Bitpay's new business model...

[NorrisK]

It is quite a shame that they resorted to this.. But was to be expected ofcourse, money needs to be made somewhere along the line. They have to earn money for their investors.

[StevenS]

I was wondering how they expected to make money. Their new offering is not bad for several reasons:

• Because Bitcoin adoption is still low, many "coffee shop" merchants won't have more than 30 Bitcoin transactions per month.
• 1% is still roughly 1/3 of credit card fees.
• If the merchant is a Bitcoin enthusiast, he can send the bitcoin directly to his own wallet, hodl it, and pay no fee.
• "Free, Unlimited, Forever" always sounded too good to be true, and made me suspicious.

I'm still going to suggest BitPay to the local tea shop.

[maokoto]

Agree that it was expected. I think it is better to thank them for the amount of free service provided till now.

We tend to attack free providers when they become paid ones, while we do not blame paid services if they require payment from the beginning. That is not good.

[BitcoinNewsMagazine]

If you want to avoid Bitpay's new fees you can always move to Coinify.

[PolarPoint]

It is expected. They can't offer their service for free indefinitely. They are only charging 1%. That is not very much compared to credit cards. If merchants do not want to pay the fee, they can setup their own bitcoin node and write their own api.

[bri912678]

How did they make money while they offered the free service? How did they pay their staff's wages and their bills? Did they use VC money? They must have had a business plan that was convincing enough to get all the VC money, and it must have included a method of making profit from a free service. Sometimes I heard different free services claim they intend to make money from advertising but it doesn't usually work out.

[LiteCoinGuy]

this is one of the best bitcoin companies out there. Bitpay even pays the salary for one core bitcoin dev! how many bitcoin companies do this? right...
hopefully they will stay in buniness.

it sounds crazy but maybe they should set up an exchange to make some money.

[unamis76]

Bad move. Fortunately we are starting to have quite a few methods for merchants to accept Bitcoin payments in a secure and professional way on their websites, using decentralized services, hosted on their own servers if they want.

Let's keep decentralization rising

[Gleb Gamow]

I was wondering how they expected to make money. Their new offering is not bad for several reasons:

• Because Bitcoin adoption is still low, many "coffee shop" merchants won't have more than 30 Bitcoin transactions per month.
• 1% is still roughly 1/3 of credit card fees.
• If the merchant is a Bitcoin enthusiast, he can send the bitcoin directly to his own wallet, hodl it, and pay no fee.
• "Free, Unlimited, Forever" always sounded too good to be true, and made me suspicious.

I'm still going to suggest BitPay to the local tea shop.

Or, you can do what Sonny Vleisides under the auspices of BFL did, and amass hundreds of transactions from various sources, then use BitPay as an exchange to covert over ten million dollars worth of bitcoins, making sure to not do over 30 such transactions within any given calendar month or thirty-day period.

BTW, I may or may not be privy to pending indictments like I was privy to current layoffs prior to them being announced. Like I've alluded to in that now locked thread, REAL shit has yet to hit the fan.

Break-away Friday somewhere in Africa:

[dexX7]

WoW !!! Mircea Popescu is back. Not only on Trilema, but also on Twitter - https://twitter.com/trilema

Great art, very down to the point. Who's that guy on the right? And the magician?

[Brad Harrison]

Well this sucks for my business

[angelakay124]

They are only asking for 1% fee that is very low compared to other payment processor where we should pay more than 0.50$+4-5% as a fee for every transactions. If a person like to Add a secure bit coin deposit system than they are a good option. The only limitation is they don't accept gambling sites. I like their service so far.