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Why We're Updating the Minimum BitPay Payment Amount to $100
- MrBlue 9y agoThis is why Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is gaining momentum with merchants. Transactions are verified quickly with the typical fee of half a penny.
- nkkollaw 9y agoLooks like Bitcoin is more like gold that you stash, and Bitcoin Cash more like money that you buy things with.
- acchow 9y agoStill, at ~26 transactions/sec it's a far cry from something like Visa. Maybe we can do much better international trade with it tho.
- Fnoord 9y agoI wager mankind can do more than 26 gold transactions/sec.
- ineedasername 9y agoThat comparison to gold is only apt when the price of BTC is relativy stable. There is no relevant comparison to gold as an asset class when bitcoin is so volatile. In order to be a valid gold alternative it needs to have a stable, predictable value. Nobody that wants gold in their portfolio is going to want to replace it with an unpredictable and volatile asset. There's no need for rhetoric comparing BTC to gold. It's not gold, it isn't like gold, and we dont need another form of gold. Let Bitcoin be its own thing.
- Fnoord 9y agoExcept in wartime during a huge recession, gold is still worth something because there's demand for it and it can be traded for fiat currency. Gold has that world-wide, century long track record, and history proves it does. Bitcoin has yet to survive recessions and wars. Thus far, it isn't even stable during boom. As long as cryptocoins aren't accepted as much as fiat currency (and they're not even _remotely_ near 1:1), they'll be in lower demand during less glorious times. Practically nobody (less than now) will accept cryptocoins then because you can't use them to buy anything worthwhile. A man's gotta eat, and keep the chin above the tide.
- VMG 9y agoBcash is at high risk of a 51% attack unless they change their proof-of-work algorithm https://notehub.org/z6ztu https://notehub.org/z6ztu Litecoin is equally cheap, has fast block times and no such risk. Neither will scale sufficiently without off-chain transactions.
- brucephillips 9y ago> This is why Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is gaining momentum with merchants. source?
- brndnmtthws 9y agoAre you part of the Roger Ver sockpuppet team? I see from your comment history that you might be.
- MrBlue 9y agoAre you part of the Blockstream/Core sockpuppet team? I see from your comment history that you definitely are.
- dang 9y agoPersonal incivility isn't allowed here, even if someone else broke the site guidelines. If you see an egregious comment, please flag it or email us at hn@ycombinator.com. Don't make the thread worse by stooping to the same level. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- dang 9y agoWe ban accounts for breaking the site guidelines like this, so please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and don't post like this again.
- vm 9y agoCould you elaborate on which merchants use BCH? Would love to see any data you've come across or even anecdotes
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- webninja 9y agoI'd rather see merchants use Ripple until this whole BCash/Bitcoin war is settled and scalability is solved since it's faster. But yeah BCash transactions were less than 8 cents when I tried it.
- omarforgotpwd 9y agoBitcoin undoubtedly is a technical and social phenomenon, but it’s also definitely almost useless as a digital currency at the moment. Other alternatives like Bitcoin cash, litecoin, ethereum etc. are much more useful for actually... sending money to people. The dev team needs to make Bitcoin as good as Venmo for sending payments between people, or someone else will beat them to it. People have talked for a long time about currency X being better and replacing Bitcoin but with Bitcoin rising so fast that the network has basically shut down, this may be the first time another currency or fork has the opportunity to overtake it in market cap.
- paulcole 9y ago>Bitcoin undoubtedly is a technical and social phenomenon, but it’s also definitely almost useless as a digital currency at the moment. Those who have truly drunk the koolaid call this a feature not a bug.
- zaidf 9y agoThose who have truly drunk the koolaid call this a feature not a bug. By that logic, I could say: "Those who have truly drunk the koolaid call the high price of gold a feature not a bug." Turns out much of the world revolves around drinking some kinda koolaid.
- paulcole 9y ago>Turns out much of the world revolves around drinking some kinda koolaid. Not sure if this is a feature or a bug?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- rubber_duck 9y agoI think all block chain solutions have the same problem with scaling right ? IOTA sounds like it could potentially solve this since they seem to be P2P with accelerator nodes instead of relying on miners - but honestly I haven't looked too much in to it just put few hundred bucks to it if it actually ends up working.
- brndnmtthws 9y agoThey should probably focus on implementing segwit instead of these shenanigans. BitPay lost a lot of credibility when they published instructions telling people to "upgrade" their Bitcoin wallets by switching to btc1, which was a hardfork that failed spectacularly. What they did was bordering on fraudulent.
- x775 9y agoSure, and a 40% transaction fee reduction sounds great in theory, but with a median fee of ~$28.58 (https://bitcoinfees.earn.com/ https://bitcoinfees.earn.com/) it will still inarguably leave BTC at a significant disadvantage compared to virtually every other available payment option. Mind you, this calculation is done at current prices and network congestion; the numbers can only be expected to increase assuming further adoption. Not viable.
- smaili 9y agoWorth calling this out: > We are also working quickly to add support for a Bitcoin Cash (BCH) payment option on all BitPay invoices. Bitcoin Cash is a modified fork of Bitcoin which will allow purchasers to send payments with significantly lower bitcoin miner fees. Bitcoin Cash payments will allow us to re-enable payments as small as $1 or smaller.
- paulsutter 9y agoLightning protocol looks like the right solution https://medium.com/@lightning_network/lightning-protocol-1-0-compatibility-achieved-f9d22b7b19c4 https://medium.com/@lightning_network/lightning-protocol-1-0...
- MrBlue 9y agoYes and only years away!
- VMG 9y agoI have successfully sent payments already. If you are a computer-savvy person you can set it up in a few hours. Let me know if you need help.
- parenthephobia 9y agoWhereas I can set up a Paypal account in a few minutes, even if I'm not computer savvy.
- colordrops 9y agoNo it doesn't. The reason BTC is choked off is because the core devs are promoting the lightning solution instead of on-chain scaling because they have a stake in making money off the lightning network. And now that we've reach a critical mass of transactions this lightning network is nowhere to be found even though its been promised for years. The core devs are like the DNC. They'd rather kill the blockchain than capitulate and update the block size. edit: downvoting me out of visibility won't change the truth. The lightning network, which is driven by Blockstream, which makes up the most core devs, is planning to make money off of lightning network fees, and they aren't willing to give that up even if it means killing BTC. It's not even a secret - there is plenty of public info on Blockstream's business model.
- charlesdm 9y agoUpdating the block size is not a permanent solution though? You can't just keep updating the block size?
- webninja 9y agoAt this point, it's faster and cheaper to get the private key delivered by FEDEX than making transactions on the Bitcoin network.
- bdcravens 9y agoEvery transaction I've conducted in recent weeks took about 20 minutes and cost less than 1%. (Using Trezor at highest fee level) For those who don't follow Bitcoin subreddits, this was discussed here: https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/7lfyrf/psa_its_faster_and_cheaper_to_get_the_private_key/ https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/7lfyrf/psa_its_faster_...
- webninja 9y agoYou must have been moving over $5000. 1% of 5000 is still $50. The minimum fee for me yesterday was 0.004btc (about $55), the suggested fee was 0.008btc (about $112), and the priority fee was prohibitively high. My hd wallet had 3 inputs though which increases the fee. When I sent with the minimum fee, it stayed unconfirmed for a little over a day before it flat fell off the network. When I resent it with the suggested fee ($112), it stayed unconfirmed for several hours until the early morning when it started getting confirmations finally.
- bdcravens 9y ago$2000 for $3 $13000 for about $8
- tradersam 9y agoLooks like another Bitcoin v. Bitcoin Cash argument thread getting started again. I'm getting really tired of this.
- anonytrary 9y agoWhen kings fight, princes rise.