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Stripe: Bitcoin Sign-up

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Re: Stripe: Bitcoin Sign-up

#121

Post by grey-area »

vertex-four wrote: post #110
grey-area wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So there is no risk in shipping because you are 100% positive that you have the money you expect you have. Only if you wait for a significant amount of time (days?) to verify the transaction. If you use a payment processor and they allow you to pass through transactions without verification, they are assuming that risk for you, but the risk is still there, and there is of course also risk caused by the currency volat…

> Only if you wait for a significant amount of time (days?) to verify the transaction. What? Two or three confirmations are generally irreversible. Six - an hour, give or take - has been generally agreed to be absolutely irreversible since the original Bitcoin client (if it's not, there's something really wrong and Bitcoin isn't as valuable as we thought). If you're using a payment processor which takes risk that doe…

Credit cards generally verify in seconds, so this is a significant difference, even if the time is hours (I'd read somewhere it could be days for 7 confirmations, but thanks for the correction if that is never true and it is hours) - that confirmation time varies wildly and is not predictable is also an issue. A lot of merchants ship almost immediately after orders are completed (e.g. digital goods), so introducing another delay is not great and a significant downside for both merchants and consumers.

These and other technical challenges like blockchain size are probably soluble though, esp. if it hit scale and people were working on it, what worries me more in terms of mass adoption is the attitude to other risks like security, volatility and lack of insurance in the Bitcoin community, the insane requirements for sending in copies of passports etc that exchanges still have for purchasing bitcoins, and the fundamental problems caused by giving individual cryptographic keys perpetual value.

It would certainly be nice to have a payment system not controlled by Visa/Mastercard, and I imagine one is coming, but I'm not convinced Bitcoin is that alternative because of the assumptions baked into its design that we need to exchange tokens in order to exchange value.

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin Sign-up

#122

Post by grey-area »

baddox wrote: post #106
grey-area wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So there is no risk in shipping because you are 100% positive that you have the money you expect you have. Only if you wait for a significant amount of time (days?) to verify the transaction. If you use a payment processor and they allow you to pass through transactions without verification, they are assuming that risk for you, but the risk is still there, and there is of course also risk caused by the currency volat…

I think you're drastically overstating the risk of a double spend.

Maybe so, I did mention other risks though.

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin Sign-up

#123

Post by vertex-four »

grey-area wrote: post #121
vertex-four wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Only if you wait for a significant amount of time (days?) to verify the transaction. What? Two or three confirmations are generally irreversible. Six - an hour, give or take - has been generally agreed to be absolutely irreversible since the original Bitcoin client (if it's not, there's something really wrong and Bitcoin isn't as valuable as we thought). If you're using a payment processor which takes risk that doe…

Credit cards generally verify in seconds, so this is a significant difference, even if the time is hours (I'd read somewhere it could be days for 7 confirmations, but thanks for the correction if that is never true and it is hours) - that confirmation time varies wildly and is not predictable is also an issue. A lot of merchants ship almost immediately after orders are completed (e.g. digital goods), so introducing a…

> the insane requirements for sending in copies of passports etc that exchanges still have for purchasing bitcoins.

If you've ever bought foreign currency in a bureau de change, you'll have had to provide ID. It's the same set of laws which require Bitcoin exchanges to require ID. Take it up with your Government.

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin Sign-up

#124

Post by dcc1 »

anurag wrote: post #18
dcc1 wrote: post #13

I will stick with Bitpay, thank you very much. They are also actively researching and testing bitcoin stuff > http://bitcore.io/blog/articles/cosign-our-multisignature-wa... I used Stripe for several months, but then they said my business is "too high a risk" for them, 7 years in business (longer than Stripe), hosting company in Ireland, very low charge-back rate, all customers more than happy, good support etc! Sinc…

Really sorry about that. Mind sending me details at anurag@stripe.com?

Thanks email sent, our service is actually not to dissimilar to tarsnap now that I think of it, anyways that was in the past. Thought I tell people my experiences.

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin Sign-up

#125

Post by zanny »

wyager wrote: post #56
piokoch wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"which are awful, but necessary for now". I am not sure what is exactly that awful in having free credit for X days, rewards for making purchases (which effectively cancels fees) and, the most important thing, chargebacks. I can understand Credit Card issues from seller point of view, but for clients (that is most of us), they are not that bad. Bitcoin will have to provide the same level of consumer comfort and safet…

> the most important thing, chargebacks. Chargebacks are awful. 99% of the time, the merchant is a trusted party with a reputation to uphold, and the customer is a nobody who either couldn't care less about or couldn't be held to their reputation. Established companies won't go around overtly scamming people. The only time that chargebacks are really a good thing is with the very uncommon untrusted-merchant sale (lik…

And in these situations it makes more sense to just use a trusted third party broker than to have it built into the transaction schema. It adds huge amounts of overhead and unpredictability to what should be simple exchange.

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin Sign-up

#126

Post by pbreit »

danielweber wrote: post #115
pbreit wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin does have the capability of "2 of 3" authorizations which can mitigate some of the upfront risk. The idea being that a payment only completes after 2 parties approve it, the 3rd being an independent 3rd party in this case (who could be configured to auto-approve if a complaint isn't filed in x days).

And what stops the customer from filing a bogus complaint, same as they do now if they use a credit card?

Getting kicked out of the system.

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin Sign-up

#127

Post by gnopgnip »

wyager wrote: post #56
piokoch wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"which are awful, but necessary for now". I am not sure what is exactly that awful in having free credit for X days, rewards for making purchases (which effectively cancels fees) and, the most important thing, chargebacks. I can understand Credit Card issues from seller point of view, but for clients (that is most of us), they are not that bad. Bitcoin will have to provide the same level of consumer comfort and safet…

> the most important thing, chargebacks. Chargebacks are awful. 99% of the time, the merchant is a trusted party with a reputation to uphold, and the customer is a nobody who either couldn't care less about or couldn't be held to their reputation. Established companies won't go around overtly scamming people. The only time that chargebacks are really a good thing is with the very uncommon untrusted-merchant sale (lik…

If chargebacks were not available they would happen much more often. This is evident by looking at the bitcoin community as a whole.

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin Sign-up

#128

Post by etchalon »

baddox wrote: post #104
hnnewguy wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> Because as a consumer, I've never had a complaint about my CC, ever. I take it you've never had your CC details stolen, or less seriously, had your CC automatically shut down when you're traveling due to "suspicious activity."

I've had both happen to me.

Neither take more than a few moments on the phone to resolve without the lose of any funds.

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin Sign-up

#129

Post by mikeash »

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 why I almost never make purchases with cash.

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin Sign-up

#130

Post by etchalon »

pgtruesdell wrote: post #47
Smudge wrote: post #12

I wonder how this will work. Once out of beta, will it be a default option, or will it require extra steps for both the developer and the end-user? And will we be able to operate primarily in Bitcoin end-to-end, or will everything be converted to/from a preferred currency (e.g. USD) during each transaction?

Stripe is going to convert it to the merchant's local currency in "real time" to prevent the problems in fluctuations of BTC value. This is shaping up to be very nice. http://recode.net/2014/03/27/stripe-merchants-will-soon-be-a...

Both Coinbase and BitPay already do this.
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