Bitcoin: the Stripe perspective
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Bitcoin: the Stripe perspective
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Re: Bitcoin: the Stripe perspective
#2Stipe is hitting on a bunch of the key points here. The big one is that bitcoin alone is not going to solve all our money problems, it will be the network of companies that build products on top of bitcoin. Its the reason we are seeing so much money going into these companies instead of investors just buying and holding Bitcoin.
Re: Bitcoin: the Stripe perspective
#3Good piece. If you're reading this expecting something new from Stripe though you'll be disappointed:
>> "So what role will Stripe play here? We already provide Bitcoin acceptance, and we're actively investigating other functionality. We'll have other updates on this front before too long."
Re: Bitcoin: the Stripe perspective
#4The beautiful thing about bitcoin is that it's an open system, an open currency if you will, that will allow a nice app ecosystem to be built on top of it. That aspect will allow many non-technical people to interact with abstractions that hide away all the complexities (such as Stripe), but it will also allow experts and hackers to still tap into the network directly with their own wallets, nodes, private keys etc.
I think that bitcoin is currently in its early infancy when it comes to user adoption and still has a very long way to go before it reaches its potential. It's not completely off base to compare it with the way the internet was back in the early 90s.
Re: Bitcoin: the Stripe perspective
#5This is one of the best posts on the "state of the Bitcoin economy" I've read yet. They nail a few key points that shows they get it in a real-world sense.
* Mass-consumer adoption of Bitcoin is a tough sell in developed countries (USA, etc.)
* Bitcoin the Network may ultimately be more valuable than BTC the currency
* "No chargebacks!" is a pitch to merchants for BTC, not consumers. Consumers like chargebacks & trust.
* BTC the currency may end up being a behind-the-scenes player so long as traditional currencies do their job.
This says to me that Stripe's position is ultimately to be the Visa of Bitcoin or the SWIFT of Bitcoin. And that's could indeed be a huge opportunity.
Re: Bitcoin: the Stripe perspective
#6> "what might a Bitcoin that's useful for the mainstream look like?"
Great article, and the extremely familiar line above made me smile.
Re: Bitcoin: the Stripe perspective
#7It worries me to see people describe Bitcoin as the "IP layer of payments." I have serious doubts about Bitcoin's ability to scale to a global audience. Transactions are too slow, the blockchain is too heavy, etc. I see Bitcoin in a very similar light to IPv4 and JavaScript: a good idea that escaped into the wild too quickly. And so we wind up piling hacks upon hacks to make up for the lack of a solid foundation, and it only gets harder to replace the current standard with a better alternative.
Re: Bitcoin: the Stripe perspective
#8I am not sure why anyone would want to accept Bitcoin via Stripe
Same can be accomplished with Bitpay, who take 0% in fees with a 30$/month package (1% otherwise), they also pay into the bank the next business day unlike Stripe. And they are also alot more open as to the types of businesses they accept.
Or hell one could directly accept bitcoin with bitcoind running locally or using the blockchain.info api and then converting bitcoins with Bitstamp (or just using the bitcoins to buy things, every day more and more places accept them!)
It is great seeing Stripe actually embracing new technologies but imho their current bitcoin "offering" is not great and they are picky as to who they do business with.
edit: ah typical HN fanboyism, vote down anything negative said about Stripe instead of addressing the points raised.
Re: Bitcoin: the Stripe perspective
#9This is my favourite article about Bitcoin to date, and properly describes one of the main ideas I wish Bitcoin detractors would come around to. Bitcoin has a lot of problems as a unit of account and as a store of value, but that is not primarily what Satoshi was building (https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf). Bitcoin is, and has always been, a medium of exchange first and foremost. It still has some shortcomings in that regard, but it is the closest thing we have to solving the trust issues of peer-to-peer exchange in a purely technical fashion.
Comparing Bitcoin addresses to the IP layer of the internet is brilliant. Something that the Bitcoin community has been a bit slow to accept is the idea that "peer-to-peer exchange" may be occurring at the corporate level rather than at the individual level for most people--it's hard to imagine a world where that isn't true due to the points outlined in the "Comparison to the card networks" part of this article. However as long as the corporate implementation is done in such a way that anyone could jump in as an individual if they wanted to bear their own risk, then we are still miles ahead of how the traditional financial system currently works ("net neutrality" for money).
Re: Bitcoin: the Stripe perspective
#10It worries me to see people describe Bitcoin as the "IP layer of payments." I have serious doubts about Bitcoin's ability to scale to a global audience. Transactions are too slow, the blockchain is too heavy, etc. I see Bitcoin in a very similar light to IPv4 and JavaScript: a good idea that escaped into the wild too quickly. And so we wind up piling hacks upon hacks to make up for the lack of a solid foundation, and…
Are there counter-examples of enormous, open platforms that escaped into the wild at just the right time? Because sure, IPv4 and JS have their problems, but it is impossible for me to conceive of an alternate universe where they were perfect at launch.