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Stripe: Bitcoin

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Re: Stripe: Bitcoin

#291

Post by fijal »

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…

or people living in a country different than the US (one problem with that is that banks/credit card companies take a MAJOR hit on the exchange rate that's very hard to overcome without having bank accounts in different jurisdictions).

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin

#292

Post by muyuu »

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 want to give my CC details and/or my personal information to every merchant. This usually means I either buy from fewer merchants, or pay with bitcoin if allowed. Obviously, if the merchant is going to require my info anyway then it's pointless, so it depends.

That's one of the main points about bitcoin for me. As a tool for privacy. On the surface it may seem trivial, and corporations living off mining your information will always try to pretend it's not even an issue by simply avoiding mentioning it. While at the same time push for their payment solutions as either compulsory or cheaper ("soft pressure"). But make no mistake, this is one of the most effective tools for mining your data reliably and the likes of Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc are just not going to give up on it easily. Authorities also won't give up on "follow the money" as a tool, or even snooping and hacking into your communications legally or not, inside of their jurisdiction or not. It's basically no rules for some, all the rules for you.

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin

#294

Post by lmm »

celticninja wrote: post #171
loceng wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A better or more accurate example I realize would be pointing out that if the US government prints money then the overall value per unit of the of the currency goes down. Bitcoin is mined which is akin to printing money. I'm not sure I am using the correct terminology, though trying to better articulate. Currency gets destroyed buy governments. They say take $1 million of cash and burn it/remove it from circulation.

i think you dont understand bitcoin or money at all. that is not meant to be dismissive, i think a lot of people dont understand how money creation actually works, just that it does. for some reason people think bitcoin is so strange that they could not use it but if they stopped to think about how fiat currencies work they would be equally confused. so the first thing you say, about the US government printing money…

Governments certainly do take more money (or money-like instruments) out of circulation than they're putting in under some circumstances, for equal and opposite reasons to quantitative easing. It's rare, because normally the economy is growing (at what you assume is a sustainable rate) and so you want the currency base to grow as well. But I believe the US took at least a little out of circulation in an effort to damp the "irrational exuberance" of 2001.

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin

#295

Post by lmm »

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.

A ponzi scheme actually pays out some interest, at least initially. The only reason that kind of fraud is possible is that investments generally make money. An exchange like mtgox never does that. If you're doing the thing you did at mtgox - just storing your money, not trying to make money through investing - then you put your money in an FDIC-protected account and you're immune to madoff-like frauds.

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin

#296

Post by runeks »

amelius wrote: post #293

Could this mean we will soon be moving towards micropayments? And perhaps less dependence on app stores?

Now that is actually an area where bitcoin makes sense.

Use Stripe to put up a payment gateway in front of articles. Just send 50 cents in bitcoin to the address that is displayed, and you can read the article instantly.

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin

#297

Post by lmm »

venaoy wrote: post #168
bduerst wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmmm, some of these hypotheticals are wishful thinking. For example 1, it's a double edged sword. As a seller, no international chargebacks sounds like a wet dream! As a buyer, why would I use bitcoin internationally when I can't reverse my transaction if they don't deliver? Example 2 seems legit for now. If and when bitcoin becomes more mainstream, you'll see an increased transactional cost from overhead and risk mi…

> 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…

> 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 such a low amount is not worth my time)

If this is a real use case (and frankly how often do you want to pay for something that you don't care whether you'll actually get?) you can buy a prepaid credit card (over the internet, from a reputable provider, using your normal credit card) and use that. No reason that couldn't be smoothly automated (indeed I believe some bank accounts will already let you generate an additional card number with a limited amount of funds). I suspect there's just very little demand for it.

> I didn't fully trust the merchant with my credit card info (how securely do they protect/encrypt it? could they be hacked? etc).

Your bank covers you if they are though.

> You completely avoided the main point of my example #3.

If people use bitcoin then people will use bitcoin sure. But that applies to any tradeable object. If enough people start giving each other baseball cards at christmas then people will start paying with baseball cards. What's the specific advantage that would make people want to give bitcoin?

> your cute story doesn't mean credit card fraud is a solved problem. In many cases the customer has NO RECOURSE for fraud. For example you cannot chargeback a transaction made more than 60 days ago. Some fraudulent merchants pretend to act legitimately but stall shipping (eg. claim delays, issues, etc) for 60 days specifically to exploit this fact

Most reputable card issuers will cover you for longer than the contract says. And even if not, 60 days of cover is still much better than the 0 days you get with bitcoin.

> Or if your PIN code is stolen and a fraudulent transaction is made with the PIN code, you will typically be held liable

Again, you're contractually liable but in practice reputable banks cover you at least the first time. Whereas if your bitcoin private keys are stolen, the money is gone and you'll never get it back.

> Give your money to a fraudster and he will run away with it, no matter if its bitcoins or dollars.

What's the non-fraudster option with bitcoin? Who's offering FDIC-protected bitcoin accounts?

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin

#298

Post by runeks »

cca wrote: post #268
sah88 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Hence the 0.5% fee. :)

I suspect this is the reason Bitpay is able to waive fees completely: they do not take responsibility for unconfirmed transactions.

> Note: Regardless of the transaction speed settings, a fully paid invoice is credited to your merchant account after the transaction has accrued six confirmations. [1]

[1] https://support.bitpay.com/hc/en-us/articles/202943915-What-...

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin

#299

Post by lmm »

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…

> 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.

In a spherical-cow sense bitcoin is better. In practice, if I'm paying with amex I tap my card on the reader and the waitress hands me the cup of coffee in seconds; if I'm paying with bitcoin I'm standing there for half an hour.

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

If a friend's sending me money it's by "faster payment"; theoretically it can take up to 2 hours (similar to bitcoin's max times), in practice it's a couple of minutes. My bank's happy for me to "spend it instantly" in terms of not charging me an overdraft fee (in fact I can spend it before I get it, as long as I put the money in by the end of the day), so I have GBP1500 (let's call it $2500) of float.

There are edge cases where this doesn't work - more than $2500, or paying internationally over the internet. But they really are edge cases; the problems bitcoin solves are problems I've never had, and I suspect that's true for the vast majority of "normal people".

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin

#300

Post by lmm »

tracker1 wrote: post #179
aioprisan wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that creating a blur between buyers and sellers? We've always had small businesses and will continue to have both small businesses and large corporations. I don't understand the small unit price correlation to a small business. The 1-2% savings in processing fees right now are heavily offset by the instability of the currency. Not being able to plan your cost of goods sold and having predictable formulas for t…

You mean like the stability in the cost of things like food and gas?

Yep. Prices of both of those are far more stable in USD than in bitcoin.
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