or theft? Can I reverse the transaction if I get stiffed? If the answers are "no" and "no", then I'd probably still prefer my credit card for peace of mind. 3% isn't a huge discount in the grand scheme of things, and I get 1-3% rewards on my credit card for most purchases.

You can't do any of that with cash either...

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin Sign-up

#95

Post by deegles »

Given the recent guidance from the IRS regarding bitcoin (it's property like stocks or bonds... http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/0325irsbitc...) I wouldn't try to use it as a day-to-day currency. Every single transaction will represent a taxable event, requiring calculating cost-basis and capital gain/loss. If Stripe were announcing today a "pay with MSFT shares" feature, people would ridicule them. That's essentially what bitcoin payment is. (in the US at least)

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin Sign-up

#96

Post by patmcc »

deegles wrote: post #94
srdev wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on a lot of other factors. Are my bitcoins on the card insured against loss or theft? Can I reverse the transaction if I get stiffed? If the answers are "no" and "no", then I'd probably still prefer my credit card for peace of mind. 3% isn't a huge discount in the grand scheme of things, and I get 1-3% rewards on my credit card for most purchases.

You can't do any of that with cash either...

Which is one of the good reasons for using credit cards - when my wallet gets stolen, the cash is gone and my credit card liability is $0.

Bitcoin is very similar to cash in a lot of ways. This is both a pro and a con.

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin Sign-up

#97

Post by lclarkmichalek »

deegles wrote: post #94
srdev wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on a lot of other factors. Are my bitcoins on the card insured against loss or theft? Can I reverse the transaction if I get stiffed? If the answers are "no" and "no", then I'd probably still prefer my credit card for peace of mind. 3% isn't a huge discount in the grand scheme of things, and I get 1-3% rewards on my credit card for most purchases.

You can't do any of that with cash either...

I don't think the person you are replying to is talking about cash. Goalposts...

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin Sign-up

#98

Post by netcan »

[deleted] wrote: post #87
netcan wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 1st order effects are on business. It's mostly the 2nd order effects that consumers feel. Marginally higher costs that inevitably pass to consumers . Merchant refusal to ship to "high risk" locations. More difficult international transactions generally. Fewer online vendors (=less choice & higher prices) of high risk (easily resellable) items. Then there are the effects of having such a thick intermediary, a duop…

[deleted]

As others have said, risk=chargebacks which bitcoin does fix. with CCs merchants basically have to trust customers and being overseas makes you untrustworthy (like to chargeback).

Lots of other things imply risk. The only way to reduce it is by finding out more about customers: full name, current location, previous location, chargeback history and anything else that the merchant, CC company, payment gateway and 3rd parties hired by any of these can find.

That segways nicely into the high profile brokeness that bitcoin aims to fix: privacy. I prefer a world where people can buy stuff without their name being crosschecked and recorded by all these parties, at least by default. If we want to require porn or ammunition or whatnot to be purchased by verified individuals, lets do it with some explicit identity check instead of by default in some opaque way.

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin Sign-up

#99

Post by kalleboo »

hendzen wrote: post #76

Awesome. Now to see how their integration works with regards to confirmation time. The best solution IMO is to use a risk analyzer to determine the number of needed confirmations. 0 conf for small payments for a merchant with a low fraud rate, with increasing confirmations needed as the size of the payment grows. I would look at BitPay's checkout flow to see the state of the art here. Also hoping they implement the p…

> The best solution IMO is to use a risk analyzer to determine the number of needed confirmations

As I understand it, you can still feel pretty safe with 0 confirmations if you're monitoring the bitcoin network for double-spend attempts over the average network propagation time. If you don't see any double-spend attempts anywhere on the net by the time most of the net has seen your transaction, you're probably good. There are a lot of hidden pitfalls in bitcoin security (such as - the above isn't guaranteed, if miners change their mind to be greedy and pick the transaction with the highest fee instead of the first one, that method breaks) so I'm not sure if it's bulletproof though.

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin Sign-up

#100

Post by netcan »

wdewind wrote: post #85
netcan wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 1st order effects are on business. It's mostly the 2nd order effects that consumers feel. Marginally higher costs that inevitably pass to consumers . Merchant refusal to ship to "high risk" locations. More difficult international transactions generally. Fewer online vendors (=less choice & higher prices) of high risk (easily resellable) items. Then there are the effects of having such a thick intermediary, a duop…

> Marginally higher costs that inevitably pass to consumers Massive statement that I sincerely doubt is true (increased revenue off of increased liquidity drives prices down for everyone).

I don't understand this statement.

It's controversial that an extra cost attached to every transaction in a big wide chunk of the economy will bring up costs to consumers.

It's not very different to sales tax.

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