Expedia Starts Accepting Bitcoin for Hotel Bookings
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Expedia Starts Accepting Bitcoin for Hotel Bookings
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Re: Expedia Starts Accepting Bitcoin for Hotel Bookings
#2The common thread in many of these announcements seems to be coinbase.
Re: Expedia Starts Accepting Bitcoin for Hotel Bookings
#3Is this as big as it seems to me? This seems huge. Is it huge? I can't tell. Should I be excited? I am.
Now if only I could make it easier for people to pay me in bitcoins for small freelance work...
Re: Expedia Starts Accepting Bitcoin for Hotel Bookings
#4The common thread in many of these announcements seems to be coinbase.
Which bodes extremely well for them. They may quickly become the PayPal of bitcoin for providing a solid service allowing businesses to interface with BTC; as PayPal did for giving businesses and individuals a solid service to transact using the internet.
Re: Expedia Starts Accepting Bitcoin for Hotel Bookings
#5Is this as big as it seems to me? This seems huge. Is it huge? I can't tell. Should I be excited? I am. Now if only I could make it easier for people to pay me in bitcoins for small freelance work...
Can you accept Coinbase payments?
That's the thing here: Coinbase is just another payment processor. Most businesses are used to having to accept "some extra payment processor".
Since you get to do some sort of announcement, which more most companies means you get to be in the news in a semi-positive way, why not? It's risk free for them - or at least only as risky as their ability to sue Coinbase for missed payments.
Re: Expedia Starts Accepting Bitcoin for Hotel Bookings
#6Is this as big as it seems to me? This seems huge. Is it huge? I can't tell. Should I be excited? I am. Now if only I could make it easier for people to pay me in bitcoins for small freelance work...
Can you accept Coinbase payments? That's the thing here: Coinbase is just another payment processor. Most businesses are used to having to accept "some extra payment processor". Since you get to do some sort of announcement, which more most companies means you get to be in the news in a semi-positive way, why not? It's risk free for them - or at least only as risky as their ability to sue Coinbase for missed payments…
> Can you accept Coinbase payments?
I don't need help for accepting bitcoins. I trust bitcoins themselves, I consider them a real currency, not something that has to be immediately exchanged for centralised currency. So I'm fine just accepting them without an intermediary. My hope is that as bitcoins get more popular, businesses like Coinbase will seem less important.
Instead, I need help getting bitcoins from all the people out there who have no idea how to get bitcoins.
Re: Expedia Starts Accepting Bitcoin for Hotel Bookings
#7Is this as big as it seems to me? This seems huge. Is it huge? I can't tell. Should I be excited? I am. Now if only I could make it easier for people to pay me in bitcoins for small freelance work...
Can you accept Coinbase payments? That's the thing here: Coinbase is just another payment processor. Most businesses are used to having to accept "some extra payment processor". Since you get to do some sort of announcement, which more most companies means you get to be in the news in a semi-positive way, why not? It's risk free for them - or at least only as risky as their ability to sue Coinbase for missed payments…
Suing a startup company with no tangible assets is not much of an insurance. How much does it cost for the biggest travel company in the world to set their systems to accept bitcoins, pass a contract through lawyers, train support, etc? I'd say at least as much as the value of appearing in the news.
So IMHO Expedia sow the huge value of the BitCoin payment system.
Re: Expedia Starts Accepting Bitcoin for Hotel Bookings
#8This seems good. But at the heart of it I fear it defeats the whole point of Bitcoin the payment system.
Why? I thought the whole point of Bitcoin was to create a decentralized payment system. And here is Coinbase (or Bitpay) becoming centralized payment systems...
Re: Expedia Starts Accepting Bitcoin for Hotel Bookings
#9This seems good. But at the heart of it I fear it defeats the whole point of Bitcoin the payment system. Why? I thought the whole point of Bitcoin was to create a decentralized payment system. And here is Coinbase (or Bitpay) becoming centralized payment systems...
Yeah, I hear you. I am hoping they are just crutches to bootstrap bitcoin adoption. If bitcoins become popular, perhaps we can lose the crutches. Or perhaps we'll have tons of competing escrow businesses.
What is it with humans' tendency to centralise anyways? Here is democracy... now here's an all-powerful president and congressional oligarchy. Here is the industrial revolution to facilitate transportation of goods all around the countryside... now here are the giant megalopolises in which most of us now live. Here is the internet... now here's Gmail, the single location to email, and Facebook, the single location to put all of your personal data. Here are DVCSes... now here is github, a place to centralise all of our DVCS work.
Maybe there's just something fundamentally ingrained in human psychology that makes us converge like this.
Re: Expedia Starts Accepting Bitcoin for Hotel Bookings
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you accept Coinbase payments? That's the thing here: Coinbase is just another payment processor. Most businesses are used to having to accept "some extra payment processor". Since you get to do some sort of announcement, which more most companies means you get to be in the news in a semi-positive way, why not? It's risk free for them - or at least only as risky as their ability to sue Coinbase for missed payments…
> Can you accept Coinbase payments? I don't need help for accepting bitcoins. I trust bitcoins themselves, I consider them a real currency, not something that has to be immediately exchanged for centralised currency. So I'm fine just accepting them without an intermediary. My hope is that as bitcoins get more popular, businesses like Coinbase will seem less important. Instead, I need help getting bitcoins from all th…
> My hope is that as bitcoins get more popular, businesses like Coinbase will seem less important.
> Instead, I need help getting bitcoins from all the people out there who have no idea how to get bitcoins.
If these two sentences don't sum up BTC I don't know what does.