Seamlessly Buy with Bitcoin using Zinc | Hacker News Reader

Seamlessly Buy with Bitcoin using Zinc

blog.zincsave.com

44 pointsmkx25 comments

This looks awesome, as in, too good to be true. I don't get it...who's paying the difference?

And why would you not charge for a service like this? You're providing a service people should find valuable.

EDIT: I just checked the FAQs on the website and I'm still not convinced. Coupons? Promotions? What if I already maxed out on coupon codes? What if there are no more left?

We also source from other vendors. So you may order via a Walmart checkout, but find that your item comes in a box from Target. This is the largest source of per-order savings.

I'd be so confused when that box showed up.

That's great, if it works. Will it scale? Not so sure.

Anyway, not trying to kill your vibe. Prove the haters wrong. This is great if you can make it work. Charge money though. You deserve it.

Curious how Target/Walmart would feel about that. Do you have any initial feedback? Like sibling comment from aarondf, I would also be confused as a customer.

I can't find the exchange rate they use. It always makes me nervous when that isn't clearly shown.

Thanks for the feedback! It is the current Coinbase SELL price: https://coinbase.com/api/v1/prices/sell

We'll add it to the order confirmation page soon!

I'm still looking for an exchange where I can buy Bitcoins simply with a Credit/Debit Card. I hurriedly read the title as:

Seamlessly Buy Bitcoin using Zinc

Missed the "with"! Anyone else wanting this? Or if it already exists, can someone point me there?

The problem with cards and Paypal is chargebacks. You can't get your coins back if someone cancels his currency transaction.

Most people don't abuse them, but a handful does, and that's enough to wreak havoc.

The only way this could ever work safely is if you partnered with a credit card company prepared to treat a record in the blockchain as sufficient proof to refuse a chargeback.

Or if you treated credit-card bitcoin purchases as options. On the surface it's not a good idea for someone to accept credit cards for bitcoins, but why can't I use my credit card to purchase BTC at the current rate for, say, April 15 delivery? Of course, now I have to trust the seller to follow through, but that's a tractable problem that can be solved with either reputation-based trust or escrow services.

I like this. Do you know how long one would have to wait for chargebacks to be no longer an option?

At a minimum, chargebacks can occur months later. The chances of a fraudulent chargeback would go down the longer you waited, though the changes of a legitimate "why don't I have my product yet" chargeback would likely go up.

Haha!

I think it's a pretty solid way of establishing "delivery". But Credit Card company supporting BitCoins, that doesn't sound too probable, since easy availability of BTCs could be a threat to Credit Cards.

Buying a cryptocurrency with a credit card is expensive, and AFAIK the online merchants who accept cards for digital currencies don't distinguish between credit or debit cards. The companies that accept cards are going to charge you fees to cover the risk of a reversal (remember if you reverse, the exchange rate may have changed significantly since the original transaction making their managing their cash flow much more complicated), plus you may incur international card fees depending on who the merchant is, and they're still going to charge you their normal spread over and above this.

(This is true for fiat currencies too - cash and cash equivalents are a special case of purchases, and can attract cash advance fees, reward exclusions, etc. Try reversing an international credit card payment some time, too, you can be out by as much as 5-6% in fees even though the charge was reversed!)

If you want to still want to go this route you could try buying Second Life Lindens (SLL) at e.g. VirWox and using those to buy Bitcoin (BTC) - of course you're going to pay the spread twice, making your BTC even more expensive.

You can do this on Coinbase

I guess when you get to a point where you have enough volume with specific retailers ( e.g., Amazon ) you can start negotiating a discounted price if you pay cash. So the savings could be sustainable at that point (potentially). I wonder how you get there though.

They are even giving you money back. Awesome

I was hoping this would be a payment gateway that accepts bitcoin.

Is this Zinc.io that never finished?

Seems too good to be true...

different from what snapCard offers?

Well, for now at least, they're not charging the extra 2% that snapCard takes.

Doesn't seem very innovative.

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