Bitcoin Forum

http://corner.squareup.com/2014/03/square-market-accepts-bitcoin.html

http://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/2014/03/31/why-square-bitcoin-integration-big-deal/

great!

and nobody even noticed amid the china panic!

yet the sellers are exhausted in the face of disaster.

the fundamentals are catching up fast!

Fast is right. I would not be surprised if this spurs Paypal to adopt bitcoin in a few months, just in time for the next big rally.

how would paypal accept bitcoin? just as a deposit and witdrawl method? but i feel that would defeat the purpose of paypal i tought bitcoin would remove paypal from the scene

who gives a shit, no one actually uses Bitcoin to buy stuff. Only ones doing are the bitcoin millionaires few who want to avoid taxes

They could make it another payment option alongside Visa, MC, Discover, etc.

It would have been better for VHS manufacturers to start producing DVDs than try to ignore them and cling stubbornly to old technology.

Paypal could sell BTC at a markup like coinbase, and they would probably become the world leader in online BTC wallets. People trust them. Not everyone wants to manage their own private keys (sad, right?) but at least paypal can offer the world class security. Maybe I'm just naive, but I think they should offer bitcoin services rather than bury their head while it destroys them. Knowing capitalism the way I do, the most likely scenario is funding an anti-bitcoin lobby in washington.

Assuming Square does not have a bad experience with bitcoin, I think the cat's out of the bag on this. Paypal will find they are losing marketshare to Square and will conclude that it will be more fruitful for them to adopt bitcoin than to lobby against it. It wasn't THAT long ago that Paypal was the innovative kid on the block ... surely they haven't COMPLETELY forgotten those roots!

I never heard of Square before. It is tiny compare to Paypal but it might get a bigger deal in the future. As far as I understand they specialized in mobile payments and this will be a deal in the next years...

Yeah, few days ago when this news appeared it was the first time I heard for Square. But it never hurts to have new kids on the block  ;D

I think the reason this is not a bigger deal like it would have been a few months ago is the IRS ruling in the US about bitcoins.  Since any exchange of them is not considered a capital gain/loss type situation it really hurts BTC as a currency.

Still on balance a good thing.

I cannot believe why this IRS ruling is a big deal. A few days ago the FED said it had no influence on Bitcoin because it is no money. And money is defined as a medium of exchance,store of value, unit of account and measure of value. Be serious. What of these function provide Bitcoin at this point? Maybe it is a high risk store of value (investment) and medium of exchance? Nowerdays you only buy something with Bitcoin as an experiance. I can remember that guy you drove 100 miles to a Subway just to pay with Bitcoin. This Subway had it since 1-2 weeks and this was the first customer to buy stuff with bitcoin. Now, yes, Overstock was a bigger deal but for Europeans not a real option. I will not buy with Bitcoin if it is cheaper to cash out and buy at Amazon.com...

So calm down. At this stage you have to be a dreamer to see Bitcoin as a currency rather than commodity. That Germany saw it as currency (like the UK, too) is rather lucky. Or the decicion makers there see more potential for the future^^

So after all, this IRS ruling was no news after the FED ruling.

I agree that the IRS ruling is not such a bad thing.

I mean, think about it. If we were back in 2011 and hashing out a list of the 5 most likely attitudes of the US government towards bitcoin as of 2014, this (bitcoin as a commodity) would probably be the number one best of all possible outcomes. What more could we expect, honestly?? Treating it as a currency would actually result in a HIGHER tax burden. And in the early days, many bitcoin enthusiasts thought that bitcoin would be seen as an existential threat to the dollar (because in their eyes, it WAS an existential threat to the dollar) and it would be outlawed.

The market right now is overreacting to bad news - even taking favorable news and making it bad. In a few months, it will be overreacting to good news (again), and the cycle will repeat itself.

oh i get it now. that would be cool. and it would probly make paypal more money  win win situation

^This.  Merchant adoption is an illusion to keep people believing in the "moon" delusion, but the general public is catching on to the pyramid promotion model, and they aren't buying.  At the end of the day, people can't spend what they don't have.  

Lots of small businesses accept Square. It's used a lot at farmers markets and for people who want to accept physical CC cards (they give a free card reader that plugs into your smartphone's headphone jack) without the hassle of signing up for a merchant account. My barber accepts it, and I just paid a cab driver today using it. It's pretty common in the US.

They may not have bitcoin yet, but they will buy some and use it when they realize its advantages. And I'm not talking about investment potential. Here are two:

1) Payment processors like Square will probably offer a discount to people who pay using bitcoin instead of credit cards. They are able to do this because they can avoid paying 3% to the credit card companies. Fundamentally, the technology behind bitcoin is superior to the legacy credit card system and that is why it will win this battle.

2) They can buy stuff without entering any of their personal information. That means that when they buy porn, it won't show up on their credit card statements. And when they go to Target, they won't worry that their credit card info is going to get stolen.

Great ... Some new to stop the freefall of prices...
if Paypal accepts bircoin.. It will be its biggest step in the history and will get bitcoin to more people. Also the price willget over 1000

1)  My debit card doesn't cost me anything to use.  Buying Bitcoin costs me 1% or more to get and that's if the price hasn't crashed by the time it clears Coinbase.  So, accepting all that risk, paying more and maybe getting a discount, is a non-starter.    

2)  Porn?  Is that really the best you can come up with.  ::)  

The tech is sound.  Satoshi solved the double-spend problem and now it can be duplicated into useful solutions.  Bitcoin isn't useful because people don't buy Bitcoin to spend them.  The buy them to hold because that's the message Bitcoiners push.  "Buy and hold"  This means poor distribution of Bitcoin and most people will never have them to spend.  Cryptocurrencies are here to stay, it's just going to be something that actually has a clue what it takes to make a useful currency.  Actually, Dogecoin (as crazy as that sounds to me) has a better chance at mass adoption by the general public, because of it's wide spread capabilities and it's usefulness to people.

It's not the feds that will kill Bitcoin, it'll be greed and monetary ignorance.

Someone doesn't understand how supply and demand works.

A lot of people don't understand supply and demand.  What does that have to do with a currency actually being useful to people?

As with any new technology, there will be early adopters, late adopters, and everyone-in-between adopters. You're looking at things from the viewpoint of those who will be the late adopters. Fine, someone's gotta be last. The early adopters will think that sure, the price may crash, but then again it may go up too, the latter being more likely. And as time goes on, the volatility will decrease. You say maybe getting a discount. In fact they'll either get one or they won't, and if they do, they'll know it. The merchant, who HATES paying credit card fees, is incentivized to market bitcoin to them so that the merchant can avoid the credit card fees.


It's not the only example I can come up with. But it's a damn good one. So in the words of Ron Burgundy: "Don't pretend that you're not impressed!" ....  ;D

http://31.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lz7rdkWIx11r8xshmo1_500.gif

PS It's a good example for two reasons:
1) Easy to understand the motivation for someone using bitcoin. No esoteric economic arguments needed. In fact, I think even Dogecoin community would get it ... Such motivation. Much privacy. Wow.
2) Historically, much of the early growth of the Internet was through porn. Like it or not, if it catches on in the porn industry, it helps lay the groundwork for more mainstream uses.

I haven't heard of square before myself but this seems to be interesting and attracting a lot of attention so neat

Although the first comment I read is that its an April fools joke in which case that would be in bad taste

OH DAMN need to watch out for tomorrow fake news feeds lol

This is cool, quite a few smaller merchants in
Victoria (Canada) accept square.i

Can't be an April Fool's joke ... they announced it March 31.

I hope so as well but that was cutting it a bit close  ;D

How this make sense? A April joke can announced a day before, there is no rules. ::)

Good news.

Could be bearish in the short term, but in the long term, it's bullish. tl;dr: buying opportunity.

Good news
hope this great news help BTC prices climbing up again

Porn is really a good argument. And other digital goods. Imagine you are a porn producing company. You are faced with several websites which offers porn for free but likely in a bad quality. But this is changing (I heard from a friend *harrumph*). So because porn is the thing everyone uses but is ashamed to say that often, there are no advocates in the parlament arguing there has to be done someting (other than in the music industry).
So let's pretend you click download on a high quality 30min porn and what do you see? An QR-Code with bitcoin address which wants 50Cent or 1$ in bitcoin from you. Hell fuck yeah, I want to see that movie! Ok maybe I will find it with searching the internet but I want it now. So fuck it. I pay! Just to avoid credit cards which can see my wife maybe I would pay per credit card too, but I want to abo (subscription).

Same with music. One dollar for a whole album is better than zero dollar. Or movies. Let's pretend you want to watch a movie with your friends or girlfriend in high quality. Yes, there are services like Amazon, netflix etc. but many people don't have and want this.

The target it occasion buyers.

I really wonder why the pornindustry is not doing this. My friend would use it...

The other point: Bitcoin has to become the money of internet. I don't see paying with Bitcoin in the supermarket in the near future. Why should I buy Bitcoin (1% fee) + risk to - maybe - get a small discount. Large comapnies don't pay high fees. Walmart pays maybe 1%. So Bitcoin should be used as digital good first. But then, when people use it in the internet (you when it is conveniant to just have 1 or 2 Bitcoin, maybe as an investmnent, too) maybe companies start to pay a small amount of the salary in Bitcoin. Let's say your salary is $3000, so come on. $2900 + $100 in Bitcoin. Would an employee opt in?

I see a bright future as long the goverment don't fucks it up or consumer do not prefer other new kinds of money (like google money, ripple etc.).

I looking at things from a realistic point of view.  You're basing your assumptions on emotions.  What you "hope" will happen, so you can benefit.  What merchant wouldn't love to avoid fees?  That's a no brainer but what consumer wants to transact without consumer protections and chargeback abilities when merchants don't deliver?  What consumer what's to spend 1% up to 10% just to obtain Bitcoins to spend them.  Nobody, just people who want Bitcoin to go to the "moon".  And they aren't really using them to purchase anyway.  They are holding, right?

If porn is the best you can do, that can be accomplished much easier with much more abundant currencies like Dogecoin, for example or a combination of cheaper and more abundant altcoins.  Access is what will make these currencies useful and thus valuable.  Not the other way around.  Bitcoin will likely survive for the handful of people who have them.  That's great...but chances of Bitcoin becoming a global currency: 0

The only thing that "impresses" me about Bitcoin, is it solved the double-spend problem.  But now we know how to duplicate that.  Bitcoin as a transactional currency, is not impressive, in fact it's a little embarrassing that we're still talking about the 1.0 version of cryptocurrency.  We already have better options...it's coming time to move on.  Meaning the general public, the only people that actually matter in deciding what will become adopted.

Heh. There is a "this is actually good news" meme, which has made its way onto some T-shirts (http://imgur.com/Dyc6EGe) now - poking fun at the bullish bias of the Bitcoin community, which has been known to treat absolutely everything as "actually good news" for Bitcoin. But that was during the irrational exuberance phase. Now it seems the polar opposite "this is actually bad news" meme is active instead. This is to be expected, since we seem to be very close in time to the very bottom of this bear market.

Your friend may already be using it:

http://www.coindesk.com/leading-adult-site-porn-com-now-accepts-bitcoin/
http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-10-percent-porn-com-sales/
http://www.coindesk.com/playboy-plus-accepting-bitcoin-payments/
http://www.coindesk.com/naughty-america-bitcoin-acceptance/

I'm fine with letting the best crypto win, be it bitcoin, dogecoin, or whatever. I'm betting that bitcoin's first-mover advantage will be the deciding factor. Are you saying that dogecoin is more "accessible" than bitcoin? Suppose I want to send my mom flowers for her birthday. Why would I choose dogecoin over bitcoin?

PayPal and Bitcoin never,
I am send ticket to PayPal support service, and I get negative response from PayPal.

Not the little square reader, yet.

Just the online side.

Good, because I feel the same.  I just want to see "crypt" change the world for the better.  I don't care what "brand name" you put on it.

I use Doge as an example, because there are billions of them and the community just passes them around, tips each other.  They don't really concern themselves with over-hoarding.  Like most things, they lack infrastructure, but that's easy.  Anything that is "Bitcoin" infrastructure can be Doge infrastructure.  I'm looking at the long-term roll out of crypto and as an example, Doge offers a more inclusive and less extremist community and they are much more willing to spread around the wealth.  This combination can lead to 100's of millions of people holding Dogecoin at very small entry prices.  With that kind of user adoption, businesses will obviously cater to that.

This is where Bitcoin messed up, IMO.  Poor distribution that likely can never be solved, unless the large coin holders start freely distributing Bitcoin to millions of people.  Doubt that's going to happen.  Like I said earlier, people can't spend what they don't have and paying fees to buy Bitcoin, just to make purchases, makes no sense for the average consumer.

LOL. Complaining about a 1% fee when the value of bitcoins is up about 500% from a year ago. Boohoo, that leaves you with only 499% profit!

In the past year, I've paid through Square much more often through Paypal since it's a lot more popular with small businesses. This is good news for me since I can pay with the bitcoin while avoiding the hassle of exchanging for fiat beforehand.

Suppose you are on vacation or are doing business internationally. How much does it cost to exchange your local currency into a foreign currency? I don't actually know the answer to that but I would imagine it is at least 1%.

Tell me about it! Travel (even domestic) with a credit card is a major pain. Since credit cards are so insecure, the credit card companies panic every time you travel. My cards get frozen nearly every time I travel more than 100 miles from home.