Square Market Accepts Bitcoin • Hacker News Board

Good to see. Businesses that offer marketplace services should have no objection to integrating bitcoin as a payment option. It does not deteriorate the merchant or consumer experience (regardless of whether or not they use or hold bitcoin), so they have nothing to lose, and all to gain.

For Square, it's just an extra payment method that they're hoping will help their merchants (and them) tap into the very small percentage of evangelistic early adopters who have made large gains and are now willing to spend some of their coins.

Square is most probably not a supporter of the vision of bitcoin taking over e-commerce payments. Most of their business stems from partnerships with large credit card companies. This is a pure (and smart) marketing play.

Re: Square Market Accepts Bitcoin

#15

Post by jusben1369 » Mon, Mar 31, 2014, 9:12 PM UTC

When Bitcoin's are converted to a fiat currency that's now a taxable event correct? That's when the gain or loss is "realized" So if you pay in Bitcoin and the platform/processor immediately converts it into $US to pay the merchant does that create a taxable event for the seller? I suspect people would like to pay in Bitcoin to a merchant who accepts and keeps it in Bitcoin so that a gain is not realized and no taxable event occurs. But really am curious/scratching head/not sure.

Re: Square Market Accepts Bitcoin

#16

Post by marcell » Mon, Mar 31, 2014, 9:13 PM UTC

battani wrote: post #14

Good to see. Businesses that offer marketplace services should have no objection to integrating bitcoin as a payment option. It does not deteriorate the merchant or consumer experience (regardless of whether or not they use or hold bitcoin), so they have nothing to lose, and all to gain. For Square, it's just an extra payment method that they're hoping will help their merchants (and them) tap into the very small perc…

No need to speculate on their motives, Jack Dorsey explains them here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zJe4PUVx3c

Re: Square Market Accepts Bitcoin

#17

Post by tlrobinson » Mon, Mar 31, 2014, 9:14 PM UTC

steveklabnik wrote: post #9

tlrobinson wrote: post #4

A not-insignificant group of existing payment processors / ecommerce platforms are now supporting Bitcoin. Shopify, Balanced (sort of), Stripe, and now Square. Am I missing any?

Hey, Steve from Balanced here. Curious as to why you say 'sort of' for us: if it's that we're in beta, so is Stripe. (We're hoping to get out of beta in the near-ish timeframe.)

Last I saw, you accepted Bitcoins only from Coinbase accounts. Until I can directly pay with Bitcoins from my own wallet I consider that "sort of".

Re: Square Market Accepts Bitcoin

#18

Post by natrius » Mon, Mar 31, 2014, 9:16 PM UTC

jusben1369 wrote: post #15

When Bitcoin's are converted to a fiat currency that's now a taxable event correct? That's when the gain or loss is "realized" So if you pay in Bitcoin and the platform/processor immediately converts it into $US to pay the merchant does that create a taxable event for the seller? I suspect people would like to pay in Bitcoin to a merchant who accepts and keeps it in Bitcoin so that a gain is not realized and no taxab…

I believe the taxable event is exchanging Bitcoin for something that isn't Bitcoin. Even if the merchant holds on to the Bitcoin, a gain has been realized.

Re: Square Market Accepts Bitcoin

#19

Post by gojomo » Mon, Mar 31, 2014, 9:16 PM UTC

theswan wrote: post #3

How is Square/Stripe getting around the issue that most exchanges wait for 6 confirmations before a transaction is accepted? Are they ignoring the risk of a double spend and just going ahead once a transaction has propagated to the network for mining?

Probably. Unless you're working in concert with major mining power, it's still hard to engineer a successful double-spend. And by pushing their preferred observed transaction to major pools, Square could help ensure a double-spend can't succeed, or get a near-instant indication that a competing transaction exists. (I don't know if they're doing this.)

It also looks like most 'Square Market' purchases take more than an hour to deliver/ship... so the payment validity will be known before a hypothetical fraudster benefits.

Re: Square Market Accepts Bitcoin

#20

Post by jordigh » Mon, Mar 31, 2014, 9:17 PM UTC

jusben1369 wrote: post #15

When Bitcoin's are converted to a fiat currency that's now a taxable event correct? That's when the gain or loss is "realized" So if you pay in Bitcoin and the platform/processor immediately converts it into $US to pay the merchant does that create a taxable event for the seller? I suspect people would like to pay in Bitcoin to a merchant who accepts and keeps it in Bitcoin so that a gain is not realized and no taxab…

Only for transactions over 600 USD, aiui.