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PayPal’s Braintree Embraces Bitcoin, One-Touch Payments

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Re: PayPal’s Braintree Embraces Bitcoin, One-Touch Payments

#21

Post by [deleted] »

natrius wrote: post #17
dangerlibrary wrote: post #8

Serious 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…

[deleted]

Re: PayPal’s Braintree Embraces Bitcoin, One-Touch Payments

#22

Post by jerguismi »

dangerlibrary wrote: post #8

Serious 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…

Speculation is legal and in my opinion very valid reason to use bitcoin. I'm in for mostly speculation and savings reason, as are many of the people who are into bitcoin and I know of. To date it has worked very well for me. Of course everyone has always said that I should not do this, but I'm very glad I did, and did not listen to my girlfriend, accountant and tax advisor.

I also use bitcoins, mostly because it is very frictionless. I actually have always small amount of unencrypted bitcoins in both my phone and computer for small day-to-day online purchases, tipping and clearing debts between friends.

Also the sovereignity appeals to me. I've never experienced any banking problems myself, but I've heard of many. Just the idea that solely me decides how my money moves appeals to me, and there is very limited possibility for anyone to touch my bitcoins.

Re: PayPal’s Braintree Embraces Bitcoin, One-Touch Payments

#23

Post by natrius »

seiji wrote: post #15
natrius wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

We only do this because card networks have used their network effects to force merchants to pay for a month of credit for their customers. When merchants have a viable alternative, they'll give customers discounts to use it.

Re: PayPal’s Braintree Embraces Bitcoin, One-Touch Payments

#25

Post by [deleted] »

dangerlibrary wrote: post #8

Serious 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…

[deleted]

Re: PayPal’s Braintree Embraces Bitcoin, One-Touch Payments

#26

Post by natrius »

githulhu wrote: post #14
natrius wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We'll see. In the near term, merchants can accept Bitcoin for 0%. Customers can send Bitcoin for five cents, and some wallets pay that for you.

Re: PayPal’s Braintree Embraces Bitcoin, One-Touch Payments

#27

Post by coryking »

natrius wrote: post #17
dangerlibrary wrote: post #8

Serious 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…

What you describe is basically:

Fiat -> Credit Card/ACH -> Bitcoin -> Fiat -> ACH (on supplier).

You are basically adding at least two extra steps in a transaction vs. what exists now. How is this better than what exists now?

Re: PayPal’s Braintree Embraces Bitcoin, One-Touch Payments

#28

Post by fredbrown »

dangerlibrary wrote: post #8

Serious 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…

A serious question in return:

What's wrong with speculation and evading government interference?

Re: PayPal’s Braintree Embraces Bitcoin, One-Touch Payments

#29

Post by martindale »

dangerlibrary wrote: post #8

Serious 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…

The case is much clearer outside of the US, where the drawbacks of centralized currencies are more visible. For example, Argentina's rate of inflation was 30% in January alone.

Re: PayPal’s Braintree Embraces Bitcoin, One-Touch Payments

#30

Post by ssharp »

natrius wrote: post #17
dangerlibrary wrote: post #8

Serious 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…

So it's an API for ACH? That could be a bonus for merchants, giving them a standardized way of processing low-fee payments, but what's the appeal for consumers? Merchants pay the credit card fees because offering the credit card option ultimately results in more revenue than not offering the credit card option.

The adoption needs to happen more so on the consumer-side than the merchant-side. Merchants can offer the service, but that doesn't mean people will utilize in. I get 1.5% back on all my credit card purchases, so I'm incentivized to put as much of my spending on my credit card as I can. I also get additional consumer and fraud protections on my credit card that are either not as good or completely missing from doing ACH transfers on my bank account.

I think BitCoin needs far more appealing consumer use-cases than it currently has to really hit widespread adoptions.

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