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Bitcoin Visa debit cards are cancelled

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Re: Bitcoin Visa debit cards are cancelled

#141

Post by vkou »

staplers wrote: post #133
kennyasare wrote: post #114

A 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 perspe…

The irony of making it difficult to exit crypto means traditional banking will long-term be on the losing end as people who buy into crypto (even as novelty) won't want to "cash out" due to difficulty while realizing how convoluted the fiat process is when viewed from the outside. They'll find ways to stay in crypto and get things done.

This is false.

When you find that you can't sell your tulips for dutch guilder, you don't set up a mirror economy that uses tulips for currency. Instead, you find tulip prices collapsing, and yourself broke.

Why would my landlord, who is not vested in crypto, want to exchange goods and services for bitcoins that he can't cash out to pay his contractors, taxes, etc? Nobody wants to be paid in illiquid assets, what on earth would possess him to get into that horror show.

Re: Bitcoin Visa debit cards are cancelled

#142

Post by keytarsolo »

jaxytee wrote: post #94
Kazamai wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tether

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.

This seems like a pretty sensible decision though, since most cryptos don't really work like a currency they work more like an investment. Especially now that the transaction fees are so high, and the transaction processing time takes so much longer than debit cards, credit cards, paypal or other electronic transfers.

Re: Bitcoin Visa debit cards are cancelled

#143

Post by vkou »

synthmeat wrote: post #45

Most 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.

This is how anyone dealing with money transfer deals with:

1. Unacceptable levels of fraud.

2. Governments changing the rules/clarifying the rules.

3. Discovery of immense counterparty risk.

Since #2 did not happen, I'm assuming that #1 was at play. Given that this is bitcoin, #3 is present, but it's not clear that VISA would go digging for it.

Re: Bitcoin Visa debit cards are cancelled

#144

Post by toomim »

vkou wrote: post #141
staplers wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The irony of making it difficult to exit crypto means traditional banking will long-term be on the losing end as people who buy into crypto (even as novelty) won't want to "cash out" due to difficulty while realizing how convoluted the fiat process is when viewed from the outside. They'll find ways to stay in crypto and get things done.

This is false. When you find that you can't sell your tulips for dutch guilder, you don't set up a mirror economy that uses tulips for currency. Instead, you find tulip prices collapsing, and yourself broke. Why would my landlord, who is not vested in crypto, want to exchange goods and services for bitcoins that he can't cash out to pay his contractors, taxes, etc? Nobody wants to be paid in illiquid assets, what on…

Maybe that's what you do, but that's not what I do, and that's certainly not the hacker way.

So instead of saying "this is false", you should be saying "well, this is just, like, my opinion, man."

Re: Bitcoin Visa debit cards are cancelled

#145

Post by down »

vkou wrote: post #141
staplers wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The irony of making it difficult to exit crypto means traditional banking will long-term be on the losing end as people who buy into crypto (even as novelty) won't want to "cash out" due to difficulty while realizing how convoluted the fiat process is when viewed from the outside. They'll find ways to stay in crypto and get things done.

This is false. When you find that you can't sell your tulips for dutch guilder, you don't set up a mirror economy that uses tulips for currency. Instead, you find tulip prices collapsing, and yourself broke. Why would my landlord, who is not vested in crypto, want to exchange goods and services for bitcoins that he can't cash out to pay his contractors, taxes, etc? Nobody wants to be paid in illiquid assets, what on…

in every thread there is a tulips idiot, tulips didn't happened, is just propaganda of those times, was no crash, meltdown, whatever, there are landlords that will take bitcoin, especially younger ones, hell, I could even find escorts that will take bitcoin and give me a discount, bitcoin is fungible, why would not take bitcoin, with all the quantitative erasing.

Re: Bitcoin Visa debit cards are cancelled

#146

Post by toomim »

boysabr3 wrote: post #84

I wonder why this happened. Visa is primarily a technology company - not a financial institution. It's incentivesed to keep fraud on visa cards low (so that merchants continue to accept it) and keep its ecosystem of issuers + acquirers happy. If I'm not missing anything, I believe this must have happened because of unusually high levels of fraud on Bitcoin visa cards. Certain acquirers might've complained about abnor…

Bitcoin competes with Visa. It's in Visa's interest to cut it off, while giving only vague "reasons" why, so that we all assume that it's because Bitcoin users have high fraud.

Re: Bitcoin Visa debit cards are cancelled

#147

Post by marcell »

kennyasare wrote: post #114

A 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 perspe…

> 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.

What country do you live in? This has not been true in US or EU for years as Coinbase and Kraken are two excellent options to get in and out. Bitcoin debit cards are a bit of novelty, not some central infrastructure.

Re: Bitcoin Visa debit cards are cancelled

#148

Post by Domenic_S »

marcell wrote: post #147
kennyasare wrote: post #114

A 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 perspe…

> 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. What country do you live in? This has not been true in US or EU for years as Coinbase and Kraken are two excellent options to get in and out. Bitcoin debit cards…

Comparing Coinbase to ETrade I'd have to disagree. If you want to make small (sub-$1000) transactions, sure Coinbase and Kraken are good enough, but $10k or $100k or $1MM is a totally different story.

Re: Bitcoin Visa debit cards are cancelled

#149

Post by vkou »

repomies691 wrote: post #18
oelmekki wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see this happening for bitcoin, though (or maybe for online orders, which don't need to be instant). Two years ago, I got sick of banks whose services I found of lesser and lesser quality, and tried a bitcoin/VISA debit card, just to see if it was working. The idea was this: I make a bitcoin transaction to add bitcoins in card provider wallet, and when transaction is complete, I could exchange it for fiat tha…

For online payments instant payments are actually not that important requirements. The process needs to happen just fluently from customers perspective. If the merchant is dispatching physical items, he can just wait for the transaction to confirm and dispatch the items after that. The customer won't see much difference because the biggest issue is the shipping time. For online payments bitcoin works quite well. Stil…

> For online payments instant payments are actually not that important requirements.

When the exchange rate fluctuates as much as it does, instant payment is an important requirement.

Suppose BTC is worth $15,000 today. I want to buy a widget for $150.

I want to see 0.01 BTC deducted from my balance. The merchant wants to get paid $150.

If the transaction happens instantly, everyone is happy.

If the transaction does not happen instantly...

Let's say I transact 0.01 BTC to the payment processor. It will clear tomorrow. The merchant will get paid when it clears. Tomorrow... The payment processor has 0.01 BTC in their possession.

... Except that by then, BTC went down to $13,000. The merchant still expects to be paid $150. The payment processor has 0.01 BTC on their books, which is worth $130... and a debt of $150.

That's the problem with using BTC as a currency. You either need to pay through the nose for fast confirmation, or you expose yourself to volatility risk.

This is, incidentally, why Steam has stopped accepting Bitcoin. You can't use it as a currency. [1]

[1] http://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/...

Re: Bitcoin Visa debit cards are cancelled

#150

Post by Kazamai »

xorcist wrote: post #112
Kazamai wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Have you tried to sell millions of dollars worth of bitcoin to USD? As soon as there is a down day the exchanges shutdown and stop people from trying to withdraw. The money to cash out billions doesn't exist. All these headlines of founders being billionaires is false. $1.5 billion fake USD pumped crypto. Good luck to anyone holding millions of dollars trying to cash out when the market turns downward. This is adult musical chairs. There will be millions of bag holders and rich exchange criminals.
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