Expedia Starts Accepting Bitcoin for Hotel Bookings • Hacker News Board

Re: Expedia Starts Accepting Bitcoin for Hotel Bookings

#51

Post by notahacker » Wed, Jun 11, 2014, 5:39 PM UTC

StavrosK wrote: post #47

notahacker wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect that, arguably more counter-intuitively, it will push the price up, fed by increased speculation due to apparent signs of Bitcoin "going mainstream" that will far exceed any actual Expedia transactions taking place. I'm more intrigued by the commercial decision from Expedia's perspective. Presumably they've done a back of the envelope calculation and decided "group of people more likely to pick Expedia over…

They have tabs that go "Credit card", "Paypal", "Bitcoin", so, presumably, 0 people will be confused by that, plus they have lower fees than either CC companies or Paypal, so it sounds like an obvious win for them.

With a large enough user base, you'll definitely encounter people that will be sufficiently intrigued by the idea of paying with Bitcoins they don't have (or confused by accidentally clicking on the Bitcoin tab) to get distracted and end up making the payment via one of the other hotel search website windows they have open. That's true even if the Bitcoin tab is much more discreet than the "credit/debit card" default.

There are, after all, enough people confused by a concept as non-novel as the address their credit card is registered to for some companies to be willing to pay higher interchange fees and accept higher chargeback risk to omit those fields from their CC forms.

Re: Expedia Starts Accepting Bitcoin for Hotel Bookings

#52

Post by jwcooper » Wed, Jun 11, 2014, 5:50 PM UTC

oleganza wrote: post #24

jwcooper wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Everyone asks the same question. It does not matter if Coinbase or Expedia "sits" on BTC they receive. As long as there are people willing to sit on them, the price is going to stay the same. The price/liquidity of BTC depends not on who exactly sits on BTC, but on number of hands that own it. More hands -> more demand -> higher price and liquidity. See also this quote from Rothbard: http://blog.oleganza.com/post/433…

Unless their employees, partners (hosting, etc) get paid in BTC, it actually does matter if they "sit" on the BTC they receive.

Many businesses and people still require to get paid in USD (EUR, etc) in order to do business. This may not always be this way, but as of today it is.

Re: Expedia Starts Accepting Bitcoin for Hotel Bookings

#53

Post by frenchy » Wed, Jun 11, 2014, 6:18 PM UTC

justme123 wrote: post #29

jordigh wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Centralization is prone to corruption... 2008 financial crisis ilustrated it very well worldwide... Decentralization, while having a bigger overhead, also benefits from a bigger pool of contributors... Example 1 - mathematics: if the europe-mathematics did not cooperate with other world-mathematics, they would limit their knowledge to only european findings, which would leave them reduced compared to the worldwide ma…

I think the problem here is that you are confounding different types of problems.

Knowledge tends to benifit greatly from decentralization; building railroads, not so much.

Re: Expedia Starts Accepting Bitcoin for Hotel Bookings

#54

Post by Mangalor » Wed, Jun 11, 2014, 6:26 PM UTC

malloreon wrote: post #48

Does Expedia hold any bitcoin reserves? Do they interact with bitcoin at all? Nope. They let someone else do it and just accept real money.

Coinbase will likely have to keep more reserves though to compensate with the new business.

Re: Expedia Starts Accepting Bitcoin for Hotel Bookings

#55

Post by dustcoin » Wed, Jun 11, 2014, 6:28 PM UTC

malloreon wrote: post #48

Does Expedia hold any bitcoin reserves? Do they interact with bitcoin at all? Nope. They let someone else do it and just accept real money.

Overstock keeps 10% of bitcoin sales in bitcoin: http://www.reddit.com/r/tabled/comments/24knns/table_iama_im...

Re: Expedia Starts Accepting Bitcoin for Hotel Bookings

#56

Post by baddox » Wed, Jun 11, 2014, 6:31 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...

The real service Coinbase is providing is the conversion of bitcoins into government currency. I can't think of an immediate way to decentralize that, because moving government currency between people requires centralization (short of mailing physical cash, which obviously has its own issues).

It's fairly trivial to simply accept bitcoins in a decentralized fashion. That's just what normal Bitcoin transactions are.

Re: Expedia Starts Accepting Bitcoin for Hotel Bookings

#57

Post by baddox » Wed, Jun 11, 2014, 6:33 PM UTC

yen223 wrote: post #20

jordigh wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> What is it with humans' tendency to centralise anyways? I think it's less about human psychology and more about managing efficiency. A well-run centralized system will always be more efficient than a well-run decentralized system, by virtue of having less overhead. Whether it's overhead from arranging logistics to one large city, instead of a hundred small cities, or overhead from interacting with one large federal…

> A well-run centralized system will always be more efficient than a well-run decentralized system, by virtue of having less overhead.

That's a circular definition, unless you have some objective way to measure how "well-run" a system is other than just measuring its efficiency.

Re: Expedia Starts Accepting Bitcoin for Hotel Bookings

#58

Post by baddox » Wed, Jun 11, 2014, 6:36 PM UTC

stevehawk wrote: post #11

Has there been much talk about how stores using Bitcoin reduces the anonymity of Bitcoin by tying IDs in the transaction of acquiring that coin to the person that ultimately uses it? I'm sure the uber nerds were already aware of this but has it been brought up enough that the general community thinks this through? One booking on Expedia and you've revealed any possible Silk Road or other curious transaction you've ev…

True anonymity is not a feature or a design goal of Bitcoin. It's pseudonymous, so it's better than a credit card and worse than cash. A lot of care must be taken to keep yourself anonymous on the Bitcoin network, and anyone who cares about that certainly shouldn't be buying airline tickets with Bitcoin unless they have completely disjoint wallets.

Re: Expedia Starts Accepting Bitcoin for Hotel Bookings

#59

Post by brador » Wed, Jun 11, 2014, 6:56 PM UTC

broolstoryco wrote: post #35

jwcooper wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What happens if bitstamp follows mtgox?

Re: Expedia Starts Accepting Bitcoin for Hotel Bookings

#60

Post by patrickk » Wed, Jun 11, 2014, 6:59 PM UTC

jordigh wrote: post #9

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...

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…

> Maybe there's just something fundamentally ingrained in human psychology that makes us converge like this.

Convenience/laziness, lack of concern about privacy, and social signalling help to explain the internet related centralisation examples you noted.

"Free", convenient and easy-to-use (and your privacy goes out the window) will win over inconvenient, marketed improperly, and slightly more difficult to use every time with the mass market.