Comment by aianus | Hacker News Reader

Comment by aianus | Hacker News Reader

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> Chargebacks are a form of consumer protection. Eliminating them benefits the merchant, at the expense of the consumer.

I wouldn't have to do any chargebacks or get my card replaced if I'd made my purchase with Bitcoin instead of sending my credit card details to a merchant which subsequently gets hacked. Also, competitive merchants would have to pass on the cost savings.

> Yes, that sucks. But how often does that happen?

Seems to happen pretty often. Target, Sony, etc all pretty recent.

> Yes, forex trading and gambling are absolutely fantastic to do with bitcoin. But this reinforces the argument that bitcoin is a speculative financial asset, rather than a currency used in day-to-day activities.

I don't mean trading or holding bitcoin. There are many people who trade forex (like oanda.com) and gamble on sports or poker (like betfair.com) every day. The current payment methods make it difficult and expensive to deposit and withdraw on those types of sites because of VISA and MasterCard's rules and duopoly.

I guess your argument is then about security. Your funds are as secure as whoever is holding them, whether it be in bitcoin or regular fiat through CC.

If you place your bitcoin on Coinbase, Bitpay, an exchange, or even on your own local wallet/cold storage, and one of these gets hacked (e.g. a hacker gets access to your private key), your funds are gone forever.

If you give your credit card info to a merchant and they betray your trust and charge you, you will 1) not lose your funds because you'll just charge them back, 2) they will be blacklisted by their credit card provider if chargebacks are too high. So this incentivizes merchants to not charge you illegally if they want to stay in business.

The Target, Sony hackings were indeed unfortunate, but they are exceptions rather than the norm. And they can also be likened to the many exchanges and wallets that have been hacked in the bitcoin world. Except in the latter case, consumers could not get their money back.

"There are many people who trade forex (like oanda.com) and gamble on sports or poker (like betfair.com) every day. The current payment methods make it difficult and expensive to deposit and withdraw on those types of sites because of VISA and MasterCard's rules and duopoly."

Yes I agree with this. Trading and gambling is really easy to do with bitcoin. And yes it's a nightmare with fiat. But I think most of these issues are due to government regulation (which is expected for these activities).

The Target, Sony hackings were indeed unfortunate, but they are exceptions rather than the norm.

No, they're just the high-profile. Credit card hacks are happening constantly. A quick Google search shows crafts store Michaels (3 million CCs), White Lodging Services and Creathe Group (5 million CCs), all just announced since March. Last year, Adobe lost more than 100 million CCs.

There was $11 billion in CC fraud just in 2012!

And they can also be likened to the many exchanges and wallets that have been hacked in the bitcoin world.

Exchanges are not comparable, the only people who need to keep money there are traders.

As for wallets, that's true, but the difference is that there's only a single place with the data, instead of dozens or even hundreds of retailers each with a copy of a single CC. You'll probably never have a single wallet service with dozens of millions of accounts, such as Target, Sony and Adobe had.

Except in the latter case, consumers could not get their money back.

Anyone who thinks that comes for free is naive. You're paying, alright. Just indirectly.

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This doesn't mean Bitcoins are the answer. For example, here in Portugal, we have had sane push-based payment mechanisms for years, and requiring credit cards is thankfully rare. But I've never seen such a service work internationally.

The difference is people stealing all those credit cards could only use a very small number of them before they were all cancelled/replaced.

If someone broke the security on a wallet hosting service they could clear out every customer completely instantly with no recourse.

>You're paying, alright. Just indirectly.

And so are bitcoin users that shop in most stores that also accept credit cards. It's priced in for everyone.

> And so are bitcoin users that shop in most stores that also accept credit cards. It's priced in for everyone.

You can get 3% cashback for using Bitcoin on gyft (and by extension Amazon)

I can get 3-6% off the price plus 2% cashback by using one of the other gift card companies.

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