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Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin
51–60 of 212 posts
Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
True there's no advantage to paying with bitcoin currently and most people are just using it for the novelty value. But enough growth and merchants will just have to offer discounts with bitcoin purchases to stay competitive.
That's not true, it's cheaper for me to buy things on Amazon with Bitcoin via Gyft (3% cashback) than using my credit card (1% cashback) or debit card (nada).
You're ignoring the cost of acquiring bitcoins in that 3%.
Also cheaper still to buy gift cards via raise, cardpool, giftcardgranny, hundreds of other results for "discount gift cards" which are 3%-6% off AND get your 1% cash back.
Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin
#53Great. So, when can customers expect their money to be protected after they convert their savings into bitcoin, without trusting their coins to a third party service like Coinbase, and without spending a solid week learning how to safely store their coins themselves? This is exactly a "schlep blindness" problem that a startup could be solving. Deliver a turnkey solution for consumers to store their own coins. Don't m…
I think hardware wallets (like the Trezor), or smartphones with a TPM module is the solution.
This will take time, however (the latter more than the former).
The reason it will take time is that the concept of storing your own money digitally, like is the case with Bitcoin, is an entirely new concept that software and hardware needs to adapt to. With all other solutions (VISA, PayPal, bank wires), you're asking someone else to transfer your money, with Bitcoin you're doing it yourself. Basically, each user needs a greater level of security than PayPal, VISA and banks have internally, since Bitcoin payments are generally irreversible after an hour or so (and often much sooner).
This isn't something that is done overnight, and people have started working on it, but it takes time to, first of all, develop the hardware, and, second of all, develop and implement the interface between the hardware wallet and the actual payment request (ie. when I arrive at a BitPay invoice payment page, how do I pay using my hardware wallet?).
Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin
#54Pay 1% more(or 3%-8% more if you have a cash back card and depending on where you bought your coins) to save them 2% and lose all consumer protections in the deal. It's no wonder there is almost no consumer growth in the bitcoin world while new merchants are announced every other day.
You are wrong, there is tremendous consumer growth happening. The two biggest US processors (BitPay and Coinbase) release numbers every once in a while. One example: "Since [...] October, along with the integration with Shopify in November, [...] the transaction volume has tripled." Source: http://blog.bitpay.com/2013/12/11/bitpay-exceeds-100-000-000...
https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions
I don't see any growth. Also, 70k transactions/day - one average shopping mall.
Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin
#55Great. So, when can customers expect their money to be protected after they convert their savings into bitcoin, without trusting their coins to a third party service like Coinbase, and without spending a solid week learning how to safely store their coins themselves? This is exactly a "schlep blindness" problem that a startup could be solving. Deliver a turnkey solution for consumers to store their own coins. Don't m…
There is people working on that issue. For example Trezor is an easy to use bitcoin safe. I think it's headed in the right direction: http://www.bitcointrezor.com/
Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
True there's no advantage to paying with bitcoin currently and most people are just using it for the novelty value. But enough growth and merchants will just have to offer discounts with bitcoin purchases to stay competitive.
If the numerous and massive data breaches, and subsequent credit card theft and fraud events of the last few years have taught us anything, it is that yes paying in bitcoins has one fundamental advantage: you are never handing the store your full billing info which can be stolen and reused by fraudsters. Now, Bitcoin also has its own security challenges (eg. how to secure a wallet), but there are solutions (hardware…
>> If the numerous and massive data breaches, and subsequent credit card theft and fraud events of the last few years have taught us anything, it is that yes paying in bitcoins has one fundamental advantage: you are never handing the store your full billing info which can be stolen and reused by fraudsters.
This is also the case with ICC/EMV cards, though the USA hasn't caught up to that for some reason.
--edit-- of course this only applies to physical transactions, online transactions are still vulnerable, yes.
Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
Paying in Bitcoin makes a lot of sense: 1) You don't have to provide private info like CC number. 2) If you bought bitcoins at X and now they are valued at 10X you may effectively enjoy 90% discount on all purchases. All these mythical user-protecting chargebacks are almost never used by consumers for refunds (companies who care about brand help them settling refunds) and almost always for the cases when you CC detai…
For 2), surely you would have to pay capital gains tax on the increase in value. To be fully compliant with the law, it may be hard to enforce in reality.
Depends on your country of residence. In the US, I believe this is the case, in Denmark, this isn't the case (http://taxinsights.ey.com/archive/archive-news/danish-assess...).
Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd say it's because bitcoin transactions are not instant. To fully 'verify' that a transaction has taken place, they need 6 confirmations. The transaction may within a few seconds show up on the bitcoin blockchain, but it can't be fully trusted until it has at least 6 confirmations. Waiting for that can take some time.
I'm pretty sure Bitcoin payment processors like Bitpay aren't waiting for 6 full confirmations.
BitPay doesn't wait for anything; it's the merchant that chooses how many confirmations to wait for (and incurs the risk of this choice).
Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin
#59Great. So, when can customers expect their money to be protected after they convert their savings into bitcoin, without trusting their coins to a third party service like Coinbase, and without spending a solid week learning how to safely store their coins themselves? This is exactly a "schlep blindness" problem that a startup could be solving. Deliver a turnkey solution for consumers to store their own coins. Don't m…
Here's the Bitcoin theft reference: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7233230
Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
True there's no advantage to paying with bitcoin currently and most people are just using it for the novelty value. But enough growth and merchants will just have to offer discounts with bitcoin purchases to stay competitive.
If the numerous and massive data breaches, and subsequent credit card theft and fraud events of the last few years have taught us anything, it is that yes paying in bitcoins has one fundamental advantage: you are never handing the store your full billing info which can be stolen and reused by fraudsters. Now, Bitcoin also has its own security challenges (eg. how to secure a wallet), but there are solutions (hardware…
I would much rather spend 10 minutes on the phone with my credit card company once every couple years contesting fraudulent transactions than have the potential for all of my money to be stolen if I make one security fuck up ever.
The number of "I had all my bitcoins stolen, here is the list of 25 security precautions I've taken, where did I fuck up" articles is terrifying. I'm willing to sacrifice the 1% savings or whatever it is I'd theoretically get from bitcoin for that peace of mind.