6 ms·

I wonder how much Colin made from the Bitcoin rise. It seems amazing that one could have made a little fortune by just deciding to accept Bitcoin as an experime

I wonder how much Colin made from the Bitcoin rise. It seems amazing that one could have made a little fortune by just deciding to accept Bitcoin as an experiment few years back.

thesmallestcat 9y ago
That makes no sense, businesses that have been accepting Bitcoin generally charge the USD price at the current exchange rate and convert that back to USD not long after the transaction, for fear that Bitcoin would turn into funny money. We're talking business here, not investment.
- yebyen 9y ago
  Yeah, business. So about those transaction fees... you can save money by grouping your transactions and clearing them in blocks. Now you're dangerously close to figuring out that you can make more money by waiting for the best time to clear the block. Once you've crossed that bridge, if your business has any margin at all, it's not hard to imagine that keeping some of the exchanged crypto currency back from each clearing block until the next block, or even longer, during any bullish run (that we've seen on more than one occasion) can result in a measurable margin increase with a fairly low (or at worst, quantified) risk profile.
  - dahdum 9y ago
    That would still be investing, business would pay taxes on the Bitcoin value at the time of purchase as revenue, regardless of conversion to fiat in whole or part.
    - yebyen 9y ago
      I know, so you pay your taxes and now you might as well have been a day trader for the levels of complexity that adds to your tax accounting burden. Not sure what my point was really — that's just about exactly how this plays out.
- rrdharan 9y ago
  50 Cent begs to differ: https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/24/16930010/50-cent-rich-bitcoin-twitter-instagram-humblebrag https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/24/16930010/50-cent-rich-bit...
njarboe 9y ago
Looks like the US cutting off Wikileaks from the credit card system in late 2010, forcing them to set-up bitcoin very early, and Wikileaks keeping the coin because of fear of bank account seizure, might have netted it $25 million or so[1]. This is really a classic case to point to for the problems(or strengths, if one is in control) of the current banking/fiat system that was part of the claimed reason why Satoshi created Bitcoin. [1]https://www.thedailybeast.com/where-did-wikileaks-dollar25-million-bitcoin-fortune-go https://www.thedailybeast.com/where-did-wikileaks-dollar25-m...
takeda 9y ago
It is up to him, but most people/companies immediately convert to USD, because they just want money for their service not to gamble. Yes, you could have made a lot of money with bitcoin, same of you would put all your money on 7 black in roulette. Hindsight is always 20/20.
cperciva 9y ago
Precisely $0.00. I have never held bitcoins or any other cryptocoins -- Stripe abstracted that away for me.
rlpb 9y ago
> It seems amazing that one could have made a little fortune by just deciding to accept Bitcoin as an experiment few years back. In terms of what you might have made, there is no difference between 1) accepting Bitcoin as an experimental payment method in an existing business; and 2) accepting cash as usual and using that to buy some Bitcoin as an experiment. What would have been much easier is 3) buying some Bitcoin as an experiment outside of the operation of a business. Because you wouldn't have had to worry about how to handle it in your business accounts, or set up an automated payment flow for it, and so forth. You might as well be asking "I wonder how much people made from the Bitcoin rise".

I wonder how much Colin made from the Bitcoin rise. It seems amazing that one could have made a little fortune by just deciding to accept Bitcoin as an experiment few years back.

thesmallestcat 9y ago

That makes no sense, businesses that have been accepting Bitcoin generally charge the USD price at the current exchange rate and convert that back to USD not long after the transaction, for fear that Bitcoin would turn into funny money. We're talking business here, not investment.

yebyen 9y ago
Yeah, business. So about those transaction fees... you can save money by grouping your transactions and clearing them in blocks. Now you're dangerously close to figuring out that you can make more money by waiting for the best time to clear the block. Once you've crossed that bridge, if your business has any margin at all, it's not hard to imagine that keeping some of the exchanged crypto currency back from each clearing block until the next block, or even longer, during any bullish run (that we've seen on more than one occasion) can result in a measurable margin increase with a fairly low (or at worst, quantified) risk profile.
- dahdum 9y ago
  That would still be investing, business would pay taxes on the Bitcoin value at the time of purchase as revenue, regardless of conversion to fiat in whole or part.
  - yebyen 9y ago
    I know, so you pay your taxes and now you might as well have been a day trader for the levels of complexity that adds to your tax accounting burden. Not sure what my point was really — that's just about exactly how this plays out.
rrdharan 9y ago
50 Cent begs to differ: https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/24/16930010/50-cent-rich-bitcoin-twitter-instagram-humblebrag https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/24/16930010/50-cent-rich-bit...

njarboe 9y ago

Looks like the US cutting off Wikileaks from the credit card system in late 2010, forcing them to set-up bitcoin very early, and Wikileaks keeping the coin because of fear of bank account seizure, might have netted it $25 million or so[1]. This is really a classic case to point to for the problems(or strengths, if one is in control) of the current banking/fiat system that was part of the claimed reason why Satoshi created Bitcoin. [1]https://www.thedailybeast.com/where-did-wikileaks-dollar25-million-bitcoin-fortune-go https://www.thedailybeast.com/where-did-wikileaks-dollar25-m...

takeda 9y ago

It is up to him, but most people/companies immediately convert to USD, because they just want money for their service not to gamble. Yes, you could have made a lot of money with bitcoin, same of you would put all your money on 7 black in roulette. Hindsight is always 20/20.

cperciva 9y ago

Precisely $0.00. I have never held bitcoins or any other cryptocoins -- Stripe abstracted that away for me.

rlpb 9y ago

> It seems amazing that one could have made a little fortune by just deciding to accept Bitcoin as an experiment few years back. In terms of what you might have made, there is no difference between 1) accepting Bitcoin as an experimental payment method in an existing business; and 2) accepting cash as usual and using that to buy some Bitcoin as an experiment. What would have been much easier is 3) buying some Bitcoin as an experiment outside of the operation of a business. Because you wouldn't have had to worry about how to handle it in your business accounts, or set up an automated payment flow for it, and so forth. You might as well be asking "I wonder how much people made from the Bitcoin rise".