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Stripe: Bitcoin

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Re: Stripe: Bitcoin

#41

Post by j42 »

JohnTHaller wrote: post #29
j42 wrote: post #14

Honestly, this may be what it takes to see more mainstream consumer adoption. A lot of the apps with high levels of penetration in this generalized demographic seem to use Stripe--if it's truly a frictionless integration, it will be really interesting to see the market's response. Coinbase & exchange API's were the first step. Single-script hosted payment processing with a UI focus (accessible to tech and grassroots…

The bigger problem with mainstream consumer adoption is the fact that mainstream consumers don't have any bitcoins to spend. Then there's the fact that you have to use an exchange to buy the coins in the first place and... let's just say bitcoin exchanges aren't exactly known as secure financial institutions. It seems a large bitcoin exchange is hacked and shuts down just about weekly: Just hours ago: Cavritex, Canad…

I think we are & will continue to see mass die-offs of the current generation of exchanges, as many were formed in a time where regulation and security were of less concern--combine that with the fact that they amass enormous amounts of untraceable value under what is essentially a single, private key, they're the ideal target.

The beauty of true P2P is that while a central authority still has the potential to compromise the network, the distributed nature at least distributes the attack surface equally. I imagine banks & security-conscious, established digital financial service providers will step in at some point to assume the role of the exchanges. It may be a step back for privacy and anonymity (sadly) but a major step forward for its legitimacy.

More importantly, the concept of interchangeability is emerging. When you find that BTC and $ transactions can be reconciled seamlessly (ie, agnostically with no logistical concern to source whether credit card, BTC, EBT, etc.) I think that P2P option may start to happen naturally. Providers like Stripe abstracting this is certainly the first step.

[edit] I would love to see what would happen if a company like Venmo that deals primarily in socail micro-transactions were to attempt a UX integration.

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin

#42

Post by veryluckyxyz »

nate_martin wrote: post #38
veryluckyxyz wrote: post #31

Can someone tell how Stripe (or other providers) guarantee immunity from price fluctuations?

Merchant sets their price in dollars (for example) and the price in Bitcoin is calculated when a transaction is made using the current btc exchange rate.

Stripe (in this case) receives bitcoins and it is exposed to fluctuations. So, if Stripe guarantees the seller a price for the bitcoin, I would think that Stripe has a mechanism to limit or even eliminate the risk from that exposure. I am interested in learning how Stripe does it. Do you know how Stripe does it?

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin

#43

Post by chuckup »

patrickaljord wrote: post #27
adriancooney wrote: post #17

What a fantastic product page. After less that 30 seconds, I knew exactly what Stripe was doing with Bitcoin, how to use the new feature and integrate it. This is great news for Bitcoin. If all it takes is one extra line of code for online retailers to start accepting the currency, widespread adoption could sky rocket. That's always been Bitcoin's crutch, simple integration. Others like Coinbase and Bitpay have made…

I think the crutch now is not that it's hard to acquire bitcoins (thanks to coinbase and friends) or pay with bitcoin (thanks to stripe and friends), no, the only crutch is why should I buy bitcoins with my dollars when I can just pay with my dollars directly? It can be useful for people who either don't have access to credit cards but have access to bitcoins, people who already have a lot of bitcoins and curious tec…

I don't think you need to buy them (unless you want to gamble on their value going up) - just be willing to accept them as payment in the future. As more people see they can easily spend bitcoin, they become more willing to accept it as payment, and the userbase grows (bringing more price stability, hopefully)

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin

#44

Post by krithix »

veesahni wrote: post #12

Is this available to canadian stripe accounts too or just US?

I work for Stripe. While people anywhere around the world can pay with Bitcoin (and we've seen payments from over 60 countries during our beta), we currently only support merchants who have U.S. bank accounts. (Fun fact: Our first Bitcoin user had a Canadian Stripe account, but also a U.S. bank account.)

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin

#45

Post by Killswitch »

collision wrote: post #28
tlrobinson wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but of course the exchange rate matters as well. It's trivial for Bitcoin payment processors hide an extra "fee" in the exchange rate by giving you a worse exchange rate than you'd get at Bitcoin exchanges and pocketing the difference. (I have no idea if Stripe does that or not)

We're not marking up the exchange rate. 0.5% is the only fee.

Awesome work! I've been trying to push bitcoin at our company as a form of payment, we use Stripe already, so this will make it easier.

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin

#46

Post by aet »

veryluckyxyz wrote: post #42
nate_martin wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Merchant sets their price in dollars (for example) and the price in Bitcoin is calculated when a transaction is made using the current btc exchange rate.

Stripe (in this case) receives bitcoins and it is exposed to fluctuations. So, if Stripe guarantees the seller a price for the bitcoin, I would think that Stripe has a mechanism to limit or even eliminate the risk from that exposure. I am interested in learning how Stripe does it. Do you know how Stripe does it?

Can they do the conversion realtime and charge the client whatever rate they get?

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin

#48

Post by ihodes »

Someone1234 wrote: post #39
deweller wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> should I buy bitcoins with my dollars when I can just pay with my dollars directly? Cheaper fees (0.5% vs 2.9%) can be potentially passed on to consumers. And anonymity.

In the last 24 hours, Bitcoin has been worth between $232 and $238, so that could be called a 3% fee on top of the 0.5% fee, and that 3% is just from the last 24 hours. If you look at the last week, the fee could be considered even higher (more than double or quad that). The problem with Bitcoin is that it is extreme volatile. So you may gain or lose money. So while a 2.9% free on dollars is fairly predictable, you r…

From the linked page:

> Fluctuation-resistant

> Avoid exchange rate hassles—specify amounts in USD and we’ll send you dollars.

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin

#49

Post by cca »

lbotos wrote: post #25

Any idea how stripe is handling confirmations? (I'm a bitcoin newbie, but I know that consensus took a minute or so the last time I had done anything with BTC.) Has that changed?

(Christian from Stripe here.) We credit USD to our user's account when we see a transaction that we believe will become confirmed. The time-delay between when the customer pushes the transaction and when we notify our users is typically less than 15 seconds and almost always less than 60 seconds.

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin

#50

Post by tree_of_item »

jkyle wrote: post #34
deweller wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> should I buy bitcoins with my dollars when I can just pay with my dollars directly? Cheaper fees (0.5% vs 2.9%) can be potentially passed on to consumers. And anonymity.

Cash is as anonymous as it gets.

How do you pay with cash on the internet? You need some sort of card.
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