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Stripe: Bitcoin

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Re: Stripe: Bitcoin

#81

Post by ikeboy »

jliptzin wrote: post #64
chuckup wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you need to buy them (unless you want to gamble on their value going up) - just be willing to accept them as payment in the future. As more people see they can easily spend bitcoin, they become more willing to accept it as payment, and the userbase grows (bringing more price stability, hopefully)

I don't think userbase has much of a correlation to price stability. Even commodities like gold or oil have exhibited periods of high volatility even with a large "userbase" Also, while we're talking about price, people sometimes conflate bitcoin transaction volume with bitcoin price, forgetting that for every buyer there is a seller. As a means of transacting, bitcoin is great, especially for small amount or across…

Few people buy things directly with gold.

"bitcoin transaction volume" is worthless. Anyone could easily make a new record in btc txs for a thousand dollars. If I send money to myself, it counts as a tx.

The real concern with bitcoin is that it can only support 3 transactions a second with the current codebase. Gavin wants to fork it to get rid of the block size limit, but there's been opposition.

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin

#82

Post by ikeboy »

wyldfire wrote: post #59
deweller wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> should I buy bitcoins with my dollars when I can just pay with my dollars directly? Cheaper fees (0.5% vs 2.9%) can be potentially passed on to consumers. And anonymity.

bitcoin's not really that anonymous. Sure, the ledger doesn't contain identities, but it's not extremely difficult for the mapping between addresses and identities to "leak" and once they do, it's anything but anonymous.

Can you tell us who hacked BTER or Bitstamp then? Since it's so easy to deanonymize people, you know.

Just look at the addresses the stolen bitcoins were sent to.

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin

#83

Post by sagivo »

mrb wrote: post #22

Stripe's Terms of Service reveal that they use Coinbase in the backend to transact and exchange the bitcoins: https://stripe.com/bitcoin/terms If you are a small merchant planning to do less than $1-2 million dollars in sales, you might still prefer using Coinbase directly instead of Stripe though, because Coinbase waives all fees until the first $1 million dollars (then it's 1%), but Stripe charges a constant 0.5% f…

if you want to save i can recommend of Bitpay - no fees at all.

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin

#84

Post by sfeng »

Shank wrote: post #62
cca wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Christian from Stripe here.) We credit USD to our user's account when we see a transaction that we believe will become confirmed. The time-delay between when the customer pushes the transaction and when we notify our users is typically less than 15 seconds and almost always less than 60 seconds.

Has the technology changed/evolved enough that that's credible? I was under the impression that it wasn't "fully confirmed" by the network until a new block was mined, or you could have double spend attacks?

Credit card fraud protection often relies on heuristics, perhaps they are doing a similar thing here.

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin

#85

Post by jusben1369 »

ssharp wrote: post #65
adriancooney wrote: post #17

What a fantastic product page. After less that 30 seconds, I knew exactly what Stripe was doing with Bitcoin, how to use the new feature and integrate it. This is great news for Bitcoin. If all it takes is one extra line of code for online retailers to start accepting the currency, widespread adoption could sky rocket. That's always been Bitcoin's crutch, simple integration. Others like Coinbase and Bitpay have made…

While this may be helpful, I can't see it being a game-changer at all. Have retailers like NewEgg or Overstock seen any sort of drastic revenue increases or activity from accepting Bitcoin? The problems with Bitcoin are almost entirely on the acquiring -side and not spending side. Getting a Bitcoin is a PITA and I don't think the demand from most consumers is there to overcome the pain. The game-changer for Bitcoin w…

I think Bitcoin is the Linux of payments. Everyone always talked about the potential to completely change the desktop (consumer use) but the real impact was the network/backend (Sun/NT machines) So Bitcoin is exciting to me but not as a payment method. But as a backbone it gets really interesting.

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin

#86

Post by malgorithms »

cissou wrote: post #80
patrickaljord wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the crutch now is not that it's hard to acquire bitcoins (thanks to coinbase and friends) or pay with bitcoin (thanks to stripe and friends), no, the only crutch is why should I buy bitcoins with my dollars when I can just pay with my dollars directly? It can be useful for people who either don't have access to credit cards but have access to bitcoins, people who already have a lot of bitcoins and curious tec…

Keep in mind that the merchant fee is .5% with Strip/Bitcoin. With regular credit card payment processing, the fee is something like 2.25%. The difference could be shared equally between the merchant and their customers. Life would be 1% cheaper for everyone (kind of).

The problem with this is that, from the buyer's perspective, the price is almost always the same when using a credit card or alternative. And with a credit card, the buyer gets rewards back, typically 1% or so. So, sadly, using a credit card continues to have more protections, costs less, and has deferred payment. I don't think this is a good thing, just saying. I hold some bitcoins, but I never buy anything with them. It costs more.

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin

#87

Post by veryluckyxyz »

cca wrote: post #49
lbotos wrote: post #25

Any idea how stripe is handling confirmations? (I'm a bitcoin newbie, but I know that consensus took a minute or so the last time I had done anything with BTC.) Has that changed?

(Christian from Stripe here.) We credit USD to our user's account when we see a transaction that we believe will become confirmed. The time-delay between when the customer pushes the transaction and when we notify our users is typically less than 15 seconds and almost always less than 60 seconds.

> We credit USD to our user's account when we see a transaction that we believe will become confirmed.

Can you please elaborate?

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin

#89

Post by gigq »

chris_va wrote: post #67

Question for Stripe folks. At creation, Stripe guarantees an exchange rate that is usable for 10 minutes. If the customer sends bitcoin to the receiver after the 10 minutes have expired, we’ll still process the transaction but the conversion amount will no longer be guaranteed. Say I am a merchant, and I want to make $10 on my transaction. With a 0.5% fee: - Without BTC, I charge $10.05 to the user, you take 5 cents,…

I don't know the answer to this but given the user is the one who didn't complete the transaction in 10 minutes they are probably held responsible. I would guess if it was underpaid they would have to send more to the address (the same as if they only paid half the bill). If it's overpaid they probably send the overpaid amount back as a refund to the address it was sent from (or keep it).

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin

#90

Post by AgentME »

patrickaljord wrote: post #27
adriancooney wrote: post #17

What a fantastic product page. After less that 30 seconds, I knew exactly what Stripe was doing with Bitcoin, how to use the new feature and integrate it. This is great news for Bitcoin. If all it takes is one extra line of code for online retailers to start accepting the currency, widespread adoption could sky rocket. That's always been Bitcoin's crutch, simple integration. Others like Coinbase and Bitpay have made…

I think the crutch now is not that it's hard to acquire bitcoins (thanks to coinbase and friends) or pay with bitcoin (thanks to stripe and friends), no, the only crutch is why should I buy bitcoins with my dollars when I can just pay with my dollars directly? It can be useful for people who either don't have access to credit cards but have access to bitcoins, people who already have a lot of bitcoins and curious tec…

>no, the only crutch is why should I buy bitcoins with my dollars when I can just pay with my dollars directly?

(By dollars directly, I assume you mean by credit card or paypal.)

Credit cards and paypal come with the ability to do chargebacks which are useful if you don't fully trust whoever you're paying, but credit card companies and paypal are middlemen who must be trusted too. If I trust the company I'm giving money to more than I trust paypal to not fuck up or delay the transaction, then I'll immediately choose to use Bitcoin.

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