Microsoft Store doesn't accept Bitcoin anymore
windows.microsoft.com
windows.microsoft.com
It is possible that just associating with Bitcoin makes the consumer more skeptical.
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.
The conclusion was not scientific.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
No personal information is involved, so no personal information is leaked.
Payments are minuscule, so the risk of single transaction is very low.
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.
Oh please.
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?
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.
The illegitimate use cases are already proven.
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.
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.
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.
But the way it is, I can’t.
There are a few (very few) that does not have an annual fee though.
You don't pay annual fees for your credit cards?
So whether these cards are worth it depends a lot on how you use your card, but, they can pay for themselves very easily.
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.
Neither is bitcoin, so pretty sure that's irrelevant for this discussion.
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)?
I have credit cards for buying things.
How often do you go over 4000€ and pay for it at point of sale?
Usually, you sign a contract, and wire the money to VW or wherever you bought your car, or you wire it to the bank where you bought the shares.
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?
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.
Nope. Actually, they pay me at a rate of 1-5% cash back on all purchases made on the card.
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).
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).
I wouldn't pay for one though.
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 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.
Or pay more like 200€ a year for one with better protections for your money, which I’d get for free with EC?
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.
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.
Wire transfers are absolutely unheard of at the consumer level outside of things like escrow for a house.
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.
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.
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.
https://www.wirecardbank.de/fileadmin/user_upload/wirecardba...
> 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.
https://www.wirecardbank.de/fileadmin/user_upload/wirecardba...
But indeed, it’s a very ideal card, for a German bank. I’ll bookmark it.
Absichtlich verwirrend geschrieben.
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).
The majority of, if not all, government benefits are paid directly to a bank account.
It is essentially impossible to live as a functioning adult without a bank account in 2016 in the UK.
"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]
I've never written a cheque in my life. We're phasing them out by 2018, apparently. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8414341.stm
I think I've only ever received cheques twice, both times were gifts at birthdays from grandparents (80+ years old).
But the US isn't especially unique.
- you run a low margin business and don't want 3% of everything you make to go to Visa
- or you don't want to eat the cost of credit card fraud
- or you live in a country that makes business banking more difficult
- or you can't have the possibility of fraud or charge backs (like selling precious metals, higher end jewelry etc)
- or you don't want to be gouged by credit card processors for a legal business like porn or marijuana...
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."
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?
What controls this?
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
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.
By December the same year the price "[had] crashed to $600, rebounded to $1,000, crashed again to the $500 range. Stabilized to the ~$650–$800 range."
Here's a graph showing the rate from July '13 to June '15:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Bitcoin#/media/File....
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.
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.
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.
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.
I wonder about the accounting and tax ramifications of transactions done in Bitcoin.
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/ethereum-blockchain-a...
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.
1. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/ethereum-blockchain-a...
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 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?
It is too much effort for "a bit of buzz."
Of course, that's an ongoing cost so it kind of makes sense to add Bitcoin for the publicity and then remove it later.
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.)
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.
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.
Authorising the card is instantaneous and the funds can be settled into your account within a couple of days.
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.
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.
That's the problem with fixed, deflationary currencies....no one wants to spend them.
It's proponents claim that it has all sorts of uses, but the only thing people actually use it for is illegal activity.
Since the Ross Ulbricht trial, it has become obvious that even using it for illegal activity is a bad idea, as it's easily traceable.
I am not just a proponent; it just so happens that bitcoins are a convenient form of international internet money for me.
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.
How people use is not its intrinsic property.
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.
I wonder how much they spent implementing their ability to accept bitcoin. Probably more than they ever made in profit.