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Stripe: Bitcoin

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Re: Stripe: Bitcoin

#251

Post by aaxe »

undefined0 wrote: post #197
krithix wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I work for Stripe.) That's correct. Stripe does not currently support recurring or repeated payments with Bitcoin. The receivers can only be used for a single payment.

Since you could now be considered 'big leaders' in the bitcoin world. You really should lobby for a BIP70 specification which allows for wallets to subscribe people to payments. However, then would be the question of how can both the wallet provider and Stripe agree on the exchange rate. In short, I'd like to see BIP70 become like PayPal's IPN, so it can notify websites of subscriptions, refunds, payment requests, in…

Paypal's IPN is the worst piece of garbage ever.

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin

#252

Post by conception »

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…

Worse are the tax implications of using large amounts of Bitcoin, since it's treated as property and not a currency. Good luck keeping track of your cost averaging over the year.

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin

#253

Post by Retra »

ikeboy wrote: post #237
Retra wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 b…

It's not illegal per se to donate to wikileaks, but you may be put on a list somewhere. Do you think all free speech should be only with identified speakers? How would you feel if your entire spending history was in the public domain? In most of your examples, you can easily pay with cash, which is anonymous.

No, I don't think all free speech should be with identity. I would anticipate that it is hard to have free speech under such conditions.

I wouldn't care if my spending history were public, but that's obviously not relevant. I don't believe spending should be anonymous. I don't believe people should be allowed to make any purchase they desire without penalty. I do believe people should be able to speak without penalty, as people are better able to ignore bad words than they are bad money. Money corrupts people far more effectively and quickly than speech.

>It's not illegal per se to donate to wikileaks, but you may be put on a list somewhere.

So? You're already on a list somewhere. Are you arguing that you have a right not to be on lists, and that this has anything to do with currency?

>In most of your examples, you can easily pay with cash, which is anonymous.

No, not "easily." You have to go to a bank and sit in front of their cameras while they hand you money. That's not the same as anonymous internet transactions. And the person you are giving money to will see you hand it to them, unless you jump through some hoops. And jumping through hoops is shady when you're doing something illegal. And someone cannot steal your cash without being physically present, and thus requiring knowledge of your location and opportunity to leave a trail of evidence.

I mean, if it were so easy to pay cash, what value does bitcoin even bring to the table? Why are all these bitcoin advocates not just using cash, if they are so similar?

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin

#254

Post by josu »

cplease wrote: post #231
josu wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In many developing countries the bar is pretty low, and while bitcoin is not that stable yet, it may well become a suitable option in a few years. Look at the Argentinian Peso, it has lost almost 90% of its value against the USD since 2001. http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=USDARS%3DX+Interactive#%7...

Right, the Argentina straw man. Worst inflation example you can find is the Argentina peso, and it's lost 10% in a year where the bitcoin dropped 63%, and bitcoin's volatility over the same time period has been much, much higher. Even the most mismanaged government manages its currency. No one is managing bitcoin, it's price reflects the volatile market whims of a cryptocurrency backed by nothing but computation and…

Argentina, Venzuela, Russia, Ukraine, Sudan, Belarus... I haven't done the math, but we are probably talking about a couple of hundred million. If they all adopted bitcoin, it would probably become the 5th or 6th currency by people using it in the world.

>Even the most mismanaged government manages its currency.

Governments don't manage currencies.

>No one is managing bitcoin,

No one managed gold when all currencies were gold backed and it did not see bitcoin's price volatility.

>it's price reflects the volatile market whims of a cryptocurrency backed by nothing but computation and beset by fraud.

No, its price reflects the low volume.

>The volatility is not going away.

Nobody can predict the future.

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin

#255

Post by venaoy_ »

bduerst wrote: post #184
venaoy wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a buyer, why would I use bitcoin internationally when I can't reverse my transaction if they don't deliver? Sometimes reversibility just doesn't matter. The merchant might be 100% trustworthy (like Amazon). Or as another example I once rented a VPS for a month from Russia. I paid in bitcoins because it was $3 or $4 so I simply didn't care if the VPS provider didn't deliver (submitting a chargeback request for su…

Spinning a lack of reversible transactions as being a "Benefit" is disingenuous because there is real demand for them. You're can't always do business with trusted merchants like Amazon, especially internationally. The point for #3 is that "How can I use these bitcoins I've been gifted?" is not a real problem for the majority of people. It's a solution to a problem that many don't have. I'm glad you found my story cu…

(I can't log into my venaoy HN account at the moment)

> Spinning a lack of reversible transactions as being a "Benefit" is disingenuous

I argue, through my examples, that reversibility is often not as important as you may think. Another data point: I am a typical American consumer and in 20 years doing probably 5,000+ credit card transactions I have never had to issue a single chargeback at all. So I know for a fact that I would be willing to use Bitcoin for its advantages. Hell, credit card fees which are passed to customers by inflating prices by ~2% probably indirectly cost me north of $20,000 over my 20 years of use. I could have saved $20,000 and I would have been totally fine with the lack of reversibility of Bitcoin. Even if I end up being scammed one day by a non-reversible $1000 Bitcoin transaction, I would still be $19,000 financially ahead with Bitcoin.

> I'm glad you found my story cute, but fail to see how pointing out imperfections in credit card insurance policies is supporting bitcoin, because bitcoin doesn't fill those imperfections

I point out imperfections to show you that even an imperfect system such as credit cards manage to be reasonably successful. So Bitcoin is not perfect either but, similarly, this should not prevent it from being reasonably successful.

> getting my account hacked on a bitcoin exchange

Bitcoin hardware wallets have a huge potential to significantly increase security for consumers.

> The entire world's supply of bitcoin is limited to 2.7 transactions a second

Why do you present this as being a sort of fatal flaw? It's not. A block size increase will solve this. It was not done yet because it's not a problem yet: the average block size is currently still far below the 1MB limit.

> I'm not even going to go into why you would compare Mt. Gox to Madoff. Madoff is an uninsured investor and in prison, Mt. Gox is an exchange and the thieves are where?

I compare the two because both cases are a result of fraud and both cases were/are being investigated by authorities. (MtGox was not robbed, Mark Karpeles committed fraud -- see the willy report -- as a result Karpeles is currently under investigation by the Japanese authorities). You seem to be under the impression the government and authorities are ignoring Bitcoin fraud. They are not. In the US for example the S.E.C. recently prosecuted a Bitcoin ponzi scheme operator: http://www.sec.gov/News/PressRelease/Detail/PressRelease/137...

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin

#256

Post by venaoy_ »

bduerst wrote: post #227
celticninja wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bec…

It was not a ponzi, but MtGox became insolvent through fraud: Mark Karpeles simulated fake transactions with fake coins and fake dollars using his willy bot.

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin

#257

Post by roywiggins »

Igglyboo wrote: post #205
malgorithms wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with this is that, from the buyer's perspective, the price is almost always the same when using a credit card or alternative. And with a credit card, the buyer gets rewards back, typically 1% or so. So, sadly, using a credit card continues to have more protections, costs less, and has deferred payment. I don't think this is a good thing, just saying. I hold some bitcoins, but I never buy anything with the…

This is correct. The only businesses I've ever seen pass the CC fees onto the user are very small mom and pop shops ($5 min) and gas stations.

Norwegian Air (budget airline) adds a fee for bookings made with a credit card.

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin

#258

Post by wyldfire »

celticninja wrote: post #175
wyldfire wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

there is no mapping to leak, there is no join between your identity and the bitcoin ledger, there may be some sites such as coinbase that can say "well coins were sent from this address controlled by Mr. Bob, to a new address". Mr. Bob says he sent it to a gambling website, exchange, merchant, localbitcoin sale, in person trade etc. After that he has no idea where it has gone or no way to link the identity of the cur…

When I spend money with a vendor I often reveal my identity to them intentionally (so that they can ship me goods!). There's the join right there. You can argue that I shouldn't have sent money to this vendor but I think that eliminates an enormous existing use case for cryptocoins.

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin

#259

Post by sdrothrock »

mikekchar wrote: post #219
patrickaljord wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is potentially amazing for me. I just started a consulting business in Japan. Credit cards are hard to come by, especially for foreigners. I need to pay for various services: domain name registration, etc, etc. At the moment I'm constrained to using Japanese companies who will accept bank transfer payments. If this becomes popular, I could buy services anywhere. There service fees are very reasonable. This is wh…

> I need to pay for various services: domain name registration, etc, etc. At the moment I'm constrained to using Japanese companies who will accept bank transfer payments.

Why not buy a refillable Visa at a convenience store?

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin

#260

Post by bduerst »

venaoy_ wrote: post #256
bduerst wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bec…

It was not a ponzi, but MtGox became insolvent through fraud: Mark Karpeles simulated fake transactions with fake coins and fake dollars using his willy bot.

Just how many HN accounts do you have? And why?

Insolvency wasn't the question.

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