Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

MasterCard to open up network to cryptocurrencies

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 910 posts

Re: MasterCard to open up network to cryptocurrencies

#131

Post by PragmaticPulp »

lottin wrote: post #100
olalonde wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin is used as a speculative investment today only because it is so underpriced. Once its value stabilizes, its use in day to day transactions will grow. > Should also note that MasterCard crypto transactions almost certainly won’t be settled on the blockchain. And neither are USD transactions. In fact, USD doesn't even have a blockchain! The great thing with Bitcoin is once you want to cash out your Bitcoin, you…

Since bitcoin doesn't produce income and it's not backed by anything there is no way to tell whether it's 'underpriced'.

It’s ironic that the best bull case for Bitcoin is that maybe it’s so devoid of actual use cases that no one can tell if it’s overpriced relative to its (lack of) utility.

Re: MasterCard to open up network to cryptocurrencies

#132

Post by ArtTimeInvestor »

nhumrich wrote: post #64
ArtTimeInvestor wrote: post #4

The game Paypal currently plays with Crypto is the closest thing to printing money I have ever seen: Their users can "buy and sell Bitcoin" and pay "no fees". How does Paypal make money? "From the spread". The difference between bid and ask. And who sets the spread? Drumroll ... Paypal! Since you cannot transfer your bitcoins out, when you sell your bitcoins, Paypal pays you whatever they like. So far, Paypal only of…

this isn't entirely true, PayPal does charge a transaction fee every time you sell or buy

Not when selling or buying crypto.

Re: MasterCard to open up network to cryptocurrencies

#133

Post by the_local_host »

PretzelPirate wrote: post #9
cbradford wrote: post #3

I thought the whole idea of Bitcoin was to get out of the financial system that Mastercard is a central piece of.

The original idea of Bitcoin was to have a currency that wasn’t in government control - not to keep the government and big banks away from it. The current world of cryptocurrency gives you a choice of trusting big banks or not, and having the same economic opportunities regardless of the level of trust you are comfortable with.

> The original idea of Bitcoin was to have a currency that wasn’t in government control

I've never understood this. With an immutable ledger of all transactions, governments simply have to make it illegal to transact anonymously (or pseudonymously), watch the blockchain, and investigate any un-attributed transactions.

It would actually enhance governments' surveillance capabilities against anyone not willing to run the risk of trying to obscure their identity, which I expect would be most people.

If you can intimidate the participants, the inescapable math of the whole thing becomes a tool that can be used against those participants. You don't need to control a currency if you can control anyone who holds it.

Re: MasterCard to open up network to cryptocurrencies

#134

Post by leighfuu »

cesarb wrote: post #110
bagacrap wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how that's different? When a merchant accepts cash, they have to pay for physical security and pickup, it's prone to theft or miscounting, etc. So cash isn't free. Accepting card payments is also not free. Merchant pays visa for convenience (to both merchant and customer); visa kicks some back to customer.

I've seen this said a lot, but in my experience whenever a merchant has different prices for cash and credit card, the cash price is always lower. So whatever the merchant is paying to Visa and/or MasterCard, it's more than it costs to handle cash.

Traditionally the discount for cash in many professions is due to avoiding tax.

i.e. a plumber will do a job for cheaper if they are paid in cash as they won't be declaring that work in their accounts - avoiding the ~20% tax that would be due otherwise.

Re: MasterCard to open up network to cryptocurrencies

#135

Post by GrumpyNl »

systemvoltage wrote: post #84
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #2

These stories usually spur more enthusiasm for buying cryptocurrency, but ironically those buyers aren’t interested in spending cryptocurrency using their MasterCard. They’re hoping other people will buy cryptocurrency from these announcements, driving the price up. Or, more likely, they’re just hoping other people will buy cryptocurrency and not use it in these spending systems. Spending cryptocurrency would result…

What's the point of an unstable, volatile, frantically manipulated currency that is susceptible to social media pump and dump schemes (Elon + Doge)? Currency and its exchange rate needs to be relatively stable for the world to put trust into it. Saying that BTC is stable, but the rest of the world's fiat currency is fluctuating makes no sense. US dollar provides stability and security, I feel confident that a cappucc…

Marketing and marketing, jump the bitcoin bandwagon.

Re: MasterCard to open up network to cryptocurrencies

#136

Post by tobias3 »

maxkwallace wrote: post #75

To everyone saying "my credit card pays me 2% to use it", no, your credit card charges the merchant 2.3%+ to use it, that gets bundled into the price, and they give you 2% of that as a kickback.

Here in the EU, credit card transaction fees are capped at 0,3%. So no shenanigans, but cryptocurrencies would have to fall within this range as well.

Re: MasterCard to open up network to cryptocurrencies

#137

Post by arcticbull »

janoside wrote: post #116
systemvoltage wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the point of an unstable, volatile, frantically manipulated currency that is susceptible to social media pump and dump schemes (Elon + Doge)? Currency and its exchange rate needs to be relatively stable for the world to put trust into it. Saying that BTC is stable, but the rest of the world's fiat currency is fluctuating makes no sense. US dollar provides stability and security, I feel confident that a cappucc…

What's the point, you ask... Here is Ross Stevens, CEO of Stone Ridge Asset Management, describing "the point" for an hour: https://www.microstrategy.com/en/bitcoin/videos/bitcoin-macr... It sounds like you've made up your mind about Bitcoin, but I believe you've missed the big picture. The above video, if you watch it with an open mind, will help you to glimpse it. Hint: it's not about cappuccino, it's about living…

You haven't shared "the point" just a link to MicroStrategy, a failed software company whose CEO had to pay an $11 million dollar SEC settlement decades ago for cooking the books, making a desperate Hail Mary play buying near the top of a speculative mania in a bid to gain relevancy. MSTR is the new "Long Island Iced Tea" -> "Long Blockchain Inc" rebrand [1]

Humorously enough, the same is roughly true of Tesla, a car company which sells 5% as many cars at Toyota while valued about twice what the entire rest of the car market put together is worth.

Their only source of profit is selling carbon credits to traditional automakers who won't need them anymore as they're all moving electric too. One more Hail Mary distraction to maintain the one thousand three hundred P/E ratio. In a manufacturing business. Not software with zero marginal cost. Manufacturing. The industry average P/E is right around 15.

> ...it's about living in a world of competitively devaluing currencies and resulting asset inflation.

Currency is an intentionally-lossy temporary store of value. It only needs to hold its value for as long as it takes you to buy assets with them. At 2% inflation it does. Anything else is a straw-man you'd recognize if you attended ECON 101.

Asset inflation isn't inflation, it's an ROI. CPI is inflation.

This is a typical set of r/Bitcoin talking points that are easily debunked.

[1] https://qz.com/1659246/the-fbi-wants-more-information-about-...

Re: MasterCard to open up network to cryptocurrencies

#138

Post by Slartie »

liquidify wrote: post #27
sschueller wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is outright scam in my view. They never have to hold bitcoin. They may as well sell paypal coin. Robinhood and Revolut do the same thing. If you can't transfer out your bitcoin, you don't have any bitcoin.

They couldn't do that. If they didn't actually have any crypto, in the event of a large scale increase in price combined with a large scale cash out, Paypal would have to eat the difference from buy to sell price. They would lose their shirt. At minimum, Paypal is buying some percentage of the crypto sales in actual crypto to act as a hedge. However, it is more likely they are closer to 1 to 1 backing since they prob…

They could just as well hedge the "PayPal-Bitcoin" they hand out to their customers with unbacked Bitcoin futures. They don't necessarily have to buy the underlying as long as they can find some other party who's willing to engage in a bet about the future of the Bitcoin price.

Though I must admit that it's doubtful for them to find enough cash to take the other side of this bet, so most likely they have to resort to actual Bitcoin bought from liquid exchanges or OTC.

Re: MasterCard to open up network to cryptocurrencies

#139

Post by ryder9 »

nemo44x wrote: post #129
agentdrtran wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Once its value stabilizes, its use in day to day transactions will grow." and how will it grow when it's a fixed amount of currency with a fixed amount of transactions per second?

You can divide it over and over. The source code is a living document and transaction speed can be implemented either off chain, in the code base itself, or otherwise. It’s weird to see so many opinions on this website that think BTC is a static thing that can’t or won’t adopt useful pull requests that miners agree are useful. It’s like if it were the mid-90’s and everyone was just as skeptical of e-commerce of the w…

except it charged me to use money, my credit card gives me 1-2% back from all the money I spent... why would I ever use bitcoin in any normal transactions? also, why would I buy bitcoin to spend it if it's so volatile it can depreciate 10-20% in a day?

Re: MasterCard to open up network to cryptocurrencies

#140

Post by NoSorryCannot »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #25
vortico wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin is only good for large transactions, but there are 1000000 cryptocurrencies that solve this problem such as BCH, USDT, and LTC. Use one of them.

Honestly, why? My credit card pays me 2% to use it. If there’s a problem with my transaction, I click some buttons and the card company reversed the charges. If I lose my card, I call them up and get another one overnight without losing all my money. Why would I give all of that up, pay exchange fees on both ends of a transaction, pay transaction fees (however small), and wait longer for my transactions to clear?

Taking the bigger picture, those rewards and disputes aren't free. These things get paid for by transaction fees, cardholders that carry balances, and vendors taking a loss. On the whole, prices for everything go up, but people fortunate enough to have "good" credit cards get a slight discount at the expense of those who don't.

I'm not necessarily saying this system is better or worse than some alternative, just pointing out that it's not all upside.

Post reply on HN