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What some people don't understand about BTC
randvegeta
Member, Host Rep
We accept BitCoins, and as a hosting provider, you learn to appreciate a number of benefits you don't see with many other payment methods. I will list a few:
1.) It's non reversible.
2.) Clients paying with BTC are genuine clients (of course they can still abuse the service, but that seem's better than being 'robbed'.
3.) It can still be completely automated. So unlike bank transfer, cheque or cash, your automated systems can really take care of itself.
Still, there seems to be a number of misconceptions that some people struggle to get over.
To those who don't know. People, please understand that BTC transactions are NOT INSTANT OR FREE.
Transactions take time to be processed and need to be confirmed several times by several miners before the transaction can really be 'confirmed'. This could be done quickly but generally speaking it happens within 15-45 mins. The speed of which transactions actually occur very much depend on the fees levied, where smaller fees tend to be processed slower.
I have lost count of the number of times we have been told that an invoice has been 'paid' but the status has not yet been updated. In every (BTC) instance, it has always been the case that they just needed to wait a little longer to get the confirmations. In some cases, I have seen transactions 'pending' for WEEKS because the fees were set too low.
BTC transactions are also NOT FREE. Typical transaction fee (in USD) is more than US$0.50 at the moment. Certainly still 'competitive' by Paypal/Credit Card standards given the fee broadly flat, but it exists none the less. And this can complicate certain things as if you send a payment without accounting for the fee, then you may end up with insufficient funds to cover an invoice.
We had a client who has a $7 invoice but only $6 was received as they a.) sent the wrong amount, and b.) did not account for the fees. The following $1 payment also ended up being mostly going to fees.
BTC has it's place, but I don't see how it can really become mainstream given the limitations of the system, and the fact that 99% of people won't be able to understand it.
Comments
True, but 99% of people don't want to understand it in order to use it, that is the real issue. If the masses were going to adopt it then it needs to be as easy as a Paypal payment.
Happens same to use with BitPay client open ticket sayings payment is sent but Invoice still says unpaid just 5 minutes after placing the order.
But that what Support Ticket are for. Probably will take another 2 Years once clients get more experience with BTC
I understand it but rarely use it, because as a consumer, Paypal is better. I'm not a chargeback kind of guy, but it's nice to have some credit card protection.
You guys seem to think that paper money was adopted instantly.
There is a transaction limit for the entire BTC network. The more people that use it, the longer it will take to process transactions. Similarly, the most expensive it will become, not only in terms of USD as a result of a rising BTC value, but in BTC itself.
BTC, in it's current form really cannot realistically be used in the same way as Paypal or Credit Card can.
BTC is much more like gold. You can probably buy a few things with gold, but in practice, it's actually quite difficult.
When you say 'paper' do you mean fiat? Or actual paper? Because if you mean actual paper, it probably was adopted instantly.
There were better reasons to adopt it than there ever will be for BTC.
I wouldn't call violence a better reason, but it surely was a stronger reason. I'd too change my gold to paper if the penalty was decapitation.
Too true. Imagine if we all had to use gold for currency...
Paper. Paper was fiat from the start (well, maybe not from the very first month, but you get my point). And it wasn't adopted instantly, of course not.
Before paper were coins. Not all coins were gold and silver. But carrying tons of metal around was probably a bit tricky. Paper money was a way of carrying large amounts of value without actually having to carry it. And if it is made legal tender, then it must be accepted :-). So I'm pretty sure that it was adopted instantly... pretty much.
But BTC can never be widely adopted so... it's kind of moot.
That is correct. And gold/silver coins progressively contained less and less valuable substance than their face value. Fiat money existed by governments looooong before the printing press.
Partially correct. This is how paper money originated in Europe. Wealthy people deposited the money for storage into banks, banks gave them receipts, receipts were trade-able and exchanged at face value (as an aside, guess what the bank realized they could do shortly after).
This means that adoption was slow and very limited.
That came centuries later. I'd call that a slow adoption
As I said, if someone puts a knife on your neck, you trade your gold with whatever.
We already know a method for forced adoption, who knows what our masters will decide in the future
There are technical limitations which make widespread adoption impossible. So its not a matter of force. Its like trying to count to 1,000,000 in 10 seconds. You can try but you'll never succeed.
Currently there are technical limitations. It's just a matter of maturity of the technology. It's not going to be today's btc that gets the wide adoption.
And then we built computers and they can count to 1 mil in much much much lower time than 10 sec
We are waiting for Segwit or BU. Once we get Segwit, we can activate the lightning network and our transaction limit problems are literally solved. Or you could vote for BU and get bigger blocks but this is bad in my opinion.
The reason why we don't have Segwit or BU right now is because there is a huge war between the two communities supporting them. This war is currently at a stalemate so none of these solutions can activate yet.
No, the more nodes are in the network the faster it goes. That works for Tor too.
If using BitPay, there are addresses whitelisted that have invoices paid the moment they are sent
Wrong wrong and wrong again.
Transaction confirmation speed is dictated by number of miners and fees of transactions, more nodes in the Bitcoin network simply means transactions are relayed faster to other nodes, which means nothing unless the tx is already confirmed / mined in a block
beenz
flooz
btc
one of these virtual currencies currently still exists
the fact that we cannot even agree here is proof widespread adoption will be impossible.
Yes, there are solutions to the problem. But it requires the communiy to agree to change the underlying technology.
The blockchain (technology) will survive, and be used for years and years to come. Im not convinced that we can still call it BTC though.
Does the entire blockchain still need to be rebuilt, reread, and rebuilt for the minor changes and forks which may or may not follow the direct schema? Either way, really, it's just spergfodder.
Do not hate BTC.
I do understand why providers sometimes prefer BTC payment.
However, I seldom use BTC.
The problem is you need to buy Bitcoin first.
Sometimes I may need to wait for a couple of days if I use sofortüberweisung or bank transfer payment gateway to buy BTC.
Paypal does not allow to buy bitcoin directly.
In general, I don't like online credit card payment.
If the BTC payment gateway can charge my bank account directly, I will be happy to give it a shot.
If it can charge your account directly, then BTC is kind of unnecessary.
An exchange may do that. QuadringaCX will fund from Interac online.
Update on the client who tried to pay $7 but only managed to pay $6.
Seems that whatever system they use to make payment, takes out a fee FROM the payment itself. Takes out exactly 0.0008 from the transaction (which is about $1). So they paid $7, and we received a fraction over $6. They then made 2 separate payments, again, $1 each, and we receive only a tiny fraction of that $1 again, meaning there is still almost a dollar outstanding. And yet, the client has already paid $3 in fees. Seems they would need to send almost $2 to cover the outstanding balance + the transaction fee.
A rather unfortunate situation for our poor client.
personaly i use bitpay.com and i convert all tranzaction directly to eur (i dont need btc) , i am verry content because no fees to transfere in bank , also the fee/tranzaction what i pay is 1%.
I use CarrotPay and BitPay. The $1 fee was not charged by our gateway, but by whatever system the client was using.
I set my prices in USD and then allow customer to pay in BTC. CarrotPay and BitPay handle the conversion so I need not worry. CarrotPay is based in HK so it's easy and cheap for us to withdraw to our HK bank account.
CarrotPay is a bit more expensive (3%) compared to BitPay (1%) but it's more convenient for us to use Carrot.
I do not know exactly how the client got into the situation he is in. Obviously there is some manual processing on the client side as the amount transferred was less than the amount 'requested' by the gateway. So the charges were on his side, not ours.
Indeed. But one has to wonder why he didn't know how his chosen service worked. I mean he saw what happened the first time, and then he expected things to be different the second time. What was he thinking?
I just don't want to wait such a long time before I can pay my service.
Customers change their mind when the payment process is time-consuming.
Besides, I remember I did a lot of researches before my first time BTC payment.
My point is, BTC is not as convenient as Paypal. This is a trade-off.
For the transfer fee, I also hit a wall with my first payment. Some Euro cents was missing. I needed to send a few more cents and wait for another 45 minutes.
If the payment gateway can list out the estimated transfer fee and estimated time to arrive, it can help.
You mean some gateways don't tell you what you have to pay in order to pay the right amount? Surely one doesn't just keep guessing until it's right. I suppose one could just pay double, and then ask the vendor to refund the excess. I'm starting to think that paying by Bitcoin is just plain dysfunctional.