6 ms·

Amazon is the biggest threat to Bitcoin right now

25 points by deegles 9y ago

KasianFranks 9y ago
It's not about Bitcoin, it's about Cryptocurrency. Amazon is being forced (disrupted before our own eyes) into this new economic model.
- watty 9y ago
  The point is that Bitcoin doesn't scale well enough for Amazon. If Amazon chooses a lesser known cryptocurrency or creates their own, Bitcoin will suffer.
prepend 9y ago
This article is pretty light on content and doesn’t answer the question of why Amazon would want to adopt cryptocurrency. I would expect that they will adopt a large number all at once and accept whatever the customer wants to pay with. They currently support dozens of currencies so a few dozen more is really just a case of customer demand. As soon as customers want to pay with a cryptocurrecy, Amazon will roll out. What would be really surprising is if they make their own cryptocurrency for use on Fire devices or something that would reduce their credit card processing fees.
justboxing 9y ago
Yes, Amazon is considering Cryptocurrency but not Bitcoin. Bitcoin is decentralized and not regulated, whereas alt-currencies / "alt-coins" like Ripple are centralized and regulated by the Company and several Banks including Amex, non-profits like Gates Foundation, have come on board and use Ripple for Liquidity and speed and lowered costs ( no-need to maintain Nostro, Vostro accounts in FIAT currencies) in international markets. From a Ripple presentation slide from a while back, it looks like Amazon, AirBnB and Uber are all looking to alt-currencies like Ripple (which has seen the widest adoption so far in this space). > But because it allows globally distributed companies like Airbnb, Amazon and Uber to move money from all their various locations to their appropriate bank accounts. Clearly, this will save time and money compared to the current modus operandi. Source: https://oracletimes.com/does-ripple-xrp-latest-price-move-have-anything-to-do-with-airbnb-amazon-and-uber/ https://oracletimes.com/does-ripple-xrp-latest-price-move-ha... [ Also, it's somewhat shortsighted on OP's part to look at domain name registrations and come to a conclusion. Big companies like Amazon, Facebook pre-emptively register 100s of domains on combinations of their brand name and new tech solution to avoid confusion / fraud ]
- amalag 9y ago
  Agree with you on Ripple's potential but I wouldn't read too much into that slide. Those companies were on the slide as an example use case. I don't think it meant any official buy in.
- loceng 9y ago
  Is Ripple a competitor to WeTransfer - they sound like they are attempting to do the same thing?
gremlinsinc 9y ago
Amazon needs to adopt Ardor with it's own child chain. Ardor's network speed, I believe is setup to do 35x faster transactions than bitcoin and 3.5x faster than ripple. Disclaimer: I own some Ardor.
twelve40 9y ago
Bandwidth or not, how can you pay for retail junk with something that may go up 2x in value in the next few hours? Or down by as much.
chis 9y ago
Why would an ordinary consumer ever want to pay for retail goods in a currency other than the one that their salary comes in? Amazon is happy to eat credit card fees, and if they really wanted to avoid that they could let customers link their bank account directly to Amazon.
- justboxing 9y ago
  > Why would an ordinary consumer ever want to pay for retail goods in a currency other than the one that their salary comes in? You are thinking of Consumers in the West, almost all of who have Bank Accounts, Credit Cards and in these cases, your statement makes sense. However, a large majority of the developing world still works on Cash economy. And in rural areas in these regions, most people don't have bank accounts, credit cards with with to shop on Amazon. They do have mobile phones with internet. So it would make sense for Amazon to use crypto-currency to allow such people to make purchases on it's site. Do you know that Amazon in India has a COD feature (Cash on Delivery), so the dude delivers your package and takes cash from you for your purchase from Amazon.in.
  - hkmurakami 9y ago
    Honest question -- how do you buy crypto with cash? Wouldn't it be simpler to partner with various retail outlets to let cash based consumers load their amazon accounts with cash (via gift cards or other means), or even issue Amazon branded debit cards that these people can top up in store? I mean cash on delivery and cash on delivery to a convenience store are both real and very popular options in Japan (the former with pretty rampant delivery fraud issues, but that's another can of worms), an affluent country where many consumer can get credit cards, but one where culturally people are skeptical of financial products and prefer to deal in cash.
    - justboxing 9y ago
      > how do you buy crypto with cash? Right now, you have to open an account with 1 of the exchanges, like Kraken, or Bitstamp, or GDAX, or wallets like Coinbase, link your Bank account and wire money in. This is like the Wild West these days, with horror stories of wire transfers not getting credited for weeks and some not getting any response from customer support (all do email only, no phone). I think they are also having a hard time with the insane spike in interest. Kraken CEO is claiming that they are seeing 50,000 Account openings per day[1] and are not able to handle it and hence the 5XX HTTP errors that people are seeing on their site. > This blaze is on fire. > The recent, unexpected explosion in demand has been overwhelming. Each of the past few days has produced 50,000 new account registrations and 10,000 new support tickets — an order of magnitude above where we were just last quarter. Concurrent users, daily trades and volumes are also hitting new all-time highs. We are struggling to keep up. [1] Source: https://blog.kraken.com/post/1399/degraded-service-upgrade-next-week/ https://blog.kraken.com/post/1399/degraded-service-upgrade-n... One thing I'm still not able to wrap my head around is this. In order to 'BUY' Crypto currency, you have to pay plain old Paper currency like USD or JPY (referred to as FIAT currency in the crypto world). So how does this make Crypto like Bitcoin an independent currency? There are also some stories that 40% of Bitcoin is 'OWNED' by less than 1000 individuals / institutions around the world. That's not the case with paper money though.
bb88 9y ago
I disagree. If it takes consumers 22 extra steps to do something, they won't use it. I feel that's the problem with bitcoin. The other aspect is it's ripe for a company that already does transactions to take over. Pay-pal, Visa, AMEX, etc. I can already hear the Visa commercial tag line, "Just remember to take your Visa, because they don't take Bitcoin."
justifier 9y ago
math is the biggest threat to bitcoin cryptographic hash functions are only as strong as the magnitude of our ignorance
- andirk 9y ago
  Can't argue against you there, but isn't the point of Proof of Work that it grows as our ignorance (inverse of hashing power) diminishes?; The smarter we get, the more difficult it gets.
  - justifier 9y ago
    sure, but at some point you run out of leading zeros or as bitcoin attempts to obfuscate it: "target=0" it has yet to be proved, in the positive or negative, whether an algo can compute any target of a 256 bit hash in polynomial time forcing difficulty to require, at least, larger hashes or specific hardware the problem with larger hashes is what makes the PoW difficulty where you need it also would cause the 'difficulty' of storage and reading of that hash to increase impractically the problem with specific hardware is purely speculative but i would assume issues of frauds claiming to mine on the impeded hardware but truly use fully functioning hardware, or force the network to be centrally mined to ensure the hardware used which breaks cryptocurrency's image as decentralised from https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Difficulty#What_is_the_maximum_difficulty.3F https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Difficulty#What_is_the_maximum_di... "The actual maximum difficulty is when current_target=0, but we would not be able to calculate the difficulty if that happened. (fortunately it never will, so we're ok.)" that 'never' is simply offensive to the foundation of mathematical rigor that bitcoin is built on, and i would argue an attempt to defraud potential, and current, users
- loceng 9y ago
  Quantum computing should at some point allow for instantaneous solving of any equation.
  - justifier 9y ago
    Sort of If what you really mean is it'll solve any problems in bqp but you bring up an interesting point implicitly: do people who support cryptocurrencies deny the results and predictions of quantum hardware research?
maremmano 9y ago
When (not if) will the Primecoins arrive?

25 points by deegles 9y ago

It's not about Bitcoin, it's about Cryptocurrency. Amazon is being forced (disrupted before our own eyes) into this new economic model.

watty 9y ago
The point is that Bitcoin doesn't scale well enough for Amazon. If Amazon chooses a lesser known cryptocurrency or creates their own, Bitcoin will suffer.

prepend 9y ago

This article is pretty light on content and doesn’t answer the question of why Amazon would want to adopt cryptocurrency. I would expect that they will adopt a large number all at once and accept whatever the customer wants to pay with. They currently support dozens of currencies so a few dozen more is really just a case of customer demand. As soon as customers want to pay with a cryptocurrecy, Amazon will roll out. What would be really surprising is if they make their own cryptocurrency for use on Fire devices or something that would reduce their credit card processing fees.

justboxing 9y ago

Yes, Amazon is considering Cryptocurrency but not Bitcoin. Bitcoin is decentralized and not regulated, whereas alt-currencies / "alt-coins" like Ripple are centralized and regulated by the Company and several Banks including Amex, non-profits like Gates Foundation, have come on board and use Ripple for Liquidity and speed and lowered costs ( no-need to maintain Nostro, Vostro accounts in FIAT currencies) in international markets. From a Ripple presentation slide from a while back, it looks like Amazon, AirBnB and Uber are all looking to alt-currencies like Ripple (which has seen the widest adoption so far in this space). > But because it allows globally distributed companies like Airbnb, Amazon and Uber to move money from all their various locations to their appropriate bank accounts. Clearly, this will save time and money compared to the current modus operandi. Source: https://oracletimes.com/does-ripple-xrp-latest-price-move-have-anything-to-do-with-airbnb-amazon-and-uber/ https://oracletimes.com/does-ripple-xrp-latest-price-move-ha... [ Also, it's somewhat shortsighted on OP's part to look at domain name registrations and come to a conclusion. Big companies like Amazon, Facebook pre-emptively register 100s of domains on combinations of their brand name and new tech solution to avoid confusion / fraud ]

amalag 9y ago
Agree with you on Ripple's potential but I wouldn't read too much into that slide. Those companies were on the slide as an example use case. I don't think it meant any official buy in.
loceng 9y ago
Is Ripple a competitor to WeTransfer - they sound like they are attempting to do the same thing?

gremlinsinc 9y ago

Amazon needs to adopt Ardor with it's own child chain. Ardor's network speed, I believe is setup to do 35x faster transactions than bitcoin and 3.5x faster than ripple. Disclaimer: I own some Ardor.

twelve40 9y ago

Bandwidth or not, how can you pay for retail junk with something that may go up 2x in value in the next few hours? Or down by as much.

chis 9y ago

Why would an ordinary consumer ever want to pay for retail goods in a currency other than the one that their salary comes in? Amazon is happy to eat credit card fees, and if they really wanted to avoid that they could let customers link their bank account directly to Amazon.

justboxing 9y ago
> Why would an ordinary consumer ever want to pay for retail goods in a currency other than the one that their salary comes in? You are thinking of Consumers in the West, almost all of who have Bank Accounts, Credit Cards and in these cases, your statement makes sense. However, a large majority of the developing world still works on Cash economy. And in rural areas in these regions, most people don't have bank accounts, credit cards with with to shop on Amazon. They do have mobile phones with internet. So it would make sense for Amazon to use crypto-currency to allow such people to make purchases on it's site. Do you know that Amazon in India has a COD feature (Cash on Delivery), so the dude delivers your package and takes cash from you for your purchase from Amazon.in.
- hkmurakami 9y ago
  Honest question -- how do you buy crypto with cash? Wouldn't it be simpler to partner with various retail outlets to let cash based consumers load their amazon accounts with cash (via gift cards or other means), or even issue Amazon branded debit cards that these people can top up in store? I mean cash on delivery and cash on delivery to a convenience store are both real and very popular options in Japan (the former with pretty rampant delivery fraud issues, but that's another can of worms), an affluent country where many consumer can get credit cards, but one where culturally people are skeptical of financial products and prefer to deal in cash.
  - justboxing 9y ago
    > how do you buy crypto with cash? Right now, you have to open an account with 1 of the exchanges, like Kraken, or Bitstamp, or GDAX, or wallets like Coinbase, link your Bank account and wire money in. This is like the Wild West these days, with horror stories of wire transfers not getting credited for weeks and some not getting any response from customer support (all do email only, no phone). I think they are also having a hard time with the insane spike in interest. Kraken CEO is claiming that they are seeing 50,000 Account openings per day[1] and are not able to handle it and hence the 5XX HTTP errors that people are seeing on their site. > This blaze is on fire. > The recent, unexpected explosion in demand has been overwhelming. Each of the past few days has produced 50,000 new account registrations and 10,000 new support tickets — an order of magnitude above where we were just last quarter. Concurrent users, daily trades and volumes are also hitting new all-time highs. We are struggling to keep up. [1] Source: https://blog.kraken.com/post/1399/degraded-service-upgrade-next-week/ https://blog.kraken.com/post/1399/degraded-service-upgrade-n... One thing I'm still not able to wrap my head around is this. In order to 'BUY' Crypto currency, you have to pay plain old Paper currency like USD or JPY (referred to as FIAT currency in the crypto world). So how does this make Crypto like Bitcoin an independent currency? There are also some stories that 40% of Bitcoin is 'OWNED' by less than 1000 individuals / institutions around the world. That's not the case with paper money though.

bb88 9y ago

I disagree. If it takes consumers 22 extra steps to do something, they won't use it. I feel that's the problem with bitcoin. The other aspect is it's ripe for a company that already does transactions to take over. Pay-pal, Visa, AMEX, etc. I can already hear the Visa commercial tag line, "Just remember to take your Visa, because they don't take Bitcoin."

justifier 9y ago

math is the biggest threat to bitcoin cryptographic hash functions are only as strong as the magnitude of our ignorance

andirk 9y ago
Can't argue against you there, but isn't the point of Proof of Work that it grows as our ignorance (inverse of hashing power) diminishes?; The smarter we get, the more difficult it gets.
- justifier 9y ago
  sure, but at some point you run out of leading zeros or as bitcoin attempts to obfuscate it: "target=0" it has yet to be proved, in the positive or negative, whether an algo can compute any target of a 256 bit hash in polynomial time forcing difficulty to require, at least, larger hashes or specific hardware the problem with larger hashes is what makes the PoW difficulty where you need it also would cause the 'difficulty' of storage and reading of that hash to increase impractically the problem with specific hardware is purely speculative but i would assume issues of frauds claiming to mine on the impeded hardware but truly use fully functioning hardware, or force the network to be centrally mined to ensure the hardware used which breaks cryptocurrency's image as decentralised from https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Difficulty#What_is_the_maximum_difficulty.3F https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Difficulty#What_is_the_maximum_di... "The actual maximum difficulty is when current_target=0, but we would not be able to calculate the difficulty if that happened. (fortunately it never will, so we're ok.)" that 'never' is simply offensive to the foundation of mathematical rigor that bitcoin is built on, and i would argue an attempt to defraud potential, and current, users
loceng 9y ago
Quantum computing should at some point allow for instantaneous solving of any equation.
- justifier 9y ago
  Sort of If what you really mean is it'll solve any problems in bqp but you bring up an interesting point implicitly: do people who support cryptocurrencies deny the results and predictions of quantum hardware research?

maremmano 9y ago

When (not if) will the Primecoins arrive?