PayPal goes crypto-currency with Bitcoin eBay's PayPal business will start accepting the crypto-currency Bitcoin for payments “over the coming months”. The move confirms rumours that emerged in August that the online store was in talks with Bitcoin processor Coinbase. Those talks involved Braintree, which the company acquired early this year, and according to …
Paypal isn't accepting bitcoin. They are accepting real money from Coinbase when you give Coinbase your bitcoins. It's the same unnecessary middleman scheme that Overstock, Newegg, Dell and others are doing. It's just going to be a matter of time before coinbase and bitpay runs out of VC capital and the whole "we accept bitcoin" thing implodes.
"Paypal isn't accepting bitcoin."
So that being the case, isn't all this really just the Bitcoin boosters offering companies revenue that can be portrayed as "accepted Bitcoins" for the purpose of generating Bitcoin momentum? That would be very helpful if another big cash-out/rip-off is in the works down the road...
It seems to me that Bitcoin acceptance and Bitcoin momentum are good. The fact that these latest developments are using a middleman doesn't mean that other desirable functions of Bitcoin don't still apply.
That said, how is Paypal going to deal with chargebacks? Bitcoin doesn't support that.
They are accepting real money from Coinbase when you give Coinbase your bitcoins
should be
They are accepting real currency from Coinbase when you give Coinbase your bitcoins
It's a subtle but rather important difference you ought to be aware of. The authors of that link naturally have a business reason for making you understand this, but they are correct, and it's good to recognise this difference when a government is messing around with currency. IMHO, Bitcoin is also a currency.
Pretty much really.
or the alternative is it slowly drives down the price of bitcoins leaving the payment processors with a mountain of coins they cannot shift without taking a huge loss on.
As more places start accepting them the people sitting on large stashes are going to start cashing out and releasing them back onto the market - the question is who's going to be buying all those coins up??
BitPay / Coinbase usually sell the coins they get within one hour after they received them... They have $$$ in their hands even before the company who they're providing the service for. It's not like they're just leaning back and going "ah whatever, it'll work out for sure".
Happy to accept cowrie shells if everyone else does..
And therein lies the rub.
Credo. I believe,. I trust.
Credit. Trust.
Incredible. Unbelievable. Not to be trusted.
Who do you trust more? Casino Bank, Government, Ebay/Paypal or a cryptographic algorithm?
These days most people probably pick the latter, despite the NSA.
Some form of crypto currency is going to be the next thing that shakes breaks and remakes global economy away from the interfering hands of governments and banks, and actually destroys the need for retail banking.
I don't know if you could even get most Reg readers or any other self-selected group of techies to say they trust it. The idea that "most people" would trust a cryptographic algorithm over the US government, large bank or Paypal is laughable. Most peope don't even begin to understand what the foundation of bitcoin is, but just know it has "something to do with computers" and therefore in their minds the same viruses and bugs that affect them could affect their money.
The only reason any non-techies have got involved in bitcoin is the hype. They're chasing the next big thing, like they chased the dot com bubble, flipping houses, and gold before it. When the next big thing comes along to distract their attention, bitcoin will be in the past from their perspective just like day trading.
If you put your money into bitcoin or other non income-producing assets that are dependent on what someone else values them in the future, you are in speculation, not investing
Picture the world’s entire gold supply melted together into a cube 68 feet (21 meters) on each side valued at $8 trillion. For the same amount, an investor could purchase all the farmland in the US, 11 replicas of Apple Inc or 20 Googles, and still have about $1 trillion of walking around money.
A century later, the farmland will be producing valuable crops no matter the currency, and dividends from the companies would probably add up to trillions of dollars. The 170,000 metric tons of gold will be unchanged in size and still incapable of producing anything. You can fondle the cube, but it will not respond.
Apologies to Warren Buffett
"assets that are dependent on what someone else values them in the future"
So that would be all assets ever. Including any conventional currency you care to pick, given their value in trade for goods and services as well as against other currencies changes all the time.
Any item be it a posession or currency is only worth what someone else will give you for it.
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