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Comment by NicoJuicy | Hacker News Reader

Time to donate https://www.videolan.org/contribute.html#money

Thanks VLC team for all the good years !

I love it when the Bitcoin QR code is just right there. Donated 10mbtc

Ditto, I donated 5 mbtc. I love the zero-friction experience of paying in bitcoins. Click the link, instantly opens my wallet, type amount and hit send. Done.

No need to wait for a slow site to load and having to click through multiple confirmation screens (Paypal)...

Paypal is two clicks now. Click buy on the site you are buying from, PayPal loads and logs you in automatically, confirm the amount and click pay.

God forbid you attempt a donation to a party PayPal doesn't like, they will just seize your assets.

I can only talk about Paypal from the payer side it's virtually frictionless in my experience and transactions can be disputed via Paypal or my bank. Buying and using bitcoin adds a number of extra steps as well as transaction costs in moving dollars into bitcoin as well as giving me no dispute mechanism.

Paypal is pretty frictionless, but it still takes ~15-20 sec to do the 3 clicks through 3 slow-to-load Paypal pages (1: paypal button, 2: page to specify amount, 3: confirmation page). By contrast, a click on the Bitcoin address opens my local Bitcoin wallet which opens up instantaneously, and clicking send is also instantaneous. Total ~3 sec. The difference between ~15-20 and ~3 sec is enough to make me prefer BTC over Paypal.

I don't need the ability to dispute: I am not going to change my mind later about this donation.

I don't need to buy BTC: like many bitcoin users I already have some in my possession, ready to be spent at any time.

How long does it take for the payment to go through ? What's the fee ?

For a donation transfer speed doesn't matter, but for actual purchase it's a lot more than 30 s last I've tried

The payment is broadcasted instantly (1-2 seconds). Fee can be as low as $0.10-0.30 (eg. these donations to the VLC address https://blockchain.info/tx/99ee82b2b8f33ee22c6c51ff4ba198141... https://blockchain.info/tx/d056b36bdb81f70cf344d4489ba337ad1... https://blockchain.info/tx/445ba8e7559a4f83bcd7fd7adac30cf9f...).

It's important to understand the difference between a broadcasted transaction (tx received by most Bitcoin nodes, "0-confirmation", 1-2 seconds) versus the transaction being included in at least 1 block ("1 confirmation", ~10 minutes). Some merchants accept 0-confirmation tx, while others require 1 confirmation. But in almost all cases it's fine to accept 0-confirmation transactions:

• ordering physical goods online (an order takes more than ~10 minutes to be shipped & delivered anyway)

• ordering virtual goods/services (eg. paying for VPN: the vendor can simply cancel the service if the tx is never confirmed)

• any low-value real-world transaction (eg. paying for groceries... no one will bother with a double-spend attack to steal groceries)

• etc

PayPal also collects money in the name of charitable organizations not affiliated with PayPal who didn't ask PayPal to do so.

If they don't check with PayPal to discover this the money is given to a different organization.

Wait, what? How is that legal?!

Until they freeze your account or ban you for some silly reason.

Thanks a lot. Really cool.

I couldn't decide how much to donate, so I decided to donate RANDBETWEEN(1, 50) euros.

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