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PayPal’s Braintree Embraces Bitcoin, One-Touch Payments
11–20 of 139 posts
Re: PayPal’s Braintree Embraces Bitcoin, One-Touch Payments
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> "at this point I can already say that cryptocurrencies are the future of the global economy" You can say it all you want - that doesn't mean it's going to happen. Personally I see cryptocurrencies becoming popular enough that 'normal' people use them from time to time and understand how they work but I don't see the entire global economy switching from current currency forms to cryptocurrency anytime in the near f…
Merchants are paying 3% or so to accept money from their customers today. There are zero-fee, instant conversions for customers and merchants to use Bitcoin (Circle and BitPay, respectively). Once the user experience is right, customers will pay using funds from their bank account via Bitcoin with near-zero costs (slight exchange rate differences between services), and merchants will offer their customers discounts t…
The only place I get a discount for paying in cash is gas stations.
Merchants just charge everyone a little more, and nobody cares.
Re: PayPal’s Braintree Embraces Bitcoin, One-Touch Payments
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> "at this point I can already say that cryptocurrencies are the future of the global economy" You can say it all you want - that doesn't mean it's going to happen. Personally I see cryptocurrencies becoming popular enough that 'normal' people use them from time to time and understand how they work but I don't see the entire global economy switching from current currency forms to cryptocurrency anytime in the near f…
Merchants are paying 3% or so to accept money from their customers today. There are zero-fee, instant conversions for customers and merchants to use Bitcoin (Circle and BitPay, respectively). Once the user experience is right, customers will pay using funds from their bank account via Bitcoin with near-zero costs (slight exchange rate differences between services), and merchants will offer their customers discounts t…
There will always be intermediaries taking a few percent--from the consumer's point of view, bitcoin's incompatibility with chargebacks is a bug, not a feature.
Re: PayPal’s Braintree Embraces Bitcoin, One-Touch Payments
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> "at this point I can already say that cryptocurrencies are the future of the global economy" You can say it all you want - that doesn't mean it's going to happen. Personally I see cryptocurrencies becoming popular enough that 'normal' people use them from time to time and understand how they work but I don't see the entire global economy switching from current currency forms to cryptocurrency anytime in the near f…
Merchants are paying 3% or so to accept money from their customers today. There are zero-fee, instant conversions for customers and merchants to use Bitcoin (Circle and BitPay, respectively). Once the user experience is right, customers will pay using funds from their bank account via Bitcoin with near-zero costs (slight exchange rate differences between services), and merchants will offer their customers discounts t…
Bitcoin transactions won't always be free though, as the block reward decreases and transaction fees become necessary to incent the network to verify transactions. The fees for bitcoin may end up being roughly the same as traditional banking fees.
Re: PayPal’s Braintree Embraces Bitcoin, One-Touch Payments
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> "at this point I can already say that cryptocurrencies are the future of the global economy" You can say it all you want - that doesn't mean it's going to happen. Personally I see cryptocurrencies becoming popular enough that 'normal' people use them from time to time and understand how they work but I don't see the entire global economy switching from current currency forms to cryptocurrency anytime in the near f…
Merchants are paying 3% or so to accept money from their customers today. There are zero-fee, instant conversions for customers and merchants to use Bitcoin (Circle and BitPay, respectively). Once the user experience is right, customers will pay using funds from their bank account via Bitcoin with near-zero costs (slight exchange rate differences between services), and merchants will offer their customers discounts t…
In the US, only poor people spend cash. Everybody else spends credit and reconciles at the end of the month (or lets it roll over).
Re: PayPal’s Braintree Embraces Bitcoin, One-Touch Payments
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think bitcoin won yet. I haven't heard of paypal allowing people to pay for bitcoins yet. (as in transfers of funds to exchanges) They accept it for their service, but noone else can.
Using PayPal is a really bad way to sell bitcoins, because PayPal lets the buyer dispute the transaction, reversing payment. If you sell bitcoins via PayPal, you're taking a big counterparty risk (not to mention the 3rd party, PayPal itself).
> PayPal lets the buyer dispute the transaction, reversing payment.
What would be the alternative? CC, ACH, and most other payment systems also have a mechanism for chargebacks.
Re: PayPal’s Braintree Embraces Bitcoin, One-Touch Payments
#17Serious question: If one is engaged in entirely legal activities - no money laundering, no drugs, no illegal weapons, no tax evasion, no slipping around international monetary controls - why would one want to use Bitcoin? With the volatility of Bitcoin's price, transfer costs of traditional payment methods (1-3%) are totally dwarfed by the risk of holding Bitcoins for even a short period of time. Maybe there is some…
Holding bitcoins isn't required to spend money using the Bitcoin network. Services can let you purchase bitcoins when you're making a payment and send them instantly. (They need your credit card as a backup payment method in case the ACH fails.) Sellers quote a Bitcoin price that is stable for 15 minutes. There is no price fluctuation during a purchase. It's effectively paying with your bank account over the Bitcoin network, and paying much lower fees as a result.
This is why paying with Bitcoin will be common within a year.
Re: PayPal’s Braintree Embraces Bitcoin, One-Touch Payments
#18Serious question: If one is engaged in entirely legal activities - no money laundering, no drugs, no illegal weapons, no tax evasion, no slipping around international monetary controls - why would one want to use Bitcoin? With the volatility of Bitcoin's price, transfer costs of traditional payment methods (1-3%) are totally dwarfed by the risk of holding Bitcoins for even a short period of time. Maybe there is some…
I'd imagine the greatest benefit would be as a low friction P2P payment option. It's still hard to just send a fixed amount of money to someone with traditional payment systems, and if both parties have and use BTC, it would be pretty convenient.
> a fixed amount of money
That's still tricky with bitcoin, though, no? You can certainly send a fixed amount of BTC, but that value is probably going to get pegged to a national currency when you want to spend it.
Re: PayPal’s Braintree Embraces Bitcoin, One-Touch Payments
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> "at this point I can already say that cryptocurrencies are the future of the global economy" You can say it all you want - that doesn't mean it's going to happen. Personally I see cryptocurrencies becoming popular enough that 'normal' people use them from time to time and understand how they work but I don't see the entire global economy switching from current currency forms to cryptocurrency anytime in the near f…
Merchants are paying 3% or so to accept money from their customers today. There are zero-fee, instant conversions for customers and merchants to use Bitcoin (Circle and BitPay, respectively). Once the user experience is right, customers will pay using funds from their bank account via Bitcoin with near-zero costs (slight exchange rate differences between services), and merchants will offer their customers discounts t…
Every HN thread that discusses bitcoin contains this claim. What can you do to support this? Will the providers of this superior user experience not expect compensation for their efforts? Will miners not expect compensation once the coin limit has been reached? Will bitcoin transaction companies not need extra coin around to account for fraud? How can there possibly be no fees when a third party is required for the common man to use bitcoin?
I am pro bitcoin but, I am very skeptical of the frequent claim that bitcoin will enter mainstream usage without fees similar to that of credit cards.
Re: PayPal’s Braintree Embraces Bitcoin, One-Touch Payments
#20Serious question: If one is engaged in entirely legal activities - no money laundering, no drugs, no illegal weapons, no tax evasion, no slipping around international monetary controls - why would one want to use Bitcoin? With the volatility of Bitcoin's price, transfer costs of traditional payment methods (1-3%) are totally dwarfed by the risk of holding Bitcoins for even a short period of time. Maybe there is some…
If we don't take a US-centric view of it where everything not within their financial system is illegal, what about countries such as Argentina? Bitcoin is global. As a digital ecommerce infrastructure there is a lot of value. For example, even in Canada and it was very difficult accepting foreign credit cards until Stripe came around. The merchant/CC industry moved so slowly it took decades longer than it should have to get adequate APIs. BTC doesn't have these limitations, especially for underdeveloped countries.
Vendors in the middle of Africa do not need a bank account and credit card merchant account to sell products online. Plus they can distribute the earnings to their family members working across the country with their mobile phone, without their family needing accounts.
Most Americans seem to be drawn to the decentralized nature but there are opportunities in other countries to escape corrupt or non-existent banks, or use it as an alternative to their countries even more unstable currencies.