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Expedia Starts Accepting Bitcoin for Hotel Bookings

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Re: Expedia Starts Accepting Bitcoin for Hotel Bookings

#71

Post by rmason »

Well it seems that Expedia did a great thing by allowing you to use Bitcoin to pay for hotel bookings. So that means I don’t need to use my credit card any longer when I check into the hotel?

Not exactly:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/27vc4x/expedia_star...

If you read down in the comments you see hotel workers saying they will still apply a 2X block on the daily rate of the room to your credit card, even if you've paid for the room with Bitcoin. A block that can take up to two weeks to be released.

Obviously the standard hotel procedures will need to be revised but until then Bitcoin buyer beware ;Rick

Re: Expedia Starts Accepting Bitcoin for Hotel Bookings

#72

Post by scoot »

notahacker wrote: post #44
vijayboyapati wrote: post #41

It's interesting to think what announcement like this have in aggregate on the price of bitcoin. Counter-intuitively the price of bitcoin should face downward pressure as merchant adoption of this sort increases. Expedia doesn't hold any of the bitcoin they receive. The bitcoins are instantly converted to dollars on a market exchange. This means that holders of bitcoin, especially those who are sitting on large capit…

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…

> I'm more intrigued by the commercial decision from Expedia's perspective.

I suspect pure marketing. A mainstream player announcing support for bitcoin is still newsworthy. In another year, probably not so much as there will have been a series of such announcements by then.

Even if they don't do a single bitcoin transaction, the coverage and back-links will more than cover the cost of integration, and any resulting bit coin transactions (that don't replace a more traditional form of payment) are upside.

Re: Expedia Starts Accepting Bitcoin for Hotel Bookings

#73

Post by kolev »

Expedia accepts Coinbase, not Bitcoin. This is no different than accepting PayPal. Did you pay with PayPal balance, credit card, or bank account - it doesn't matter. You implement PayPal APIs and you receive dollars from PayPal. The rest is just speculation, but seems that price is dropping as "acceptance" like this can only lead to selling pressure if it ever gains any traction, of course. I'm really surprised all these merchants implementing Bitcoin for the PR, but confusing their checkout routine. The path to checkout should be as short as possible with as little decisions to be made along the way. Any distraction can lead to abandonment. Is the cheap PR all worth it? I personally doubt. It's obvious that the general public is not interested in Bitcoin and is, in fact, getting bored. I keep polling non-techie friends, the common theme is "Bitcoin is a scam". Even most tech people aren't much interested except the small share who invest in stocks, i.e. the speculator by nature.

Re: Expedia Starts Accepting Bitcoin for Hotel Bookings

#74

Post by toast0 »

jimktrains2 wrote: post #39
higherpurpose wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In the US, cities can levy sales taxes as well. Also, the city field in your address does not accurately indicate your municipal boundaries; it's more of an identifier of which post office serves you and which municipal boundaries it falls within.

Re: Expedia Starts Accepting Bitcoin for Hotel Bookings

#75

Post by marincounty »

scoot wrote: post #72
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…

> I'm more intrigued by the commercial decision from Expedia's perspective. I suspect pure marketing. A mainstream player announcing support for bitcoin is still newsworthy. In another year, probably not so much as there will have been a series of such announcements by then. Even if they don't do a single bitcoin transaction, the coverage and back-links will more than cover the cost of integration, and any resulting…

Yea--some Harvard MBA making a name for themselves? I wish I wasn't so cynical. I sincerely hope crypto currencies annihilate the credit card industry. I guess any publicity is good publicity?

Re: Expedia Starts Accepting Bitcoin for Hotel Bookings

#76

Post by gnaritas »

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.

I think that's old info, pretty sure Coinbase spreads around multiple exchanges now for their buys and sells. They haven't just used Bitstamp in quite a while.

Re: Expedia Starts Accepting Bitcoin for Hotel Bookings

#77

Post by gnaritas »

natrius wrote: post #46
nitid_name wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The blockchain describes stakes in a conceptual ledger. The current limitations on divisibility are easy to change in the future. 21 million is arbitrary and meaningless.

> The current limitations on divisibility are easy to change in the future.

Not true.

> 21 million is arbitrary and meaningless.

Also not true.

Changing either of those things requires a hard fork of the network and a majority consensus among the miners globally which is in no way "easy to do".

Re: Expedia Starts Accepting Bitcoin for Hotel Bookings

#78

Post by broolstoryco »

gnaritas wrote: post #76
broolstoryco wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think that's old info, pretty sure Coinbase spreads around multiple exchanges now for their buys and sells. They haven't just used Bitstamp in quite a while.

I didnt mean to imply they are restricted to Bitstamp.

Re: Expedia Starts Accepting Bitcoin for Hotel Bookings

#79

Post by sillysaurus3 »

marincounty wrote: post #75
scoot wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm more intrigued by the commercial decision from Expedia's perspective. I suspect pure marketing. A mainstream player announcing support for bitcoin is still newsworthy. In another year, probably not so much as there will have been a series of such announcements by then. Even if they don't do a single bitcoin transaction, the coverage and back-links will more than cover the cost of integration, and any resulting…

Yea--some Harvard MBA making a name for themselves? I wish I wasn't so cynical. I sincerely hope crypto currencies annihilate the credit card industry. I guess any publicity is good publicity?

Yea--some Harvard MBA making a name for themselves? I wish I wasn't so cynical.

It's not cynical. Accepting bitcoin as payment isn't beneficial right now. There's no benefit for merchants, because it's instantly converted back to traditional currency. There's no benefit for consumers, because consumers have to buy bitcoin in order to spend bitcoin, and buying bitcoin means consumers have to manage their own wallet or store their money in a third party service that can fail or steal their money at any time.

The singular benefit is the publicity your business gets by accepting bitcoin. In other words, bitcoin is trendy.

This isn't a dismissal of bitcoin. History has shown that trends are a powerful force. If it achieves a kind of critical mass, then that will open up other avenues for bitcoin to become useful. But in the meantime, be assured that your gut instinct of "there doesn't seem to be any reason to accept bitcoin except publicity" is spot on.

As an aside, I think these announcements won't affect the fundamental price of bitcoin. They'll cause fluctuations, but not any long-term rise or fall. The price of bitcoin is driven by speculation. It always has been, and always will be. The fundamental price at any given time is due to speculators with large amounts of bitcoin who place large buy orders in hopes of getting other speculators to place large buy orders, then they sell. From a game theory point of view, if a bunch of gamblers all place large buy orders, the first gambler to sell stands to profit, and the other gamblers will lose out. You can see the evidence of this at any time: http://i.imgur.com/SYHhSCv.png ... A gambler buys a bunch of bitcoin, which causes other gamblers to buy a bunch of bitcoin, which lets the first gambler sell off their position and make out handsomely.

There's no long-term speculation going on. Or, if there is, then the long-term speculation is being done by a few dozen people with massive bitcoin holdings. No one else's speculation is a significant price mover.

It's true that the market responds to announcements, but it's not true that the market price is driven by announcements. They just serve as a trigger for gamblers to initiate gambles. Hence, I don't think the fundamental price will shift very much; what shifts the price is when large players enter or exit the market, which happens much more rarely than announcements do.

Re: Expedia Starts Accepting Bitcoin for Hotel Bookings

#80

Post by natrius »

gnaritas wrote: post #77
natrius wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The blockchain describes stakes in a conceptual ledger. The current limitations on divisibility are easy to change in the future. 21 million is arbitrary and meaningless.

> The current limitations on divisibility are easy to change in the future. Not true. > 21 million is arbitrary and meaningless. Also not true. Changing either of those things requires a hard fork of the network and a majority consensus among the miners globally which is in no way "easy to do".

It's easy to do if it will increase miner wealth, which a more useful currency will do.

Disagree with that all you want. My point is that it's possible. Speculating about the likelihood of it succeeding doesn't seem worthwhile to me.

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