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Bitcoin: the Stripe perspective

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Re: Bitcoin: the Stripe perspective

#71

Post by headgasket »

Cyther606 wrote: post #65
IgorPartola wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. The more I think about BTC, the more I understand that the exchange protocol is the most useful part of it. Storing value in an encrypted wallet on your computer is inconvenient to say the least. Not that I want local storage of value to go away, but as a consumer I want a very different payment experience than "here, have my CC number" or "let me pay with PayPal".

Satoshi wrote in the genesis block: The Times 03/Jan/ 2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks Bitcoin was released in staunch opposition to the banking system. > Storing value in an encrypted wallet on your computer is inconvenient to say the least It's possible to store Bitcoin on sheets of paper, or entirely in your brain, safely and securely. I get the distinct feeling you've never used Bitcoin before…

I believe you are philosophically right about the idea of bitcoin. The cat is out of the bag: there is a distributed alternative to the global banking system. BTC might be corrupted, but the idea is not. Another spin on the POW and on the mass distribution mechanism, and the regulators might have a serious problem on their hands. Lots of ifs.

Re: Bitcoin: the Stripe perspective

#72

Post by Cyther606 »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #64

> First, the resulting ecosystem is technologically open. Open ecosystems have a way of getting better much faster than their closed counterpart. Unless you are specifically in the business of making financial institutions, it would seem that Stripe (and for that matter, nearly every payment provider that a computer can interact with) is open in all the ways that matter to a normal person. > There are a number of cry…

First, Bitcoin resembles MLM / network marketing more than any one traditional financial instrument.

Second, that the State would want to allow a free market currency of fixed supply to compete with their own digital currency that can be whimsically inflated and used to fund endless warfare and welfare just doesn't fit the historical record.

Never, in the past hundred some odd years, has any competing currency been adopted by the banking system because of innovative features.

Bitcoin is innovative because it gives people control over a form of globally accepted currency which cannot be debased or manipulated. Bitcoin can be sent and received by any person in the world, in any amount, at any time, for any reason. That's why Bitcoin is important. Bitcoin is _not_ important if it just compliments the existing banking system's functions, or makes it cheaper. It's important because it frees humanity from the arbitrary clutches of the State. It gives power back to the individual at least in matters of money and finance, and everything else can follow from that.

Re: Bitcoin: the Stripe perspective

#73

Post by Cyther606 »

sanswork wrote: post #70
Cyther606 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Satoshi wrote in the genesis block: The Times 03/Jan/ 2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks Bitcoin was released in staunch opposition to the banking system. > Storing value in an encrypted wallet on your computer is inconvenient to say the least It's possible to store Bitcoin on sheets of paper, or entirely in your brain, safely and securely. I get the distinct feeling you've never used Bitcoin before…

>It's possible to store Bitcoin on sheets of paper The process for making a secure paper wallet is far from convenient and brain wallets are about the worst possible way to store bitcoin and are far from safe and secure. If you're going to get some please do not use a brain wallet.

Numerous wallets make it dead simple to create a paper wallet. With Electrum, you just open the program and it automatically generates 12 words which you can write down on paper or learn by heart. It doesn't get much easier than that, and it's perfectly safe and secure to do.

Re: Bitcoin: the Stripe perspective

#74

Post by marincounty »

maaku wrote: post #47
boucher wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless of course they invested when bitcoin was over $1000. Ever heard the phrase "past performance is not an guarantee of future returns?"

Gold is the typical store of value asset, and the story there is very similar.

Gold has experienced rapid growth since 2008, but historically the growth curve has been flat. I have never heard a competent Financial Advisor recommend gold.

But this boom is weird? I wonder if HFT's will be to blame, when we have the crash?

Re: Bitcoin: the Stripe perspective

#75

Post by jedunnigan »

jarin wrote: post #30

Taking this a step further, when using it as a pure transport medium, the cryptocurrency itself doesn't matter. It could be Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dogecoin, 2304293f20983uf2089j2f3coin, or whatever, as long as it's liquid enough to convert back and forth. What we really need is a gateway system that will intelligently convert between your local currency -> the cryptocurrency with the best liquidity/exchange rate -> the d…

It's funny, the article basically perfectly describes Ripple in its gateway section. It gets a lot of heat for the XRP business but in reality it's a very clever system that opens up a lot of possibility. It just needs more gateways at this point.

Re: Bitcoin: the Stripe perspective

#76

Post by nathansobo »

jessaustin wrote: post #68
brg444 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> * Bitcoin the Network may ultimately be more valuable than BTC the currency This is a fundamental misunderstanding of Bitcoin. Because each and every Bitcoin function as a sort of "token" that provides access to this payment network, their value is closely tied to the value of the network. For Bitcoin to become an international payment gateway system, liquidity requires every Bitcoin to be worth a lot.

If one uses BTC primarily for exchange, one doesn't care what the "value" is. The only priorities are the convenience and reliability of the conversions into and out of BTC. These are threatened only a little by volatility, and not at all by actual BTC value.

Agree for the most part, so long as there's sufficient liquidity in the target fiat currency.

Re: Bitcoin: the Stripe perspective

#77

Post by freedom123 »

drcode wrote: post #55
freedom123 wrote: post #44

Bitcoin, no matter how you word it or rationalize it will always have a root problem and inherent risk...it is backed by nothing. Users today think its usage gives it market value and it can but to a limit. Money (USD) originally (the dollar bill) worked because it was back by gold. A metal that worked because everyone on the planet wants it. That dollar bill was a "check" or agreement stating, this dollar bill repre…

If gold wasn't used as a store of value its value would be very maybe a hundredth of what it is now: Gold-plated jewelry in our modern era is essentially indistinguishable (even at the level of a physics lab using scales/xrays/etc if need be) from solid gold jewelry. Gold, for all intents and purposes, is also "backed by nothing".

Aluminum was more expensive than gold until a cheap way to purify it was developed. Now we wrap our food in it. Gold is only valuable until the first metallic asteroid is placed into high Earth orbit. Not tomorrow, but probably sooner than you think. reply

If gold wasn't used as a store of value its value would be very maybe a hundredth of what it is now: Gold-plated jewelry in our modern era is essentially indistinguishable (even at the level of a physics lab using scales/xrays/etc if need be) from solid gold jewelry. Gold, for all intents and purposes, is also "backed by nothing". << again has almost nothing to do with Bitcoin being back by nothing. Gold is the item of value it doesn't need to be backed, it is the back'er.

Re: Bitcoin: the Stripe perspective

#78

Post by ceallen »

natrius wrote: post #17
nemo1618 wrote: post #7

It 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…

Transactions are instant unless the sender double spends. Wait ten minutes for anonymous senders. Trust known senders, then blacklist their identity for instant transactions if bad behavior is detected. This is effectively what any merchant who accepts credit cards does today. Credit card transactions look instant, but can be rejected weeks later. If the blockchain is too heavy, why are miners willing to process tran…

Individual transaction fees are being heavily, heavily subsidized by block rewards currently. Just eyeballing the current numbers:

~400 transactions per block, 25 btc reward, ~500 usd / btc gives a transaction cost of 31 dollars each.

What happens to fees when mining rewards taper off? Just authoritatively stating "it'll be fixed" blindly pushes these problems into the future.

Re: Bitcoin: the Stripe perspective

#79

Post by dwaltrip »

sanswork wrote: post #70
Cyther606 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Satoshi wrote in the genesis block: The Times 03/Jan/ 2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks Bitcoin was released in staunch opposition to the banking system. > Storing value in an encrypted wallet on your computer is inconvenient to say the least It's possible to store Bitcoin on sheets of paper, or entirely in your brain, safely and securely. I get the distinct feeling you've never used Bitcoin before…

>It's possible to store Bitcoin on sheets of paper The process for making a secure paper wallet is far from convenient and brain wallets are about the worst possible way to store bitcoin and are far from safe and secure. If you're going to get some please do not use a brain wallet.

If you know what you are doing, brain wallets are very safe. However, if you don't, you might easily make a disastrous mistake. The casual user should not store coins in a brainwallet, but they can be quite useful.

Re: Bitcoin: the Stripe perspective

#80

Post by mcs »

mcs wrote: post #66

What about a voting system? With little keychains given out with only the voting system having the public key for, and any third party can validate the votes. "Coins", or voting credits can be distributed back to voters without transaction fees.

Bitcoin as a store of value is only when people are holding other commodities or speculative fiat. Large caches of early bitcoin holders will likely not crash a market that creates them wealth, so if there are actual commodities that align with bitcoin, and illegal drugs are not that commodity for a multitude of reasons and even just fluctuated with the usd, so bitcoin either needs significant natural resource or "hard assets" backings of bitcoin or it'll ebb and flow with the USD because shops that accept bitcoin still have to pay to do USD conversion and the rate moves dynamically just like there is a broadcasting network for the gas prices for gas stations when the gas price per gallon fluctuates quickly based on futures markets.
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