Seems like people aren't considering that these Bitcoin Exchange businesses might not be managed very well since it's a bunch of techies in a room and no accountants or business people. Seems to me like some of these exchanges might just be pulling shenanigans.
Perhaps you would like to know what PayPal (Confinity, back then) was like a dozen or so years ago (or why they might have had to sell to eBay a few years later, instead of shutting down? hint: http://news.cnet.com/PayPal-files-for-an-IPO/2100-1017_3-273696.html ) |
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Possible, but if they don't have the funds available to back all their deposits, then that doesn't exactly bode well either. They also allow withdrawal by check. They have no advance warning as to how much I will be withdrawing nor which method I will use to withdraw. Though Dwolla is FDIC insured (or NCUA insured, depending on which pass-through account Dwolla has used for the funds) an exchange would probably wish to place customer funds in an interest-bearing insured account. Because of delays in transfers, cash management can be quite a challenging task. Too bad there is no digital currency that is low-cost, non-repudiable and features fast clearing so that banks and corporations could use to transfer funds. A real pity it is. |
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but for withdrawls as well. Withdraw USD to Dwolla
Withdrawal via Dwolla is currently unavailable. We apologize for the inconvenience and will make an annoucement on our help page and via our newsletter shortly(7/27/2011). Looks like that change just occurred beginning today. When the exchange stopped accepting Dwolla deposits that meant every withdrawal would then draw from the exchange's existing balance with Dwolla. Perhaps it would have become too difficult and expensive to try to maintain an adequate balance of funds available at Dwolla to be able to offer Dwolla withdrawals without running empty very often. |
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With Dwolla being uncooperative, the amount of money it will take to keep up with the growing supply of bitcoin will not be able available. Unlike PayPal and credit card processors, Dwolla does not object to its service being used for the purchase of bitcoins. Dwolla simply was forced to pivot and it now passes most of the risk of fraud onto the merchant. That doesn't mean that Dwolla is no longer an acceptable funding method, it just means that it no longer is the least expensive acceptable funding method. Price fixes everything. Dwolla chargebacks are tougher than PayPal or credit card chargebacks, so the frequency will occur much less often. By adding a surcharge to all Dwolla payments, an exchange can still accept that payment method yet be able to absorb a certain level of chargebacks. Camp BX, for example, said recently that because each deposit converted to bitcoins produces enough commissions such that even if they see a 1% overall chargeback rate from Dwolla, they could absorb the losses and continue on. And that is without a surcharge for Dwolla deposits. This is just a speed bump and not a brick wall. We desperately need a bitcoin bank to transfer funds to one another instantly and in a monetary language that everyone is used to. There are more and more of these coming every day. Is WalletBit perhaps a little closer to what you are looking for? - http://walletbit.com (and their Business Tools: http://walletbit.com/businesstools ) - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Category:EWallets |
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If someone has a story or a solid way to purchase these withought using my bank account (worried) let me know. Thanks in advance you guys!!!! VirWoX is one method. It requires that you buy SLL and then trade those for BTC, which incurs fees, but it is possible. YouTipIt sells bitcoins using a method where credit card is allowed, but again for the fees it only makes sense for low amounts. - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Buying_bitcoinsPerhaps there is a local exchange where you can exchange cash for bitcoins? - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Category:Local |
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I think the positives outweigh the problems, but 2 minutes is too fast, id go for like 5 minutes. and me as a very very small merchant, i would still accept 2 confirmations. It comes down to ... is it instantaneous (i.e., a few seconds) or is it longer. When longer, it doesn't matter if it is 45 seconds, two minutes or ten minutes -- they all don't pass as being "instantaneous". There has been the argument that for most real world point of sale transactions, the risk to accepting at 0/unconfirmed even would not be high enough to deter a retail merchant from using bitcoin. The risk can be cut even further with additional software that monitors for double spends attempts so that race attacks taking advantage of network speed would not be successful: - http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=27417.msg350531#msg350531 If even having a low-risk of loss isn't acceptable, then there can be extensions that will help bridge how bitcoin works with how existing commerce works. For instance, the Mt. Gox redeemable code can be used to transfer with immediate settlement bitcoins from one Mt. Gox account to another. A mobile app for accommodating both sides of that is described here: http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=25307.0Of course, those transactions don't benefit from the advantages bitcoin offers, including pseudonymity (as Mt. Gox knows both parties), but since those transactions use bitcoins at least there needn't be a conversion to USD or other currency for them to be used in a retail transaction. (incidentally, the Mt. Gox redeemable code / voucher can be for either BTC or USD currencies.) |
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(And you have to account for people doing their own 'remixing' as they bounce funds from one address they control to another.) Velocity of money really should relate to coins changing hands, not just transactions that end up in the block chain. One metric that might correlate to the velocity of money figure is BitcoinDays Destroyed: - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bitcoin_Days_DestroyedIt recently has been trending down a little (down as %). While velocity of money doesn't care if the source of funds for a spend was from a recent payment or from savings socked away long ago, the BitcoinDays Destroyed will differentiate between the two. The older the source of the funds, the higher the BitcoinDays Destroyed will be. Without knowing if the transaction is for spending, just a rejuggling of funds, or the result the "change transactions", using raw transfer numbers will overstate by a huge margin the velocity of money. Hopefully the BDD help fill the gap for that metric to some degree. |
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But these estimates always seem to hold velocity of money constant; ie, they assume that the velocity of bitcoin in these situations would be the same as dollars or whatever they're comparing to. Is that true? On the last day of the month, starting about an hour before midnight the parking lot at Walmart begins to fill. That is because when the clock strikes twelve, the customer's funds become available for spending and the cashiers become very busy. If those funds were to be tracked, they would likely turn over several times over a couple of days and thus have a high velocity for that short period of time. Then take the example of me sending in a payment. Before writing the check I had to deposit adequate funds. These funds took several days before the amounts I deposited were available to me for spending. I then write the check and mail it to my creditor. Several days will pass before the amount of that check is drawn from my account. It might seem that there was a low velocity there, because there was maybe 10 days from when I received the money to when it was drawn from my bank account. But while those funds were in the bank, they were loaned out, and with fractional reserve ... maybe 9 times as much as I had on deposit was loaned out. So the payment network being slow didn't really hurt the velocity -- those funds could still have been responsible for turnover that occurred. With bitcoin though, we have no fractional reserve yet (that we know of). So every day that a bitcoin isn't "in play" velocity of the money supply is reduced. Countering that is the fact that transactions received are available for spending within minutes. That will cause velocity to be able to increase -- assuming the recipient wants to spend. Consider that Walmart example above. Spending by those without access to credit will often occur as soon as those funds are available. So the faster payments clear, the higher the velocity potential. I just made the concusion that for those without access to credit there is an advantage to receiving bitcoin funds (wages or trade revenues) over receiving funds through the legacy banking networks. But I'm not an economist. Most economists refuse to believe that bitcoin has any use in this world and thus, I suspect, they won't be considering what effect faster clearing times has on Bitcoin's velocity of money. Here's a little more from those who, umm ... aren't big fans of bitcoin: http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=11627.msg167838#msg167838 and https://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=57.msg169414#msg169414 |
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Here is the bitcoin group, showing currently 4180+ members But that isn't a Facebook group. It is a Facebook page. It has 4180+ people who "like" the page, but a page has no "members". I've since found out what liikely happened. Nearly a year ago Facebook introduced "new groups" for connecting smaller groups of people who you know. For businesses (which "Bitcoin" likely falls under), they want Facebook pages to be used instead of Facebook groups. - http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150249514781340The old groups all got closed and no longer show up in any searches -- instead you need to have a link to it (or know the URL) if you are not already a member. If you've left the group (which I must have done, somehow), having a link to it is the only way to get back in. Additionally, I've since read that there have been rivalries between groups and reporting the group as "scam" enough times would cause it to disappear. Though the Bitcoin "not a fan" club could have done that, a more likely explanation is tht the group I'm thinking of is still there, just that I'm no longer a member and can't see it in the search results. |
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Bitcoin looks, at least on the surface, like it might be able to enable such things, but upon closer inspection, perhaps not. Since we do not know how much the miners will require as payment in the future, it will be risky to base a business around bitcoin transactions costing less than a few cents. It was just weeks ago that the bitcoin client was still sitting at 0.01 BTC fee requirement and that meant the transaction fee was $0.20 USD worth for each transaction. Of course, that was a special situation and probably won't happen again, but a rise to three or five cents each transactions seems plausible. |
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Sorry for the noob question (but I guess thats why this forum is here...). When I see $100 MtGox USD quoted is that a USD100 worth of Bitcoin (ie around 7.35 BTC). ? $100 MTGUSD refers to $100 worth of USD funds held in an account with Mt. Gox. At one point in time, Mt. Gox had a Send Money method that would let one trader transfer any amount of USD funds from the trader's own account to any another account on Mt. Gox. That feature was discontinued just about a month ago when Mt. Gox redeemable codes / vouchers were introduced. The redeemable codes provide nearly the same function. The codes are like a stored value card. Think like a Green Dot MoneyPak. Once you create a voucher for whatever amount you specify your balance is reduced by that amount and you are given a code. You can then provide that code to anyone with a Mt. Gox account and when the recipient redeems (claims) your voucher code, the recipient's account gets the funds from the voucher. When you "withdraw" funds to a voucher, you specify whether the voucher should be for bitcoin (BTC) or USD funds. These voucher codes are useful for transferring USD without having to withdraw funds to Dwolla or to a bank first. Because the funds are available instantly, you will see MTGox USD vouchers used in over the counter trading. For example, here someone is selling MTGUSD in exchange for PayPal  Additionally, the BTC vouchers might be useful for sending bitcoins to someone who does not yet have a bitcoin address. |
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Facebook has become quite anal about the difference between 'groups,' 'pages' and 'profiles'. Make the wrong one and you get deleted. The only Facebook page I'm aware of is http://www.facebook.com/bitcoinsHmm ... that is a Facebook page, and what i had seen before was a Facebook group. But some of the posts on that page look familiar, except with this there is no Satoshi Nakamoto who was the name that had made many of the posts. So, I've no idea. I wonder what happened. This will work though. Thanks! |
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you are setting zero fees to the client but it sends a fee without telling you. I don't know of any versions that did that. The most recent version (v0.3.24) will pop up a dialog box that says the transaction fee is required and will display the amount. its not only the fact that there is no FAQ Added. - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/FAQ#How_much_will_the_transaction_fee_be.3FPlease know that the client cannot say something like: the fee for getting this transaction processed in the next block is N bitcoins. That is because there is no set fee. When the client comes up with a number, it is only making an estimate. It is up to the miner to determine whether or not to include a transaction. The higher the fee, the more likely the transaction will get included. Even a high fee though is not a guarantee. Currently, the 50 BTC reward is adequate for many miners so that is why you will see transactions with no fee in many of the blocks yet. |
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