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Comment by jlgaddis | Hacker News Reader

Honest question: is there legitimate demand for this for legitimate reasons?

I was big into Bitcoin about four years ago and work for an ISP nowadays. We provide services as well and I've considered mail/web hosting/VPS/dedicated offerings (on a small scale) with Bitcoin as a payment option but I don't want to end up attracting the "wrong type" of people.

I realize that there are people who simply want to be anonymous and I'm totally fine with that (I do run Tor relays, for example) but my fear is that the majority of customers this would attract would be those that are "up to no good".

Thinking out loud, perhaps a mail hosting service payable with Bitcoin would be a good way to test the waters -- that is, we could take care of domain registration, DNS configuration/hosting, etc. and allow access over Tor for those looking for "anonymous e-mail" (although I'd be implementing pretty low limits on volume, at least initially).

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There are plenty of legitimate reasons to pay with BTC. I love how friction-less and easy it is, especially if you get partially paid in BTC as well for your services. I love https://bithost.io and I guess you could ask Scott if he had any problems so far.

He gives you a limit of 2 instances (droplets) on signup. You can then open a ticket and explain what you intend to do and he gives you the desired number of servers. I give him access to the apps I'm working on to remove any doubt and be transparent.

I always think that malicious people find entirely different ways to get what they want without even thinking of payment. Hacking a box for example.

Thank you :)

Define "legitimate reasons". One reason someone might be interested is that my billing information would not be available in case of a compromise of the billing system (which happens). Also, nobody can social engineer information out of a hosting company that the hosting company doesn't have. There are plenty of people who are totally legit that have "unpopular" opinions or are worried about crazed trolls.

Do you do anything to stop people from signing up with Visa gift cards under a fake name?

I honestly think you probably wouldn't have too many problems if you didn't target the low end of the market, made it clear that you won't put up with abuse, and maybe required a deposit to get service that'd be returned after X months or forfeited for abusive behavior.

> Define "legitimate reasons".

For the most part, pretty much anything that isn't against a standard terms of service.

> There are plenty of people who are totally legit that have "unpopular" opinions or are worried about crazed trolls.

I agree and understand. Those folks aren't who I'm worried about.

My biggest concern is the "abusive" folks, to be honest. Abuse of any type wouldn't be tolerated at all but I am all for freedom of {expression,speech,...} and wouldn't care what the service was being used for as long as it was legal.

Requiring a deposit isn't something I had thought of before but that might very well be a good "deterrent".

I think the standard thing is to charge more if the customer pays via Bitcoin, and to expect payment in 3/6/12 month lumps rather than a month at a time.

This could help to deal with increased customer service costs (abuse handling), and to price spammers out of the market.

Yeah, that sounds reasonable too.

There are already mail providers that take bitcoin, but I don't know of any that will manage your domain for you. (E.g. mailbox.org takes bitcoin or envelopes with cash in them, but you have to configure your domain DNS yourself.)

Some (definitely not first-world) countries have pretty large taxes to foreign purchases. We've > 35% in Argentina. BTC skips that (though BTCs have been getting harder to come by here).

I'm sure it's not the only place.

Also, people without a credit card.

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