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Stripe: Bitcoin

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Re: Stripe: Bitcoin

#361

Post by freework »

runeks wrote: post #301
freework wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

its very easy to predict if a transaction will confirm.

The problem isn't detecting whether 99% of transactions will confirm. The problem is preventing someone from ordering $10,000 worth of gold from a site that uses Stripe with Bitcoin payments enabled. Sending a paying transaction to Stripe, who confirms it within a minute, and simultaneously mining a block with contains a transaction that double spends the bitcoins sent to Stripe. Stripe is now out $10,000. You receiv…

It costs 80 million dollars to buy all the hardware to mine a single block. It will probably costs 800 million dollars to amass enough computing power to mine 10 blocks. It only makes sense to double spend a transaction with a VERY large amount. No transaction going through stripe will qualify.

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin

#362

Post by grubles »

davidgerard wrote: post #346
grubles wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is why multi-signature transactions eliminate this negative.

What percentage of transactions, in the real (if small) world of buying things with Bitcoin, are multisig?

Not sure, but you might be able to gain some insight due to the fact that multisig addresses all start with a "3".

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin

#363

Post by ikeboy »

ryanlol wrote: post #338
ikeboy wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if it gets sent through a mixer, then sent to an exchange, traded for an alt-coin, that's sent through its own mixer, then sent to a different exchange and traded back, then sent to another mixer? All you need is one link on the chain to not keep logs (which many mixers claim not to anyway), and you've hit a dead end. Look at Tor. It's never been broken by tracing back each relay, even though there are usually o…

Mixing large amounts is pretty damn hard, there's not enough volume to hide large transactions. Trading massive amounts of BTC to an altcoin would be even harder, concealing the movements of that altcoin would be pretty much impossible. In the end the process of money laundering ends up being significantly more complicated than with "real money". Don't go and compare Tor to BTC, just don't. They share nothing from a…

I'm not so sure about what you say about large mixing. https://bitmixer.io/faqs.html claims to have 2000 btc available, around $500,000. I argued that exchanges function as a mixer of sorts, and they're going to have a lot more btc lying around.

The comparison of Tor to BTC was mainly comparing mixers to relays. Just like you need every relay to store logs if you're going to go after all of them to break the chain, the same holds true by mixers.

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin

#364

Post by joncalhoun »

vacri wrote: post #173
joncalhoun wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you said is 100% correct, which is why companies accepting bitcoin need to give the entire ~2-3% discount to customers. Very few credit cards will match 2-3% rewards, and from the sellers perspective bitcoin is better than credit cards payments. To name a few benefits: - There are no chargebacks - Funds are available immediately (though transferring from BTC to USD may take a day) - You can accept payment from a…

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

I mentioned this in another comment, but this is why I would encourage consumers to only take a discount like this from reputable sellers.

eg I would gladly take a 2% discount with Amazon, as it would save me hundreds over time.

On the other hand, if I were trying out a new SaaS product I would start with a credit card and opt to use BTC once I trusted the company and their product, much like I wouldn't buy a 1 year subscription for a 10% discount without first using the product for a month or two.

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin

#365

Post by ryanlol »

aianus wrote: post #326
lmm wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're willing to just unconditionally trust the merchant like you would with bitcoin, can't you use a wire transfer (western union etc.)?

A SWIFT wire transfer costs $40 a pop and requires me to visit a branch (which is especially hard to do when I'm 10,000 km away from home). It's also much more annoying for the merchant to accept vs. changing one line of code in their Stripe checkout. Western Union is also expensive and inconvenient (although somewhat less so than the bank).

You should seriously consider switching banks in that case, what bank doesn't let you do wire transfers online?

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin

#366

Post by ryanlol »

ikeboy wrote: post #363
ryanlol wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mixing large amounts is pretty damn hard, there's not enough volume to hide large transactions. Trading massive amounts of BTC to an altcoin would be even harder, concealing the movements of that altcoin would be pretty much impossible. In the end the process of money laundering ends up being significantly more complicated than with "real money". Don't go and compare Tor to BTC, just don't. They share nothing from a…

I'm not so sure about what you say about large mixing. https://bitmixer.io/faqs.html claims to have 2000 btc available, around $500,000. I argued that exchanges function as a mixer of sorts, and they're going to have a lot more btc lying around. The comparison of Tor to BTC was mainly comparing mixers to relays. Just like you need every relay to store logs if you're going to go after all of them to break the chain, t…

2000BTC isn't very much at all, especially since the mixer having 2000BTC doesn't mean they can securely mix 2000BTC.

Exchanges will most definitely be storing logs, so that won't help much.

Comparing mixers to relays isn't valid either, with BTC the attacker will have access to the blockchain, which is basically the worst possible attack scenario for Tor.

And in any case, there isn't enough BTC transaction volume to reliably hide large amounts of BTC.

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin

#367

Post by csense »

andrewfong wrote: post #158
joncalhoun wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you said is 100% correct, which is why companies accepting bitcoin need to give the entire ~2-3% discount to customers. Very few credit cards will match 2-3% rewards, and from the sellers perspective bitcoin is better than credit cards payments. To name a few benefits: - There are no chargebacks - Funds are available immediately (though transferring from BTC to USD may take a day) - You can accept payment from a…

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.

What rationale is there to have a law specifically about this?

It seems to me like there's three contracts involved: The agreement between merchant/CC, consumer/CC, and consumer/merchant. Since these are all private parties, why does the government even care what contractual arrangements they make among themselves regarding how the form of payment affects how much needs to be paid?

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin

#368

Post by aianus »

ryanlol wrote: post #365
aianus wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A SWIFT wire transfer costs $40 a pop and requires me to visit a branch (which is especially hard to do when I'm 10,000 km away from home). It's also much more annoying for the merchant to accept vs. changing one line of code in their Stripe checkout. Western Union is also expensive and inconvenient (although somewhat less so than the bank).

You should seriously consider switching banks in that case, what bank doesn't let you do wire transfers online?

I think all of them here in Canada (unless you have some special merchant account). The banks all claim that you won't be held responsible for any fraudulent use of your account online. They wouldn't be able to claim that if you could do irreversible wire transfers.

Where do you live?

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin

#369

Post by ryanlol »

aianus wrote: post #368
ryanlol wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should seriously consider switching banks in that case, what bank doesn't let you do wire transfers online?

I think all of them here in Canada (unless you have some special merchant account). The banks all claim that you won't be held responsible for any fraudulent use of your account online. They wouldn't be able to claim that if you could do irreversible wire transfers. Where do you live?

I live in Finland, and the whole concept of not being able to send wire transfers from your online banking (or even a phone app) sounds utterly ridiculous.

This seems to be the norm in most of Europe. AFAIK the big US banks let you do wire transfers online too.

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin

#370

Post by lmm »

aianus wrote: post #353
lmm wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've watched a friend try and buy a pizza with Bitcoin. It was funny for the first five minutes or so.

Which pizza place? Was this in-person or online? The animation on Stripe's launch page is pretty much what buying things with Bitcoins is like for me: https://stripe.com/bitcoin .

Pembury Tavern. Last time I went there they weren't advertising "pay with bitcoin" any more, only "send us bitcoin tips", which avoids the problem. Maybe the tech's gotten better (this was a year or so ago now), but from here that looks like at least one early adopter who's given up.
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