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I think the crutch now is not that it's hard to acquire bitcoins (thanks to coinbase and friends) or pay with bitcoin (thanks to stripe and friends), no, the on

I think the crutch now is not that it's hard to acquire bitcoins (thanks to coinbase and friends) or pay with bitcoin (thanks to stripe and friends), no, the only crutch is why should I buy bitcoins with my dollars when I can just pay with my dollars directly? It can be useful for people who either don't have access to credit cards but have access to bitcoins, people who already have a lot of bitcoins and curious tech people.

deweller 12y ago
> should I buy bitcoins with my dollars when I can just pay with my dollars directly? Cheaper fees (0.5% vs 2.9%) can be potentially passed on to consumers. And anonymity.
- jkyle 12y ago
  Cash is as anonymous as it gets.
  - tree_of_item 12y ago
    How do you pay with cash on the internet? You need some sort of card.
    - cdbajorin 12y ago
      Gift cards purchased with cash.
    - LamaOfRuin 12y ago
      You purchase a prepaid debit card with cash.
      - grubles 12y ago
        In a store with cameras.
        esMazer 12y ago
        is it that different from buying bitcoins by meeting physically with someone and paying cash? or do you buy bitcoins from your personal computer? I guess no way will be truly anonymous
        grubles 12y ago
        I have read about people buying bitcoins by sending cash through the mail. That is perhaps the most anonymous one can get.
        flatline 12y ago
        The seller has your mailing address. Mining is probably the most anonymous way to do it, and by far the least cost-effective. There are, however, ways to launder your bitcoins if you really want them to be anonymous, regardless of how you acquired them.
        grubles 12y ago
        If you are buying bitcoin, all you need is the seller's (seller of bitcoin) address to send the cash to.
        iopq 12y ago
        You can mine another cryptocurrency with your GPU and use that to convert to BTC. That's actually mildly profitable if you choose the right currency and your electricity costs are not too high.
        emodendroket 12y ago
        I mean, imagine you go in with a baseball cap, and you go to a store that's nowhere near where you live. Is anyone really gonna be able to pull that up and ID you in 6 months? A year?
    - angersock 12y ago
      I use a scanner. Sometimes, just a cell-phone camera. Most e-commerce stores have access to a printer.
- Someone1234 12y ago
  In the last 24 hours, Bitcoin has been worth between $232 and $238, so that could be called a 3% fee on top of the 0.5% fee, and that 3% is just from the last 24 hours. If you look at the last week, the fee could be considered even higher (more than double or quad that). The problem with Bitcoin is that it is extreme volatile. So you may gain or lose money. So while a 2.9% free on dollars is fairly predictable, you really don't know what the final "fee" would be on Bitcoin.
  - pakled_engineer 12y ago
    It works like Bitpay where you are guaranteed that amount in USD after user pays with Bitcoin. They assume all price fluctuation risk.
    - esMazer 12y ago
      I think they were referring to the buyers view, where you are referring to the sellers
  - ihodes 12y ago
    From the linked page: > Fluctuation-resistant > Avoid exchange rate hassles—specify amounts in USD and we’ll send you dollars.
    - thesimon 12y ago
      He's probably more referring to the customers side. Why should I buy bitcoins for let's say $300 and risk them being worth $200 in a few weeks (which would cost me 33%) instead of keeping my money and paying directly (maybe 3% fees for the seller)?
      - derefr 12y ago
        It's a much more nuanced question if you don't hold USD in the first place. Here I have a choice between holding BTC and holding CAD. Both fluctuate compared to the prices of stuff I want to buy from US retailers.
- wyldfire 12y ago
  bitcoin's not really that anonymous. Sure, the ledger doesn't contain identities, but it's not extremely difficult for the mapping between addresses and identities to "leak" and once they do, it's anything but anonymous.
  - choffman 12y ago
    Agreed. Which is why some of the newer cryptocurrencies like Monero are gaining some attention.
    - davidgerard 12y ago
      No, no altcoins are gaining attention.
  - ikeboy 12y ago
    Can you tell us who hacked BTER or Bitstamp then? Since it's so easy to deanonymize people, you know. Just look at the addresses the stolen bitcoins were sent to.
    - Retra 12y ago
      Sounds to me like you just explained why you shouldn't want anonymity in your transaction.
      - ikeboy 12y ago
        There are benefits to anonymity, which arguably outweigh disadvantages. I was just pointing out that bitcoin is anonymous when used by someone with a brain. (I.e not Ross Ulbricht, who apparently sent money to an assassin from his personal wallet, without using a mixer.)
        Retra 12y ago
        I understand that there are benefits to anonymity, but I don't think anonymous transactions are really a priority at this time, except for people doing illegal business. I certainly don't want politicians to be able to receive anonymous funding. It's different with something like speech, where we have a rational principle that says "people can speak as a general proxy for hypothetical positions." But you can't make hypothetical purchases, and you can't represent a general population with anonymous purchases. So anonymous purchases don't have a social basis for the same protections.
- balladeer 12y ago
  Cheaper fees are moot points in the context of what costs the end user will incur at the end of the day. Anonymity? Are we still keeping our talk limited to "BC payments for VPNs" and "BC payment for those seedboxes in the DMCA agnostic parts of the EU" (not that it's not a valid use case)? I guess not, at least that's not the popular argument around. Volatility of Bitcoin prices puts stock market rate fluctuations to shame. Think of it from the market price point of view and from the point of view of an end user, like me - who'll buy Bitcoins (yes, one who didn't win the gold rush lottery or couldn't afford the mean machines or wasn't just aware) to buy a pair of jeans which has its price fixed at, let's say, $59.99 since last 7 months. When I bought the Bitcoins it cost me $1200/b.c, but the next day when I went to buy that jeans with my Bitcoins - or maybe I just wanted to convert it back to dollars, it was at $800/b.c or let's just say $1100/b.c if you find the former rate too far fetched. Trust me, it just doesn't make any practical financial sense to me and no, I am not in the minority, I am part of the majority. If you say that "Bitcoins were never meant for the majority in the first place" then it's a different story altogether. Also, if I would have had the 1000s or even 10s or maybe 100s of Bitcoins from the initial gold rush (given I was able to afford an able and mean mining rig) it would have been a different story - I mean my "different" point of view then. And just to be clear I value my privacy just like I know my affordability and financial limits too.
chuckup 12y ago
I don't think you need to buy them (unless you want to gamble on their value going up) - just be willing to accept them as payment in the future. As more people see they can easily spend bitcoin, they become more willing to accept it as payment, and the userbase grows (bringing more price stability, hopefully)
- jliptzin 12y ago
  I don't think userbase has much of a correlation to price stability. Even commodities like gold or oil have exhibited periods of high volatility even with a large "userbase" Also, while we're talking about price, people sometimes conflate bitcoin transaction volume with bitcoin price, forgetting that for every buyer there is a seller. As a means of transacting, bitcoin is great, especially for small amount or across borders. It makes no difference what the price of bitcoin is as long as the buyer and seller are immediately converting out of bitcoin and into their local currencies - and that has no long term impact on price. Unless of course many people notice rising transaction volume, confuse the trend, and then invest in bitcoin, which then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
  - ikeboy 12y ago
    Few people buy things directly with gold. "bitcoin transaction volume" is worthless. Anyone could easily make a new record in btc txs for a thousand dollars. If I send money to myself, it counts as a tx. The real concern with bitcoin is that it can only support 3 transactions a second with the current codebase. Gavin wants to fork it to get rid of the block size limit, but there's been opposition.
josu 12y ago
It may not be that appealing for a dollar/euro economies, but for emerging markets where their currency is not that stable and average inflation is around 3-5% it could have great potential.
- pastProlog 12y ago
  > currency is not that stable Do you mean like a currency that was worth $650 against the US dollar a year ago, and today is worth $250 against the US dollar? That kind of stability?
  - josu 12y ago
    In many developing countries the bar is pretty low, and while bitcoin is not that stable yet, it may well become a suitable option in a few years. Look at the Argentinian Peso, it has lost almost 90% of its value against the USD since 2001. http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=USDARS%3DX+Interactive#%7B%22range%22%3A%22max%22%2C%22scale%22%3A%22linear%22%7D http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=USDARS%3DX+Interactive#%7...
    - cplease 12y ago
      Right, the Argentina straw man. Worst inflation example you can find is the Argentina peso, and it's lost 10% in a year where the bitcoin dropped 63%, and bitcoin's volatility over the same time period has been much, much higher. Even the most mismanaged government manages its currency. No one is managing bitcoin, it's price reflects the volatile market whims of a cryptocurrency backed by nothing but computation and beset by fraud. The volatility is not going away.
      - josu 12y ago
        Argentina, Venzuela, Russia, Ukraine, Sudan, Belarus... I haven't done the math, but we are probably talking about a couple of hundred million. If they all adopted bitcoin, it would probably become the 5th or 6th currency by people using it in the world. >Even the most mismanaged government manages its currency. Governments don't manage currencies. >No one is managing bitcoin, No one managed gold when all currencies were gold backed and it did not see bitcoin's price volatility. >it's price reflects the volatile market whims of a cryptocurrency backed by nothing but computation and beset by fraud. No, its price reflects the low volume. >The volatility is not going away. Nobody can predict the future.
cissou 12y ago
Keep in mind that the merchant fee is .5% with Strip/Bitcoin. With regular credit card payment processing, the fee is something like 2.25%. The difference could be shared equally between the merchant and their customers. Life would be 1% cheaper for everyone (kind of).
- malgorithms 12y ago
  The problem with this is that, from the buyer's perspective, the price is almost always the same when using a credit card or alternative. And with a credit card, the buyer gets rewards back, typically 1% or so. So, sadly, using a credit card continues to have more protections, costs less, and has deferred payment. I don't think this is a good thing, just saying. I hold some bitcoins, but I never buy anything with them. It costs more.
  - joncalhoun 12y ago
    What you said is 100% correct, which is why companies accepting bitcoin need to give the entire ~2-3% discount to customers. Very few credit cards will match 2-3% rewards, and from the sellers perspective bitcoin is better than credit cards payments. To name a few benefits: - There are no chargebacks - Funds are available immediately (though transferring from BTC to USD may take a day) - You can accept payment from anyone anywhere in the world (harder with CC atm) - Fraud detection isn't as important w/out chargebacks. Granted this is a concern for consumers, which is why they need solid security for their wallets. I think of it like cash transactions. You don't have to worry about someone coming into a store and claiming that someone spent their $5 bill with serial code 123-xyz after stealing it.
    - andrewfong 12y ago
      Is it legal to pass the discount onto customers? The only businesses I've seen giving a discount for paying in cash are (some) gas stations.
      - sanswork 12y ago
AgentME 12y ago
>no, the only crutch is why should I buy bitcoins with my dollars when I can just pay with my dollars directly? (By dollars directly, I assume you mean by credit card or paypal.) Credit cards and paypal come with the ability to do chargebacks which are useful if you don't fully trust whoever you're paying, but credit card companies and paypal are middlemen who must be trusted too. If I trust the company I'm giving money to more than I trust paypal to not fuck up or delay the transaction, then I'll immediately choose to use Bitcoin.
- skizm 12y ago
  I guess that's the rub. As a customer (not a merchant) I will always trust paypal or visa over the person I am paying. If something doesn't get delivered, I get my money back. Also Stripe is now the middleman. I'm not giving BTC to a merchant, I'm giving it to stripe to give to the merchant. That's good also, because I trust stripe more than merchant XYZ.
  - vertex-four 12y ago
    I'll note that Stripe will likely not refund you if the merchant refuses to. They do do some minor checking that the entity you're paying actually exists, though.
- jfoster 12y ago
  PayPal and Visa are additional layers of trust. It's not them or the merchant, it's them and the merchant. Meaning that if something goes wrong, you can ask the merchant to make it right. If the response is unsatisfactory, you can then go to PayPal or Visa to essentially overrule the merchant. The additional layers of trust are a good thing for consumers to take up unless merchants apply surcharging based on payment methods.
- thesimpsons1022 12y ago
  paypal never delays anyone who is paying a real merchant. only delays i've seen have been associated with ebay.
grubles 12y ago
>when I can just pay with my dollars directly? Credit card transactions take something like 180 days to confirm. Within those 180 days one can issue a chargeback. Bitcoin transactions take ~10-60 minutes (depending on the required number of confirmations) and cannot be clawed back.
- XorNot 12y ago
  Which only really happens if the customer files a dispute, the dispute is valid, which in turn means the customer is aggrieved. Why would I want to forfeit that ability again?
  - aianus 12y ago
    Here's an example that really happened to me: I legitimately wanted to use my Canadian credit card to buy something in the US and have it shipped to me in Vietnam but the merchant naturally was unwilling to take on the chargeback risk and I was unable to complete the purchase.
    - lmm 12y ago
      If you're willing to just unconditionally trust the merchant like you would with bitcoin, can't you use a wire transfer (western union etc.)?
      - aianus 12y ago
        A SWIFT wire transfer costs $40 a pop and requires me to visit a branch (which is especially hard to do when I'm 10,000 km away from home). It's also much more annoying for the merchant to accept vs. changing one line of code in their Stripe checkout. Western Union is also expensive and inconvenient (although somewhat less so than the bank).
        ryanlol 12y ago
        You should seriously consider switching banks in that case, what bank doesn't let you do wire transfers online?
loceng 12y ago
The problem with Bitcoin though is it isn't a currency. If it was a currency, if $1 USD was paid for a Bitcoin, that USD would be destroyed, not pocketed. The only people promoting Bitcoin are those who have something massive to gain, e.g. they own a lot of Bitcoin or they have vested interest in the ecosystem. Stripe facilitating this would allow them to start gathering Bitcoin, at a rate of .5% per transaction, and if perhaps will have the impact of increasing Bitcoin's value - further increasing the value of Bitcoin they own.
- enneff 12y ago
  I don't understand your comment. When you buy or sell currency, the original currency is not destroyed. Or am I wrong?
  - loceng 12y ago
    If the USD government prints more money then the overall value of the currency goes down.
    - nhaehnle 12y ago
      There is no such direct causality. The value of a currency (in the sense of exchange rates and prices of goods) is determined by supply and demand, and nothing else. People with the mindset of "USD government printing money => value of USD goes down" have been predicting QE-based inflation for years, and they were wrong. When you drop this incorrect mindset and adopt the correct one (supply and demand!) it's easy to see why: QE did not make people richer, so it did not lead to the kind of significant increase of demand that would be required to trigger a rise in inflation.
    - davidgerard 12y ago
      This is not quite how it works, despite the claims of Austrian economics (which doesn't actually work).
- celticninja 12y ago
  how would that $1 be destroyed?
skulquake 12y ago
There are 2.5 billion people in the world who do not have access to modern banking abilities vs. the 1 billion or so who do.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  There are 7 billion people in the world, so your numbers suggest that about half the people in the world neither have nor do not have access to modern banking facilities. Additionally, those with the least access to modern banking facilities probably don't have the best access to facilities for efficiently making use of bitcoins, either.
  - iopq 12y ago
    Some people have their spouse do the banking. Some of those 7 billion people are 3 years old.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
mikekchar 12y ago
This is potentially amazing for me. I just started a consulting business in Japan. Credit cards are hard to come by, especially for foreigners. I need to pay for various services: domain name registration, etc, etc. At the moment I'm constrained to using Japanese companies who will accept bank transfer payments. If this becomes popular, I could buy services anywhere. There service fees are very reasonable. This is what I have been waiting for with Bitcoin (and wondering if it would ever emerge).
- StavrosK 12y ago
  Yep, my friends will definitely accept Bitcoin for everyday transactions (splitting bills, etc) if they know they can spend it on the sites they use often.
- sdrothrock 12y ago
  > I need to pay for various services: domain name registration, etc, etc. At the moment I'm constrained to using Japanese companies who will accept bank transfer payments. Why not buy a refillable Visa at a convenience store?
  - mikekchar 12y ago
    I have not seen one, but perhaps I missed it. Do they exist in Japan?
    - sdrothrock 12y ago
      I'm pretty sure I've seen them in Family Mart and 7&i. http://www.smbc-card.com/prepaid/brand/guide/index.html http://www.smbc-card.com/prepaid/brand/guide/index.html SMBC apparently has them, too.
      - mikekchar 12y ago
        Thanks a lot! This will be incredibly helpful to me :-)
conception 12y ago
Worse are the tax implications of using large amounts of Bitcoin, since it's treated as property and not a currency. Good luck keeping track of your cost averaging over the year.
- bitcointaxes 12y ago
  Easy. https://bitcoin.tax https://bitcoin.tax
fijal 12y ago
or people living in a country different than the US (one problem with that is that banks/credit card companies take a MAJOR hit on the exchange rate that's very hard to overcome without having bank accounts in different jurisdictions).
muyuu 12y ago
I don't want to give my CC details and/or my personal information to every merchant. This usually means I either buy from fewer merchants, or pay with bitcoin if allowed. Obviously, if the merchant is going to require my info anyway then it's pointless, so it depends. That's one of the main points about bitcoin for me. As a tool for privacy. On the surface it may seem trivial, and corporations living off mining your information will always try to pretend it's not even an issue by simply avoiding mentioning it. While at the same time push for their payment solutions as either compulsory or cheaper ("soft pressure"). But make no mistake, this is one of the most effective tools for mining your data reliably and the likes of Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc are just not going to give up on it easily. Authorities also won't give up on "follow the money" as a tool, or even snooping and hacking into your communications legally or not, inside of their jurisdiction or not. It's basically no rules for some, all the rules for you.
- stef25 12y ago
  > I don't want to give my CC details and/or my personal information to every merchant Why?
  - brasky 12y ago
    I guess you missed all the giant data hacks over the last year.
    - jeromegv 12y ago
      The point is that even if you're credit card number is stolen, you are not responsible and get a new card. Compare that to the data hacks of bitcoin exchanges...
      - muyuu 12y ago
        Bitcoin and bitcoin exchanges are a completely different thing. When my CC data is stolen, criminals everywhere have access to my current personal information, often even address, phone, picture. I cannot possibly undo that damage. Losing a regular payment for me is NOTHING compared to that. Just having Google have all that next to other data mined about me from people using gmail accounts to mail me etc, it's massive. I just do not trust corporations to deal with my personal data so I take at least a modicum of measures against these dangers. By simply paying through CC you are giving everything away in one swoop.
fluffheadsr 12y ago
so that you don't have to give your CC info to companies who don't protect it and then have it stolen, so that some jack off in Texas can go buy 200 rolls of TP from wal-mart. That's enough reason. Push payments > Pull Payments
brighton36 12y ago
It'll soon be as seamless as a magstripe. See "The Solution" here: http://cointelegraph.com/news/113255/keeping-score-at-the-2014-bitcoin-bowl http://cointelegraph.com/news/113255/keeping-score-at-the-20...

deweller 12y ago

> should I buy bitcoins with my dollars when I can just pay with my dollars directly? Cheaper fees (0.5% vs 2.9%) can be potentially passed on to consumers. And anonymity.

jkyle 12y ago
Cash is as anonymous as it gets.
- tree_of_item 12y ago
  How do you pay with cash on the internet? You need some sort of card.
  - cdbajorin 12y ago
    Gift cards purchased with cash.
  - LamaOfRuin 12y ago
    You purchase a prepaid debit card with cash.
    - grubles 12y ago
      In a store with cameras.
      - esMazer 12y ago
        is it that different from buying bitcoins by meeting physically with someone and paying cash? or do you buy bitcoins from your personal computer? I guess no way will be truly anonymous
        grubles 12y ago
        I have read about people buying bitcoins by sending cash through the mail. That is perhaps the most anonymous one can get.
        flatline 12y ago
        The seller has your mailing address. Mining is probably the most anonymous way to do it, and by far the least cost-effective. There are, however, ways to launder your bitcoins if you really want them to be anonymous, regardless of how you acquired them.
        grubles 12y ago
        If you are buying bitcoin, all you need is the seller's (seller of bitcoin) address to send the cash to.
        iopq 12y ago
        You can mine another cryptocurrency with your GPU and use that to convert to BTC. That's actually mildly profitable if you choose the right currency and your electricity costs are not too high.
      - emodendroket 12y ago
        I mean, imagine you go in with a baseball cap, and you go to a store that's nowhere near where you live. Is anyone really gonna be able to pull that up and ID you in 6 months? A year?
  - angersock 12y ago
    I use a scanner. Sometimes, just a cell-phone camera. Most e-commerce stores have access to a printer.
Someone1234 12y ago
In the last 24 hours, Bitcoin has been worth between $232 and $238, so that could be called a 3% fee on top of the 0.5% fee, and that 3% is just from the last 24 hours. If you look at the last week, the fee could be considered even higher (more than double or quad that). The problem with Bitcoin is that it is extreme volatile. So you may gain or lose money. So while a 2.9% free on dollars is fairly predictable, you really don't know what the final "fee" would be on Bitcoin.
- pakled_engineer 12y ago
  It works like Bitpay where you are guaranteed that amount in USD after user pays with Bitcoin. They assume all price fluctuation risk.
  - esMazer 12y ago
    I think they were referring to the buyers view, where you are referring to the sellers
- ihodes 12y ago
  From the linked page: > Fluctuation-resistant > Avoid exchange rate hassles—specify amounts in USD and we’ll send you dollars.
  - thesimon 12y ago
    He's probably more referring to the customers side. Why should I buy bitcoins for let's say $300 and risk them being worth $200 in a few weeks (which would cost me 33%) instead of keeping my money and paying directly (maybe 3% fees for the seller)?
    - derefr 12y ago
      It's a much more nuanced question if you don't hold USD in the first place. Here I have a choice between holding BTC and holding CAD. Both fluctuate compared to the prices of stuff I want to buy from US retailers.
wyldfire 12y ago
bitcoin's not really that anonymous. Sure, the ledger doesn't contain identities, but it's not extremely difficult for the mapping between addresses and identities to "leak" and once they do, it's anything but anonymous.
- choffman 12y ago
  Agreed. Which is why some of the newer cryptocurrencies like Monero are gaining some attention.
  - davidgerard 12y ago
    No, no altcoins are gaining attention.
- ikeboy 12y ago
  Can you tell us who hacked BTER or Bitstamp then? Since it's so easy to deanonymize people, you know. Just look at the addresses the stolen bitcoins were sent to.
  - Retra 12y ago
    Sounds to me like you just explained why you shouldn't want anonymity in your transaction.
    - ikeboy 12y ago
      There are benefits to anonymity, which arguably outweigh disadvantages. I was just pointing out that bitcoin is anonymous when used by someone with a brain. (I.e not Ross Ulbricht, who apparently sent money to an assassin from his personal wallet, without using a mixer.)
      - Retra 12y ago
        I understand that there are benefits to anonymity, but I don't think anonymous transactions are really a priority at this time, except for people doing illegal business. I certainly don't want politicians to be able to receive anonymous funding. It's different with something like speech, where we have a rational principle that says "people can speak as a general proxy for hypothetical positions." But you can't make hypothetical purchases, and you can't represent a general population with anonymous purchases. So anonymous purchases don't have a social basis for the same protections.
balladeer 12y ago
Cheaper fees are moot points in the context of what costs the end user will incur at the end of the day. Anonymity? Are we still keeping our talk limited to "BC payments for VPNs" and "BC payment for those seedboxes in the DMCA agnostic parts of the EU" (not that it's not a valid use case)? I guess not, at least that's not the popular argument around. Volatility of Bitcoin prices puts stock market rate fluctuations to shame. Think of it from the market price point of view and from the point of view of an end user, like me - who'll buy Bitcoins (yes, one who didn't win the gold rush lottery or couldn't afford the mean machines or wasn't just aware) to buy a pair of jeans which has its price fixed at, let's say, $59.99 since last 7 months. When I bought the Bitcoins it cost me $1200/b.c, but the next day when I went to buy that jeans with my Bitcoins - or maybe I just wanted to convert it back to dollars, it was at $800/b.c or let's just say $1100/b.c if you find the former rate too far fetched. Trust me, it just doesn't make any practical financial sense to me and no, I am not in the minority, I am part of the majority. If you say that "Bitcoins were never meant for the majority in the first place" then it's a different story altogether. Also, if I would have had the 1000s or even 10s or maybe 100s of Bitcoins from the initial gold rush (given I was able to afford an able and mean mining rig) it would have been a different story - I mean my "different" point of view then. And just to be clear I value my privacy just like I know my affordability and financial limits too.

chuckup 12y ago

I don't think you need to buy them (unless you want to gamble on their value going up) - just be willing to accept them as payment in the future. As more people see they can easily spend bitcoin, they become more willing to accept it as payment, and the userbase grows (bringing more price stability, hopefully)

jliptzin 12y ago
I don't think userbase has much of a correlation to price stability. Even commodities like gold or oil have exhibited periods of high volatility even with a large "userbase" Also, while we're talking about price, people sometimes conflate bitcoin transaction volume with bitcoin price, forgetting that for every buyer there is a seller. As a means of transacting, bitcoin is great, especially for small amount or across borders. It makes no difference what the price of bitcoin is as long as the buyer and seller are immediately converting out of bitcoin and into their local currencies - and that has no long term impact on price. Unless of course many people notice rising transaction volume, confuse the trend, and then invest in bitcoin, which then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
- ikeboy 12y ago
  Few people buy things directly with gold. "bitcoin transaction volume" is worthless. Anyone could easily make a new record in btc txs for a thousand dollars. If I send money to myself, it counts as a tx. The real concern with bitcoin is that it can only support 3 transactions a second with the current codebase. Gavin wants to fork it to get rid of the block size limit, but there's been opposition.

josu 12y ago

It may not be that appealing for a dollar/euro economies, but for emerging markets where their currency is not that stable and average inflation is around 3-5% it could have great potential.

pastProlog 12y ago
> currency is not that stable Do you mean like a currency that was worth $650 against the US dollar a year ago, and today is worth $250 against the US dollar? That kind of stability?
- josu 12y ago
  In many developing countries the bar is pretty low, and while bitcoin is not that stable yet, it may well become a suitable option in a few years. Look at the Argentinian Peso, it has lost almost 90% of its value against the USD since 2001. http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=USDARS%3DX+Interactive#%7B%22range%22%3A%22max%22%2C%22scale%22%3A%22linear%22%7D http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=USDARS%3DX+Interactive#%7...
  - cplease 12y ago
    Right, the Argentina straw man. Worst inflation example you can find is the Argentina peso, and it's lost 10% in a year where the bitcoin dropped 63%, and bitcoin's volatility over the same time period has been much, much higher. Even the most mismanaged government manages its currency. No one is managing bitcoin, it's price reflects the volatile market whims of a cryptocurrency backed by nothing but computation and beset by fraud. The volatility is not going away.
    - josu 12y ago
      Argentina, Venzuela, Russia, Ukraine, Sudan, Belarus... I haven't done the math, but we are probably talking about a couple of hundred million. If they all adopted bitcoin, it would probably become the 5th or 6th currency by people using it in the world. >Even the most mismanaged government manages its currency. Governments don't manage currencies. >No one is managing bitcoin, No one managed gold when all currencies were gold backed and it did not see bitcoin's price volatility. >it's price reflects the volatile market whims of a cryptocurrency backed by nothing but computation and beset by fraud. No, its price reflects the low volume. >The volatility is not going away. Nobody can predict the future.

cissou 12y ago

Keep in mind that the merchant fee is .5% with Strip/Bitcoin. With regular credit card payment processing, the fee is something like 2.25%. The difference could be shared equally between the merchant and their customers. Life would be 1% cheaper for everyone (kind of).

malgorithms 12y ago
The problem with this is that, from the buyer's perspective, the price is almost always the same when using a credit card or alternative. And with a credit card, the buyer gets rewards back, typically 1% or so. So, sadly, using a credit card continues to have more protections, costs less, and has deferred payment. I don't think this is a good thing, just saying. I hold some bitcoins, but I never buy anything with them. It costs more.
- joncalhoun 12y ago
  What you said is 100% correct, which is why companies accepting bitcoin need to give the entire ~2-3% discount to customers. Very few credit cards will match 2-3% rewards, and from the sellers perspective bitcoin is better than credit cards payments. To name a few benefits: - There are no chargebacks - Funds are available immediately (though transferring from BTC to USD may take a day) - You can accept payment from anyone anywhere in the world (harder with CC atm) - Fraud detection isn't as important w/out chargebacks. Granted this is a concern for consumers, which is why they need solid security for their wallets. I think of it like cash transactions. You don't have to worry about someone coming into a store and claiming that someone spent their $5 bill with serial code 123-xyz after stealing it.
  - andrewfong 12y ago
    Is it legal to pass the discount onto customers? The only businesses I've seen giving a discount for paying in cash are (some) gas stations.
    - sanswork 12y ago

AgentME 12y ago

>no, the only crutch is why should I buy bitcoins with my dollars when I can just pay with my dollars directly? (By dollars directly, I assume you mean by credit card or paypal.) Credit cards and paypal come with the ability to do chargebacks which are useful if you don't fully trust whoever you're paying, but credit card companies and paypal are middlemen who must be trusted too. If I trust the company I'm giving money to more than I trust paypal to not fuck up or delay the transaction, then I'll immediately choose to use Bitcoin.

skizm 12y ago
I guess that's the rub. As a customer (not a merchant) I will always trust paypal or visa over the person I am paying. If something doesn't get delivered, I get my money back. Also Stripe is now the middleman. I'm not giving BTC to a merchant, I'm giving it to stripe to give to the merchant. That's good also, because I trust stripe more than merchant XYZ.
- vertex-four 12y ago
  I'll note that Stripe will likely not refund you if the merchant refuses to. They do do some minor checking that the entity you're paying actually exists, though.
jfoster 12y ago
PayPal and Visa are additional layers of trust. It's not them or the merchant, it's them and the merchant. Meaning that if something goes wrong, you can ask the merchant to make it right. If the response is unsatisfactory, you can then go to PayPal or Visa to essentially overrule the merchant. The additional layers of trust are a good thing for consumers to take up unless merchants apply surcharging based on payment methods.
thesimpsons1022 12y ago
paypal never delays anyone who is paying a real merchant. only delays i've seen have been associated with ebay.

grubles 12y ago

>when I can just pay with my dollars directly? Credit card transactions take something like 180 days to confirm. Within those 180 days one can issue a chargeback. Bitcoin transactions take ~10-60 minutes (depending on the required number of confirmations) and cannot be clawed back.

XorNot 12y ago
Which only really happens if the customer files a dispute, the dispute is valid, which in turn means the customer is aggrieved. Why would I want to forfeit that ability again?
- aianus 12y ago
  Here's an example that really happened to me: I legitimately wanted to use my Canadian credit card to buy something in the US and have it shipped to me in Vietnam but the merchant naturally was unwilling to take on the chargeback risk and I was unable to complete the purchase.
  - lmm 12y ago
    If you're willing to just unconditionally trust the merchant like you would with bitcoin, can't you use a wire transfer (western union etc.)?
    - aianus 12y ago
      A SWIFT wire transfer costs $40 a pop and requires me to visit a branch (which is especially hard to do when I'm 10,000 km away from home). It's also much more annoying for the merchant to accept vs. changing one line of code in their Stripe checkout. Western Union is also expensive and inconvenient (although somewhat less so than the bank).
      - ryanlol 12y ago
        You should seriously consider switching banks in that case, what bank doesn't let you do wire transfers online?

loceng 12y ago

The problem with Bitcoin though is it isn't a currency. If it was a currency, if $1 USD was paid for a Bitcoin, that USD would be destroyed, not pocketed. The only people promoting Bitcoin are those who have something massive to gain, e.g. they own a lot of Bitcoin or they have vested interest in the ecosystem. Stripe facilitating this would allow them to start gathering Bitcoin, at a rate of .5% per transaction, and if perhaps will have the impact of increasing Bitcoin's value - further increasing the value of Bitcoin they own.

enneff 12y ago
I don't understand your comment. When you buy or sell currency, the original currency is not destroyed. Or am I wrong?
- loceng 12y ago
  If the USD government prints more money then the overall value of the currency goes down.
  - nhaehnle 12y ago
    There is no such direct causality. The value of a currency (in the sense of exchange rates and prices of goods) is determined by supply and demand, and nothing else. People with the mindset of "USD government printing money => value of USD goes down" have been predicting QE-based inflation for years, and they were wrong. When you drop this incorrect mindset and adopt the correct one (supply and demand!) it's easy to see why: QE did not make people richer, so it did not lead to the kind of significant increase of demand that would be required to trigger a rise in inflation.
  - davidgerard 12y ago
    This is not quite how it works, despite the claims of Austrian economics (which doesn't actually work).
celticninja 12y ago
how would that $1 be destroyed?

skulquake 12y ago

There are 2.5 billion people in the world who do not have access to modern banking abilities vs. the 1 billion or so who do.

dragonwriter 12y ago
There are 7 billion people in the world, so your numbers suggest that about half the people in the world neither have nor do not have access to modern banking facilities. Additionally, those with the least access to modern banking facilities probably don't have the best access to facilities for efficiently making use of bitcoins, either.
- iopq 12y ago
  Some people have their spouse do the banking. Some of those 7 billion people are 3 years old.
deleted 12y ago
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mikekchar 12y ago

This is potentially amazing for me. I just started a consulting business in Japan. Credit cards are hard to come by, especially for foreigners. I need to pay for various services: domain name registration, etc, etc. At the moment I'm constrained to using Japanese companies who will accept bank transfer payments. If this becomes popular, I could buy services anywhere. There service fees are very reasonable. This is what I have been waiting for with Bitcoin (and wondering if it would ever emerge).

StavrosK 12y ago
Yep, my friends will definitely accept Bitcoin for everyday transactions (splitting bills, etc) if they know they can spend it on the sites they use often.
sdrothrock 12y ago
> I need to pay for various services: domain name registration, etc, etc. At the moment I'm constrained to using Japanese companies who will accept bank transfer payments. Why not buy a refillable Visa at a convenience store?
- mikekchar 12y ago
  I have not seen one, but perhaps I missed it. Do they exist in Japan?
  - sdrothrock 12y ago
    I'm pretty sure I've seen them in Family Mart and 7&i. http://www.smbc-card.com/prepaid/brand/guide/index.html http://www.smbc-card.com/prepaid/brand/guide/index.html SMBC apparently has them, too.
    - mikekchar 12y ago
      Thanks a lot! This will be incredibly helpful to me :-)

conception 12y ago

Worse are the tax implications of using large amounts of Bitcoin, since it's treated as property and not a currency. Good luck keeping track of your cost averaging over the year.

bitcointaxes 12y ago
Easy. https://bitcoin.tax https://bitcoin.tax

fijal 12y ago

or people living in a country different than the US (one problem with that is that banks/credit card companies take a MAJOR hit on the exchange rate that's very hard to overcome without having bank accounts in different jurisdictions).

muyuu 12y ago

I don't want to give my CC details and/or my personal information to every merchant. This usually means I either buy from fewer merchants, or pay with bitcoin if allowed. Obviously, if the merchant is going to require my info anyway then it's pointless, so it depends. That's one of the main points about bitcoin for me. As a tool for privacy. On the surface it may seem trivial, and corporations living off mining your information will always try to pretend it's not even an issue by simply avoiding mentioning it. While at the same time push for their payment solutions as either compulsory or cheaper ("soft pressure"). But make no mistake, this is one of the most effective tools for mining your data reliably and the likes of Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc are just not going to give up on it easily. Authorities also won't give up on "follow the money" as a tool, or even snooping and hacking into your communications legally or not, inside of their jurisdiction or not. It's basically no rules for some, all the rules for you.

stef25 12y ago
> I don't want to give my CC details and/or my personal information to every merchant Why?
- brasky 12y ago
  I guess you missed all the giant data hacks over the last year.
  - jeromegv 12y ago
    The point is that even if you're credit card number is stolen, you are not responsible and get a new card. Compare that to the data hacks of bitcoin exchanges...
    - muyuu 12y ago
      Bitcoin and bitcoin exchanges are a completely different thing. When my CC data is stolen, criminals everywhere have access to my current personal information, often even address, phone, picture. I cannot possibly undo that damage. Losing a regular payment for me is NOTHING compared to that. Just having Google have all that next to other data mined about me from people using gmail accounts to mail me etc, it's massive. I just do not trust corporations to deal with my personal data so I take at least a modicum of measures against these dangers. By simply paying through CC you are giving everything away in one swoop.

fluffheadsr 12y ago

so that you don't have to give your CC info to companies who don't protect it and then have it stolen, so that some jack off in Texas can go buy 200 rolls of TP from wal-mart. That's enough reason. Push payments > Pull Payments

brighton36 12y ago

It'll soon be as seamless as a magstripe. See "The Solution" here: http://cointelegraph.com/news/113255/keeping-score-at-the-2014-bitcoin-bowl http://cointelegraph.com/news/113255/keeping-score-at-the-20...