Umm... April fools?
Square Market Accepts Bitcoin
41–50 of 132 posts
Re: Square Market Accepts Bitcoin
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is perhaps the most useful way of looking at Bitcoin today. Now that the tax treatment of Bitcoin has been established, using Bitcoin as currency makes about as much sense as using stock as currency. In other words, it doesn't.
Can I transfer stock to you with three taps on my phone? Bitcoin makes far more sense than stock as currency, especially if higher sustained demand reduces fluctuations in value, which isn't typical for stocks.
Based on your comment, I would guess that you have never had to file a long Schedule D. Accurately tracking your short and long term capital gains and losses is not always as straightforward as it might seem, especially when you have lots of transactions. Additionally, there are often associated matters (such as carryovers) that you wouldn't want to address without the assistance of a qualified professional. Unless you're an investor/trader who is familiar with these issues and has enough money at play to make it worth your while, the hassle, costs and liability that could arise should you make a mistake are going to quickly eliminate the utility of using Bitcoin over USD.
Additionally, you need to look at this from the perspective of a merchant. The average merchant has expenses denominated in US dollars and accepts payment in US dollars. There is no FX risk. Bitcoin changes that. Do you honestly believe that the average merchant is equipped to manage FX risk, or has any appetite for FX exposure in the first place?
Please note that volatility is a red herring. Volatility has no bearing on the costs associated with tracking capital gains and losses (you need to accurately track your transactions regardless), and while the level of volatility will certainly impact how you manage FX risk, low volatility doesn't mean that there is no risk to address.
Re: Square Market Accepts Bitcoin
#43How 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?
Zero-confirmation transactions are fine for everything but rivalrous digital goods; it takes longer than 60m to ship something in any case, so if there's a double spend you just notify the merchant and they can cancel the order.
Re: Square Market Accepts Bitcoin
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
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".
Ahh gotcha. Yes, we believe that's a pretty important distinction. Fair enough!
What's the reason for this? Is it part of Coinbase's payment integration? I don't recall any other websites doing this (although there's the possibility that I simply haven't used other sites that also do this)
Re: Square Market Accepts Bitcoin
#45Does anyone have an opinion on why the price of Bitcoin doesn't seem to move on news like this? It seems significant in my opinion and I would think that wider acceptance would lead to a higher price, but that hasn't been the case over the past few weeks / announcements.
Re: Square Market Accepts Bitcoin
#46How 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?
Is this Square? Square up has a different logo and looks a little more like generic bootstrap. I'm not sure if they're related or just an auction site with a similar name.
Edit: yep, see https://www.squaremarket.com/about, this is not the US payment company most people on HN would call 'square' but an auction site started by Oxford grads.
Re: Square Market Accepts Bitcoin
#47Does anyone have an opinion on why the price of Bitcoin doesn't seem to move on news like this? It seems significant in my opinion and I would think that wider acceptance would lead to a higher price, but that hasn't been the case over the past few weeks / announcements.
It's easy for merchants to accept bitcoin, because they always propose it alongside a CC payment alternative. And they never risk anything, because they only ever touch USD. So it's all gain for them. (This is more a marketing stunt to drive traffic to Square Market, more than anything else. Square Market has been having trouble competing with more common marketplaces such as Shopify and Amazon).
This doesn't affect consumer adoption though, which is what investors/traders would be looking at.
Also, if the number of bitcoin transactions through such methods goes up, BTC/USD is more likely to go down. Any bitcoin sent to a Square merchant will be picked up by Coinbase and sold at the bid price on the bitcoin markets, which will pressure price action down. (Coinbase then takes the USD from that sell and transfers them to Square).
Re: Square Market Accepts Bitcoin
#48Does anyone have an opinion on why the price of Bitcoin doesn't seem to move on news like this? It seems significant in my opinion and I would think that wider acceptance would lead to a higher price, but that hasn't been the case over the past few weeks / announcements.
It doesn't make it any easier to acquire bitcoins in the first place. When you already have a debit/credit card there is no reason to use bitcoins to shop with square.
Re: Square Market Accepts Bitcoin
#49Curious if they are going to take a lower transaction fee on Bitcoin payments as opposed to credit card purchases. They really should.
Why? They are incurring a potentially-substantial risk in facilitating the transaction for you, as well as providing the infrastructure for you. That's why CC fees exist, and that's why people providing bitcoin-related services should be able to charge fees too.
Because otherwise people will just stick to credit cards?
Re: Square Market Accepts Bitcoin
#50Does anyone have an opinion on why the price of Bitcoin doesn't seem to move on news like this? It seems significant in my opinion and I would think that wider acceptance would lead to a higher price, but that hasn't been the case over the past few weeks / announcements.
A $10 t-shirt will still cost $10 worth of bitcoins.
Whether that winds up being 1 or 1000 bitcoins is totally irrelevant. There's no intrinsic value