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Reddit Starts Accepting Bitcoin for Reddit Gold Purchases via Coinbase

115 points by jerguismi 14y ago

SlipperySlope 14y ago
Like WordPress, this is great for the Bitcoin economy.
jere 14y ago
Virtual goods like Reddit gold seem like an obvious opportunity to accept bitcoin. There's no marginal cost, so you don't have to worry so much about the price of BTC plummeting one day.
- nwh 14y ago
  The price is converted from USD and updated automatically. There's no risk from moving exchange rates.
  - jere 14y ago
    You're saying Reddit gets USD instantly? I guess coin base is the one taking the risk? Maybe I am misunderstanding.
    - mahyarm 14y ago
      I'm guessing it's being used as an exchanged medium to do in within seconds. (Currency->Bitcoin)->(Bitcoin->USD)->(Reddit Bank Account).
    - mynameishere 14y ago
      When you trade money on forex, you lose the difference between the bid and ask (the spread). Between USD and EUR, the spread is tight, and banks use this to profit when you change money there, as most people don't have forex accounts. This is probably how bitcoin operations make money, as the spread (I'm guessing) is gigantic and volatile.
- malandrew 14y ago
  The most obvious opportunity IMHO is a country with a country collapsing due to hyperinflation. Had Brazil suffered from inertial inflation today instead of the early 1990s, lots of people would have adopted BitCoin and the administration of Fernando Henrique Cardoso would never have had to introduce the Unidade Real de Valor under the Plano Real. There must be a startup opportunity in simply creating a system that can be rapidly introduced and be communicated from person to person virally in a country with a failing currency. I'm curious it possible for someone, or some investment fund, with enough cash to distort some countries currency enough to destabilize it enough to get the citizens of that country to dump the destabilized currency in favor of BitCoin.
- networked 14y ago
  While Facebook wouldn't allow it on their site a social game accepting BTC for in-game purchases would be a great fit for this model, provided there's a significant overlap between people who play social games and people who use bitcoin. If that is not the case such a game could serve as a subversive tool to get people who are into social games into bitcoin or a double subversive tool to get people already into bitcoin into social games.
lcc_tn 14y ago
I will now get Reddit gold. Protip for hopeful startups: there's a really, really good chance I'll pay you money (whatever your thing is), if you accept bitcoin payments. I personally want to see bitcoin be successful, and I'll go quite a ways to realize that wish in whatever small ways I can.
- rdl 14y ago
  What is the most expensive virtual good you'd purchase with bitcoin? Would you pay 100 bitcoins for a year of .com domain registration? :)
  - twodayslate 14y ago
    100BTC = $2,715
    - sneak 14y ago
      twodayslate: Wooooosh... rdl: https://twitter.com/sneakatdatavibe/status/299802823435100160 https://twitter.com/sneakatdatavibe/status/29980282343510016...
- nblaisdell 14y ago
  Out of curiosity, what makes you want to see bitcoins be successful so much? A backend programmer I'm working with wants to include bitcoin payments in a site but I'm not convinced.
  - celticninja 14y ago
    why wouldn't you accept payment for soemthing? Taking payments in BTC is very easy there are a multitude of copy and paste code snippets that will do it for you. Unlike taking paypal or visa there are no hoops to jump through.
    - nblaisdell 14y ago
      I guess my real question is how many people actually use it. I know for a lot of people it has a tendency to sound a bit scamy when you first hear about it. I feel like for those people it might be a turn off. Feel free to prove me wrong though.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
SCdF 14y ago
So I have read a bit about Bitcoin, including actively trying to read primers and so on, but I think my utter lack of education around economics^ is really hindering my understanding. Plainly: Why do I care about bitcoin? What does it have that other currencies (US, EU, my own NZD) doesn't have? Why should I put my money into it, and how do we know it will not collapse and make your fake wealth even more fake? ^To help calibrate your measurements, the part of The Economist that actually talked about the economy utterly confounds me. Edit: As another calibration, I had to google 'fiat currency' when someone brought it up below ;-)
- javert 14y ago
  As a merchant, it could hypothetically be easier or cheaper to deal with Bitcoin than other currencies online. (For example, note how aggravating/risky PayPal is.) As a person who wants to hedge against inflation or hyperinflation, it has a fixed total supply and can't be directly manipulated by the government (nor does its value depend on the government's credibility). As a speculator, there is the _possibility_ of making huge profits if you go ahead and get in early. As a person who is afraid of government power, it _could_ take away a lot of the government's power if widely adopted. (If everything is "cash," they can't really tax you accurately; and with Bitcoin, they can't just print more money.) It would be really nice if the US government had to choose between, say, multiple decade+ occupations in the Middle East vs. spending on other things. As a regular spender, there is the _possibility_ of easy digital transactions with less overhead expense (e.g. swipe your smartphone to pay for something, _without_, say, VISA taking off the top... though probably it would be some bitcoin processor taking (less) off the top). A different way of looking at it is: it's basically analogous to gold, except easy to transmit, but not impervious to apocalypse or regulatory action that would take down the Internet. Basically everything I said above is an implication of this way to look at it. People who are slightly bullish on gold ought to be extremely bullish about Bitcoin, IMO, if they have the technical understanding to believe that it works (I do, and it does).
  - MichaelApproved 14y ago
    "As a merchant, it could hypothetically be easier or cheaper to deal with Bitcoin than other currencies online. (For example, note how aggravating/risky PayPal is.)" As a customer, I don't care about how aggravating/risky PayPal is to you. I also don't care that you have trouble with any other merchant account. I'm going to use the payment option that gives me the most protection and is most convenient to me. Credit card companies and PayPal allow me to dispute charges for unsatisfactory service. Even though I've rarely used that in my life, it's a huge reassurance! As I understand it, Bitcoin is like a cash transaction with very little recourse for the customer. Once the transaction is complete, you can't reverse it (I'm still learning about it so please correct me if I'm wrong). There could come a day when a middle man comes between the merchant and customer to give customer protection but then you're pretty much in the same boat as we are now. Note: I'm also a merchant, so I know the pains of PayPal and merchant accounts. Just reminding you to look at it from the customer perspective.
powertower 14y ago
If you are going to buy bitcoins, don't use BitInstant (at least not until they get their operation together). Read the nightmare thread here were some people are filing police reports to get their money back, while others just give up - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=128314.980 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=128314.980 It's the same story over and over every day without any change and the same effects.
Expez 14y ago
I bought some Bitcoins using MtGox about 4 months ago. The experience was pretty smooth. I had to send money to their bank in Japan and they credited my account. This increased the cost of aquiring bitcoins, because the bank also took a cut. In general, I don't trust my wallet in the hands of strangers so I don't keep my bitcoins with MtGox. Instead I encrypted my wallet.dat with GnuPG and put copies of it in several locations. Bitcoin Qt seems to be able to attach a passphrase to your wallet.dat as well, but I opted to go the manual route. I bought some bitcoins as an alternative to gold to balance my portfolio and hedge against inflation. In other words I plan to hold on to them for the forseeable future, so the inconvenience of dealing with the encryption manually is negligible.
TBCM 14y ago
Bitcoin adoption is increasing and reaching new businesses every day. The more people who get into this virtual currency, the better! For those who haven't joined the revolution yet, check out http://thebitcoinmaster.blogspot.com http://thebitcoinmaster.blogspot.com and get started!

115 points by jerguismi 14y ago

Like WordPress, this is great for the Bitcoin economy.

jere 14y ago

Virtual goods like Reddit gold seem like an obvious opportunity to accept bitcoin. There's no marginal cost, so you don't have to worry so much about the price of BTC plummeting one day.

nwh 14y ago
The price is converted from USD and updated automatically. There's no risk from moving exchange rates.
- jere 14y ago
  You're saying Reddit gets USD instantly? I guess coin base is the one taking the risk? Maybe I am misunderstanding.
  - mahyarm 14y ago
    I'm guessing it's being used as an exchanged medium to do in within seconds. (Currency->Bitcoin)->(Bitcoin->USD)->(Reddit Bank Account).
  - mynameishere 14y ago
    When you trade money on forex, you lose the difference between the bid and ask (the spread). Between USD and EUR, the spread is tight, and banks use this to profit when you change money there, as most people don't have forex accounts. This is probably how bitcoin operations make money, as the spread (I'm guessing) is gigantic and volatile.
malandrew 14y ago
The most obvious opportunity IMHO is a country with a country collapsing due to hyperinflation. Had Brazil suffered from inertial inflation today instead of the early 1990s, lots of people would have adopted BitCoin and the administration of Fernando Henrique Cardoso would never have had to introduce the Unidade Real de Valor under the Plano Real. There must be a startup opportunity in simply creating a system that can be rapidly introduced and be communicated from person to person virally in a country with a failing currency. I'm curious it possible for someone, or some investment fund, with enough cash to distort some countries currency enough to destabilize it enough to get the citizens of that country to dump the destabilized currency in favor of BitCoin.
networked 14y ago
While Facebook wouldn't allow it on their site a social game accepting BTC for in-game purchases would be a great fit for this model, provided there's a significant overlap between people who play social games and people who use bitcoin. If that is not the case such a game could serve as a subversive tool to get people who are into social games into bitcoin or a double subversive tool to get people already into bitcoin into social games.

lcc_tn 14y ago

I will now get Reddit gold. Protip for hopeful startups: there's a really, really good chance I'll pay you money (whatever your thing is), if you accept bitcoin payments. I personally want to see bitcoin be successful, and I'll go quite a ways to realize that wish in whatever small ways I can.

rdl 14y ago
What is the most expensive virtual good you'd purchase with bitcoin? Would you pay 100 bitcoins for a year of .com domain registration? :)
- twodayslate 14y ago
  100BTC = $2,715
  - sneak 14y ago
    twodayslate: Wooooosh... rdl: https://twitter.com/sneakatdatavibe/status/299802823435100160 https://twitter.com/sneakatdatavibe/status/29980282343510016...
nblaisdell 14y ago
Out of curiosity, what makes you want to see bitcoins be successful so much? A backend programmer I'm working with wants to include bitcoin payments in a site but I'm not convinced.
- celticninja 14y ago
  why wouldn't you accept payment for soemthing? Taking payments in BTC is very easy there are a multitude of copy and paste code snippets that will do it for you. Unlike taking paypal or visa there are no hoops to jump through.
  - nblaisdell 14y ago
    I guess my real question is how many people actually use it. I know for a lot of people it has a tendency to sound a bit scamy when you first hear about it. I feel like for those people it might be a turn off. Feel free to prove me wrong though.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

SCdF 14y ago

So I have read a bit about Bitcoin, including actively trying to read primers and so on, but I think my utter lack of education around economics^ is really hindering my understanding. Plainly: Why do I care about bitcoin? What does it have that other currencies (US, EU, my own NZD) doesn't have? Why should I put my money into it, and how do we know it will not collapse and make your fake wealth even more fake? ^To help calibrate your measurements, the part of The Economist that actually talked about the economy utterly confounds me. Edit: As another calibration, I had to google 'fiat currency' when someone brought it up below ;-)

javert 14y ago
As a merchant, it could hypothetically be easier or cheaper to deal with Bitcoin than other currencies online. (For example, note how aggravating/risky PayPal is.) As a person who wants to hedge against inflation or hyperinflation, it has a fixed total supply and can't be directly manipulated by the government (nor does its value depend on the government's credibility). As a speculator, there is the _possibility_ of making huge profits if you go ahead and get in early. As a person who is afraid of government power, it _could_ take away a lot of the government's power if widely adopted. (If everything is "cash," they can't really tax you accurately; and with Bitcoin, they can't just print more money.) It would be really nice if the US government had to choose between, say, multiple decade+ occupations in the Middle East vs. spending on other things. As a regular spender, there is the _possibility_ of easy digital transactions with less overhead expense (e.g. swipe your smartphone to pay for something, _without_, say, VISA taking off the top... though probably it would be some bitcoin processor taking (less) off the top). A different way of looking at it is: it's basically analogous to gold, except easy to transmit, but not impervious to apocalypse or regulatory action that would take down the Internet. Basically everything I said above is an implication of this way to look at it. People who are slightly bullish on gold ought to be extremely bullish about Bitcoin, IMO, if they have the technical understanding to believe that it works (I do, and it does).
- MichaelApproved 14y ago
  "As a merchant, it could hypothetically be easier or cheaper to deal with Bitcoin than other currencies online. (For example, note how aggravating/risky PayPal is.)" As a customer, I don't care about how aggravating/risky PayPal is to you. I also don't care that you have trouble with any other merchant account. I'm going to use the payment option that gives me the most protection and is most convenient to me. Credit card companies and PayPal allow me to dispute charges for unsatisfactory service. Even though I've rarely used that in my life, it's a huge reassurance! As I understand it, Bitcoin is like a cash transaction with very little recourse for the customer. Once the transaction is complete, you can't reverse it (I'm still learning about it so please correct me if I'm wrong). There could come a day when a middle man comes between the merchant and customer to give customer protection but then you're pretty much in the same boat as we are now. Note: I'm also a merchant, so I know the pains of PayPal and merchant accounts. Just reminding you to look at it from the customer perspective.

powertower 14y ago

If you are going to buy bitcoins, don't use BitInstant (at least not until they get their operation together). Read the nightmare thread here were some people are filing police reports to get their money back, while others just give up - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=128314.980 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=128314.980 It's the same story over and over every day without any change and the same effects.

Expez 14y ago

I bought some Bitcoins using MtGox about 4 months ago. The experience was pretty smooth. I had to send money to their bank in Japan and they credited my account. This increased the cost of aquiring bitcoins, because the bank also took a cut. In general, I don't trust my wallet in the hands of strangers so I don't keep my bitcoins with MtGox. Instead I encrypted my wallet.dat with GnuPG and put copies of it in several locations. Bitcoin Qt seems to be able to attach a passphrase to your wallet.dat as well, but I opted to go the manual route. I bought some bitcoins as an alternative to gold to balance my portfolio and hedge against inflation. In other words I plan to hold on to them for the forseeable future, so the inconvenience of dealing with the encryption manually is negligible.

TBCM 14y ago

Bitcoin adoption is increasing and reaching new businesses every day. The more people who get into this virtual currency, the better! For those who haven't joined the revolution yet, check out http://thebitcoinmaster.blogspot.com http://thebitcoinmaster.blogspot.com and get started!