Why some 3rd party wallet providers should be avoided..

[DaveF]

Why are we, as a community, allowing a company like BitPay to insert themselves in to all our transactions, to collect our data, to spy on us, to report us to the government, and take a cut for the privilege?

Such companies will exist as long as people are going to use and support them.

I am not using BitPay and will never be.
Everyone is free to decide how he handles a payment. If someone chooses to use BitPay to give aways his data, i couldn't care less. That's not my business.
You can't force other people to be privacy-orientated or non-retarded or whatever. If they decide to giveaway their data (hello facebook, tiktok, etc..), they are free to do so.

I 100% agree with this but it still comes back to:

... We need more places to take BTC directly. If there is going to have to be a conversion to fiat to pay rent / gas / electric / insurance / vendors / etc. then places like BitPay / Coinbase Commerce / etc. are always going to exist and they may or may not have shitty (to us) rules.

What are we, as a group and individually doing about it? I admit in the business / commercial side I am doing nothing. Don't have the time or motivation or ability to even begin to try to have vendors change their ways. Heck I think our old landlord thought checks were way to modern and why don't we pay with cash.

On the private side I have had some success with some small biz and individuals to take BTC but the few that do very quickly convert it to fiat though Coinbase / Gemini.
Which beings us back to we need more places to take BTC so they don't have to. Actually had one who I setup a BTCPay server for look into BitPay by themselves and ask me about it so he would not have to waste time converting to fiat. That is why we have to get more places to take BTC. Otherwise, IMO not only is BitPay going to stay, we are going to get more places like it.

edit: I think if we want to continue this discussion on how to get more people to take BTCwe should start a new thread.

-Dave

[BrewMaster]

^^ the problem is that "adoption" takes time and it can not be forced. the absurdity of it which also prevents adoption from growing is that everyone wants the adoption to happen before THEY get on board. for example the merchant wants people to first want to pay in bitcoin before it starts accepting it while the people want the merchant to first start accepting bitcoin then they start spending their bitcoins.
as long as this is the case we are not going to see any major growth in number of places that bitcoin can be spent.

in a situation like this, third party wallet providers even centralized offer a utility that will attract users and is damaging to the whole system.

[DaveF]

Just made this post, BitPay wants to become their own bank.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5298855

-Dave

[o_e_l_e_o]

What are we, as a group and individually doing about it?

Education is the first step. Educate other users about how using BitPay is bad for their own privacy and security, as well as being bad for the wider bitcoin ecosystem. Direct them to links such as https://debitpay.directory/ to help them find new places to shop which do not use BitPay, as well as to find alternatives to companies they are already using which do use BitPay. Obviously, we should follow these steps ourselves. If BitPay using companies see less revenue than their non-BitPay counterparts, they will soon make the switch.

Then, educate the merchants. Many merchants are simply unaware about how terrible BitPay is, or are unaware that there are better alternatives out there. Tell the merchants that you would like to shop with them, but you will not support BitPay and why not. Provide information regarding alternatives such as BTCPay.

Then most importantly, put your money where your mouth is. Spend bitcoin at non-BitPay merchants. Support them and help them grow.

[STT]

I've been in this situation and I wasn't prepared to pay that fee so just sent it manually and got a warning I'd messed it up etc. but as I remember it would always clear with some delay.   In my case it was totally fine about a delay as it wasnt a time critical purchase and I was in receipt of nothing but a credit on a commodity gold account, wasnt a big deal and very often wasnt a large amount to be fussing over.      Convenience will always be a big deal with mainstream operations and Bitpay is trying to appear to be that perfect solution, I agree on their bias and why they always steer people away from using BTC.

[libert19]

May be next time a better way would be to purchase coupon code directly from sites like bitrefil, they support LN so you would be paying much lesser fees.