BitPay and PayPal

Post by JoeAltmaier » Tue, Sep 23, 2014, 7:48 PM UTC

joshuaxls wrote: post #30

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heard that before. The question to answer is, "Why now?" What's different now? Nothing. Not yet. This will change someday, but I don't think that's today. The day Bitcoin gets FDIC protections is the day it can go mainstream.

The point of bitcoin is that you don't need FDIC protection. You need FDIC protection with a bank because the bank isn't required to hold enough reserve to cover its deposits. If there's a run on the bank, and everyone wants to pull their deposits out, and the bank is insolvent, then the government guarantees to protect consumers by printing more money (inflation) to fulfill the bank's reserve requirements. With bitc…

Post by martindale » Tue, Sep 23, 2014, 7:52 PM UTC

tonyhb wrote: post #19

trevordev wrote: post #14

BitPay sponsored angel-hack Seattle that I participated in this summer. Their developer api was horrible and poorly documented wasting everyone time. I was in one of the few groups that got it to work. When asking when we would find out who won the 5 bitcoin prize for best use of it we were told to contact bitpay. I contacted them multiple times and support told me to to contact their CEO who ended up not responding…

I've worked with Bitpay while making https://www.incoin.io/ and their developer docs are average to good. It wasn't horrible, the documentation was good enough and Bitpay offered to help (and were super helpful when we asked any questions). In fact, other than having to implement BitAuth ourselves it was pretty painless. Regarding your AngelHack prize... the same thing happened to me. I'd be more skeptical of AngelHa…

Post by sillysaurus3 » Tue, Sep 23, 2014, 7:53 PM UTC

awt wrote: post #29

danbruc wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, it is mostly a solved problem. The question is, what value does Bitcoin add (for the average customer not interested to buy narcotics on Silk Road) and what is the price for this, for example unsolved security issues and large price fluctuations during the early adoption phase?

Let's be more general. Set A = stuff you can buy with USD. Set B = stuff you can buy with BTC. Set W = all stuff. Set A will always be a subset of set W, and is getting to be a smaller subset every day. Set B will in the future be an exact match for Set W. Which unit of account would you choose? A or B? edited: typo (C instead of B)

Post by sanswork » Tue, Sep 23, 2014, 7:54 PM UTC

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #24

Aqueous wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'What is the value proposition for consumers apart from sending money to friends? That's valuable, but it's not multi-billions of dollars worth of valuable' It isn't? Western Union makes $5 billion in revenue every year. PayPal - and a reference to sending money to friends is literally the name of the company - also makes $5 billion in revenue every year.

Except Bitcoin makes it free to send money to friends. One way I could see this being financially viable to build a company around is if lots of people are storing money in the company's webwallet. Then the company could invest customers' money, like a bank. But if you are using a webwallet like Coinbase, then you are asking to get screwed out of your money, since there are no FDIC protections.

Post by drcode » Tue, Sep 23, 2014, 7:59 PM UTC

scarmig wrote: post #15

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correction: Bitcoin traders were looking for an excuse to buy a lot of Bitcoin. Your eyes are deceiving you. The way it works is, they buy in order to jump the price. Then other people buy and continue the momentum upwards. Then, in a few days, they sell, and thus capitalize on everyone else's belief. This is how it's been for almost a year now. Ask yourself: Why use Bitcoin? What is the value proposition for consume…

What's the value proposition of money? Sending money to people. Bitcoin is silly in lots of ways, but what something like it could potentially do is revolutionary. PayPal is worth billions; retail banking is a 12-figure yearly revenue industry. That's a whole lot of money on the table.