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Accepting BitCoins
SimpleNode
Member
How many of you accept BitCoins? How do you accept it?
Why do you accept it? Why don't you? How popular is it?
Do you transfer your funds back to your bank account as USD via. a BitCoin exchange? Do you just spend them at other BitCoin-accepting vendors?
Comments
Think it varies on a case by case basis, though some people will simply set up a unique receiving address to automate payments (since you can watch the network for confirmations of payment to a specific receiving address automatically).
Personally if I were using it more often, I'd probably try to get it converted as soon as possible due to the amount values fluctuate, which is where something like BitPay would come in handy, but so far I've only accepted it on a case by case basis and spend it back towards services that accept bitcoins. (there's a handful of folks that accept them).
We just started accepting it for VPNs and will probably open it up to shared/reseller but their is a %5 charge as a bit of insurance for market fluctuation.
Can someone hit me with some knowledge and let me know -why- you would want to accept BitCoin?
I'm genuinely curious.
@MannDude
It's like a currency. Why not accept it?
Also as an alternative form of payment that can't be reversed, frozen or charged back, almost as good as cash from a seller point of view.
Because there are other, more legitimate methods of receiving payments? How are you protected as a buyer or seller with bitcoins? What is your recourse if purchasing something with bitcoins and not getting the service? Regular merchant accounts allow you to do something usually.
I'm genuinely curious though. I personally don't know a lot about bit coins, as I find paper cash money to be my preferred currency. Can't buy a gallon of milk or carton of eggs with bitcoins.
wow...
Not sure how cryptocurrency is any less legitimate than actual cash, the only real difference is that it's not centralized and inflatable like a government made currency.
But as you said, you don't know much about them.
You know what I mean. I was just genuinely curious as to why someone would accept bitcoin payments or who would want to purchase a service with it as compared to the more well known and 'legitimate' methods of payments. With PayPal, I've never had any issues. I can quickly/easily transfer to a bank account. If I purchase something and do not get it, I can dispute it. As a buyer and sometimes a seller (domains), this is important to me.
Nothing mind blowing about that.
Well like I said earlier, for some things not everyone has the greatest luck with say paypal or other methods of online payments.
Also since you can convert BTC back to a government backed currency such as USD etc (since there's people buying it, or thru sites etc). It's yet another way to make money from people who have the coins so to speak. In a way I kind of wish I had kept the 136 or so BTC I had when it was originally around 0.35 USD per (now it's around 12.50 USD per BTC), but least when I sold em off it was around 6 per so I made a profit.
PS: I personally haven't really taken the dive into them, but the idea of not having all my eggs in one basket is appealing, especially in a format that I control.
I will never drink the kool aid that BitCoin is...
Pepsi doesn't seem to be working too well either...
@kbeezie - lol
well, you could
If you look hard enough you can, there's of course a few services (in another thread) where you could even charge it's equivalent value on a debit card.
well i don't really like the idea that your bitcoin may only be worth only half of what it is now in a few month's time
Lol. Just lol.
By doing due diligence or using some kind of (possibly hypothetical) service that insures you against problems.
You can't chargeback.
The same as when purchasing something using cash and not getting the service. Being a pain in the ass towards the guy that owes you something until he coughs up.
Seriously, why do people keep making these baseless assumptions? A grocery, whether online or brick-and-mortar, could easily accept Bitcoin. Hell, Bitmunchies used to sell food for BTC, and I think the only reason they closed down was because noone was interested in it.
Better get rid of those dollars and euros then. They seem to have taken a larger plunge over the past few years than Bitcoins did.
@SimpleNode have a look at BitPay, we use them, they convert it to USD or a few other currencies or you can chose to have the funds in BTC itself.
If you convert it to USD or any other currency you have the option to withdraw it to bank directly.
Backtracking, I should've probably been a bit more elaborate in my response to @MannDude about "legitimacy", instead of just "lol". Apologies for that.
Bitcoin is not illegal. It is not based on debt. It is not printed in any amount at will. It is not centrally manipulated.
Every single unit of currency in the Bitcoin system can be verified in terms of integrity via cryptography. It's impossible to just print extra money because you feel like it, Bitcoins can only be generated according to the preset algorithm (which is designed to prevent inflation by adjusting the 'difficulty' when the total mining power in the network increases). It cannot be manipulated by a single entity at will. It is possible to represent Bitcoins physically, just like cash dollars. The economy as a whole can be audited independently by looking at the public blockchain.
US dollars are based on debt. The majority of them only exist as an entry in a database, that can be changed at will, without any kind of independent integrity check. A US dollar can be duplicated, printed, and copied at will. The US dollar is controlled by a single central entity, of which you cannot be certain that they have your best interests in mind. There is no independent auditing of the economy as a whole. Inflation can run rampant without any designed measures to prevent it (all of the measures that should prevent this are based on human intervention and can, as such, fail).
Virtually every government-issued currency has the same characteristics as outlined above for the US dollar.
if you know of a currency that is more legitimate than Bitcoin, I'd like to hear which one that would be.
Oh, like the Dollar/Euro/Sterling?
bitcoin = virtual cash
It's a boy's dream: send cash over e-mail
"Cryptographical cash" would be a better term.
Not even close
bitcoin = alternative currency
While I personally do not support or agree with bitcoin, the amount of uninformed, knee-jerk reactions here are amazing. Bitcoin has the same flaws as the worlds fiat currencies, probably some others, but it is no less fake than the dollar/euro/sterling, which all are 100% fake.
An economy would not work with something 'real' when it gets so big.
10,000+ years of gold/silver as currency would beg to differ.
Any reasoning behind that claim?
I've considered accepting it but seeing the amount of abuse we receive from customers paying via Liberty Reserve. I have my doubts on what will come of it.
Are you addicted to Kool aid?
Sounds more like you need stricter fraud/abuser checks.
It's already strict enough. No matter what we try to do to prevent abuse from people that pay via LR someone will find away around it. Liberty reserve is just like Bitcoin there is no possibility to chargeback or dispute.
Someone could come with the apparent intention of running a blog or a personal website and attempt run a spam script or booter instead. There really isn't a viable way of putting restrictions on a person paying with a certain gateway without putting it on everyone which isn't fair for the legitimate user.
What are you using for fraud checks? I'd imagine the major triggers are related to things that aren't the payment processor (name, address, IP, etc).
The first step is Maxmind which is set to (Reject Country/IP Mismatch, Anonymous Proxy and high risk countries and anyone with a risk score higher then a set amount etc..) Other then that we keep an eye out for suspicious looking Names/email addresses and hostnames.