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The funny thing is that PayPal was originally intended to provide safe, transnational money exchange beyond the control of governments. (Somewhat like Bitcoin t

by hastur 14y ago

The funny thing is that PayPal was originally intended to provide safe, transnational money exchange beyond the control of governments. (Somewhat like Bitcoin today.) So they wanted to be a solution to a problem. Now PayPal is part of the problem.

incongruity 14y ago
They've done a great job of being a bank while not being regulated like a bank. It'd be kind of impressive, if it weren't so damn problematic for users/customers.
ef4 14y ago
Yeah, they got big enough fast enough that it wasn't practical to squash them. So they got incorporated into the system instead. If anybody finally does manage to create a transnational money beyond governments, it's going to need to be highly decentralized.
- joering2 14y ago
  > If anybody finally does manage to create a transnational money beyond governments, it's going to need to be highly decentralized. ok, but can you explain why Bitcoin is not starting to fill out this shoe already??
  - kristofferR 14y ago
    Tons of reasons. Here's a few: * Hard to use, you need to exchange "real" money to use it - you can't just link up your bank account like on Paypal and start using it right away. * You either need to totally trust a 3rd party provider with your money (and if they lose/steal it - that's your problem) or run a clunky and slow application on your computer which requires several GBs of HD space (faster, lighter apps are coming) * Slow, a transaction can take 10-20 minutes to finish (which means that you can't get instant order confirmations/digital product delivery like people are used to when paying with Paypal/Credit Cards).
    - kiba 14y ago
      Hard to use, you need to exchange "real" money to use it - you can't just link up your bank account like on Paypal and start using it right away. Transfering money is suppose to be instant and easy with bitinstant. You either need to totally trust a 3rd party provider with your money (and if they lose/steal it - that's your problem) or run a clunky and slow application on your computer which requires several GBs of HD space (faster, lighter apps are coming) For the main client, this is defintely a problem. There's already bitcoin clients that doesn't relies on downloading several GB of the blockchain. Slow, a transaction can take 10-20 minutes to finish (which means that you can't get instant order confirmations/digital product delivery like people are used to when paying with Paypal/Credit Cards). There's a company called ringcoin that provide instant confirmation service for bitcoin.
    - jerguismi 14y ago
      These are all solvable problem, therefore reason to be long on bitcoin.

by hastur 14y ago

incongruity 14y ago

They've done a great job of being a bank while not being regulated like a bank. It'd be kind of impressive, if it weren't so damn problematic for users/customers.

ef4 14y ago

Yeah, they got big enough fast enough that it wasn't practical to squash them. So they got incorporated into the system instead. If anybody finally does manage to create a transnational money beyond governments, it's going to need to be highly decentralized.

joering2 14y ago
> If anybody finally does manage to create a transnational money beyond governments, it's going to need to be highly decentralized. ok, but can you explain why Bitcoin is not starting to fill out this shoe already??
- kristofferR 14y ago
  Tons of reasons. Here's a few: * Hard to use, you need to exchange "real" money to use it - you can't just link up your bank account like on Paypal and start using it right away. * You either need to totally trust a 3rd party provider with your money (and if they lose/steal it - that's your problem) or run a clunky and slow application on your computer which requires several GBs of HD space (faster, lighter apps are coming) * Slow, a transaction can take 10-20 minutes to finish (which means that you can't get instant order confirmations/digital product delivery like people are used to when paying with Paypal/Credit Cards).
  - kiba 14y ago
    Hard to use, you need to exchange "real" money to use it - you can't just link up your bank account like on Paypal and start using it right away. Transfering money is suppose to be instant and easy with bitinstant. You either need to totally trust a 3rd party provider with your money (and if they lose/steal it - that's your problem) or run a clunky and slow application on your computer which requires several GBs of HD space (faster, lighter apps are coming) For the main client, this is defintely a problem. There's already bitcoin clients that doesn't relies on downloading several GB of the blockchain. Slow, a transaction can take 10-20 minutes to finish (which means that you can't get instant order confirmations/digital product delivery like people are used to when paying with Paypal/Credit Cards). There's a company called ringcoin that provide instant confirmation service for bitcoin.
  - jerguismi 14y ago
    These are all solvable problem, therefore reason to be long on bitcoin.