Earlier quoted context omitted.
You just described most iCO really.
I'm going to start one, just going to call it Ibizacoin or something.
Go for it! Honesty seems to have worked out well for the Useless Ethereum Token guy:
Bitcoin Visa debit cards are cancelled
111–120 of 194 posts
Re: Bitcoin Visa debit cards are cancelled
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
> how volatility and rapidly deflating currency would effect their cash flow. Not at all? You obviously don't understand what a bitcoin debit card is. It's just like a normal debit card, but you fund it with bitcoin. The company you get the card from sells your bitcoin for fiat currency at the time you make a purchase (or at the time you top up the card, depending on how they do it). The properties of bitcoin are com…
The liquidity to sell to fiat is drying up after many are realizing the valuations for crypto are completely fraudulent. There is an astronomical amount of centralized crypto printing going on that has corrupted the entire crypto ecosystem. Tether just wrote in their legal terms that as a of January 1st tether can't be redeemed or used by Americans even though it backs USD. Corrupt exchanges inflated the prices and i…
This is not true. Liquidity in these markets is steadily increasing. It is easier now to sell large amounts of Bitcoin than it was two years ago, and it was easier then than two years prior.
Re: Bitcoin Visa debit cards are cancelled
#113Bitcoin is currently not what Bitcoin was when it was created. Slow peer-to-peer transactions and high processing fees. Average fees are hovering around 30 dollars. That's an average. Unconfirmed transactions has been at over 100k for months. The mempool is also hovering around an ATH. The Bitcoin is crippled. Sentences like "store of value" are now the term used to describe Bitcoin. Very far from what the Bitcoin us…
Could you be any more of a shill? RBF is optional . Furthermore, disabling RBF doesn't enable 0-conf transactions -- transactions can still be dropped from the mempool. Anyways, say hi to the BCash CEO for me.
We've banned this account like we said you would if you continued to break the guidelines.
Re: Bitcoin Visa debit cards are cancelled
#114A few thoughts from a CEO in this space:
1. There are very few issuing banks for crypto fiat debit cards. Internationally there has been 1 WaveCrest; which as of a few months ago decided to discontinue support.
2. Even when a bank will sponsor a crypto fiat debit card into one of the payment networks, the company offering the card will face constant pressure from their own bankers.
3. This happening is from my perspective just a quick look behind the curtain of the Digital Currency infrastructure problem as it exists today. There is no good way in, or out of digital currency at the moment, and the ones that exist are tenuous at best. The base truth is that Traditional banks are not capable of supporting new methods of value transfer. That means that the companies that build and provide infrastructure for those methods are currently at the mercy of a partner who basically wont help them.
I always try and make the charitable assumption about the motives of others and my take on the banking digital currency relations is basically this: Banks have a business model that has worked well for generations; they do a little fractional reserve, they extract as many fees as they can invent, and they centralize the control of wealth. The promise of digital currency is that everyone will have the capability to do that for themselves. So, its not surprising to me that it is hard for them to work with those of us who are building bridges and on/off ramps between the two systems.
With all of that being said, I am sorry for all of the debit card users who are currently without an off ramp, and I can assure you that the folks at BitPay, Xapo, and all of the other companies that lost access to the EU are working as hard as possible to bring those programs back online.
Re: Bitcoin Visa debit cards are cancelled
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. The SEC has said they consider crytpos securities. That would mean the fraudulent price manipulation in the crytpo space (Bitfinex treating tether as USD and pushing up the bid) is securities fraud. This is probably why Wells Fargo stopped clearing Dollar transactions for Bitfinex.
Wire transfer fraud. I am an insider in the Bitcoin industry, and within 1 day of opening a new bank account we started seeing fraudulent wires flooding in. When we dug deeper, it was shocking to see how many Americans' bank credentials have been hacked. It takes almost no effort for a EEU/RUS hacker to send a wire from a hacked bank account. Once the fraudulent wire is sent, rest of the wire transfer system is tedio…
Regarding CB ACH, They had/have a huge exploitable hole in their ACH system that a friend discovered by accident. Long story short, they credited them for a large sum that they never took from his/her account. I won't put the exact detail of how to trigger the error but suffice it to say it was shocking to learn how a system that deals with large sums of real money could fail in such a way (and likely in a repeatable manner although my friend didn't try as repeating it would likely be seen as stealing).
It's really quite shocking how a ecosystem that touts decentralization has a glaringly centralized failure point - the fiat exit exchanges. When one or two of them goes, it will bring down the whole house of cards. And given how shitty CB's software was (or maybe still is) I just hope I can get my gains out before the whole thing comes crumbling down.
Re: Bitcoin Visa debit cards are cancelled
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's not correct. There is always some amount of fraud that manage to go through all the checks. That doesn't mean it's intentional. And that certainly doesn't mean that any financial service can stop doing any verification and become a paradise for fraudsters.
> That doesn't mean it's intentional. Except that of course it was: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hsbc-probe/hsbc-to-pay-1-...
This is a great bit from the article:
"Mexican traffickers used boxes specifically designed to the dimensions of an HSBC Mexico teller’s window to deposit cash on a daily basis."
Re: Bitcoin Visa debit cards are cancelled
#117Also, FWIW none of us make any money on offering these debit card products. We actually do it to give people that have digital currency a quick off ramp. Here is how the programs technically work:
1. Infrastructure company pre funds an account with an issuing bank.
2. User sends digital currency to infrastructure company to add to their card.
3. Infrastructure company receives that currency, and alerts bank to debit their account for fiat.
4. Infrastructure company has to find an exchange to trade OTC as often as possible to protect against as much volatility as possible, while keeping in mind the minimum OTC trade size is generally $250k USD.
5. Infrastructure company has to wait 3 days for a wire to then add more funds to the pre funded account.
Re: Bitcoin Visa debit cards are cancelled
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
Big payment networks do not want to appear complicit in money laundering.
HSBC/RBS/Citi were fine with it; and given the amount of the fines, it was plenty profitable and they’re likely still doing it.
> HSBC/RBS/Citi were fine with it;
No, they were fine with actually being complicit with money laundering when the amount of monry they could make from it was big enough.
But even then they tried, even if ultimately unsuccessfully, not to appear complicit in money laundering
Re: Bitcoin Visa debit cards are cancelled
#119Also, FWIW none of us make any money on offering these debit card products. We actually do it to give people that have digital currency a quick off ramp. Here is how the programs technically work: 1. Infrastructure company pre funds an account with an issuing bank. 2. User sends digital currency to infrastructure company to add to their card. 3. Infrastructure company receives that currency, and alerts bank to debit…
> Infrastructure company has to find an exchange to trade OTC as often as possible to protect against as much volatility as possible, while keeping in mind the minimum OTC trade size is generally $250k USD
One can loosely think of an appreciating cryptocurrency as a short-term loan. You're out cash up front. Later, and only later, you get it back plus a little more.
The infrastructure company in your example is thus, by turning cryptocurrency's promise of cash tomorrow into cash today, providing maturity transformation [1]. This is one of the core services of a bank. It is also an inherently risky business on account of the asset-liability mismatch.
Re: Bitcoin Visa debit cards are cancelled
#120Most interesting thing here is that this came without any prior notice to any parties in the process, effective immediately. Sure looks like someone pressed a panic button.
No, I don't think so.
Their later communications say "We've been working with a new card issuer for a few months and will be ready shortly" which, while not mutually exclusive to their previous "we had no warning" communications, at least _implies_ that they had some inkling this was in the works and either were playing the bluff / negotiation game and got called, or had hoped it would all go away and so hadn't communicated the possibility to their customers.