Expedia Starts Accepting Bitcoin for Hotel Bookings • Hacker News Board

Re: Expedia Starts Accepting Bitcoin for Hotel Bookings

#31

Post by phantom784 » Wed, Jun 11, 2014, 3:00 PM UTC

yen223 wrote: post #25

taylorwc wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would contend that though you are at the tail end of the curve that doesn't need an intermediary, many of your customers are likely to need/desire an intermediary to facilitate for the people you mention, with no idea how to get bitcoins. Regardless of whether you, I, or HN hates Coinbase or loves Coinbase, they provide a layer of accessibility to an otherwise intimidating ecosystem.

> I would contend that though you are at the tail end of the curve that doesn't need an intermediary If you want to do away with intermediaries, what Bitcoin needs is a large ecosystem, such that my BTC never needs to be converted to USD to be useful - I want to be able to be paid in BTC, then to be able to exchange that same BTC for food. The food vendor in turn needs to be able to exchange that BTC for, say, a car.…

Bitcoins are very divisible. As more and more people use Bitcoins, the coins become worth more and people can simply trade smaller and smaller pieces of them. The limited supply doesn't limit the number of users.

Re: Expedia Starts Accepting Bitcoin for Hotel Bookings

#32

Post by haakon » Wed, Jun 11, 2014, 3:02 PM UTC

kleer001 wrote: post #8

This 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...

I've found that the-whole-point-of-isms are almost always wrong.

It's not the whole point of Bitcoin to be a decentralised payment system. It's part of the point, sure, but there are many other points, such as being an asset with a predictable inflation rate, and allowing the storage of value protected by cryptography.

A few centralised actors offering service to those who choose to use it does not negate those points of Bitcoin.

Re: Expedia Starts Accepting Bitcoin for Hotel Bookings

#33

Post by Karunamon » Wed, Jun 11, 2014, 3:11 PM UTC

yen223 wrote: post #25

taylorwc wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would contend that though you are at the tail end of the curve that doesn't need an intermediary, many of your customers are likely to need/desire an intermediary to facilitate for the people you mention, with no idea how to get bitcoins. Regardless of whether you, I, or HN hates Coinbase or loves Coinbase, they provide a layer of accessibility to an otherwise intimidating ecosystem.

> I would contend that though you are at the tail end of the curve that doesn't need an intermediary If you want to do away with intermediaries, what Bitcoin needs is a large ecosystem, such that my BTC never needs to be converted to USD to be useful - I want to be able to be paid in BTC, then to be able to exchange that same BTC for food. The food vendor in turn needs to be able to exchange that BTC for, say, a car.…

the number of BTC users will always be limited

Mmh.. mathematically true, but practically? First consider that block awards will continue being generated until roughly the year 2100 and probably up to another half decade on top of that.

Empires have crumbled in less time..

Secondly, remember that 1BTC is divisible down to 8 decimal places. There's no reason that .00000001BTC (aka 1 Satoshi) couldn't become the base unit of transaction.

If this were to happen (say with a client update), that would mean, once the block awards cease generating in a hundred years or so, and all 24,000,000 BTC are mined, that would mean there's (24M * 10^8) 24 quintillion individual units of currency in the world.

Re: Expedia Starts Accepting Bitcoin for Hotel Bookings

#34

Post by nitid_name » Wed, Jun 11, 2014, 3:14 PM UTC

phantom784 wrote: post #31

yen223 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would contend that though you are at the tail end of the curve that doesn't need an intermediary If you want to do away with intermediaries, what Bitcoin needs is a large ecosystem, such that my BTC never needs to be converted to USD to be useful - I want to be able to be paid in BTC, then to be able to exchange that same BTC for food. The food vendor in turn needs to be able to exchange that BTC for, say, a car.…

Bitcoins are very divisible. As more and more people use Bitcoins, the coins become worth more and people can simply trade smaller and smaller pieces of them. The limited supply doesn't limit the number of users.

They do have a division limit though. One satoshi is only four orders of magnitude smaller than a penny (US).

EDIT: answered my own question

Re: Expedia Starts Accepting Bitcoin for Hotel Bookings

#35

Post by broolstoryco » Wed, Jun 11, 2014, 3:27 PM UTC

jwcooper wrote: post #18

doctoboggan wrote: post #2

The common thread in many of these announcements seems to be coinbase.

Does coinbase sit on the Bitcoins, or turn around quickly and convert to USD somehow (where?)? Holding thousands of bitcoins as a startup seems like it would introduce a lot of volatility, even if the long-term prospects of bitcoin are good (still need to pay the employees).

Coinbase has an account on bitstamp where they hedge their net position. In times of high demand for btc, it sometimes happens that they run out of fiat on bitstamp and cannot process orders instantly.

Re: Expedia Starts Accepting Bitcoin for Hotel Bookings

#36

Post by skriticos2 » Wed, Jun 11, 2014, 3:33 PM UTC

kleer001 wrote: post #8

This 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...

Now I can travel to another country and book a hotel through this service (if they allow this in their terms of contract) with my Bitcoins without involving any banks or credit companies on my side and nobody is in-between (except the Internet). Seems pretty de-central to me. If they choose to handle the Bitcoin clearance through an intermediary is none of my concern, so I don't see any fundamental principle violated here.

Re: Expedia Starts Accepting Bitcoin for Hotel Bookings

#37

Post by psykovsky » Wed, Jun 11, 2014, 4:04 PM UTC

Karunamon wrote: post #33

yen223 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would contend that though you are at the tail end of the curve that doesn't need an intermediary If you want to do away with intermediaries, what Bitcoin needs is a large ecosystem, such that my BTC never needs to be converted to USD to be useful - I want to be able to be paid in BTC, then to be able to exchange that same BTC for food. The food vendor in turn needs to be able to exchange that BTC for, say, a car.…

the number of BTC users will always be limited Mmh.. mathematically true, but practically? First consider that block awards will continue being generated until roughly the year 2100 and probably up to another half decade on top of that. Empires have crumbled in less time.. Secondly, remember that 1BTC is divisible down to 8 decimal places. There's no reason that .00000001BTC (aka 1 Satoshi) couldn't become the base u…

There will never be even 21 million of BTC. Pretty close to 21M, but it won't get there. Also, 99,99% of block rewards will be distributed before 2040. The next 60 years till 2100 blocks will only reward a few satoshis each, except for transaction fees.

Re: Expedia Starts Accepting Bitcoin for Hotel Bookings

#38

Post by patio11 » Wed, Jun 11, 2014, 4:06 PM UTC

mrfusion wrote: post #16

Side note, I'm noticing a lot of merchants accepting bitcoin asking for more information than they should need. For example I tried to buy an ebook recently and it required my home address. For Credit cards I believe that's required to verify the billing info, but there's no reason bitcoin purchases should need it for non-shippable products. And it cancels out a lot of the benefits of using bitcoins (fast purchase, a…

Credit card address verification comes down to a risk/reward calculation. You don't have to verify the address. At some processors, doing AVS (address verification service) to some degree is worth ~1% off interchange, due to the implicit reduced fraud risk. Address verification is a fiddly beast, and returns one of about ~15 codes rather than the binary you might naively expect. (It covers cases like "Street address matched but 5 digit zip did not" or "Foreign card; we're clueless".)

It also gets used in merchant risk processing, separately from risk regarding the payment itself. Some bitcoiners are of the opinion that bitcoin means the end of risk from the merchant side of the equation. This is, broadly speaking, not true. There are plenty of transactions where "X happened but at least we got paid the agreed amount" is a failure condition.

Re: Expedia Starts Accepting Bitcoin for Hotel Bookings

#39

Post by jimktrains2 » Wed, Jun 11, 2014, 4:19 PM UTC

higherpurpose wrote: post #21

TomGullen wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We sell digital services (ebooks count), and require the customers address (or part of) to determine the VAT status of the sale. Even though buying an e-book for Bitcoin seems like you shouldn't need any personally identifiable information, quite often merchants do need to collect it.

So collect the country or state, not the home address.

You do know that in the US counties (and possibly cities, I need to double check cities) can leverage sales tax as well. However, it should only really be an issue of where you have nexus.

It's probably just how their system handle's orders (you need home address for CC for AVS, so it's probably just required everywhere in their code.

Re: Expedia Starts Accepting Bitcoin for Hotel Bookings

#40

Post by coryking » Wed, Jun 11, 2014, 4:21 PM UTC

How does this deal with damage deposits? Why would I pay with bitcoin when many rewards cards pay out extra when you use them for travel-related use?

Honestly, the cynic in me says the use case for spending bitcoin is a quick way for speculators to "cash out" in a way that makes it easier to hide earnings from the tax-man.