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Comment by rick888 | Hacker News Reader

"People were misconstruing our acceptance of Bitcoins as an endorsement of Bitcoin"

They may not think so, but buy accepting it, they are endorsing it.

I think you and the EFF are using different meanings for endorsement. Yes, by accepting it they were saying "we recognize that these BTC have some agreed-upon value and may be exchanged for good or services", and that is one type of endorsement.

What they do not want people to take away, though, is an explicit or implicit statement that "we believe in what bitcoin has set out to do, and lend our [moral] support to the effort" and possibly furthermore "we believe this is a legal thing to do and that it is a freedom we will fight to defend." Those statements, explicit or implicit, are a different type of endorsement.

A couple months ago someone posted the story of a coffeeshop that takes many foreign currencies as a gimmick, to cover over the fact that they don't take credit cards.

Do you think they're endorsing the Chinese yuan?

There's a difference between passively making a payment technique available and actively promoting it to people. By conflating the two, you're opening yourself up to all sorts of ridiculous claims, like the one above.

That is awesome. I've got 20 Euro's lying on my desk and I won't be going back to Europe anytime soon to spend it.

I'll give you 1.80 BTC for those 20.00 EUR.

Sorry, I don't deal with imaginary currencies.

BTC or Euro?

I will buy "imaginary" currency from you.

Unless you only take payment in trade, you deal almost exclusively with imaginary currencies. All currency is fiction to streamline an economy so we don't have to expend an inordinate amount of time and effort in a barter system. Most currency isn't even printed, just numbers in computer systems, sometimes with a dead tree paper trail.

Sure, but there is a real system in place that specifies that I am able to get milk per litre for 2 EUR, and purchase a coffee at the local coffee place for 3 EUR, not only that during that entire time I am able to have paper in my hands which has "value" because EVERYONE considers it to be valuable.

I can't do the same with Bitcoin, I can't have paper in my wallet, I can't go trade it for real goods right now. There is a lot of fluctuations in the price of Bitcoin, since it is entirely virtual it can easily be attacked and there are no systems in place for me to get my Bitcoin back if there is a fraudulent transaction.

I'll give you 2.0 BTC!

Absolutely, they are endorsing the Chinese yuan by acknowledging it's a legitimate currency. Why do you think countries make such a big deal about who has embassies with whom?

If you accept a currency, you are implicitly saying "I agree that this thing you have given me has value."

This makes sense for a material currency, where you wouldn't want to be burdened with useless paper rectangles or metal coins. (Same thing for an embassy, by the way, which has a non-zero cost.) But for donations with a digital currency, I think it was reasonable to hope that they could just publish a Bitcoin address just in case without endorsing it for real, because the cost to receive Bitcoin is essentially zero. (Keep in mind that you don't even need to run the software anymore, you just need to keep a copy of the private key somewhere.)

This being said, the EFF's choice is cautious, but sensible. (It's just slightly annoying to see Bitcoin labeled as a "product or service", whereas it's supposed to be a protocol.)

The overhead of keeping BTC is probably low, but what happens if they lose that private key? How many people have access to it, what's the protocol for using it, ....? I know if someone sent me some BTC there's a good chance they'd be lost to the world forever.

And then people will throw a hissy if you aren't "using" their donation. Maybe their choice of the faucet can be viewed in a different light. They are using the donations to promote and ensure a bright future for bitcoin by spreading the wealth. :)

"I agree that this thing you have given me has value."

Can we agree saying this is measurably different from saying, "I would prefer it if you paid me this way."?

OP from way back when was claiming the second thing, not the first thing.

Link? Was this the place in the Fremont neighborhood in Seattle?

Canal Street Coffee: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2625129

Such an arrangement of payment in a different currency might fly in the US. But I am guessing such stunts in the top two populous countries can get you arrested?

edit: s/pretty sure/guessing

Whether or not accepting it was seen as an endorsement, this is a pretty strong unendorsement considering recent events. So much so that it feels like another nail in a coffin.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com