[Will Bitcoin be Accepted by PayPal?]

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2013/04/30/could-paypal-be-on-horizon-for-bitcoin/


Will Bitcoin be Accepted by PayPal?
By Greg Bensinger


Bloomberg
John Donahoe, chief executive of eBay
EBay EBAY -0.07% may open its wallet to the virtual currency Bitcoin.

The e-commerce heavyweight is exploring ways to integrate bitcoins into its PayPal payments network,  Chief Executive John Donahoe said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.

“It’s a new disruptive technology, so, yeah, we’re looking at Bitcoin closely,” Donahoe said. “There may be ways to enable it inside PayPal.”

Integration into PayPal’s network would give Bitcoin some much-needed legitimacy. Accepted by few retailers, the currency is held mostly by speculators hoping to profit from price fluctuations, which have been particularly volatile in recent weeks.

Donahoe said eBay hasn’t yet made any commitments to use the currency.

He said Bitcoin was reminiscent of music sharing sites Kazaa and Napster, which were found to violate trademark rights, but helped spawn legitimate sites such Pandora and Spotify. “Virtual currency is something that’s here to stay,” Donahoe said.

Within the next five years, Bitcoin or other virtual currencies, such as airline miles, could be converted to cash and used in retail, Donahoe said. Integrating such virtual currencies into its payment network would help eBay in its effort to push PayPal use at bricks-and-mortar retailers, rather than just online. PayPal brought in $1.55 billion in revenue for eBay in this year’s first quarter, an 18% jump from a year earlier.

Last month the U.S. Treasury Department said it will apply money-laundering rules to Bitcoin and other virtual currencies, meaning firms that issue or exchange the increasingly popular online cash will be regulated in a manner similar to traditional money-order providers.

Coinsetter, which will allow participants to trade bitcoins using borrowed money in the coming weeks, has attracted venture capital funding. And Western Union Co. WU +0.96% and MoneyGram International Inc. MGI +1.81% are also studying ways to allow customers to transfer money around the globe using bitcoins.

For now, the currency is accepted on a few sites, such as Reddit and WordPress, as well as Pizzaforcoins.com, which allows users to pay for some pizza deliveries.

The currency is still volatile, making its prospects in retail sales risky. In April alone, bitcoins have ranged from $50.01 to $266, with an average of $114.94, according to bitcoincharts.com, one site tracking the currency’s value. The market for bitcoins is over $1 billion, according to the site.

Related reading: During his visit with the Journal, Donahoe also explained why eBay stands virtually alone among its peers in opposing a bill in Congress that would create a new national standard for charging state sales taxes on products bought online

My business is now accepting Bitcoin (and only Bitcoin, for the moment) for donations. If you receive services, there is no requirement to donate; but donations are graciously accepted from those who want to show their gratitude, or further my ability to continue helping people who can't afford the help (as these are generally the people who need the most help).

Do NOT use the wallets in my signature for donation. Donations should go to: 1JVxLS3aX1q22Lu9R82NXotgzVmhPxc2oB

Suggested donations (not required to receive services, but payment guarantees availability):

Typical donation: BTC0.10
Counselling session: BTC0.50
Meditative instruction: BTC0.20

Donations can be more or less than the amounts shown (and can even be 0).

I don't know how much of this is actually real, but this might be good news for Bitcoin.

http://w3.newsmax.com/a/currency-wars/video_uwr.cfm?p=n&promo_code=12374-1&gclid=CK-42tG90LYCFbNzMgodGkUAdg

It's full of scare tactics and stuff that appeals to the tin foil hat crowd, but if you find it credible, perhaps putting some money into Bitcoin is wise?

[Josh]

Okay, so... found this video on Reddit while I was looking around. Snagged the YouTube link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSu5Yyc1bEM

It's a bunch of engineers who don't know style, but there are actually some stacks of ASIC chips shown there.

Might this be a ray of hope?

Might we someday SEE a prototype machine hashing away at the promised speeds (rather than some little flashy light thingy)?

Might Josh (or someone else at BFL) actually be able to comment on whether or not the obviously-lacking budget on this infomercial-quality exposition is evidence that they're building machines to ship?

Is it just possible that the people might actually be assembling machines which people ordered almost a year ago?

[Never invest more than you can afford to lose:]

By way of observation, I've noticed a few things:

• People are really very unstable in the Bitcoin day-trading scene, whether investor or admin it really doesn't seem to matter.
• The exchanges are (so far) following almost the exact same rules as the New York Stock Exchange (even if at a smaller scale).
• People who don't understand investing are giving out all kinds of advice about it.
• The recent "crash" (drop of 70% of the total value) is exciting me, because it means I can get more coins when I buy in.
• Bitcoins tend to be more stable than fiat money (as a general rule, the past 3 weeks notwithstanding).
• People are finding ways to neatly ignore everything except bad news (e.g., fearmongering and trolling).

That being said there are some rules that people should understand before they buy in to any kind of investment scheme (and I think Bitcoin qualifies). This is NOT financial advice or legal advice; ALWAYS rely on expert advice in these matters, rather than some random guy in a forum (and yes, if you don't actually know me as a person, I qualify as "some random guy" and so does every chicken-little troll out there). My aim is to help people deal with their panic, not to tell them how they should behave. If something doesn't apply to you, then just ignore it.

• Never invest more than you can afford to lose: We all have aims and goals, and we want to make money. But always consider the amount you've invested as the amount of loss, rather than the gross gains. If you invested BTC200 into an Avalon, you have not gained or lost anything in the buying of the machine; but when you gain those BTC200 back, you're breaking even. So long as you have BTC200, you have gained and lost nothing. But if you try to measure BTC in terms of USD or EUR (which many people do, we can't help it since it gives us an idea of buying power) then you're going to lose if you start reacting to every loss in value as a loss of income. It's only income when you buy things with it.
• If you feel like selling in order to cut your losses, consider everything OTHER than finances first: If the only thing you're looking at is the money, you're losing sight of a few other important things in life (things which are actually more worthy of your consideration than the flow of bits through a computer). For example, if you're a parent, your children could do with some time. If you're not a parent, a significant other is good to spend time with. And if you don't have a significant other... well, talk to me, I have techniques which can help you to find someone.
• Our entire existence is not tied to a computer: If you can't step away from the computer long enough to actually live, then "making a living" isn't happening. Miners and ASICs work without you watching. The market goes up and down hourly. The world doesn't depend on your success. If you are so tied up in the online world that you can't actually go out and do something other than watching Bitcoins, then you should turn off the monitor (not your miner, just the screen) and step away for 24h. We are people, made to move and to do things.
• If your anxiety is so high that you can't take watching the market, stop watching: Selling out only guarantees a drop, and buying in only guarantees a rise. Bitcoin is not "based" on anything, like gold or a government's word. The only real difference between most fiat currency and Bitcoin is the level of regulation: there are no laws regarding Bitcoin because it's really nothing more than the idea of a trading currency. There is no intrinsic value, no objective standard of value, and no real ideas about the way that such should work. There is no declared value, either: a Bitcoin is based on the solutions to complex mathematical formulas, and people convert their money into Bitcoins as a means of promoting a rather new idea in decentralization.
• Stress has been tied to obesity: In some very convincing (though not fully scientific) academic studies, there is a direct correlation between stress levels and girth. People who undergo enormous stresses in life will tend to put on weight because of a nasty little hormone called cortisol. This hormone is produced during times of extreme stress (whether good or bad stress, it doesn't matter... roller coasters give us good stress because it's fun; but it's still the same reaction).
• His name is Robert Paulson: In whatever world we run in, we find our own causes and motivations. As a general rule, hatred and revenge aren't going to really do us a lot of good. If we focus on what we hate (as is the case with this line from Fight Club: "His name is Robert Paulson.") then we really lose sight of the important stuff, like who is doing what to whom. We easily forget about the corruption which goes on between corporations and governments, because we're so focused on the money that we forget that most people don't do much more than barely survive. Consider what's important to the whole world: your success, or theirs? And consider how your own success could lead to theirs, and they will help you reach yours.

These points are just things to help us all out a little. The days of fiat currency are numbered. But even more worthless than fiat currency is the Bitcoin. Which is why I'm investing into it myself: with more money invested, it increases in value.

If you would like more help (especially specific techniques) to lower anxiety, I'm selling a PowerPoint presentation for 10 LTC each copy (not that I'm stopping anyone from doing anything with it after that, since it's essentially free information anyway... but if you don't know how, then might I suggest it's worthwhile?).

It seems that there is a rather arbitrary system of administration on the chat for BTC-E, to the point that educating people in real time isn't allowed.

My last comment (which is was the only comment in several minutes, and thus I'm assuming the reason I was banned) was:

BTC is dropping? MOAR PANIC PLEASE! I want to have a good price when I buy in!

Which was in response to the fear-mongering person about 8 lines before me (chat lag, etc.) who was claiming that BTC was going to drop in value again. The overall climb in price of 80% since that person said what they did is just proving the point.

I didn't use vulgarity, I wasn't actually being mean, and it wasn't actually a troll (so much as a counter-troll). And yet the original person pushing the panic button didn't get the ban: I did.

There was no warning. There was no reason given. There was no actual rule posted or broken. It was just the arbitrary whim of the admin on a power trip with a ban hammer.

I complained. Ignored (not that I'm that surprised).

So, forget my funding going to BTC-E... if that's what they allow, then I can't really trust them. Scratch one exchange off my list.

Not calling for anyone else to boycot or anything, just satisfying my ego, here, and trying to see if someone at BTC-E might actually care enough to add a REASON for the ban, other than "you pissed off an admin, sucks to be you" (which is valid, but ultimately will hurt their business if it keeps up).

Posting rules for the chat would not go amiss.

I'm not meaning to embarrass slush or try to control his site/pool/whatever, but I was wondering why there isn't a "total reward" box in the user account stats for Namecoin mining in the same way that there is for Bitcoin mining.

People who aren't slush can also respond, I'm interested to know if there is a technical/legal reason for this, mostly to take the load off of slush, who is really getting overworked these days in keeping his pool going (and that's not sarcasm, that's honest observance, based on slush's posts).

I'd also like to know if anyone really cares about it besides me.

I don't know how to program. Period. I don't have time to learn. I also don't have much motivation. What I do have is a basic idea that I'd like to talk over with people in this thread. I don't know how possible this idea really is, but after looking at about a dozen new software packages and reading about Bitcoins for about 30 hours to figure out what I'm actually looking at, I am at a conclusion:

I really don't like having 18 separate applications to manage my alt currencies.

I also love the idea of Armory, but it's a little lacking in what is actually needed by people like me who have a bunch of old, cheap machines that barely work, never mind being able to run a wallet and a miner (one of my older machines offers a whopping 2 KHash/sec, which is slower than my main machine's CPU speed).

So here's a list of features I would really like to see implemented, if there's an ambitious programmer out there willing to hack together the code into a Frankenstein's monster of an app for Windows (Linux people love to fidget with their systems, and I'm content to let them).

Yes, I realize that the block chains involved are enormous. Yes, I know it will take weeks to download (and yes, I know that's a slight exaggeration). But to be able to track, import and export wallets would be FAR simpler with one window instead of a dozen or more.

EDIT: I added a few new features.

Features Wishlist

• Standalone, independent client which doesn't HAVE to have other software to run correctly. (Do you hear me, Armory???)
• Windows GUI
  • Some eye candy for the sake of looking slick tends to decrease dissatisfaction if there are minor bugs.
  • Menus should be complete, but primary interface should also have tabs, buttons and check boxes, etc., to make it more intuitive.
  • (I can put together a graphic of what I envision it to look like, if needed, and I'm willing to do it)
• Multicurrency tracking
  
  • BTC
  • LTC
  • PPC
  • TRC
  • Other coins as they become popular and adopted by the community (similar to UfaSoft Coin, but not necessarily the same as)
• Import/export of private keys (optionally through GPG, if installed on the end user's system) so that wallets are easily backed up.
• Import of private keys from other sources (for example, Terracoin.info or MtGox.com) to track accounts.
• Import of external wallets from already-existing clients (and TESTING to make sure that passworded wallets can actually be imported!)
• Integration with popular mining pools for stats (for example, Slush's pool's stats, or Coinotron, etc. ... pools which seem well-established)
• Integration with good miners, with stats similar in scope to cgminer/BFGminer (perhaps through log analysis, etc.)
• Real-time graphing of in/out traffic, validation of block chains, peers, etc.
• Included OPTIONAL and useful sound alerts for new payments received, confirmed, etc., as well as the ability to customize these sounds in the Windows Sounds environment.
• Integrated mining (similar to the LTC client, but with options to use different miners with different pieces of hardware, etc., for maximum mining efficiency)
  • All flags for included miner(s) are in the software, with presets and settable levels which update on the fly without the need to know the CLI.
  • Pool payout calculator (to keep certain mining pools honest about their maths, if there is some suspicion of cheating).
  • A log of all accepts, stales, rejects, difficulties, etc., for proof-of-work if it happens that someone really isn't cheating.
  • A log of all pool communications, for reasons of demonstrating MITM vulnerabilities, if they should happen.
  • Adjustable verbosity on all logs (and even the capacity to turn them off, if desired).
• Multilanguage interface (so I can share with my friends in Japan, France, Russia and the Americas).

I'm a week into this Bitcoin thing as I write. There are lots of programs that have pieces of these already written and integrated. It might be just a simple matter of putting them all together. I'm lamenting never learning to program, but as I said I don't have the time to learn right now because of my other job.

How's that for a newb? A week in, thinks he owns the place.

Any takers?