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Coinbase Commerce: merchants can accept multiple digital currencies

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Re: Coinbase Commerce: merchants can accept multiple digital currencies

#41

Post by cutety »

josu wrote: post #28
edshiro wrote: post #16

What does this mean for a crypto project like Request Network ( https://request.network/#/ ) which is trying to become the "Paypal for cryptocurrencies"? I am genuinely curious as I own some REQ, believe in the team, but also like what Coinbase has done to bring crypto to the masses (minus the outrageous fees of course).

My personal opinion about Request and similar projects. I have been using bitcoin for a while, I have payed for real goods and online services with it and I've following the crypto ecosystem for a few years. I really can't see the reason for more than just a handful of competing cryptocurrencies becoming mediums of exchange. Request's goal is noble, but I think that they'd be better off working on implementing paymen…

I think you're misunderstanding what the Request network is doing. Their goal is exactly what you described, a payment gateway for existing (all) cryptos (including fiat). The Request token ($REQ) is only used to collect fees for using the request. The REQ tokens are burned as part of the transaction, and in the end goal the end user themselves won't have to actually ever buy any REQ tokens either, it will automatically be done by the network. REQ tokens are actually only ERC20 tokens (meaning they're using the Ethereum blockchain).

The end goal is a decentralized payment gateway that will accept any crypto or fiat and payout in the desired currency. Request will handle the swapping of currencies and everything else in a decentralized manner. Obviously, likely quite a ways away from that, and there are a lot of scaling issues that need to be solved with blockchain tech itself before this can actually exist in a usable way.

Re: Coinbase Commerce: merchants can accept multiple digital currencies

#42

Post by xiphias »

joeyrideout wrote: post #27
hobofan wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To clarify, yes, some mined blockchains feel faster now simply because they are less busy. Yes, and for now it's not proven in practice that Nano will also stay responsive when it hits the same scale/busyness.

Fair enough. In theory Nano's design can handle something like O(2^n) transactions per second where n is the number of nodes, while mined blockchains can handle O(n) transactions per second where n is roughly the block rate multiplied by block size. In practice who knows. The former has a fighting chance, at least.

,,Nano's design can handle something like O(2^n) transactions per second where n is the number of nodes''

Wow, we should stop trying to build quantum computers, this Nano thing sounds much better in theory

Re: Coinbase Commerce: merchants can accept multiple digital currencies

#43

Post by xiphias »

charlesdm wrote: post #22
kylell wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

your logic is funny, is like having a busy site with a postgress db, and saying postgress is at fault, look at my mysql wordpress site with 1.3 visitors per day, how fast it is. Ethereum will colapse on itself sooner of later, no one managed to sync a node recently.

Hasn't the latest Geth update improved syncing? https://blog.ethereum.org/2018/02/14/geth-1-8-iceberg%C2%B9/

Reading through the release description I'm really glad for the thorough hard work the Bitcoin Core team is doing (and the fact that they didn't disable full verification by default). I still don't understand people putting billions of dollars in a system that crashes and hard forks multiple times a year while there's a stable alternative.

Re: Coinbase Commerce: merchants can accept multiple digital currencies

#44

Post by wmeredith »

tyfon wrote: post #7

I've never used bitcoin but to my understanding it can take quite some time for a payment to be processed. What happens if you buy something and pay, then when the merchant receives the bitcoins the value of them has dropped say 10%? Does the merchant take the loss in this system?

This was my immediate question. I bought some Etherium from Coinbase a couple weeks back and by the time I got the funds, the value had dropped (!)25%. I don't particularly care because I'm long on my crypto holdings, but in what world is something like that going to be tolerable for merchants?

Re: Coinbase Commerce: merchants can accept multiple digital currencies

#45

Post by icebraining »

diggan wrote: post #35
hobofan wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no such clause in the Coinbase Commerce TOS[0], and "Coinbase Commerce accounts are completely separate from Coinbase accounts"[1]. Also not sure what the Coinbase Commerce account is even for since "Coinbase Commerce is not a hosted service". [0]: https://commerce.coinbase.com/legal/terms-of-service/ [1]: https://commerce.coinbase.com/faq

That's true, didn't know about that. However, the Coinbase Commerce has a clause that I guess (if they feel like), can apply for adult entertainment businesses. > You agree not to use the Services in ways that: > Are illegal, obscene, defamatory, threatening, intimidating, harassing, hateful, racially, or ethnically offensive, or instigate or encourage conduct that would be illegal, or otherwise inappropriate, includ…

I don't think the courts have anything to say about it; Coinbase can refuse your business for any reason. Adult businesses aren't a protected class.

Re: Coinbase Commerce: merchants can accept multiple digital currencies

#46

Post by whataretensors »

edshiro wrote: post #36
josu wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My personal opinion about Request and similar projects. I have been using bitcoin for a while, I have payed for real goods and online services with it and I've following the crypto ecosystem for a few years. I really can't see the reason for more than just a handful of competing cryptocurrencies becoming mediums of exchange. Request's goal is noble, but I think that they'd be better off working on implementing paymen…

I also think there are way too many projects in this space and most of them are very obvious money grabs. Ultimately only a few projects will survive and gain mainstream adoption. I am really on the face regarding bitcoin though: it is the grandfather of all those crypto projects and massively moves the market, but I don't quite understand how it could ever replace a currency given its very limited supply and astrono…

REQ is not late to the game. It's still extremely early. I think multiple dex that translates currency to any other currency will emerge. Dexs can compete on fees, features, risk, etc. Additionally supply will be distributed as automated arbitrage becomes an easy way to make money.

I also don't believe in the convergence of coins with enough dexs. There are a lot of design features that people will want that are incompatible across coins, but still useful. Some coins will fail sure, but people still trade bitconnect(200k volume yesterday).

Re: Coinbase Commerce: merchants can accept multiple digital currencies

#47

Post by sf_rob »

josu wrote: post #29
tyfon wrote: post #7

I've never used bitcoin but to my understanding it can take quite some time for a payment to be processed. What happens if you buy something and pay, then when the merchant receives the bitcoins the value of them has dropped say 10%? Does the merchant take the loss in this system?

Coinbase can easily take care of this. They can have a small reserve and sell the bitcoin as soon as the transaction is published/sent to the mempool. No need to wait for any confirmations. If the transaction happens to be fraudulent†, they just buy the bitcoin back and realize the earning/loss (in the long run they will tend to even out). †Not sure what the attack vectors are here.

If they're interested in taking on the counterparty risk they could do this, but when the mempool is flooded you can replace pending transactions with new transactions with a higher fee (called "Replace by Fee").

Re: Coinbase Commerce: merchants can accept multiple digital currencies

#48

Post by notahacker »

decorator wrote: post #38
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not going to last long, it's basically an open invite for money laundering.

I can't think of anything that is universally good other than God. & from what I've heard about the Old Testament that's not even true! So we a situation where people can't even construct something from their imagination that is virtuous in all concerns. & people want financial technology to meet that bar? Seems unlikely to me. Could there be some money laundering? Probably. Will there be attempts by the owners of th…

The traditional financial system carries out trillions of transactions which are not money laundering, yet is required to jump through enormous amounts of red tape to prove its customers are not money launderers, and companies still get into trouble with regulators if they're not satisfied with their AML policies.

A new payment processor advertising the ability to accept completely anonymous transactions as a key benefit over the traditional ecosystem is going to attract a much higher ratio of money laundering to legitimate merchant accounts, and even without that, marketing Lack-of-AML-as-a-Service is sort of thing that gets regulators interested in shutting you down...

Re: Coinbase Commerce: merchants can accept multiple digital currencies

#49

Post by blunte »

The KYC/AML regulations require essentially 1:1 human effort for every new person who attempts to buy any practical amount of cryptocurrency (within the US and EU, and probably elsewhere).

So the #1 problem is that people who want to buy some cryptocurrency cannot. They wait days or weeks to get verified. And the exchanges and money changers want to provide the virtual currency to the hungry customers, but they cannot afford to hire enough people to process all the verification applications.

Given this extreme bottleneck, I don't see the significance of news about how much easier it is for people to spend virtual currency.

Ironically, Coinbase is one of the most complained about in terms of slow verifications.

Re: Coinbase Commerce: merchants can accept multiple digital currencies

#50

Post by beaner »

blunte wrote: post #49

The KYC/AML regulations require essentially 1:1 human effort for every new person who attempts to buy any practical amount of cryptocurrency (within the US and EU, and probably elsewhere). So the #1 problem is that people who want to buy some cryptocurrency cannot. They wait days or weeks to get verified. And the exchanges and money changers want to provide the virtual currency to the hungry customers, but they canno…

It only takes about 10 minutes to get verified on Coinbase. The majority of people are done in this amount of time. It's when something goes wrong and you can't get a response from customer service that is a problem. After all this time, it still sucks.
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