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Ending Bitcoin Support

stripe.com

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Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#301

Post by mikeash »

kibwen wrote: post #287
mikeash wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not entirely convinced, although I’m partway there. When you “have” a Bitcoin, that means you have the private key to a wallet which the blockchain says has such-and-such amount in it. You can have that even if the miners all disappear. You can still use it to sign transactions, although they won’t get confirmed. You can even confirm them by mining a new block yourself with your transactions in it. (If all the mi…

> it sounds about as useful as a bar of gold in a world where nobody considers gold to be valuable Nah, if civilization collapses then you'll still be able to use your bar of gold to bash in someone's skull and steal their canned beans (which, in the grim solar-flare induced darkness of 2020, will be worth their weight in bitcoins).

Bitcoin wallets have to be stored on something. Maybe there’s an untapped market for really sturdy and massive hardware wallets.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#302

Post by bdcravens »

munchbunny wrote: post #55
blueprint wrote: post #30

I don't have any place to criticize at all but this seems pretty short-sighted. The primary criticism is low tps and fees… but that's exactly what lightning was invented to solve (edit: as I now see someone else mentioned)… and it's already working, in testing phase. Isn't it more effort to remove support then add it back again soon than just to wait a few months? So it /seems/ either something else is going on or th…

"In testing phase" is probably not good enough for Stripe to roll out to their customers. I think what they meant was "we're just not seeing enough usage of Bitcoin payments to justify the costs of supporting it." Which is perfectly fair.

In the years we've used the Bitcoin integration, we've never seen a single Bitcoin payment. Next iteration of our customer portal wouldn't have featured it, even if Stripe hadn't pulled support.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#303

Post by notyourday »

ujal wrote: post #235
notyourday wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems rather rare to me. If a Dotcom type of an event affected bitcoin ecosystem, it would not have recovered - it had millions of participants actively winding up and unwinding positions in real time, which is not something that bitcoin is capable of supporting at this time. If a Housing Bubble type of an event affected bitcoin ecosystem, it would not have recovered. Lots of special purpose leveraged positions neede…

Sure, but not everyone has the privilege of living in a first world country. See for example the Republic of Georgia utilising blockchain tech to secure real estate transactions [0]. Now I am actually less afraid of investing my money as I don't trust their government. [0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2017/02/07/the-first-...

It uses a distributed public ledger, not bitcoin.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#304

Post by yashap »

aaroninsf wrote: post #212

The difference between gold and cryptocurrencies is that gold is something that doesn't go away when you stop believing in it. Simulated gold is not actual gold, in other words. They are under current conventions interchangeable, but the context that allows that is contingent.

Yeah, that’s pretty much my feeling too. Maybe one day crypto currencies will be useful for making purchases, but they certainly aren’t today, and I think it’s decenty likely they’re never used much in that capacity.

If you just want to hold an asset, are they really worthwhile over physical assets? There are arguments both ways, but my gut feeling is no.

I think the vast, vast majority of the reason for their rise in price is a combination of “the price is going up, I gotta get in now!”, and manipulation by large, unscrupulous investors. Basically, a tulip mania/pyramid scheme type phenomenon. Maybe I’ll be proven wrong, but I don’t see any really value/utility, and expect an absolutely massive collapse.

I think there’s just enough “maybe it’ll be the new gold! Maybe it’ll be the new USD!” to fuel the hype, but mostly I think it’s only going up because it’s going up, which is really the strongest indicator of truly terrible bubble.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#305

Post by clarkmoody »

montrose wrote: post #15

This reads a bit like the sort of things people say when breaking up so as not to upset the other person too much. You're a great person, but you're just more of an asset than a medium of exchange, and what I need in my life right now is a medium of exchange. What future does an asset have if people don't actually buy stuff with it? That is not a purely rhetorical question; cryptocurrencies change things a lot. But t…

> What future does an asset have if people don't actually buy stuff with it?

Does gold have a future? Nobody buys anything with gold.

Also, the Bitcoin blocks are full. Somebody is using it for something.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#306

Post by mikeash »

clarkmoody wrote: post #296
masklinn wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If all the miners are gone, the difficulty has hopefully dropped precipitously AFAIK there is no mechanism for the difficulty of new blocks to fall. And if the only use is creating transactions between yourself and yourself, well you can also collect gravel. > This doesn’t sound super useful, but it sounds about as useful as a bar of gold in a world where nobody considers gold to be valuable. Even in a sub-industri…

Difficulty falls when block times exceed 10 minutes over the adjustment period. It's happened plenty of times in the history of Bitcoin.

The catch is that the difficulty adjustment only happens every ~2k blocks. If a mass exodus of mining capacity happens really quickly, it could leave the network stranded. But if they leave at a reasonable pace, it will ramp down. That’s why I said “hopefully” before.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#307

Post by hyprCoin »

stevenwoo wrote: post #124
mamon wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, Bitcoin is the crypto equivalent of Monopoly money: it is unreasonable to use it for anything but little fun. For real world use cases there are better solutions, including other cryptocurrencies.

There was a recent bit on NPR (Planet Money?) where they interviewed young people in Seoul - they had so little faith in their ability to earn a living and save money by working a regular job in Korea they were putting all their savings into Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies and hoping to hit the jackpot. It was alarming.

http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/73...

> Low-income South Koreans are finding it harder and harder to rise to the middle or high-income classes through their own efforts and abilities, a recent study shows. Just two out of every ten households saw their economic status rise through increased income and assets over a three-year period, the findings indicate.

Crypto provides an alternative economy where class mobility isn't broken in the same ways. Youth will continue to flock to it until the local economies sort themselves out.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#308

Post by sincerely »

Another day, another HN title changed without any clear rationale. Was the original "Stripe ends Bitcoin support" really so bad that it had to be changed to "Ending Bitcoin Support"?

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#309

Post by clarkmoody »

chocolatebunny wrote: post #36
montrose wrote: post #15

This reads a bit like the sort of things people say when breaking up so as not to upset the other person too much. You're a great person, but you're just more of an asset than a medium of exchange, and what I need in my life right now is a medium of exchange. What future does an asset have if people don't actually buy stuff with it? That is not a purely rhetorical question; cryptocurrencies change things a lot. But t…

Bitcoin is definitely acting more like an asset than a medium of exchange, and yeah, I don't see why it would hold any value if it's treated like an asset. But as soon as people realize that then it should go back to being a medium of exchange and then it'll hold value again as an asset? Either way, just because Bitcoin isn't functioning correctly doesn't mean that all cryptocurrencies are not. But I guess at the mom…

> Bitcoin isn't functioning correctly

Please unpack this statement. Which part of the Bitcoin system is functioning incorrectly?

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#310

Post by rootusrootus »

zolthrowaway wrote: post #236
nxsynonym wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a ridiculous example, of course. But it's something. Not to mention the actual real applications that were mentioned above. The point is - crypto-currencies are fairy dust. There is nothing real or tangible about them.

I don't have a horse in this race, but what about pyrite? It has most of the aesthetic properties of gold (which I think everyone agrees is where most of the value comes from), but almost none of the value. Pyrite is a real, physical thing that will not disappear tomorrow. However, it has almost no value. I guess what I am trying to say is that there is a lot more that goes into value than utility. That's why I do no…

IIRC pyrite does not possess the important qualities of gold aside from sort of looking like it. For example, you can't make it into a chain like you can with gold. For jewelry you're limited mostly to using it as a rock.
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