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Show HN: 10% off at Starbucks when you buy with Bitcoin

coinforcoffee.com

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Re: Show HN: 10% off at Starbucks when you buy with Bitcoin

#101

Post by dotBen »

mhluongo wrote: post #7

Hey guys! You might remember our last app, Card for Coin, where we were buying Starbucks for bitcoin. Well, here's the other side- we're looking forward to your feedback. The websocket stuff is a little touch and go, so please let me know if you have issues. Let me know if anyone has an issue loading a card or getting a refund, and I'll work it out.

everyone wants to know, how are you fulfilling the Starbucks card side of things?

Do you have access to a private API?

Are you distributing the barcode of a card you are auto-loading? (but then how do you know the balance post sale?)

Are you screen-scraping?

I think there's a lot of people in this thread that are v curious, please do tell :)

Re: Show HN: 10% off at Starbucks when you buy with Bitcoin

#102

Post by dang »

dotBen wrote: post #100
jsun wrote: post #27

I'd like to hear a real economist's take on this but from my personal opinion Bitcoin will never take off as a transactional currency because of it's inherently limited nature, and here's the reasons contributing to it: 1. There's a finite amount of them that can ever be mined 2. There's no central governing body control the rate of inflation/deflation through monetary policy. By definition this creates a deflationar…

this is an example of where I'd love to see the new HN mods close off-topic threads. No offense the parent, but your general musing on the feasibility of Bitcoin - amount to thread jacking given the original topic above

We don't close subthreads, but we do demote off-topic ones when we see them.

Re: Show HN: 10% off at Starbucks when you buy with Bitcoin

#103

Post by jrockway »

listic wrote: post #92
myrandomcomment wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

42, not a hipster, no Fedora (well I have a VM running it). I like my coffee in the morning, french press at home (Peet's Garuda). Peet's if I am out and about and once in a great while when I get a chance I love to make it to Philz. I have disliked Starbucks coffee before it was cool thank you very much :) The comment about Starbuck was a bit tongue-in-cheek, but I guess I can see it being taken as Hipster fashion.

Hey, can I have some of that nice coffee you're having? I live in Russia. I can send you some of Art. Lebedev's (don't know if it's any good, but they roast their own mix, so you can compare) I can PayPal you the money and you'll ship me the coffee. You can ship to my US-based P.O. box. I run Ubuntu on my laptop and CentOS on KVM CentOS VM on a server. Please drop me a line via email (in profile) or any other means (…

If you're going to have someone from the US mail you coffee, at least ask for something good, like Intelligentsia or Toby's Estate :)

Peets is a huge chain that's merely less successful than Starbucks. (I like both Starbucks and Peets, FWIW, but I wouldn't pay for someone to ship those to me overseas :)

Re: Show HN: 10% off at Starbucks when you buy with Bitcoin

#105

Post by mhluongo »

dotBen wrote: post #101
mhluongo wrote: post #7

Hey guys! You might remember our last app, Card for Coin, where we were buying Starbucks for bitcoin. Well, here's the other side- we're looking forward to your feedback. The websocket stuff is a little touch and go, so please let me know if you have issues. Let me know if anyone has an issue loading a card or getting a refund, and I'll work it out.

everyone wants to know, how are you fulfilling the Starbucks card side of things? Do you have access to a private API? Are you distributing the barcode of a card you are auto-loading? (but then how do you know the balance post sale?) Are you screen-scraping? I think there's a lot of people in this thread that are v curious, please do tell :)

... but that's the secret sauce!

The short answer is a combination of all those things, plus some help from our partners. The economics is also pretty interesting. Happy to go into more detail over email :)

Re: Show HN: 10% off at Starbucks when you buy with Bitcoin

#106

Post by mhluongo »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #93
mhluongo wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now? Us.

So you put USD on Starbucks gift cards, sell the code to be used for a drink and receive the money in BTC. You're amassing BTC from disparate sources but it seems you'd be paying a slight premium, however you wouldn't need to register with any exchange. You do get a pre-loading bonus of bitcoins to play with and you can use those to generate profits - like 1000 people put $10 worth of BTC on the app, spend $5 on a co…

We do not trade on any reserves from customers like that. We're not the Gox of gift cards.

Re: Show HN: 10% off at Starbucks when you buy with Bitcoin

#108

Post by mhluongo »

mike_hearn wrote: post #75
mhluongo wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now? Us.

OK. Thanks for cheap drinks, I guess, but what's in it for you? I mean, how long do you plan to keep this up?

Hm... not sure how long we'll keep it up. The discount is a promotion, but I imagine we'll keep it in some form as marketing for the product. 10% is a nice number, but we'll test it. As pointed out in other comments, it beats Starbucks's own program, which I like.

We can afford the discount by saving money elsewhere. No credit card fees, etc.

Re: Show HN: 10% off at Starbucks when you buy with Bitcoin

#109

Post by XaspR8d »

csixty4 wrote: post #44
nicolethenerd wrote: post #34

The big question... is this actually useable at Starbucks? If I show a barista a 3rd-party, non-Starbucks affiliated app, and ask them to scan it, will they do it? Or just look at me like I've grown 3 heads? Even if it is a valid barcode (and still not clear on where that's coming from either - I don't understand the 'crowdsourcing a gold card' thing - can someone explain?)

As long as it scans, they're happy. I saw someone pay with an image of their barcode on a smartwatch and the baristas were going nuts over how cool it was.

Shucks. I successfully used my Pebble barcode at Starbucks the other day and was only met with confusion and mild surprise.

Re: Show HN: 10% off at Starbucks when you buy with Bitcoin

#110

Post by mhluongo »

c23gooey wrote: post #107

Im interested in exactly how you are handling refunds. Can you describe it for us?

Sure. @chris-martin explained the math in another comment, so I imagine you're wondering how we do refunds in bitcoin? The only easy / customer-friendly way we could see to do that was to request an email address, and send that email bitcoin via Coinbase. We didn't think BIPS-70 or any other solutions would work for this, since most people aren't familiar, and the whole purpose of the refund is to cement trust.
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