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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

#41

Post by natrius »

jaredandrews wrote: post #19
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…

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 c…

Debit cards cost half of what credit cards do. Bitcoin will be at least that cheap. Miners will be compensated plenty by mining rewards for the foreseeable future. Bitcoin service providers will charge fees that they don't today, but the competition that now exists will drive those fees as low as possible.

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

#42

Post by [deleted] »

jerguismi wrote: post #22
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 v…

[deleted]

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

#43

Post by atmosx »

dmix wrote: post #20
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…

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…

> 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.

If it were that valuable, we'd know by now. BTC is a failed currency, but a successful asset.

Escaping corrupt and non-existent bank to go after an uncontrolled currency is equally risky and way more stupid.

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

#44

Post by [deleted] »

fredbrown wrote: post #28
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?

[deleted]

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

#45

Post by Hermel »

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…

Sooner or later, a trusted financial institution will start to issue USD and EUR as colored coins on the Bitcoin network (or another cryptocurrency). From that point on, the volatility risk will be gone, but the benefits of a freely transferrable currency will remain.

With the benefits being: fast (with traditional currencies, settlement takes two days), easy to integrate, and open source. In particular, the latter point can offer a huge strategic advantage. Linux is successful because companies like IBM do not want to depend on Microsoft. Bitcoin can be successfuly for the same reason - namely because big corporations prefer depending on an open standard over depending on a competitor's payment system.

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

#46

Post by jerguismi »

atmosx wrote: post #43
dmix wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. If it were that valuable, we'd know by now. BTC is a failed currency, but a successful asset. Escaping corrupt and non-existent bank to go after an uncontrolled currency is equally risky and w…

> If it were that valuable, we'd know by now. BTC is a failed currency, but a successful asset.

How long do you usually think infrastructure around protocol such as bitcoin takes time to develop? I personally think we're still early in the game.

> Escaping corrupt and non-existent bank to go after an uncontrolled currency is equally risky and way more stupid.

What is your proposal then? I think holding ARS at least is not very wise move, but many still seem to do it. Physical USD cash is widely used in the streets, but bitcoin or something like it could be much more accessible alternative in the long term.

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

#47

Post by dangerlibrary »

IkmoIkmo wrote: post #36
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…

> why would anyone want to exchange a reasonable stable national currency for bitcoin? Name me 10 currencies you'd be comfortable holding. It'll probably be very difficult. Fact is, billions use currencies with high inflation rates and with relatively short lifespans. And it's not just places like Zimbabwe that have many problems besides insane inflation the past decade. It's also relatively developed countries like…

But so little of that is exclusive to BTC as opposed to a digital transaction valued in national currency, and almost none of the benefits you list accrue to consumers - they all benefit merchants.

- Getting rid of charge back fraud also gets rid of charge backs - an important consumer protection.

- I don't need 10 currencies I'd be comfortable holding, but any of these - http://fxtrade.oanda.com/analysis/currency-volatility have far lower volatility than BTC.

- Bankless people need banks, not cryptocurrencies. There's no difference to a bankless person between a mobile app to an online bank and a bitcoin gateway.

- My credit card pays me back a chunk of that "1-3% tax on everything," my bitcoin wallet doesn't. Until bitcoin gains market share and the tax goes away, I'm just paying more to use bitcoin.

- My credit card company provides fraud protection for when my card is stolen, my BTC wallet does not.

Looking to the future doesn't make me want to transact in BTC right now.

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

#48

Post by atmosx »

mrb wrote: post #38
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…

Why use Bitcoin? 1. As a consumer, it's fast and cheap. My dad in France can send money, instantly, to me who live in the US. No waiting days for wire transfers. No trip to a local Western Union branch necessary. No exhorbitant fee (worldwide remittance fees average 9%!) I don't even have to bother exchanging the coins with dollars to spend them, because more and more merchants begin to accept Bitcoin. 2. For consume…

1. It's a not a real-world scenario. Especially the part where you don't spend USD becuase more merchants begin to accept BTC, like if you're going to buy bread with BTC. You're not and if you do, you're 1 in 100.000.000.000.

2. Yes, that might work but it's extremely risky and complicated. When if you need to cash out quickly? What if BTC prices goes back to 150 USD because a large BTC holder (an investment bank) decided to dump the price?

3. Yes, that's true. But you have to do some kind of leverage for your prices automatically adjust btc-to-usd (or eur), otherwise BTC volatility might kill your business. But this is true, it's safer and quicker than credit cards + no other parties involved/documentation/transaction costs.

4. Yes but a volatile currency that has no central bank behind it, is not gold-backed and has no country who will support it, any economist knows that can go from 1000 to 0 in less then 3 hours. If you're sleeping in the meantime you might end up loosing way more than your pre-calculated predictable CC costs.

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

#49

Post by rstupek »

natrius wrote: post #26
githulhu wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We'll see? There is no refuting argument in there. Please provide an example of how you expect bitcoin to remain "free" going forward based on arguments already providing showing how it can't be free.

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

#50

Post by atmosx »

Hermel wrote: post #45
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…

Sooner or later, a trusted financial institution will start to issue USD and EUR as colored coins on the Bitcoin network (or another cryptocurrency). From that point on, the volatility risk will be gone, but the benefits of a freely transferrable currency will remain. With the benefits being: fast (with traditional currencies, settlement takes two days), easy to integrate, and open source. In particular, the latter p…

The only reason a big corporation would want to depend on a currency without central bank banking (e.g. controlled somehow) is if it owns the largest chunk of that currency, so it can play the role of the central banker as it see fit.

When other corporations realize what is happening they will dump the currency in no time and the currency will lose value.

The Linux is not controlled by anyone. Any company can build upon it, modify it and do what it needs to do. The comparison between Linux/BTC is extremely flawed!

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