I've used this to buy tickets and it was an incredibly easy process. Really, buying anything with Bitcoin is pleasurable experience... even simply to not be beholden to any bank to send money is amazing.
It's similar to watching only downloaded/purchased content versus watching the TV. Once you're used to having no advertisement, turning the TV on is very awkward with all the publicity.
When using Bitcoin, not having to deal with all the road blocks and fees from banks is quite refreshing. Not having to ask permission to do what you want with your money is great!
You make a good point. It's easy for me to criticize Bitcoin from the standpoint of assuming it is the official currency of some country, or the world's only currency.
However, in so doing I am unintentionally ignoring the much more relevant and likely possibility: that Bitcoin doesn't take over the world, but is simply so easy and useful for the cases you described that it "just" becomes the "Internet's currency".
This softens my criticisms of how a deflationary currency carries risks, since in this scenario Bitcoin is continually being converted to and from other currencies.
I think it likely that this is one of those things that will slowly make the difference, and change people's minds about how financial transactions ought to be.
I feel like a lot of these headlines lately are extremely gimmicky given the high volatility of bitcoin prices. These companies are just straight converting BTC back to USD which in the long run does nothing positive for true widespread adoption of bitcoin as a means of exchange.
If Bitcoin is going to succeed, it will do so in a series of incremental improvements.
There is no way for a complex technology like this to pop up fully formed - decentralized, cryptographically secure, stable in price, with a smooth user experience and universal adoption and acceptance. You are witnessing the initial stages.
Darwinian almost. Yet most of the negativity I've seen on HN over the years is because they can't fathom that it will happen "incrementally". Bitcoin doesn't necessarily have to be the best system to survive, it just needs to be good enough and reach critical mass. It's like PHP.
> These companies are just straight converting BTC back to USD which in the long run does nothing positive for true widespread adoption of bitcoin as a means of exchange.
That is truly an absurd statement. Following your logic, 10 million companies using bitpay to accept bitcoin "does nothing positive for widespread adoption of bitcoin" -- compared to say.. 0 companies using bitpay?
This is actually amazing for widespread adoption; it teaches companies how they can use bitcoin as a secure, chargeback free, negligible fee payment system without being exposed to volatility of the underlying asset (which speculators are quite happy to do themselves).
It actually is not an absurd statement if you take in to account the entire quote, "…as a means of exchange." 10 million companies using bit pay is good for raising awareness of the general public, and may in fact lead to more widespread adoption.
However as a means of exchange the most important characteristic is value. These companies are intentionally not using bitcoin as a measure of value, which is the next major hurdle that the currency needs to overcome.
"To be widely acceptable, a medium of exchange should have stable purchasing power (Value) and therefore it should possess the following characteristics:
value common assets,
constant utility,
low cost of preservation,
transportability,
divisibility,
high market value in relation to volume and weight,
recognisability and
resistance to counterfeiting.
> a medium of exchange should have stable purchasing power
What's the problem with having a medium of exchange that actually gains value over time ? (which is the case of bitcoin). By the way your USD/Euros and other fiat currencies are actually losing value over time, and not just a little. Look at what you could buy 10 years ago with 100 dollars and today. Is that "constant utility" ? Not really.
Bitcoin can act as an intermediate currency, i.e. "local currency of the internet", while both parties in a transaction are actually immediately converting to/from their own currency using their whichever exchange they like. Or maybe they're holding Bitcoin. It doesn't matter to the other party.
Existing payment systems like credit cards sort of do this, but Bitcoin does it in a more decentralized way.
Baloney: If I buy an airline ticket with a credit card, my credit card info may get stolen- There seems to be a story about stolen credit cards in the news almost every week.
With bitcoin, I can buy an airline ticket without this being possible.
But your credit card is almost always protected from financial liability if someone steals it and you report any non-authorized charges. With bitcoin, there seems to be no recourse when the exchanges get hit. This is not to mention that you are much better protected with a credit card due to the ability to contest a merchant charge if things go sour (you didn't get the product, it was defective, etc.) not to mention other benefits of credit.
Sure. But I can pay Cheapair for a return ticket $1343 with my credit card and get the fraud protection or pay the exact same price at prevailing Coinbase exchange rates (plus mining fee) and not get the fraud protection. Or, in the example I picked at random, find whitelabelled $1008 or Scandinavian $1212 returns running the same search on Kayak.
Only a shill, or someone without a credit card, could argue that paying in BTC was an advantage in this instance.
Or someone holding an appreciating currency dodging capital gains tax.
By using btc you avoid paying capital gains tax since basically everyone who holds bitcoins right now has seen their investment go up in value. Converting back to usd is not as good as spending the btc.
It is kind of nice having a currency that appreciates in value over time vs slowly getting robbed by inflation or capital gains tax.
As a vendor right now it makes sense to accept bitcoins and immediately convert back with bitpay or equivalent because there is no risk, lower transaction fees, and you open up your business to selling to people who want to do business with bitcoins for a variety of reasons. Some crazy reasons, some more rational reasons, but it really doesn't matter because they have money and want to spend it in btc.
Also I suspect there is a lot of "new money" in bitcoins right now made up of people who got lucky as early investors but have little or no sense of money management and tons of disposable income. This group of people make up a very desirable customer segment. I expect we will see a lot of businesses selling luxury goods rush into the bitcoin space soon(Like people selling space trips that may or may not ever exist).
Credit cards generally have merchant rules that prohibit higher prices for credit card transactions. As alternate paying methods get more common, there will be increasing pressure on credit card companies to loosen this restriction, since right now credit cards are by far the most dominant payment method online.
Well, according to that article it appears that US law mandates that sellers are able to charge different prices. So I guess those merchant rules are no longer in place.
Yeah I wouldn't argue that BTC works out better at the moment. But one of the ideas mentioned in the original bitcoin paper was about reducing the costs of having trusted central parties, and the corrolaries of that. It has the potential to be a more efficient system overall. Maybe.
Yeah, but it gets passed on to the consumer whether or not they use credit cards.
Very few places charge an extra fee for using a credit card.
Honestly, I trust my credit card company more than most merchants I do business with. I'd rather have them be able to claw back the payment if something goes wrong. I think that I'm way more likely to be screwed by the other party in the transaction than I am by the trusted third party.
Plenty of places (in the U.S. at least) charge a credit card fee, or require a minimum transaction. Also, as the grandparent mentioned, the cost of processing credit cards gets inevitably passed on to the customer. There was an article a while back about a local business owner who had fought the necessity to process credit cards for years (http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2013/07/northwe...). Businesses that don't process credit cards presumably don't have that cost to pass on, but could still accept bitcoin as a non-cash method of payment.
Until more places give cash/bitcoin discounts, the overall effective cost to me as an individual is the same and even less with credit card once rewards are accounted for. I would like to think that less responsible card users are financing my rewards with their interest paid while those of us who use credit cards just like cash (pay in full every month) are gaming the system a bit.
"Cars are better than horses because then we don't have shit all over the streets"
"Yeah, but the shit isn't really so bad, you can often step around it, and we have a tax to pay people to clean it up. Therefore horses are just as good as cars."
I have no idea how your reply relates in any way to what you replied to, but in defense of credit cards, if my credit card is stolen I'm not liable for any charges and if the airline screws me over I can dispute the charge with my credit card company and get my money back. Paying with Bitcoins is like paying with cash - if someone steals the cash, it's gone, and the airline screws me over, I can't get my money back.
This is only true if you use the simplest Bitcoin transaction.
However, Bitcoin supports programmable m-of-n transactions, which enable highly nuanced levels of risk hedging.
I suspect that it is only a matter of time before Silicon Valley (and elsewhere) innovators realize this and start providing smooth "select your desired level of risk" services.
How does the seller hedge against currency risk? Given that BTC is very volatile and that it can be difficult to get USD or whatever currencies the carriers are accepting for tickets the reseller ( Cheapair in this case ) has to be able to ensure that they are getting tickets for an amount in BTC greater than the cost of the ticket in the target purchase at the time they ( Cheapair ) purchase the ticket from the airline. If they guess wrong and they charge you 2 BTC for a ticket to Malaysia, but the ticket would cost 2.6 BTC by the time they confirm the transaction with you and start buying the ticket from the carrier... they'll probably just refund your BTC and tell you to try again. If on the other hand your tickets would actually cost 1.8 BTC by the time they talk to the carrier; you paid too much.
Also nobody is going to sell you an anonymous airline ticket so, the benefit of using Bitcoin in this case is very dubious.
This is exactly the kind of fluctuations futures markets were built to cover for providers (airlines, farmers, global businesses, you name it). Unsure if there is a reliable BTC futures market in existence, but I gather it would extremely active and profitable for the market makers.
Also, if you're already signed in to Coinbase you don't have to pull out a card and copy your CC info into a form. It's basically a 2-click checkout. I bought a $1,000 plane ticket using this last week in less time than it takes to order food from most sites online.
There are many tools that will save your credit card information and fill out payment forms automatically. I'm not so sure this is a great benefit of Bitcoin.
How does their refund process work should you need to cancel the trip? Do you get the nominal or real value of bitcoin back, or do you get the cash equivalent back?
I haven't bought an airline ticket in a decade that has been refundable for cash of any kind. Most airlines will take some massive fee and then give you a credit toward a future flight, if anything at all.
Alright, but the credit is typically equal to the dollar amount spent. How will they handle it for BTC? Will the credit be equal to the original BTC amount or the value in dollars?
That is, suppose you buy a 0.5 BTC (say at the time that's 500 USD) ticket. You need to change things, cancel for some reason. Do you get the credit as 0.5 BTC or as the USD value of the ticket at time of purchase (500 USD) or as the BTC equivalent of converting from USD at the time of the credit (which may or may not equal the original 0.5 BTC).
EDIT: Went to their site. Apparently refunds (in general, not BTC or USD specific text) are not typically available. When circumstances affect your plans you have to call to find out your options. Anyone have experience with their refund/credit options to comment?
I think this practice is a short-term solution. Every new company that starts accepting Bitcoin does help spread adoption. Eventually, it will mature and the price will stabilize, but this part is going to have to happen before we can get there.
I don't entirely agree. I see your point, but let's not make perfection the enemy of progress.
The more vendors that take bitcoin, regardless of what they do with it after they receive it, the more viable the currency is. "Real People" want a currency they can spend. So the more vendors that accept bitcoin the more long term widespread adoption bitcoin will have. Which is what you want right?
If Bitcoin as a payment system (including exchange fees to give government fiat to the bank) has lower overall per-transaction fees than VISA, it's a win for adoption for this business.
I don't think so, it's Bitcoin's remittance potential starting to be realised. Converting BTC to local currency straight away is probably more profitable than just taking currency via traditional channels, there's a lot of fees and middle men involved in that process. Bitcoin helps reduce them.
Exactly! BTC has to become mean for exchange of some serious commodity, like rare metals, before being considered true money. Anyone heard of tech contracts between large companies valued in BTC?
Does anyone know how these guys are processing Bitcoin? Are they using Coinbase or another processor? (Would it be feasible to roll your own transaction handling?)
I assume they are using a bitpay or similar which allows merchants to instantly convert bitcoin to USD (or equiv) funds at the time of purchase. Using this system, the merchant always receives the correct fiat amount, while still benefiting from the other advantages that bitcoin brings (low fees, no chargebacks).
Wow. No chargebacks? I know almost zip about BTC but this seems a bit dangerous for the consumer, though VERY merchant friendly. If BTC goes mainstream, do we expect a middleman-type escrow service to arise for everyday purchases?
You can do clever things with BTC to make them reversible in cases where reversibility is nice. First, you can implement a centralized PayPal-type company that clears after X days to implement chargebacks. Boring, but easy to understand and effective. The clever way to do it is with M-of-N transactions, http://www.bitescrow.org/
PS. When I order from Amazon, etc. I trust them. I get 2% back using bitcoins (from Coinbase.com (-1%) -> Gyft (+3%)). I like the 2% discount more than the credit risk of Amazon not making me happy at the end of the day : )
Fidelity offers a 2% cash back on everything card. Amazon's credit card also gives you higher than 2% on Amazon purchases. Could you elaborate more why you do a double conversion to buy something rather than a straight credit card transaction?
Basically at this point it is tax avoidance. By using btc you avoid paying capital gains tax since basically everyone who holds bitcoins right now has seen their investment go up in value. Converting back to usd is not as good as spending the btc.
It is kind of nice having a currency that appreciates in value over time vs slowly getting robbed by inflation or capital gains tax.
You can't reverse an ACH or a wire, yet, both are widely used. Once company duped an ACH payment for nearly $1,000 and then they went out of business (one can wonder if this was done on purpose), and I couldn't do anything to get it back working with Bank of America. So, every time you write somebody a check, think twice!
Bitcoin definitely favours the merchant/receiver in this aspect. Escrow can be used where desired, though it probably won't make sense for all everyday purchases (escrow for a cup of coffee over the counter is probably a bit overkill). The upcoming payment protocol in Bitcoin 0.9 explicitly allows the merchant to issue refunds if he wants to.
There was a prolonged dip in the price in this weekend, and I was wondering if this had an effect. There've been many large Bitcoin transactions recently, especially on Bitcoin Black Friday. For instance, Amagi Metals apparently sold $900,000 worth of gold and silver for Bitcoin using Bitpay as their processor.
That alone is currently a significant volume to liquidate. Enough to move the price 4-5% on some exchanges. Bitpay only takes a ~1% fee, but I assume their exchange rate is padded to absorb some of that risk. They may also sell bitcoin off the exchanges, which doesn't have a direct impact on the price.
BitPay takes 1% if you're on the free plan. Otherwise, there's just a monthly fee (well, you need to be on the $300/mo plan to get unlimited volume otherwise you're limited to $300,000/mo and $10,000/transaction)! https://bitpay.com/pricing
The payment processor (eg BitPay) takes that on. Markets are still razor thin by fiat currency standards, but are 10x to 100x thicker than a year ago. For example, buying 1.5 million USD instantly would raise the price about 4% (using just one exchange, Bitstamp)
Sometimes, a purchase or a sale of Bitcoins in the hundreds can take the market up and down by as much as 5-10% depending on the order book. I'm not sure if anybody has noticed, but Coinbase bases the price on quantity as they need to place a market order and then you depending on Bitstamp's order book state at the moment, the price difference can be huge! How are you gonna explain to consumers that they have to pay more, because they're placing a bigger order?
Since most transactions are on the order of 1/1000 of a Bitcoin, it's useful to rephrase what you said as: around 150 million mBTC are being transacted (on the blockchain) per day.
Yes, that's the first thing that came to my mind as well. I guess they'll stay on the safe side as much as they can by inflating the prices in bitcoin.
This is ridiculous! Some said the price of BTC dropped to overreaction to bad news. Well, a street vendor in UK starts accepting Bitcoin for burgers and price jumps above $1,000 in excitement (I'm kidding, of course). Talking about overreaction! Let's see some real commerce numbers, not marketing tricks to get more news coverage. I got tired of seeing everywhere in the news that one Florida guy bought a Tesla in California! With such volatility, you need to put a huge buffer in your pricing and only idiots and criminals will spend their BTC instead of paying with fiat in such case. There was some new about Indian business accepting Bitcoin then some Indian guy converted the price and showed Bitcoin price was x3 higher! If BTC is a currency, it should move up and down by no more than 1-2% (like a real currencies do) otherwise it cannot be used in serious commerce, period. At this point, Bitcoin, unfortunately, is a speculators tool. And if you invest in Bitcoin, don't forget, you're in the hands of the Chinese investors (kings of the panic sells) and the governments. Also, there are many fake news and incorrect interpretations of news about Bitcoin. Like some putting the wrong wording in Al Gore's mouth about Bitcoin when he meant something totally different or Snoop Dogg making a joke and people taking it seriously.
If Bitcoin dropped 40% due to overreaction to no-so-bad news, imagine what will happen when really bad news come out!
I believe in Bitcoin, but I cannot tolerate the madness around the price. Even if you use it as a speculator, your future medical bills will not be able to cover the profit you're gonna make - with such huge swings, the stress is way too much for the profits. Just try to imagine the Winklevoss seeing BTC dropping by 40% and tens of millions of their imaginary wealth disappearing in minutes! It's better to do margin trading with Forex - you can make even more with less stress. So, speculators, please, leave the Bitcoin land and move to Litecoin or other speculator playgrounds. Don't kill Bitcoin with your greed, please!
I wasn't making a general statement, I was talking about Bitcoin - people buy many things just because they are expensive, well, the rich people at least. BTC is dropping again after it couldn't break above $1,000. Any comment on stock spits then?
(Stock splits are irrelevant. Yes a split by itself does not affect volatility. I was just making a comment that, generally speaking, penny stocks are more volatile that highly-priced stocks.)
A stock split is not irrelevant as it "lowers" the unit price - it has a strong psychological effect. Not sure if you've noticed, but some sites started to use mBTC instead of BTC when it broke $1,000! Volatility is decreasing as people aren't as hyped up as they were and don't rush to buy at any price anymore. What you see is people waiting and meanwhile doing decent day trading profits from the small movements up and down. BTC couldn't break 1,000 USD and 6,000 CNY, so, naturally, it's falling again.
This recent volatility is mainly due to uncertainty about government responses to bitcoin: The price when up when the Congressional hearings were positive, and went down when the Chinese government announced restrictions on bitcoin use.
Eventually, most governments will clarify their position on bitcoin and volatility will decrease.
Well, it needs to be accepted in all G20 countries. I really don't understand why people interpret what happened in China as "not so bad" - it set a bad precedent and both France and the Netherlands had very negative statements, so, who knows what exactly is gonna happen.
So to restate, over 3 months of financial crisis so severe that much of the financial industry either went bankrupt or was nationalized, EUR/USD fluctuated by 20% in 3 months.
In comparison, BTC/USD fluctuated by 40% in 3 days, because of a single policy decision by a government halfway around the world.
It might settle down. It also might not settle down. BTC might lose popularity in favor of an altcoin. We don't know yet. We're in completely uncharted territory, nobody knows for sure what is going to happen.
Yes, it's possible, but not likely. There's a ton of infrastructure behind bitcoin. Tons of news coverage. Tons of debate. Nobody is aware of the second biggest coin - litecoin.
IT will always be well - I'm talking about people who put their savings into vaporware stocks. I'm not sure why everybody is giving Tulip Mania as an example when DotCom is away more similar to Bitcoin. I even thought about a version of Bitcoin, which is based on stock. You create a vaporware corporation and use its stocks as a currency, well, commodity. :)
>With such volatility, you need to put a huge buffer in your pricing and only idiots and criminals will spend their BTC instead of paying with fiat in such case.
Then I have to say, I don't really think you see the real value in bitcoin.
I was under the impression bitpay-type services would deal with the transactions. How would the volatility be an issue in that case?
If you're selling goods you buy with fiat, you can only hold Bitcoin for longer if you're hoping the price will go up or depending on the margin. Even if your vendor accepts Bitcoin, you still need to pay taxes, wages, rents, etc. with fiat, so, you cannot keep much of it in Bitcoin anyway.
So you would choose not to store your value in bitcoin because of it lacks usefulness to you. Thank you for expanding on your original statement, but I think I missed the response to the question. I however would choose to store value in bitcoin because of my own prejudice against the dollar, should I expect to see bitcoin to do better because of this?
You don't choose Bitcoin to store value, but to greatly increase value. If you don't believe in USD, convert to EUR or CNY. Let's be honest here, guys. We choose Bitcoin as it's more profitable and hope its value to go somewhere in the $10K-100K, which is possible, but it's not 100% sure, not even 10% at this point. I was an active observer and I saw how BTC went out of steam when it exceeded $1K. It tried to break $1.2K several times and it failed. Trade volume dropped significantly above $1K - and this was before the negative news, plus, many get burned by stolen Bitcoins or losing money from speculation. This is hurting the longevity of Bitcoin. Pretty much its future isn't in the hands of governments, but in the hands of speculators, which right now drive the majority of transactions and look for short-term profit and don't care much about the vitality of cryptocurrencies.
That's not at all why I choose to use bitcoin. I'm not a spectator, I'm investing in something that has slim chances of success, but I'm idealistic enough to want it to work anyways. That's why I store some of my value there. So you were incorrect, while you seem to just be a spectator of bitcoin, realize not everyone else is. I feel just as secure investing in bitcoin as I do leaving value sitting around in the form of dollar bills at this point. So as delusional as I may seem to you, I think you've missed a lot of the reasons (some) people are clammoring for bitcoin. Also, the volatility means next to nothing to me in this respect. I bought in at what I thought was reasonable, refused to panic sell, and so far everything is golden, I've been up, I've been down, but not really lost any value at all... yet.
No, I do buy and sell and I profit from Bitcoin, but just like during DotCom many thought they get the stock market (while it was only going up) and invested all their money into it and then they lost everything, don't put more than 10% of your assets as otherwise you're gonna get hurt! I know many who lost millions and their homes during DotCom, so, greed gets you killed! Also, the future of Bitcoin cannot be only in the hands of people who bought it cheap! If you think somebody will buy it at $1,000 and won't mind when it drops down to $0? The higher the price and the more uncertainty there is, the less incentive to buy will there be and we saw this happening when price exceeded $1,000 - volume dropped significantly, nobody wanted to buy. We're getting close to $1,000 again and you see volumes are dropping already.
If I lose all of my assets in bitcoin it's an acceptable loss. If the US economy tanks and I lose my dollars, I'll be pissed, because I saw it coming.
Second point is this fits my narrative. I will be quitting my job and moving out into a van sometime this year. I feel my only ability to effectively protest against the people of this country is to stop contributing. Bitcoin will serve me much better in this regard.
If US economy tanks, all world economies will tanks, too. Then people will stick to precious metals - something that can be used off the grid, something lo-tech. I am on your side that we have to revolt against ever tightening grip of the US government and Wall Street, but when it comes to finances, too much optimism is not practical, i.e. don't put all eggs in one basket. I'm not saying buy gold as gold is manipulated as well, but there are other currencies as well - CNY (very popular in Forex recently, steadily growing against USD), EUR (hmmm), CHF (growing against USD steadily), etc. It's bad that gasoline takes too much storage space otherwise it's definitely better than gold. Maybe basic drugs are a better choice, too. I think The Walking Dead is a good guide for what's a universal value storage with or without an apocalypse! :)
>If US economy tanks, all world economies will tanks, too.
I think in a few different ways it's possible this wouldn't be the case. Specifically in the event of an all out attack on the US, where the dollar might become useless while bitcoin could fair well. Regardless, I couldn't agree more about gas, drugs and other better doomsday investments, but I think bitcoin serves me in the short-term for more scenarios. I do however have a doomsday trade prepared, moonshine makin'! :D
