Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin • Hacker News Board

Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin

#201

Post by comboy » Tue, Jul 01, 2014, 10:33 PM UTC

kalleboo wrote: post #134

comboy wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to accurately measure adoption level mostly because of the decentralised nature of Bitcoin, but looking at the transaction volume is a really bad approach. One individual sending money back and forth can generate tremendous volume (similarly with exchange moving their funds between hot wallet and cold storage). Same goes for transactions count (if you are moving big enough funds you don't have to pay fee),…

> One individual sending money back and forth can generate tremendous volume Which is what the "days destroyed" measurement looks to compensate for https://blockchain.info/charts/bitcoin-days-destroyed https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bitcoin_Days_Destroyed

Yeah, it's a very nice metric. But I don't think it's related to adoption. I mean if bitcoin is used as a currency and quickly changing hands you wouldn't expect many "bitcoin days destroyed" (as opposed to when e.g. exchange is reorganizing its funds)

Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin

#202

Post by sanswork » Tue, Jul 01, 2014, 10:48 PM UTC

superuser2 wrote: post #193

sanswork wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) What are the best practises for having a bunch of bitcoin? You say you shouldn't keep it stored on your local machine but where? Keeping it stored on exchanges is kind of prone to failure in the bitcoin world. If you want to use a cold wallet you need a second computer that you don't plan to use for anything else and you need to learn linux or its pointless 2) Just because its new doesn't mean its better or makes…

>What are the best practises for having a bunch of bitcoin? Given that it's designed as a digital replacement for cash (not savings and checking accounts - cash), keeping more than a few hundred dollars around at a time would seem to be as advisable as storing the equivalent $100 bills, with the same level of extraordinary security measures needed.

I've yet to have someone remotely steal money out of my wallet.

Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin

#203

Post by sanswork » Tue, Jul 01, 2014, 10:50 PM UTC

comboy wrote: post #201

kalleboo wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One individual sending money back and forth can generate tremendous volume Which is what the "days destroyed" measurement looks to compensate for https://blockchain.info/charts/bitcoin-days-destroyed https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bitcoin_Days_Destroyed

Yeah, it's a very nice metric. But I don't think it's related to adoption. I mean if bitcoin is used as a currency and quickly changing hands you wouldn't expect many "bitcoin days destroyed" (as opposed to when e.g. exchange is reorganizing its funds)

You would actually expect to still see it climbing week over week though with the odd spike.

Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin

#204

Post by sanswork » Tue, Jul 01, 2014, 10:51 PM UTC

aianus wrote: post #130

sp332 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what happened when credit cards went toe-to-toe with bitcoin? Bitcoin got its ass handed to it. http://pando.com/2013/08/27/an-expensive-lesson-against-sell... Ebay had to ban bitcoin sales because sellers were getting ripped off so often by credit card owners.

How so? The whole scam was predicated on abusing the chargeback feature of credit cards. This just proves that credit cards are terrible at cash-like transactions (buying cash/gold/bitcoins/gambling).

No it proves they are great at cash like transactions for buyers and awful for sellers.

Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin

#205

Post by mrb » Tue, Jul 01, 2014, 10:55 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #199

mrb wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Understand this is an issue in the merchant's processes, not with Bitcoin. Your argument is like saying "seat belts in cars don't always make drivers safer, for one people may forget to buckle up and not benefit from increased safety".

> Understand this is an issue in the merchant's processes, not with Bitcoin Sure, but the end result is the same. It's irrelevant whose fault it is. Or, reversely, nothing prohibits buying with credit cards online to be done differently and be safe from such fraud (e.g one-off credit card numbers with token generators). But in the real world, credits cards are used the way we know, and merchants accepting bitcoin sti…

"the end result is the same"

No it is not: with Bitcoin, an attacker knowing your billing info cannot steal your coins. With your CC info, he can make fraudulent purchases (obviously).

Even virtual credit cards are not safe from fraud. Some transactions over the maximum spending limit or expiration date might still go through [1]. This makes none of them truly single-use since multiple charges can go through. Also, they are a PITA to use especially if you want to regenerate a one-off CC number for every transaction (which nobody does - there is no such thing as a "token generator" as you claim). For these reasons banks have been in fact discontinuing virtual CC services over the last few years, eg. see [2].

By contrast, a Bitcoin transaction is truly a one-time payment that is cryptographically authorizing a specific payment amount to a specific address, and nothing more.

[1] http://lifehacker.com/5831160/use-virtual-credit-card-number... [2] http://slickdeals.net/f/6614180-discover-is-discontinuing-th...

Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin

#206

Post by superuser2 » Tue, Jul 01, 2014, 10:57 PM UTC

sanswork wrote: post #202

superuser2 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What are the best practises for having a bunch of bitcoin? Given that it's designed as a digital replacement for cash (not savings and checking accounts - cash), keeping more than a few hundred dollars around at a time would seem to be as advisable as storing the equivalent $100 bills, with the same level of extraordinary security measures needed.

I've yet to have someone remotely steal money out of my wallet.

You've also not yet shoved a dollar bill down an Ethernet cable. Which is, more or less, what Bitcoin provides.

Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin

#207

Post by mrb » Tue, Jul 01, 2014, 11:42 PM UTC

sanswork wrote: post #164

mrb wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This milestone ($1M/day) was widely disseminated in a business wire 2 weeks before the newsbtc.com blog post: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/bitcoin-payments-pioneer-bitpa... Notice how it is burried in the announcement of the $30M funding round. This is probably why the fact was not picked up by more people.

I'll believe it when I see numbers for multiple days over multiple months. Both bitpay and coinbase have been caught in the past using spikes and holiday volume to make their overall volume look much higher than it is.

BitPay processed $5k/day in May 2012 [3], $18k/day in Sep 2012 [3], $160k/day in March 2013 [1], $300k/day average through 2013 [2], and now $1.0M/day [4].

BitPay had 1k merchants in Sep 2012 [3], 10k by Sep 2013 [5], 30k by May 2014 [6].

BitPay raised $2M in May 2013 [7], and $30M in May 2014 [4].

They had a single office in Atlanta in 2012, now they have 8000 sq ft in Atlanta [8], plus offices in Amsterdam, San Francisco, New York City.

BitPay had 7 employees in April 2013 [9], and 40 by May 2014 [8], and plans to have 100 by end of 2014 [8].

You can bury your head in the sand as much as you want, but their growth is obvious... Have you been to any Bitcoin conference? The number of new startups, flury of projects, funding rounds, etc, is mind-boggling. You belong to the super-minority who believes that "Bitcoin is seeing no consumer growth" (!)

[1] http://www.maxkeiser.com/2013/04/bitpay-processes-5-million-...

[2] http://www.paymentssource.com/news/the-companies-signing-up-...

[3] http://bitcoinmagazine.com/2298/bitpay-exceeds-1000-merchant...

[4] http://finance.yahoo.com/news/bitcoin-payments-pioneer-bitpa...

[5] http://paymentweek.com/bitpay-reaches-10k-merchants-mileston...

[6] http://blog.bitpay.com/2014/05/04/merchant-spotlight-sendowl...

[7] http://bitcoinmagazine.com/4626/bitpay-raises-2-million-led-...

[8] http://blog.bitpay.com/2014/05/21/bitpay-s-office-grand-open...

[9] http://blog.bitpay.com/2013/04/22/bitpay-expands-staff-to-se...

Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin

#208

Post by heroprotagonist » Wed, Jul 02, 2014, 2:01 AM UTC

sanswork wrote: post #197

derefr wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Specifically, on a USB stick in a regular old safe-deposit box. Now your money is in a bank.

Unless the computer you used to move it to the USB was compromised in which case someone could still steal it.

Use a Live CD with a lightweight client that doesn't need to download the entire blockchain. Keep the wallet on a separate USB key so you can keep any generated change addresses (since a LiveCD is read-only). This should be pretty effective unless the hardware itself is compromised.. If you're worried about the machine being exploited while online performing the transaction, you could limit exposure somewhat by generating an offline transaction.

Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin

#209

Post by aianus » Wed, Jul 02, 2014, 2:23 AM UTC

sanswork wrote: post #204

aianus wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so? The whole scam was predicated on abusing the chargeback feature of credit cards. This just proves that credit cards are terrible at cash-like transactions (buying cash/gold/bitcoins/gambling).

No it proves they are great at cash like transactions for buyers and awful for sellers.

... and then sellers and banks start refusing to do cash-like transactions and they're no good for anyone.

Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin

#210

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jul 04, 2014, 6:54 AM UTC

user24 wrote: post #62

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #48

Great. 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…

> 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? Given the huge amount of developer interest, I'd be pretty surprised if several groups of smart people aren't kept awake at night by their awesome ideas abou…

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