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Expedia Starts Accepting Bitcoin for Hotel Bookings

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Re: Expedia Starts Accepting Bitcoin for Hotel Bookings

#91

Post by kolev »

bequanna wrote: post #88
kolev wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, I'm sure there are speculators running scripts to generate new wallets and pump the bubble further.

>Also, I'm sure there are speculators running scripts to generate new wallets and pump the bubble further. That sounds like pretty strong, objective evidence. /s There are Bitcoin bulls and bears. Nothing wrong with being either. But, if you're going to make claims, at least have facts to back them up.

I can't prove it as I'm not the NSA. We're not in court anyway - heuristics here is totally acceptable.

What I proposed was solid - after all the Bitcoin theft recently, many learned to use hot/cold wallets, not split holdings in several wallets, etc.

Re: Expedia Starts Accepting Bitcoin for Hotel Bookings

#92

Post by oska »

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…

> It would be great to see more merchants choosing to keep some fraction, however small, in bitcoin itself.

Overstock keeps 10%.

Source: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/24kbc0/im_patrick_byrn...

Re: Expedia Starts Accepting Bitcoin for Hotel Bookings

#93

Post by swswsw »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #79
marincounty wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Accepting bitcoin as payment isn't beneficial right now. There's no benefit for merchants, because it's instantly converted back to traditional currency.

I see another benefit. Merchants benefit from lower transaction fee vs credit card.

Re: Expedia Starts Accepting Bitcoin for Hotel Bookings

#94

Post by cpach »

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…

I think Bitcoin has different appeal to different people. It might be around in 5-10 years, but not necessarily because of any anonymity advantages.

Re: Expedia Starts Accepting Bitcoin for Hotel Bookings

#96

Post by h1karu »

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.

Or perhaps there are meetings in boardrooms where the upper echelon of a given sector of the economy work hand in hand with thinktanks, highly paid psychologist consultants, PR firms, journalists, and media executives(at the ownership level) to design and execute strategies that encourage whole populations to act against their best interests by entering into these sorts of centralized arrangements.

Why does everyone always jump to "human nature" as the explanation ? I'll tell you why it's because they have no visibility into the 10+ billion dollar/year PR industry that is operating in our midst. Human nature does factor into this though.. it's human nature to assume that you're not personally vulnerable to suggestion and manipulation, so people tend to write it off even though statistically speaking the odds are that they can be influenced, and are being influenced.

Re: Expedia Starts Accepting Bitcoin for Hotel Bookings

#97

Post by prawn »

doctoboggan wrote: post #2

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

And in Australia to a far lesser degree, Coinjar. I think VC-backed business in the Bitcoin space will be what eventually drives it forward, short of an amazing new concept that people can't resist such as social network, gambling, whatever.

We started with the speculation, then these companies will keep pressing business to support Bitcoin and then potentially it reaches a tipping point and has its own momentum.

Re: Expedia Starts Accepting Bitcoin for Hotel Bookings

#98

Post by user24 »

bequanna wrote: post #82
kolev wrote: post #73

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 t…

> It's obvious that the general public is not interested in Bitcoin and is, in fact, getting bored. Do you have any proof to backup this statement? Bitcoin related growth abound. The number of My Wallet Users has doubled in the past 6 months. http://blockchain.info/charts/my-wallet-n-users

A good place to see a variety of metrics for bitcoin's growth is here: http://bitcoinpulse.com/

edit: Hmm, after I wrote that I realised it sounds a bit spammy. To be clear: I'm not affiliated in any way with that site.

Re: Expedia Starts Accepting Bitcoin for Hotel Bookings

#99

Post by netcan »

malandrew wrote: post #62
avd74 wrote: post #42

When I first read this I thought, why would they start with hotels? may be because the big profit they make out of reservations? Then I remembered what an accountant friend once said to me: "Hotels are big portals between the black and white worlds". So you may have black money in bitcoins (and a Hotel which is your "legal business"), and want to "wash" it? now you can do it through Expedia (they having a bite in the…

Makes sense, but I'd love to here more on this. What features of hotels makes them particularly good portals between the black and white worlds.

Say you run a hotel at 60% occupancy. Then the hotel suddenly goes to 80% occupancy. No additional costs. No inventory paper trail. A small motel with paper bookings could probably launder a lot of money for a silent partner.

10k comes in as bitcoin bookings (2-3 rooms per night). 10k-laundry fee gets paid as dividends to an "investor," "consultant" or anything really. The reservation books are paper.

Many consumer facing service businesses fit the bill, but hotels are a nice big category. It makes sense for them to be accepting internet payments.

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