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Stripe: Bitcoin

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Re: Stripe: Bitcoin

#221

Post by keppy »

wyldfire wrote: post #59
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.

bitcoin's not really that anonymous. Sure, the ledger doesn't contain identities, but it's not extremely difficult for the mapping between addresses and identities to "leak" and once they do, it's anything but anonymous.

The currency itself is not anonymous. In fact it's a huge mistake to suggest such a thing. That would be like saying keeping a ledger at a currency trade makes the currency 'anonymous'.

Since there are more avenues of trade available than say, with cash, laundering and other clever tactics can be used as tools to cover your tracks.

As always, the only way to keep yourself safe is through GOOD OPSEC. Bitcoin is an evolution of the currency concept, a tool for moving and representing wealth; nothing more.

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin

#222

Post by krithix »

isthisforme wrote: post #189
krithix wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

Thanks for the clarification. Could a Canadian Stripe user just start using the API and then go open a us bank account after launch, or would the us bank account be needed prior to going live?

You can get everything set up in test mode, but you will need to activate the bank account before going live. If helpful, there's more info on testing here: https://stripe.com/docs/testing#how-do-i-test-bitcoin

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin

#223

Post by krithix »

isthisforme wrote: post #190
krithix wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

And can you clarify if by us bank account you mean 'us dollar denominated', or 'us dollar denominated and a us bank'. USD bank accounts are very common in Canada. Not that needing a US bank account is necessarily a show-stopper, but it's more work.

USD-denominated and a U.S. bank for now.

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin

#224

Post by wpietri »

larrys wrote: post #176
andrewfong wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it legal to pass the discount onto customers? The only businesses I've seen giving a discount for paying in cash are (some) gas stations.

"pass the discount" You can say "if you are dressed like a clown today we will give you a 10% discount". Point being that there is nothing to prevent you from giving someone a discount as long as it doesn't break any laws and as long as you are offering it to everyone that falls into the same category (or the discount has been negotiated).

Nothing but your merchant agreement. I worked a register in a small store when I was 16, and in a slow moment I ended up reading some of the stuff VISA sent along with their booklet of invalid credit card numbers. (Yes, this was a while ago.)

In in the fine print it was clear that offering your customers a cash discount was grounds for immediately canceling your ability to take credit cards. If I recall rightly, I noticed because the store I was at did indeed offer a discount. In practice, I'm sure the store was small enough that VISA didn't care. But for larger operations I'm sure it was a serious threat.

I believe they were eventually sued and lost, but since I rarely see discounts like that, I imagine they have some sort of not-quite-illegal trick, like offering merchants advertising credits based on charged card volume.

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin

#225

Post by TACIXAT »

Hey Stripe, are you reading this?

I'm deciding between payment processors right now. I plan to have excessively low prices, in the range of 1 dollar per year. PayPal and Amazon offer micro transaction pricing at 5 cents + 5% of each transaction. Care to compete?

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin

#226

Post by wpietri »

sanswork wrote: post #215
undefined0 wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Their chargeback rates are obscenely high". I've always understood that porn companies have difficulty finding a friendly payment processor, but I've never heard that they recieve a high chargeback rate before. Do you know why that is? What do users gain from chargebacking porn websites over chargebacking dropbox, for example?

Their partner sees "XYZ.com" on the bill and goes to look it up. "Why are you buying porn?" "Oh that wasn't me! Someone must have stolen our card" and they submit a chargeback.

I'm sure regret is also a part of it as well. "Why did I spend that money?" And of course, outright theft of services, where they watch/download whatever it is they're interested in and then cancel the charge.

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin

#227

Post by bduerst »

celticninja wrote: post #203
bduerst wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both involve theft, except one is insured. You don't insure money that you give to an investor (Madoff), which is why it's disingenuous to compare Mt. Gox to an investment scam.

why is it disingenous to compare mtgox to madoff? both were run as ponzi schemes in the end which led to losses for investors,whether that was investing in bitcoin or madoffs funds.mtgox money was not insured either.

Mt. Gox was not a ponzi scheme. It was a legitimate exchange business that became insolvent, and it was the users (not just investors) who got screwed.

Also, the term ponzi scheme get's used a lot in discussion about bitcoin, but many people do not know that it is a very specific type of scam. There have even been actual ponzi schemes involving bitcoins (not Mt. Gox). The people scammed in those were not insured because it was an investment, just as the people involved in the Maddoff scam were not insured. That is why it's disingenuous.

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin

#228

Post by Retra »

ikeboy wrote: post #216
Retra wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand that there are benefits to anonymity, but I don't think anonymous transactions are really a priority at this time, except for people doing illegal business. I certainly don't want politicians to be able to receive anonymous funding. It's different with something like speech, where we have a rational principle that says "people can speak as a general proxy for hypothetical positions." But you can't make h…

But what about when someone wants to donate to wikileaks, which supports free speech (say), but they don't want governments to know that? People need money to speak freely (especially when they are persecuted for it), and those donations should be anonymous.

People need free speech to speak freely. Your Wikileaks example is cherry-picking: it is not illegal to donate to Wikileaks. It might be illegal to donate to a drug cartel, or somebody like ISIS. Or to that police officer who wanted to give you a ticket. Or that government agent deciding who to give a big contract to.

I think think of far more cases where anonymous transactions are harmful than I can where they are beneficial.

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin

#229

Post by cplease »

derefr wrote: post #194
sah88 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are in Canada that isn't really true. It is extremely easy to open a USD denominated bank account and credit card. Couple banks have Euro accounts as well.

Yeah, but if you get paid in CAD, it's still a question of when you want to deal with the volatility—point of sale, or point of forex-exchange-during-account-transfer. You still have to deal with timing it right (possibly waiting months) if you want to avoid losing tens of cents on the dollar. And if you're already thinking like that, Bitcoin isn't nearly as scary.

Bullshit. And this is not a matter of opinion or speculation. There is data and history. Take a look: http://imgur.com/FmpI0HY

That's the past year. The flat blue line around 0% is CAD vs USD. The crazy red line that's all over the place, swinging by as much as 100% in a matter of weeks, is CAD/BTC.

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin

#230

Post by WillNotDownvote »

ufo wrote: post #217
StavrosK wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it not faster and cheaper?

speed: The blockchain is updated only every 10 minutes and you need to wait for even longer if you want to be 100% sure a longer fork won't show up. cost: bitcoin miners must spend enormous amounts of energy in an inefficient process in order to keep the network running. Right now, most of the mining costs are covered by the bitcoin bounty that is awarded to miners that successfully mine a block but this reward decre…

Speed- The difference is after that 10 minutes, the transaction is settled. The money has moved. What you have with a credit card in 10 minutes is a promise that the money will move, possibly days or even weeks later.

The bitcoin can be moved again (spent by the receiver) after 10 minutes. Try that with money you received by a credit card payment.

This really is the fundamental difference of bitcoin- once the money has moved, it's really moved. It takes some time and thinking to appreciate how that opens things up quite a bit.

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