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Stripe: Bitcoin

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Re: Stripe: Bitcoin

#261

Post by doubledub »

Karunamon wrote: post #166
Joeboy wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the analogy, but not being a finance person I have no idea - is Bitcoin particularly compelling "as a backbone"?

Less bitcoin itself, but the blockchain technology that backs the currency has a number of novel uses. The idea of a public, cryptographically secure and verifiable ledger could be used in everything from voting to domain name registration.

Your reply is the most valuable & important response of this entire conversation so far. Thank you for saving my faith in the HN community.

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin

#262

Post by mirimir »

amalcon wrote: post #97
bhayden wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The appeal of bitcoin to me, a regular American, is much the same appeal that using a VPN, having encrypted hard drives, and not sharing information about myself all over social media does. There is very little ability to have privacy when paying with USD. You can have cash transactions, in real life, or send money orders through the mail. That's pretty much it. I want privacy in my spending and in my assets. If I li…

Publishing your entire transaction history for the entire world to see doesn't seem like the best way to have privacy, even if it is under a pseudonym. After all, purchasing history seems like one of the best tools to trace a pseudonym.

We can have as many pseudonyms as we need, and can transfer Bitcoins among them via mixing services. No pseudonym need make more than one purchase. It's the difficulty of anonymous postal delivery that's limiting.

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin

#263

Post by bduerst »

venaoy_ wrote: post #255
bduerst wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Those aren't examples, they're hypothetical stories created purposefully to support bitcoin, and border on No-True-Scotsman (A "true" payment system doesn't need dispute handling, so bitcoin is a true payment system).

Pointing out imperfections in credit card insurance doesn't mean bitcoin will work. I'm sorry but even you have to realize this is not even a logical point you're making.

Again, you completely missed the purpose of insurance. If your bitcoin hardware wallet is stolen, does it have insurance? Was any of the 4 exchanges hacked last week or Mt. Gox insured as your bank and payment processors are? Mt. Gox was not a ponzi scheme because it is not an investor - stop comparing it to one.

>Why do you present 2.7 transactions a second as being a sort of fatal flaw?

Because it is?

Block size can't be increased because bitcoin is decentralized. Each miner, merchant, etc. are rational actors looking out for their own profit, and can't come to the required consensus on any changes (hence how centralized agnostic monetary controls work). It's one of the reasons other cryptocurrencies, with higher xfer rates, have a competitive edge on bitcoin.

Bitcoin can not support more than a couple million users. Is this really news to you? Full disclaimer please: How much have you invested into bitcoin?

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin

#264

Post by mikekchar »

sdrothrock wrote: post #259
mikekchar wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I have not seen one, but perhaps I missed it. Do they exist in Japan?

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin

#265

Post by [deleted] »

WillNotDownvote wrote: post #230
ufo wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

[deleted]

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin

#266

Post by bduerst »

WillNotDownvote wrote: post #230
ufo wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

That's not true.

Current block size limits bitcoin to ~3 transactions per second. It would take bitcoin 22 days to handle just 1 day of Visa's global transactions.

This is a serious problem because in order to increase the block size, it requires a consensus amongst all miners, merchants, etc.

Bitcoin effectively suffers from Tragedy of the Commons, because it can't scale unless every rational actor stops trying to get their own profit out of it.

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin

#267

Post by sdrothrock »

mikekchar wrote: post #264
sdrothrock wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

I have not seen one, but perhaps I missed it. Do they exist in Japan?

I'm pretty sure I've seen them in Family Mart and 7&i.

http://www.smbc-card.com/prepaid/brand/guide/index.html

SMBC apparently has them, too.

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin

#268

Post by cca »

sah88 wrote: post #145
cca wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(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.

What happens if it does not get confirmed. Do you debit the account by an equivalent amount or eat it?

It's a good question. We want Bitcoin acceptance to be straightforward for our users, so we deal with a failed confirmation on our side. We do not debit the user.

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin

#269

Post by mikekchar »

sdrothrock wrote: post #267
mikekchar wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have not seen one, but perhaps I missed it. Do they exist in Japan?

I'm pretty sure I've seen them in Family Mart and 7&i. http://www.smbc-card.com/prepaid/brand/guide/index.html SMBC apparently has them, too.

Thanks a lot! This will be incredibly helpful to me :-)

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin

#270

Post by moe »

agotterer wrote: post #204
vacri wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- There are no chargebacks This is a huge negative for the customer, though

No idea why this was down voted. This is a very legitimate comment. When I'm wrongfully charged or sent goods that aren't what's advertised and support doesn't help or reply. A charge back offers the protection a buyer needs.

If you insist on keeping the risk on the seller side then what's wrong with good old Charge On Delivery?
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