I don't think it's about bitcoins. Wikimedia has also noticed that donations can decrease if you offer too many donation methods. They've seen this without bitcoins. Maybe donors feel like with all of those methods available someone else is already donating? Or maybe they get bewildered by the excess of choice?
This is almost exactly how Wikimedia accepts Bitcoin payments, behind an "other" link, with credit card and paypal being shown as the only two options if you click on "donate". In fact, it's kind of hard to find all of their payment options. The "other" button actually is called "problems with donating?"
I pretty much see taking bitcoin as an automatic sign to be wary of a business. I have walked away from online stores or services because they offered it.
At best, it shows an incredibly shaky understanding of how to build a sound business. At worst it signals a level of shadiness I don't want my money anywhere near.
EDIT: I am surprised that a community which so regularly likes to makes claims at business acumen would have so many eager commenters who would need to actually have it explained why use of a currency with more price fluctuations that the Zimbabwe dollar, and which cannot be reliably exchanged for other currencies because its money changing firms go out of business or turn out to be open frauds on a near-monthly bases, is not a sound business decision.
Why do you believe that accepting Bitcoin automatically makes a business shady? Often the companies I see offering bitcoin payments are the ones that are a bit ahead of the tech curve and want to try something experimental (e.g. Wordpress, Newegg, Reddit), but not so big that their cost to implement the option would be really high (Facebook, Amazon, Walmart).
To me it seems nonsensical to walk away from a company because they offer a certain payment option. Maybe you can elaborate on why you feel that way?
I sympathize with those who feel that explaining there views to people who don't know a lot about the topic is a waste of time. But if you decide that for a given topic, don't go to a forum and make claims! If you make claims, be prepared to back them up; if you aren't prepared, refrain from making claims.
An exception is if you have authority that will shift people's beliefs even without backup.
Another exception can be if you merely post links, and don't endorse any statements beyond that link. Then you're performing the service of providing more information, and any problems can be taken up with the original author.
But making claims and refusing to back them up or clarify on account of trollphobia is borderline troll itself.
Did you post the wrong link? This is a public discussion forum; asking questions is generally not considered rude. You're free to ignore the question as well.
You accused alykhalid of acting in bad faith. You made it clear you don't want any questions about the whys of that so instead of asking I shall simply write this and downvote.
I'm highly skeptical that it was just offering bitcoin that reduced donations.
For example, if they're making an API call to the payment provider on each page load to generate a new bitcoin payment button, the page load might be slower, and it might be that additional slowness which accounts for the change.
Maybe there's some kind of effect of people starting to reason about what they give away. Looking at a high volatility commodity like Bitcoin alongside the 'normal' payment options probably triggers some unconscious thinking about the right moment when to give away money, the right amount etc, which all leads to indecision and lowers conversions.
Bitcoin is dead and has been for years. And nobody broke it, it is just a solution without a problem. Sure, Mt. Gox, ASICs and the block size debate didn't exactly help Bitcoin, but nothing of that broke it.
Yes, Bitcoin has some nice theoretical properties, but the masses don't need them. What good is an anonymous currency for buying stuff if the next thing I do is entering my shipping address? Whether the system is decentralized or centralized, the average user doesn't give a shit as long as it works. I don't have to trust a bank? I don't care, I never had any issues.
And with Bitcoin I have to trust every single seller, no way to charge back in case they don't deliverer. Multisignature escrow transaction you say? Well, now we are back at square one with trusted third parties.
I am from first world country with working banking system, Bitcoin is for countries with a lot of unbanked people you say? A system that needlessly burns electricity worth hundreds of millions of Dollars every year to provide anonymity no one asked for can hardly be the best solution.
People that are still into Bitcoin just haven't yet really thought things through, hope to capitalize on greater fools, are into some less legal business or something along that line. Half a decade ago I really loved the idea of Bitcoin but since then enough time has passed to really understand the system and its implications. He's dead, Jim.
I never seen Bitcoin as a way to be anonymous. For me it was always a decentralized way to handle transactions.
If I do a transaction through a bank, it take days to clear.
If I need to accept transaction, I need to pass through a merchant account or Paypal. There's no in between. Paypal like to freeze my account? Well too bad...
If I want to handle transactions lower than 2 cents, there's no way for it.
> I have to trust every single seller, no way to charge back in case they don't deliverer.
> I don't care, I never had any issues.
I agree with you, I didn't ever had any issues with my sellers either. I trust both my bank and them. It's not a trust issue, it's a functionality one. We are stuck with a limited amount of competition and they all work the same which is sad.
> A system that needlessly burns electricity worth hundreds of millions of Dollars every year to provide anonymity no one asked for can hardly be the best solution.
To provide functionalities, the same way computers "burns electricity worth hundreds of millions of Dollars every year". I'm pretty sure most way to handle transactions (cash, visa, etc..) burns millions of dollars every year too.
I think you're missing the point that Bitcoin is an interesting payment network, despite the fact that as a consumer currency it's not particularly useful. Regardless of whether you or anyone wants an anonymous digital currency, or whether Bitcoin succeeds as being the dominant blockchain network in the long run, there's no denying that it's an interesting and useful technology. I see many commenters on HN who don't seem to understand the difference between these.
It is an interesting idea, definitely. I can also easily imagine that a future cryptocurrency will see widespread adoption. But I can not see how Bitcoin or something build on top of Bitcoin or something very similar to Bitcoin could achieve this.
What I don't understand in your comment, what is the relevant difference between Bitcoin as payment network and Bitcoin as currency that may make it work in one case but not the other. Interesting, yes, useful in its current incarnation, I don't see that.
I find it difficult to call any system with >1billion market cap "dead". Maybe "soon to die", but it can't be called dead until it's no longer valuable, IMO.
Unsurprising that they've ceased to accept Bitcoin. The only significant use cases thus far have been ransomware and buying recreational drugs. And early adopters cashing out of the pyramid scheme.
The two key value propositions noted in the post are:
> Buy APIs instantly without signup or credit card
> Sell APIs instantly without a bank account
...which are solutions looking for a problem. If you are working with legal businesses and dealing with signup, credit cards, or bank accounts are deal breakers, then there are other significant problems with your business model.
We don’t have credit cards. At all. We use EC (the E in EMV), which is a completely independent payment system, but isn’t used at all outside of Europe.
So, no US websites accept it.
I’ve been trying for 3 years to find an actually free way to send Google money to get a Google Play Dev account, but the only way is to pay money to get a credit card.
Seriously, if companies in the US would just accept a fucking international wire transfer – globally standardized, free to send and accept, processes in a few minutes – I could use a lot more international services.
As for wire transfers, they are most definitely not free to send or receive in the US. Fees are on the order of $25 each way depending on the bank, and actual humans and faxed forms are involved.
I don't know how it is in Germany, but in my country you pay for credit cards, and the amount you pay for the card determines how much insurance you have, as most all provide some type of travellers/medical/theft/etc. type of insurance.
Everyone pays their credit cards off every month because it's the law. If you are unable to pay, you can work out arrangements with the bank. If you need to use lots of money you don't have, you ask the bank for a loan and pay it back gradually.
It's my understanding that in the US, card companies make their money off fees and interest, which to me sounds like a much less appealing system designed to take advantage of the consumer.
I suspect the fees+interest thing is mostly a cover story. As unflattering as it seems, I'd be unsurprised to learn that the three pages of fine print are a calculated display, to make it seem as though they're merely not-entirely-oriented-to-the-public-good but otherwise aboveboard private corporations. And it's not as if they don't get some income from putting the screws to those short on cash, but if that were the extent of it then I should never get a credit card offer, ever. My only credit history is on-time rent payments, and my employment history + no dependents + no college loans should make it obvious that I would never generate any income from late-payment fees or interest. And yet, I've received offers throughout my adult life.
But even if they never saw a penny of income directly from me, what they would still get out of it would be the data. And insight into the purchase habits of consumers with plenty of expendable income - the same people that would otherwise be a losing proposition for a business that actually relied on failure to pay on time to stay afloat - seems like it'd be far more valuable than the entirety of what they'd be able to squeeze out of the already-cash-strapped.
I'm actually highly impressed at the extent to which they're completely successful in focusing the public discussion on their "outrageous" and exploitative policies. They put on a thoroughly convincing show of fighting tooth-and-nail against regulations to reign in that behavior. But I think it's because, if it ever got seriously done, people would start asking how it was they were still in business - and they would definitely still be in business. But the finance operation is just how they collect the raw material for their actual product.
I think you have an interesting argument here but I would like to raise some points as counter-arguments:
1. Your argument is premised on the fact that since you personally have been offered a credit card, and you personally have almost no credit history, that therefore credit card companies don't make money from charging interest on late-payments. That's an absurd premise.
2. I believe, based only on my subjective observations, that you are the exception in your use of credit. Many people are irresponsible in how they use credit cards and end up paying exorbitant interest to credit card companies. Mostly lower-middle class individuals who are trying to live beyond their means. In Canada the average citizen carries ~20 000$ of personal debt (excluding mortgages) and the majority of that is credit card debt.
3. I think you're ignoring the "brand" value of having market saturation for your product. For example, Coke vs Pepsi. Yes they are not exactly the same product but they're very similar and there's no doubt that Coke has reaped a huge benefit from having dominant market share. When you go to a diner and order a burger, and they ask you what you want to drink, if you want a cola you say "I'll have a Coke please". Its understood by that request that you want a cola, and would likely be okay with either a Coke or a Pepsi, but regardless you said Coke, and there's the value of market saturation. So yes the credit card companies want to get as many customers as possible to use their product in an attempt to saturate the market.
4. Credit card companies also charge merchants for using credit cards so even if the customers paid all their bills on time the credit card companies would still be making money. I don't imagine they make the majority of their money from charging merchants but it is still revenue they want in their coffers.
5. Your final point borders on a conspiracy theory.
Perhaps. But it means that in the US banks pay you to setup credit cards. Rewards credit cards can have sign up bonuses valued in the hundreds of dollars. They also have annual fees though, but anyone without terrible credit can get a no fee card with a smaller bonus. Most credit cards pay yoy to use, in the form of cashback bonus or rewards. Insurance is provided without fee and to some extent by law.
Wire transfers are absolutely unheard of at the consumer level outside of things like escrow for a house.
This is why I prefer to work with international banks, even in the US. If they don't know what an IBAN is I don't bother. HSBC is pretty good in this regard. Minus the money laundering.
In New Zealand we also have our own card payment network (EFTPOS). It has the same problem of being unable to make online purchases, where websites only expect Visa/Mastercard.
Luckily all eftpos POS terminals have a quite strict protocol upgrade regimen, and in the last ~5 years or so, it's becoming more common to request a Visa/Mastercard debit card (for a low but non-zero price) instead of an eftpos card (free with a bank account).
Because they are usually aren't free in Europe. And it doesn't feel like a new market opening, it usually is just that single shop once every year.
And additional ancedata because I don't know whether that's a US <> Europe thing: Personally, the idea of going into dept for private consumption is completely foreign to me and most people I know, so the idea of a credit card is very unappealing.
Wire transfers OTOH are simple, practically free and fast enough (<1 day inside the country, ~1 day inside of Europe).
> Personally, the idea of going into dept for private consumption is completely foreign to me and most people I know, so the idea of a credit card is very unappealing.
Though I know many don't follow this rule, I never purchase anything on a credit card I don't have cash for. It's purely for the convenience factor (and the 1-3% discount on all purchases).
Here in the UK, one advantage to using a credit card (even if you don't need credit) or a charge card is that the Consumer Credit Act 1974 gives you a whole bunch of extra consumer protections that you wouldn't get if you paid cash or debit card.
The main reason I got a credit card initially was because when I visited the US, nobody understood what a Maestro card was.
In the UK, credit cards (and bank accounts) are free to open.
In the Netherlands, both bank accounts and credit cards require a monthly fee (€5 / quarter for a bank account, €17,50 / year for a credit card).
I have accounts in both countries and I rarely need to fall back on my VISA card. Indeed, online payments here use an NL specific payment system called iDEAL, which makes use of your bank's online banking - it's far faster than entering 16 digit CC numbers and can integrate with your bank's app on mobile.
In the U.S., it's easy to get a credit card that has no fees. (There are some cards, like the ones associated with airline frequent flyer points, that still have annual fees.)
In fact, some credit cards will pay you a rebate on your purchases. One card I have gives me back 1% of everything I spend (the credit card company charges the merchant 2-3%, so they still come out ahead). Since I pay off my balance every month and thus pay no interest, using my credit card actually saves me money over paying in cash.
US cards don't seem to have fees except "premium" ones that toss in a concierge service. Banks seem willing to give them to anyone that opens an account. Only fees I've known people to pay were for Amex ($99 to $5000 a year.)
Plus US banks give out VISA debit cards, making it a non-issue (well, security/chargebacks might be). Dunno about EU, but in Canada, this doesn't seem easy. I opened a business account, then asked for a VISA debit card and both the service person and manager appeared to be confused as to what that'd be. They insisted I could pay things using Interac (Canadian card network), with no concept this wouldn't work for online use. They kept thinking I wanted a credit card. Bizarre.
Maybe there's some huge cost to making MasterCard or VISA connected debit cards?
I haven't seen an annual fee on a credit card in the US for years. Also, every debit card I've had for the past 20 years acts as if it were a credit card. So any place that takes a credit card can get paid directly from my bank account without dealing with real "credit" at all.
"Also, every debit card I've had for the past 20 years acts as if it were a credit card."
Except that debit cards in the U.S. are not covered by the same consumer protection laws as credit cards[1], so it's harder to do stuff like disputing charges. It's also possible for an erroneous charge on a debit card to wipe out your bank account. For that reason, I specifically ask my bank to give me a card that does not work as a debit card, only as an ATM card.
[1] E.g., the 'Fair Credit Billing Act', a federal law that protects credit card transactions, doesn't apply.
I meant that it acts as if it were a credit card from the payment processing point of view.
I address the same problem by having multiple bank accounts that have small balances and auto-depositing my monthly budget for different things into them. If any one gets compromised (and the bank is unwilling to fix it), it doesn't take out my whole bank account. Plus it provides a nice "money into envelopes" style of budgeting that's very easy to understand.
If your card only works at the ATM, then how do you buy expensive things (something that costs more than the daily ATM withdrawal limit)?
There are a ton of cards that have fees, mostly American Express, but Chase and others too. The fees usually unlock certain benefits, eg: Amex Blue Everday will pay 3% cash back at grocery stores, or for $75/yr, they will pay 6% cash back. The Amex Gold Premier is $190/yr but offer $100/yr back in baggage fees and constantly run $25-100 off deals at Enterprise, Newegg, general travel expenses.
So whether these cards are worth it depends a lot on how you use your card, but, they can pay for themselves very easily.
You can always get a free credit card if you want. I got one for my Apple Developer Account. Many german banks provide a credit card bundled with the bank account and there are also free prepaid credit cards.
All of those require you to have taken at least one loan or credit in your life, or to have an income.
I’m a student, and I was raised to never ever go into debt – I never had a single cent of debt to any institution, the maximum I ever had to a single person were cent volumes.
I tried, seriously.
Even the "free" prepaid cards cost money (usually several euro) to recharge.
> Aufladungen sind der Höhe nach nur innerhalb der vereinbarten Grenzen zulässig. Für die Aufladung der Karte wird ein Ladeentgelt gemäß Preisverzeichnis verrechnet.
> Monatlicher Freibetrag: 100€ Danach: 1,5% auf Mehrbetrag
As far as I can see, that’s the only limit.
But, also, if you do not have money on the card, your contract is automatically cancelled, and they’ll refuse to reopen one with you.
> Das Kreditinstitut kann die erforderliche Zustimmung versagen, wobei insbesondere die Nichtzahlung des Aufladungsbetrages gem. Ziffer 5 ein Versagungsgrund ist.
Eef, I hadn't seen that yet. That's really quite a thing.
I'm pretty sure that for most legitimate businesses, signup is something they want and wish everyone could do. It helps them track and maintain customer relationships, which is becoming an increasingly essential activity in the age of loyalty cards.
A bank account is similarly desirable. It takes a large part of the task of safeguarding your funds out of the hands of an amateur (i.e., oneself) and into the hands of a specialist with strong fiduciary responsibilities.
A large percent of Americans get paid via check and then use a check cashing store to convert to cash, and then use that to pay for bread. You do not need a bank account in that scenario.
It's actually not. The US and the UK have the same percentage of adults using financial services (91%.) France, Germany, Spain, Luxembourg, etc. have a higher percentage; others have lower such as Norway and Portugal (and Switzerland!.) The average for the US and Europe is 92%. http://mckinseyonsociety.com/downloads/reports/Economic-Deve...
Not true - there is an initiative in the UK started years ago to phase out checks, but it faced a lot of backlash and delays and is not anywhere on schedule. Checks are uncommon in the US as well, by the way, but you can see from the statistics I linked that cash and checks are still used in both countries.
Not sure where you live, but how easy is it to cash checks at banks with whom you don't have an account? Apparently, check cashing outlets (CCO) handle substantial volume in the US and business is booming:
"Cashing a paycheck at a [check cashing outlet] gives customers access to their
money the same day. [Alternatively,] Banks limit access to $200 or so and can
hold the money for up to five days. Further, low-income and low-balance customers
get frustrated with a bank’s fees eating away at what little is in their
accounts or sending their balances more into the red with low-balance and/or
overdraft fees" [1]
About 8% of US households don't have a bank account. [1] The number seems to be slightly lower in the UK. I believe in some Western European countries it's required to receive government payments so the unbaked rate is lower in those cases.
And global remittances, store of wealth, international monetary system resistant to government and bank controls, to name a few other uses. It's amazing how many people are willing, even eager to dismiss crypto-currencies. The concept is so radical and revolutionary that it scares the shit out of a lot of people. It will take time for humans to catch up but if you think it's just a fad then you are deluding yourself.
"And global remittances, store of wealth, international monetary system resistant to government and bank controls, ..."
BitCoin might be taken more seriously if their advocates explained why any of those need to be solved, and how BitCoin does it better than the existing solutions.
Global remittance isn't something people need very often, and there are already solutions for it.
BitCoin is not a very great store of wealth. Keeping a box of cash under your bed is more likely to retain its value than BitCoin. Storing wealth isn't even a very good idea, though, and if a person has enough money laying around they'd be better off investing it anyway.
Finally, being "resistant to government and bank controls" isn't very convincing either, and I would hypothesize advertising it that way actually hurts take up by making it sound subversive. A drug kingpin would love a money system resistant to the government and the banking system, but what actual benefit does a normal person get from it? And is it even a true statement?
Problems are always subjective. I personally think that Bitcoin will revolutionize certain types remittance and cross-border global transactions, but I think it will happen quite slowly.
What bitcoin isn't that useful for, is this kind of internet microtransactions that Microsoft was accepting. Which is quite funny in a way, because I myself use Bitcoin for this kind of transactions, steam games, humble bundle etc. But it isn't really that I want to use specifically bitcoin, it's just that I happen to have bitcoin lying around, and it is easier to spend btc on this kind of items than other payment methods. People aren't going to buy bitcoin to use them on steam games etc, but they might use them for steam games if they already have some bitcoin.
Considering that what two three mining pools make up the majority of Bitxoin and can thus decide it's fate vs the number of governments and banks and being their varying policy I really feel like bitcoin is if anything more controlled. At the very least a cash transaction doesn't need to be okayed by a third party.
Also never having to deal with credit card fraud, sending money across country borders, taking cash out of 1/3rd of the ATMs in Thailand, buying computer parts, buying anything from overstock, ordering food directly from your computer without punching in any numbers...
If someone uses my credit card to buy something I didn't approve, I get my money back and I get a new credit card, all for free. It's annoying, sure, but also reassuring.
If someone steals my Bitcoin wallet and uses it to buy something I didn't approve, well, boo hoo for me. No doubt it's all my fault. Blame the victim, etc.
I'm much happier "having to deal with credit card fraud."
Does anyone have any idea why this is? Have companies moved on from considering Bitcoin something serious?
I imagine their Bitcoin code was too expensive to maintain relative to the transaction volume it brought. Could this be a sign of things to come from other companies that support Bitcoin, and if others follow in Microsoft's footsteps, does this impact Bitcoin at all?
My guess is that they gave it a try and the purchase volumes never materially compared to credit card payments. Integration was done very poorly. You had to go to a special link "commerce.microsoft.com" and click on a small, un-styled link at the bottom of the page called "Redeem bitcoins". It was never integrated in to their main purchase flow in an easy way. It couldn't be found just by chance. You had to google to figure out how to fund with bitcoin.
Edit: There are a handful of comments about price fluctuation. Microsoft liquidated to USD right away using a company called BitPay. BitPay would take on the short term price risk and Microsoft would get exactly what they quoted in USD. Microsoft was not subject to BTCUSD price fluctuation in this scheme.
If the Microsoft was liquidating bit coin the way planetjones describes, it was probably too inconvenient since the exchange rate (Bitcoin to $) would fluctuate so unpredictably and wildy (at times) there was no way to reliably exchange bitcoins for the exact amount customers were charged.
If the exchange rate was too low, MSFT would lose money. If it was too high, they'd be breaking a number of very basic but important laws that are designed to protect consumers.
Microsoft did liquidate to USD right away using a company called BitPay. BitPay would take on the short term price risk and Microsoft would get exactly what they quoted in USD. Microsoft was not subject to BTCUSD price fluctuation in this scheme.
That said, just by eyeballing some graphs at Coinbase it looks to me like the exchange rate was a more volatile back when Microsoft started accepting Bitcoin than it is now. Which isn't to say that they couldn't reasonably decide that it's too volatile, but it does seem odd that they'd do so while the volatility's dropping rather than increasing.
I'm inclined to guess that all the BTC in the news just led them to a more fundamental reconsideration of their bet that it is (or will become) a viable unit of exchange. There are a lot of take-aways you could get from recent events that might lead to that decision, but the most fundamental one is simply that it's become clear that a huge portion of the people controlling Bitcoin's future don't want it to become one.
I wouldn't be surprised if they had a contract with a payment provider that was just too expensive for the little to no revenue that came in via bitcoin. Other than people that got bitcoin early there are not really any bitcoin users out there.
Also pretty sure that handling refunds and customer support for failed payments must have been pretty involved.
But, and I mean this in a nice way, why would people consider Bitcoin to be something "serious" in terms of an actual currency? It is always on HN but it is like an interesting hobby for them, I guess. I also understand there are startups that have built "businesses" off of it, but it is sort of reminiscent of those businesses that sell the currencies from MMORPGs.
I think Bitcoin is really meant for geeks to play with and argue and start massive flamewars over zero-knowledge proof engines and all this kind of stuff, rather than an actual real currency of the world. I guess there is an element of something like Goldbugs, but we were discussing being "serious," right?
Microsoft seem to be more interested in Ethereum [0]. They introduced an Ethereum blockchain-as-a-service offering on Azure [1] last year, and they are working with R3 [2] and some other Ethereum-using players in the much-hyped blockchain space. They seem to have decided that Ethereum is a better solution than Bitcoin for a broad set of applications, and they're probably right.
I do think Microsoft's move is indicative of growing disaffectation with Bitcoin. Bitcoin's community has been a cauldron of discontent for the better part of two years now. It's a mess, but it's not just about the blocksize. What most scares investors and technologists is that Bitcoin's development team appears to be beholden to the interests of a single company, and still worse, has disavowed making basic changes to the protocol. But basic changes are needed to enable many of the sorts of things that people dream of doing with blockchains—at least if they're going to be done with Bitcoin's blockchain.
Meanwhile Ethereum and several other competitors are maturing into good alternatives. Ethereum is a much nicer platform for programmatic money. Dash [3], Monero [4], and new projects like Zcash [5] are in some ways technically superior to Bitcoin as currencies and payment networks. At the same time, many speculators have fled bitcoin, fearing a gridlocked community and technical stasis; they've put their money into other crypto-assets, driving up their valuations. The price of ether, Ethereum's underlying asset, has skyrocketed lately, to a valuation of over $1 billion. About half a dozen altcoins have risen enormously in value over the past several months, and higher valuations bring more interest. With more interest comes more use, and with more use comes more infrastructure; Bitcoin's first-mover advantage narrows.
There was a time when I thought Bitcoin would be able to incorporate proven technical improvements from other systems, and by maintaining its technical competitiveness in that way also be able to maintain its network effect. I no longer think that. If Bitcoin can't purge its demons, other systems will out-compete it.
Microsoft seems intent on supporting Blockchains as a service, but that doesn't mean that they're going to accept them internally on a business level.
Microsoft's Blockchain platform on Azure currently supports Bitcoin, Bitshares, Ethereum, Emercoin, OpenLedger, Ripple, Factom, Eris, Coinprism, and more.
Just because they now support Ethereum as a service doesn't mean that they're validating Ethereum and plan to incorporate deep within their business units. It also doesn't mean that they think it's better than Bitcoin.
On a personal level, I'm quite excited by Ethereum and am more and more dejected by Bitcoin these days.
I don't think these companies ever considered Bitcoin as serious currency. More likely it's more about publicity and maintaining an image of being on the techno hipster edge.
There really aren't any outside of the normal. A company like Microsoft isn't holding the bitcoin they are immediately exchanging it so it is no different than taking USD since they don't make any gain or loss on the BTC.
In which case there's really no point to them using bitcoin. If they're converting it to USD immediately, they derive no benefit by using a decentralized currency.
Sure they do. There is no charge back or fraud risk for the merchant with Bitcoin. It lets you service customers that might otherwise be too risky because they happen to fit a profile that correlates to high fraud risk.
It's not just that. By accepting bitcoin, even if you change them to USD right away, you run a currency risk if BTC suddenly loses value. Also, when is a BTC transaction validated? Yeah, they have eventual consistency, but doublespending is actually possible. How long must the chain be after a transaction for it to be valid? These are nontrivial questions and tradeoffs that the store owner has to do about risks.
Transactions are valid only when you trust you have the longest chain. If a longer chain comes along, you may abandon the shorter chain and believe the longer chain.
Exactly. But when do you trust you have the longest chain? It could be that by some stroke of misfortune or malicious manipulation, a shorter chain suddenly catches up. Is a chain that is 10 links longer safe? As I said - eventual consistency. But when is eventually? This is a real issue for BTC transaction validation.
If the senaro you describe were remotely possible BitCoin would not exist. A chain more than a couple of blocks behind has almost no chance of catching up unless over 50% of the hashing power consolidated on the shorter chain. Since miners automatically abandon short chains and it is in their best interest to do so this is extremely unlikely.
As colejohnson said, the difficulty. The network, as a whole, expects to generate 1 block approximately every 10 minutes. Someone with less than 50% of the network power will never be able to sustainably mint a longer chain of 'fake' blocks before someone else mints a legit one.
> As colejohnson said, the difficulty. The network, as a whole, expects to generate 1 block approximately every 10 minutes. Someone with less than 50% of the network power will never be able to sustainably mint a longer chain of 'fake' blocks before someone else mints a legit one.
If you look at the blocks mined you can see that there are plenty of mining groups that manage to mine consecutive blocks: https://blockchain.info/blocks
Mining a few consecutive blocks isn't enough. All it itakes is one known block to cancel all the witheld blocks. Additionally, the attacks you can perform by extending a known chain a few more 'fake' blocks are minimal.
Usually, 1 confirmation is enough. 6 confirmations is considered enough for any amount. Most exchanges are comfortable with letting you use your coins in 2-3 confirmations, and they tend to be very high risk businesses in the space.
Almost certainly just low volume. Most merchants offering sale by bitcoin had little to no use.
And it makes sense, most bitcoin owners bought to speculate. Spending bitcoin isn't that different to just selling the bitcoin and spending with actual money, so if they weren't going to sell their bitcoin, why spend their bitcoin?
It's not like middlemen payment processors were avoided, most companies accepting bitcoin actually just accepted through a third party who would liquidate it back to money directly.
Adding a Bitcoin payment option is not "free," since there is non-technical overhead opportunity cost/QA/support involved with adding Bitcoin payments, even if using a payment processing API eliminates the technical overhead.
Probably the support overhead especially. The most popular Bitcoin payment provider (Coinbase) apparently fails transactions and requires manual intervention if they don't receive them within 15 minutes, and I'm not sure what they mean by receive but it happened to me despite sending payment within a couple of minutes of starting the transaction. Per the docs, they don't send any kind of API callback if this happens, just an automated e-mail telling the vendor what happened.
Of course, that's an ongoing cost so it kind of makes sense to add Bitcoin for the publicity and then remove it later.
Accepting BTC via a company that converts it to USD immediately is great for high-risk operations. Like, suppose you sell VoIP online to anyone. You're going to have a ton of fraud. BTC allows you to work with legitimate companies and re-sellers without having to worry about credit checks.
It's also handy for light hiding of your ID with respect to the store. If I purchase some degenerate online service from a company and pay using BTC, the chances of _them_ getting my actual name are far, far, less than if I use a credit card in my own name. (And buying prepaid cards is more of a hassle.)
Especially if you factor in refunds. Stripe, for instance, does immediate fiat conversion, so a refund will pretty much never be 1:1 Bitcoin. Imagine what happens when price shoots up, and customers ask for refunds, thinking they'll profit off of raised Bitcoin price. You'll either have pissed off "customers", or your store will quickly turn into nothing but an arbitrage tool.
My understanding was that companies accepting bitcoin like Microsoft just liquidated the BTC straight to USD anyhow. I don't blame them because of the fluctuation risk.
However, I am not sure they were really helping bitcoin's long term viability - other than allowing the Bitcoin millionaires to spend their coins. I suspect not enough of these people who got rich by holding bitcoins were using their bitcoins to justify having it as a payment method in the Microsoft store.
Confirmations are not required for casual purchases. The amount of luck and effort required to double-spend an unconfirmed transaction greatly exceeds the value of casual purchases. Bitcoin confirmations are more akin to the months during which you're allowed to contest a credit card purchase, except instead of months, it's between a few minutes to an hour.
Sitting there waiting for confirmation for a bitcoin purchase for a videogame is like waiting for the credit card company to reassure you that the transaction is now irreversible.
Why is the time obscene? It usually takes 45 days for confirmation if you pay via a credit card. Compare that to about 60 minutes for 6 confirmations on the Bitcoin blockchain, and it's orders of magnitude higher.
You aren't actually comparing the few seconds it takes to swipe your credit card to 60 minute Bitcoin confirmation I hope. It's about 'reversibility' of a transaction - for a Bitcoin transaction to propagate takes about the same time as a credit card swipe to propagate.
Edit: Wow why the downvotes? Seems like people here don't understand the first thing about how payments work in the real world. The funds are not 'confirmed' instantaneously. If someone walks into your store and pays you $1000 with a card, you can't say withdraw it in cash in 2 seconds.
It takes about the same time for a 0-confirmation Bitcoin transaction as an 'unconfirmed' card transaction.
> I suspect not enough of these people who got rich by holding bitcoins were using their bitcoins to justify having it as a payment method in the Microsoft store.
That's the problem with fixed, deflationary currencies....no one wants to spend them.
Liquidation usually incurs a fee. Once you add up the buyers fee to convert fiat-> Bitcoin, the Bitcoin transaction fee, and the seller's conversion from Bitcoin->fiat, Bitcoin's marginal cost benefit over credit cards is slim.
As miners become less subsidized by block rewards and must rely more on fees for covering costs (and/or full blocks cause a spike in Bitcoin fees), it seems like the cost-per-transaction may swing in favor of fiat payment schemes.
Ugh. I use Bitcoin to buy and sell Team Fortress 2 items, because it doesn't have the counterparty risk that something like Paypal has (and it also has lower fees for the time being).
Using Bitcoin also has the advantage that I can transact with it even in countries that Paypal doesn't support, and I don't have to worry about the Paypal account freezing bs that shows up in tech news from time to time.
Also it's not true that using it for illegal activity is a bad idea - the evidence that Ross Ulbricht was ultimately found and convicted on was his internet activity not related to Bitcoin. If you do it right and use mixers properly, you can make Bitcoin untraceable.
So actually, Bitcoin is usable for both legal and illegal purposes, which is a gold standard for any currency.
As lines blur between nations and international commerce becomes routine, there will be a need for global currency not subject to an individual nation's laws.
It is possible that just associating with Bitcoin makes the consumer more skeptical.