Hacker News Reader

Comment by mapgrep | Hacker News Reader

Could someone explain to me what appeal is left to Bitcoin once you get rid of anonymity?

There must be some, given all the trackable-as-dollars implementations I've seen lately, like the Bitcoin debit card and this, which is actually less anonymous than dollars (since you're sending under an account that has your real name per the Facebook TOS).

From my naive standpoint, it seems like you're exposing yourself to a lot of value volatility and to a relatively complex and uncommon processing system. Why not just use PayPal, Stripe, whatever?

View on HN

One of the biggest reasons I think bitcoin has real value is that you are suddenly in complete control of your spending. If I spend 10$ in bitcoins at target and then they get hacked it has no real affect on me. If I swipe my credit card at target and they get hacked then I have been exposed to a great deal of risk.

Not to mention the fact that no third party can be compelled to freeze your account or manipulate it in any way.

Of course all of that falls apart if you trust a third party.

I don't understand your first argument.

If you knowingly give your details over to a phishing attempt, then yes, you bear the loss. Otherwise, any loss of monies from your bank account through hacking or identity fraud will be borne by your bank. Granted, it would still be a hassle, but I am not really at risk if a website which has my details gets hacked and my CC number gets stolen.

>Otherwise, any loss of monies from your bank account through hacking or identity fraud will be borne by your bank.

Hopefully. Sure in an ideal world, you get your money back. But the real world sucks. And if you do get the money back then you have to get a new CC and go through that whole process.

Bitcoins also means that to spend online you don't have to give someone total control of your funds. My chase checkings account was put on hold and my card cancelled when I bought Bitcoins from a friend using Chase Quickpay. I had to meet with someone, in person, and get an entirely new card. Just because Chase didn't like the way I had spent my money. No one had attempted a refund, or complained. Chase just noticed the email was associated with lots of Bitcoin sales and closed my account without informing me. With Bitcoins you don't need to give a 3rd party that much power just to be able to spend money online.

Just because if everything works perfectly then you are eventually isolated from the risk doesn't mean that there is no risk. There are real costs to identity fraud even if the financial ones are eventually corrected for.

Imagine that I am traveling abroad and only have one bank, if someone broke into my house and found my routing and account number then I would have to get new ones. As I am traveling abroad I will have to continutally have access to money to simply have a place to stay. Suddenly something that you are saying isn't a risk to me is really fucking up my trip and even has the potential to have me sleeping on the street.

Bitcoin provides a different way to deal with the risk, it lets you control almost all of the risk personally, of course this means that if someone does steal your bitcoins from you, you are fucked. No third party to protect you, but also no third party to mess you up.

They serve different purposes.

While we plan on supporting our current product for the long-term, we are very interested in experimenting with a number of ways that people could interact with one another using bitcoin.

The risk of creating new products is great enough as it is. The added risk of building certain kinds of social financial products on top of existing payment methods and currencies doesn't make it worthwhile.

By building on top of Bitcoin we're able to offload an incredible amount of risk. The very nature of Bitcoin protects against double-spending and other kinds of fraud that keep PayPal and MasterCard so busy all of the time. At the same time, building software that relies on those companies is almost lunacy due to the fees and regulations. You've got to applaud what a company like Venmo can achieve with these sorts of limitations and roadblocks.

In a matter of weeks we were able to make something similar in scope to what would have taken substantial effort on the part of a company trying to do it without a cryptocurrency network.

We're very happy with the results of our first experiment as it seems to have created immediate value for people.

We're going to experiment with a number of concepts related to how people interact in a financial manner that build on the engagement that we're already seeing. Stay tuned, we're moving very quickly, and we'd rather give you something than promise you something.

I think a big advantage of something that accepts bitcoin through something like this is that even though the "normal" case is the same as things like paypal/stripe, it means that the backend supports bitcoin and can easily accept "raw bitcoins".

If you send money to a friend, they receive immediately.

They receive the bitcoins immediately* (in 10 minutes, after it's confirmed by the network), which the IRS considers property. If they want money they have to convert the bitcoins to local currency and wait for a payout to their/a bank account.

I was thinking more of sending money overseas. Remittances.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com