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Bitcoin: the Stripe perspective

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Re: Bitcoin: the Stripe perspective

#91

Post by SilasX »

FatalLogic wrote: post #38
napoleond wrote: post #9

This 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 th…

>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 Yes, if you see bitcoin as a meme (in the traditional Dawkins sense of the word), then the unit of account aspect makes it a self-financing meme. The speculative frenzy may be unpleasant, but it is necessary bootstrapping mechanism, and not accidental.

Exactly. This is the point that's under-appreciated. People talk about the economic optimality of a currency that has an intelligent issuer who can adapt the supply as needed, and how Bitcoin locks you into a specific (and depreciating, yikes!) supply path -- but that's just the nature of bootstrapping a currency, let alone one without huge guarantors!

If someone had said, "Hey, I'm starting a very thinly-traded currency and we're going to appoint an elite circle to have arbitrary authority to issue more whenever" ... eh, it's a much weaker sell, to put it mildly -- even if some ideal currency does have that property.

Re: Bitcoin: the Stripe perspective

#92

Post by afro88 »

chadkruse wrote: post #28
nlh wrote: post #5

This 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 & trus…

> This says to me that Stripe's position is ultimately to be...the SWIFT of Bitcoin. Agreed. To illustrate how broken the SWIFT system is for those unfamiliar with international wires: Last week I wired AUS$2,500 from an account I control in Australia to an account I control in the US. It touched 4(!) banks in the process, who collectively took ~$45 in fees ($25 of that being a total surprise to me, represented only…

Try Transfer Wise. It's a very useful middle ground between the current method of SWIFT and the potential of Bitcoin as a medium of exchange. It costs much less than a SWEIFT transfer and is much quicker.

Re: Bitcoin: the Stripe perspective

#93

Post by Cyther606 »

rooneel wrote: post #87
Cyther606 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

>Society can't make progress if progress hinges upon the diktates of a corruptible few. Not being sarcastic here, but come again? Isn't that also the argument _against_ bitcoin? The extension of that argument being: would people rather they get to _elect_ the corruptible few, or that the select few be just that because they are rich (family, etc) (eg. VC's dumping their money into bitcoin).

It doesn't matter what some politician thinks, or even what a rich VC thinks: there will never be more than 21,000,000 bitcoins.

Once you invest in Bitcoin, you have a vested interest in the system maintaining and appreciating in value.

I'm not worried about Bitcoin being debased by VCs.

Politicians and bankers do concern me, however, because they can do whatever they want to my fiat currency: inflate it, deflate it, confiscate it, freeze it

and they can always hold those things over my head in order to compel me to take an action against my will.

Mainstream institutions have proven time after time to be more interested in accumulating and preserving their own power, than acting in the public's best interests.

I no longer trust this system, and I actively seek out ways in which to protect myself from its whims. I would never hold any more of its money than I absolutely had to, and I look forward to building a free economy on top of the blockchain.

That's what Bitcoin's about. It's not about being PayPal 2.0.

Re: Bitcoin: the Stripe perspective

#94

Post by MichaelGG »

mseebach wrote: post #52
MichaelGG wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Instead of JavaScript, essentially any other language could have been shipped and done a better job.

With hindsight, sure, but was that really obvious in 1995 when JavaScript shipped? 1995 saw Java's first public release. PHP was a CGI-thingie that powered Rasmus' personal homepage. Tcl and Perl was the state of the art of scripting languages. Ruby was released (it would be another four years before it started getting traction outside Japan). The first edition of O'Reilly's "Programming Python" was published in 1996…

ML and LISPs existed. Surely Scheme in the browser would be a better language and implementable in the 10-day window JS had.

Re: Bitcoin: the Stripe perspective

#95

Post by bdamm »

sanswork wrote: post #82
Cyther606 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Dead simple but no more secure than just storing the file encrypted on your computer. Electrum is great and if you write down the words thats fine. If you try to memorize them without a backup there are a lot of events that can happen in your life that will lead to the total loss of your coins.

Agreed. I'm looking for a LiveCD style paper-waller generator, do you know of one?

Re: Bitcoin: the Stripe perspective

#96

Post by sanswork »

bdamm wrote: post #95
sanswork wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dead simple but no more secure than just storing the file encrypted on your computer. Electrum is great and if you write down the words thats fine. If you try to memorize them without a backup there are a lot of events that can happen in your life that will lead to the total loss of your coins.

Agreed. I'm looking for a LiveCD style paper-waller generator, do you know of one?

I don't use paper wallets myself but any barebones linux bootcd/usb with https://github.com/pointbiz/bitaddress.org and BIP38 selected is the route I see most recommended.

Re: Bitcoin: the Stripe perspective

#97

Post by rsp1984 »

napoleond wrote: post #9

This 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 th…

Let me ask a dumb question: If money exchange is the main problem that Bitcoin solves, then why isn't the problem of money exchange attacked directly instead, i.e. through some other less volatile classical stores of value like gold or stock? Why is money exchange a problem anyway and why couldn't a classical wire transfer solve the problem?

The article doesn't say anything about these things and the underlying principles other than that it's "suprisingly difficult". Instead it goes right into proposing a solution based on Bitcoin and making big picture comparisons with network protocols that probably sound very smart to the right audience.

Given the amount of agreement and hype that the article has received so far, I feel a bit like an outsider right now questioning what is proposed. I think I just don't get it. Is everybody just a lot smarter than me or does the community miss to address some basic questions here?

Re: Bitcoin: the Stripe perspective

#98

Post by Natanael_L »

diegocg wrote: post #69
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".

That's the only thing about bitcoin that actually interests me, how easy is to make payments cutting and pasting some text. But everything else surrounding bitcoin, I don't find it useful at all. I just want/need something like bitcoin, but connected to my €-denominated bank account. I don't want or need an alternative "digital currency" and I find the mere idea of one stupid, I just want to make exchanges with curre…

So you want Ripple, essentially.

You should be aware that anything dependent on a small set of entities can fail spectacularly. You never know if they get hacked, bankrupt, sued, raided, etc ...

Re: Bitcoin: the Stripe perspective

#99

Post by jp555 »

freedom123 wrote: post #77
drcode wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 indisting…

Exactly. My point was that "the things people want" is true wealth, gold is just another measuring stick for converting billable hours of work into diapers (or whatever). If Bitcoin is perceived as a superior measuring stick it will be preferred.

Re: Bitcoin: the Stripe perspective

#100

Post by brg444 »

freedom123 wrote: post #77
drcode wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 indisting…

I suggest you return to your economic and history books. Gold has no intrinsic value as you would probably call it. It is only because of some VERY distinctive properties that are not found in other metals that gold was ultimately selected as the better store of value available. Its only value comes from a market agreement.

Bitcoin is essentially the same as it replicates the same properties of gold while having a more predictable supply and features that allow it to be used more commonly as a currency, unlike gold.

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