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Comment by FireBeyond | Hacker News Reader

Seems like a horrible and arbitrary idea. What is it meant to achieve? Send a bitcoin to an address? View a block?

HTML5 started off well, but is beginning to morph into a cargo cult of 'cool': the return of mystery navigation, "swipe to navigate", many others.

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Clicking the link just opens the client which handles it any way it wishes. However, the Bitcoin URI scheme is documented pretty well already: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/URI_Scheme

bitcoin is not the first whitelisted scheme [1], we already have irc, geo, mailto, magnet, mms, news, nntp, sip, sms, smsto, ssh, tel, urn, webcal, xmpp.

[1] http://svn.whatwg.org/webapps/index#whitelisted-scheme

According to the link in the comment:

"The purpose of this URI scheme is to enable users to easily make payments by simply clicking links on webpages or scanning QR Codes."

Source: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/BIP_0021

You have given reasons that support the idea that this is arbitrary, but why is it horrible?

Are we going to have to whitelist every currency that will exist in the future? At least have a pay: schema so you do pay:bitcoin.com/... or something.

Most scheme designate a protocol not a action.

Do you suggest that we should have the same scheme for HTTP and HTTPS because in the end both return you a resource ?

Same for ssh: and telnet:, same for xmpp:, msnim:, facetime:, irc:, skype:, etc ?

Exactly. Needs another layer of abstraction to handle competing crypto currencies. BTC was the first, but won't be the last.

Something analogous to the way magnet URIs are used as an extensible scheme for peer-to-peer filesharing links?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnet_URI_scheme

Right; perhaps it would be better to introduce a generic URI scheme for paying:

    pay:?currency=btc&address=1BlaH&amount=1.0

Then you need some standardisation on what 'currency' is anyway, and if you use ISO 4217 you shut out Bitcoin.

Are we going to have to whitelist every currency that will exist in the future?

Why not?

Why stop at currencies ?

Are we now going to have evernote, dropbox, flickr etc ?

No. Evernote, dropbox and flickr are all services implemented by a single organization each. You could just to use HTTP to link to a flickr profile. Bitcoin is decentralized. It is like a protocol. Each user can have his wallet stored in a different service, or even in his computer. The spec allows a wallet service or an application to add itself as a handler for bitcoin: links. Similar to mailto:, the user can choose the application which can listen to those links. It could be gmail, or thunderbird, or outlook.

Its like a protocol but if it was a protocol it could be used by different currencies. Just because it is distributed does not mean it cannot have a URI to identify some metadata about the currency being used.

My point is.. you can have any application or service to handle bitcoin address clicks. You can choose to open your wallet service on any website, or an application which manages your bitcoins stored in your hard disk. It isn't a HTTP link, and there isn't some central web service to transfer bitcoins.

> Its like a protocol but if it was a protocol it could be used by different currencies.

Um, it is.

paypal:// ... googlecheckout:// ... etc://

Both paypal and googlecheckout are implemented in one way. It is not a protocol. Only the service's website can handle the request for payment in those currencies. Bitcoin is decentralized. The user can install/associate any service/application to send bitcoins, much like emails using mailto:

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