PayPal’s Support Is the Best Thing That Could Happen to Bitcoin | Hacker News Reader

PayPal’s Support Is the Best Thing That Could Happen to Bitcoin

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41 pointscyphersanctus17 comments

I think bitcoin has had as much media attention, excitement and such as it could have possible hoped for. Most of it was dues to the rapid rise in value/price, but regardless it has a crapload of mindshare now.

Now what we need is for people to start using it to transfer money or buy goods and services. That I haven't seen as much of. That's what it will take to make Bitcoin stick.

I think what we will see before general user adaption is going to be businesses finding ways to use it. Stellar is a good example of something I believe is a good next step which will help build a backbone that will support the transfer of money or buy goods.

I know Stellar is not 100% "on philosophy" in the sense that it still centralizes and isn't decentralized in the puritan sense of the word, but it is taking an open protocol approach which is going to make it many times better than the current bank/credit card companies.

Yeah, this is absolutely right.

Most payment processors are immediately converting Bitcoin, due mostly to volatility. When it comes down to it, these businesses are going to have a tough time doing anything other than marketing to Bitcoiners.

In addition, even if a business identifies a non critical revenue stream that they can siphon off, there a not a lot of goods that can be bought with BTC.

I would guess where this will go is into the service economy. Marketing, web design, graphic design, and programming are all going to be important first steps.

if I'm any given bitcoin user (which I'm not), what incentive is for me to actually use it for those purposes?

It's "deflationary" and "free" (in quotes because every day new coins are created out of thin air, and because the actual cost of processing each transaction is ~$25-40)

Let's assume it's deflationary. I'm way better off convincing others to spend it while I hoard as much as I'm able to.

The more you believe in bitcoin the less reason there is to ever spend them.

> and because the actual cost of processing each transaction is ~$25-40

Where did you get that quote from?

If you divide the miner rewards by the number of transactions processed in each block it works out to $25-40(usually closer to $40) per transaction that miners are paid.

Though almost all of that cost is spread between everyone holding bitcoin not the person doing the transfer.

Then that quote is meaningless.

As I see it, rewards belong to "the system" which spends them at ~25BTC/10min at this moment. Rewards are not created out of thin air, they're there anyways, and if your BTCUSD is based only on total BTC circulating you're doing it wrong (I know you're not GP, just a generic "you").

What I'm interested in is how much each transaction actually costs to miners, since eventually the reward will have to add up slightly above that cost or Bitcoin is doomed.

>if your BTCUSD is based only on total BTC circulating you're doing it wrong

Thats how it works. Supply which is the number circulating and demand. The supply keeps going up with every block. Bitcoin needs to find ~$1.6m of new demand every day to stay at the current price.

>What I'm interested in is how much each transaction actually costs to miners

I'm not sure what you mean here. How much it costs a miner depends on how many people are mining which depends on the price. It scales and generally sits around break even though there have been long periods(many believe now is one) where almost all miners will be running at a loss.

what incentive is for me to actually use it?

You want a taco. I'm selling tacos for bitcoin. Trying to convince me to spend while you hoard will not result in you eating one of my tacos.

If you won't accept real money for your taco I'll find someone who will, and very easily.

If you sell the best tacos, you can charge whatever money you want.

Wonderful. Now we can take the excellent customer service and responsiveness that PayPal is known for and apply it to something with even less regulation than the quasi-bank niche they sit in currently!

What could possibly go wrong?

Paypal regularly close/freeze funds for customers, putting many many businesses out of business, causing all sorts of issues

This can not be done with your "quasi-bank niche", until it happens to you you dont realise how shitty Paypal can be, and if they block you altogether you are effectively cut off from being able to spend money online, well this was the case until bitcoin came along

Long live bitcoin

I'm not sure why I got down voted - maybe the sarcasm was not quite sarcastic enough? We agree - Paypal's service sucks, and seeing them handle something that happens to have less regulation than they have now can not possibly be a good thing in my mind.

Actually Braintree (child company of Paypal who is offering this) actually has good customer service. Hopefully it doesn't go to shit (as, for example, ODesk's has since the Elance "merger").

That title has two different meaninings, depending on what "support" means. Both are true.

So, then all those Bitcoiners who curse PayPal as the biggest enemy should stop at once as it serves them well?

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