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Bitcoin: the Stripe perspective

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Re: Bitcoin: the Stripe perspective

#191

Post by Natanael_L »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #182
lambda wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What is left is keeping track what everyone has put in, and what they have taken out. And that's exactly what Bitcoin is; a secure digital ledger. It's a way to securely and globally record "person A has 10 BTC, gave person B 5BTC, then person B gave persone C 3 BTC" in a way that doesn't allow person A to simultanously have given those same 5 BTC to person D (who, given the anonymity of the internet, may also be p…

So is that not an impressive solution - if Alice wants to move 100 USD to France and Bob wants to move 100 USD out of France (let's say both want to buy a new textbook) then one could envisage a peer to peer money transfer system. A site allows bob and Alice to find each other, agree a shared amount to transfer, agree to which end point they will onwards transfers (hmmm this might be the breakdown point) and then rec…

You can actually achieve the same thing with Coinjoin if all involved parties agree. Instead of a bunch of individual transactions, they collectively generate and sign one.

Re: Bitcoin: the Stripe perspective

#192

Post by Natanael_L »

XorNot wrote: post #161
Vik1ng wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are completely ignoring that you still have to trust your own security and 3rd party apps and services.

Also that BTC has no chargebanks, fraud detection etc. Once its gone from your account its gone.

Multisignature services enable escrow and fraud detection, etc.

Re: Bitcoin: the Stripe perspective

#193

Post by Natanael_L »

sanswork wrote: post #187
baddox wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had to physically go to a bank and talk to people to set up my bank account. I don't see how that can be considered more convenient than spending 5 minutes on a website.

How does spending 5 minutes on a website get you bitcoin without having already gone to a bank and talked to people?

Localbitcoins.com, buy with cash

Re: Bitcoin: the Stripe perspective

#194

Post by Natanael_L »

sanswork wrote: post #135
rockyleal wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are more familiar with the current system, but after you have done it for the first time, you realise that electrum is actually way easier than banks. People just think its harder, but it is not really.

It's only easier if you ignore the part where you have to get bitcoin in the first place.

That's no fault of Bitcoin, however. Getting USD isn't magically easy either.

Re: Bitcoin: the Stripe perspective

#195

Post by pjc50 »

baddox wrote: post #181
aeturnum wrote: post #101

>However, Bitcoin has huge potential as a way to transport value. It’s surprisingly difficult to move money today, and the experience of paying for something online is just about the only part of the internet that hasn’t changed dramatically in the past twenty years. Based on my very limited understanding, the difficulty in moving money has nothing to do with technical limitations of money (it's not like we lack the…

> Does bitcoin only offer a "reset" button for regulation? Even if that was the case, that would already be pretty awesome.

Really? Which regulations in particular do you feel it would be awesome to do without (apart from KYC/AML)?

Re: Bitcoin: the Stripe perspective

#196

Post by sergiosgc »

pjc50 wrote: post #189
rsp1984 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me ask a dumb question: If money exchange is the main problem that Bitcoin solves, then why isn't the problem of money exchange attacked directly instead, i.e. through some other less volatile classical stores of value like gold or stock? Why is money exchange a problem anyway and why couldn't a classical wire transfer solve the problem? The article doesn't say anything about these things and the underlying princ…

Classical wire transfers have two things that people object to: high fees and anti-money-laundering legal requirements. The problem with making it "easy" to move money is that fraud becomes easy as well. There was an article on HN the other day about someone who wired $4k to a fraudulent AirBNB host. The credit card system skews towards assuming that the merchants are fraudulent and the customers mostly honest. Bitco…

Bitcoin allows for escrow transactions, where a third party can act as a referee in case there's a dispute in the transaction. It has the important property, absent from current escrow setups, that the escrow party never holds the money: they have the power to accept or reverse a transaction, but nothing else. It limits the trust commitment towards the escrow service.

Re: Bitcoin: the Stripe perspective

#197

Post by sergiosgc »

pmorici wrote: post #104
rsp1984 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me ask a dumb question: If money exchange is the main problem that Bitcoin solves, then why isn't the problem of money exchange attacked directly instead, i.e. through some other less volatile classical stores of value like gold or stock? Why is money exchange a problem anyway and why couldn't a classical wire transfer solve the problem? The article doesn't say anything about these things and the underlying princ…

The answer for why Bitcoin instead of Gold or stocks or whatever comes down to trust and logistics. Take Gold for example you have to have to either ship the gold around which is expensive and slow or have a trusted third party store the gold and handle netting out the transactions between entities or accept delayed payment and trust that the counter party will deliver the underlying asset. Bitcoin does not require t…

> Bitcoin does not require trust in anything except the math underlying the system.

False. It requires trust in the liquidity of bitcoin. If you can't convert bitcoin to local currency, it has no value. Bitcoin's fragility is in its ability to act as a holder of value, as repeatedly show by speculative price swinging (sometimes without apparent cause).

Gold, for all its faults, has a huge track record as a value store.

Re: Bitcoin: the Stripe perspective

#198

Post by IgorPartola »

Cyther606 wrote: post #65
IgorPartola wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. The more I think about BTC, the more I understand that the exchange protocol is the most useful part of it. Storing value in an encrypted wallet on your computer is inconvenient to say the least. Not that I want local storage of value to go away, but as a consumer I want a very different payment experience than "here, have my CC number" or "let me pay with PayPal".

Satoshi wrote in the genesis block: The Times 03/Jan/ 2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks Bitcoin was released in staunch opposition to the banking system. > Storing value in an encrypted wallet on your computer is inconvenient to say the least It's possible to store Bitcoin on sheets of paper, or entirely in your brain, safely and securely. I get the distinct feeling you've never used Bitcoin before…

Sorry, but you are wrong on most accounts, especially your evaluation of my person. You cannot possibly argue that using BTC is in some way more convenient than using a credit card. Is it personally and politically better to use BTC? Maybe. Is it easier for an average bear? Absolutely not.

Re: Bitcoin: the Stripe perspective

#199

Post by jheriko »

What if banks compete and start providing a reasonable quality of service?

It wouldn't be hard.. they just don't bother because there is no return for the investment right now.

Bitcoin scares the crap out of me. It looks too much like a criminals dream for me to have any trust in it and the network yet...

Re: Bitcoin: the Stripe perspective

#200

Post by battani »

Bakkot wrote: post #107
rsp1984 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me ask a dumb question: If money exchange is the main problem that Bitcoin solves, then why isn't the problem of money exchange attacked directly instead, i.e. through some other less volatile classical stores of value like gold or stock? Why is money exchange a problem anyway and why couldn't a classical wire transfer solve the problem? The article doesn't say anything about these things and the underlying princ…

The answer to basically all of your questions is that to transfer money, you need to move money . This can be basically a promise of money, as with wire transfers, or physical, as you'd do by transporting bullion or cash. The problem with using a promise to move money is that you have to trust whoever's promising. That works alright if there's a central authority, like a bank, but less well if you don't want to trust…

If your money transfer model includes gateways, then trust is involved. You have to trust the gateways (local banks or exchanges) to make the conversion.

The gateways on each end would also want to take a fee.

Add to that the (MASSIVE) cost of compliance globally, and the costs of the model described by Stripe may not be much better than that of existing services (TransferWise, Western Union, etc.).

It's just an absolutely mind-bogglingly large, long, and costly endeavor, and the end results may not be worth it.

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