It costs more to use bitcoin on bitpay than bitcoin cash

[jackg]

I wanted to by something and noticed the site accepted bitcoin, so I went through the checkout and got charged extra to pay in bitcoin rather than bitcoin cash, does anyone know why this is?

It seems bitpay get a lot of bad coverage now and there seems to be good reason why (I wouldn't have made a thread but the price was 50p different which was more than 1% of my total purchase)... As a community there may be issues if bitcoin cash dies or if it keeps going since some of these companies are clearly hugely invested in them.

[TryNinja]

I wanted to by something and noticed the site accepted bitcoin, so I went through the checkout and got charged extra to pay in bitcoin rather than bitcoin cash, does anyone know why this is?

Yes. To "cover transaction fees".

Doesn't it say "Network cost: X"? Or you're talking about another extra?

[PrimeNumber7]

I wanted to by something and noticed the site accepted bitcoin, so I went through the checkout and got charged extra to pay in bitcoin rather than bitcoin cash, does anyone know why this is?

Yes. To "cover transaction fees".

Doesn't it say "Network cost: X"? Or you're talking about another extra?

I believe this is to cover the cost to spend the coin that bitpay receives from the payment of the invoice. BitPay will need to either send their merchant coin, or will need to send coin to an exchange to convert to fiat that gets sent to the merchant. It currently costs more to spend a bitcoin input verses spending a bitcoin cash input.

Bitcoin's price tends to be more stable than bcash's price, so the savings from using bcash verses bitcoin is expected to be more than lost due to price volatility.

[malevolent]

I believe this is to cover the cost to spend the coin that bitpay receives from the payment of the invoice.

That's a BS excuse they like to pull to encourage people to switch to bcash. They wanted me to pay an extra ~$0.70 when the 6 blocks fee was 1 sat/B. Since I just wanted to buy a pizza that would amount to an effective fee of almost 10%.

[PrimeNumber7]

I believe this is to cover the cost to spend the coin that bitpay receives from the payment of the invoice.

That's a BS excuse they like to pull to encourage people to switch to bcash. They wanted me to pay an extra ~$0.70 when the 6 blocks fee was 1 sat/B. Since I just wanted to buy a pizza that would amount to an effective fee of almost 10%.

[img ]https://i.imgur.com/MzrdEai.png[/img]

I wish I could order a pizza for $7, lol.

To be fair to BitPay, the fee might be higher when they need to spend the coin they receive in what could be weeks in the future.

I don't think most BitPay transactions are for such small amounts. The median transaction value on the bitcoin blockchain has moved between around $160 and $750 over the past three months, and I would assume BitPay transactions would not be far off from this.

You may be correct in saying that BitPay is trying to get customers to use bcash, however additional price volatility in bcash should more than wipe out the expected savings from using bcash.

[BrewMaster]

the fee is indeed a reason since it goes up from time to time (as high as 50 these days) even if the current fee of that time were 1 satoshi/byte. so we can't just rule that out.

but also the other reason is the same continuation of the propaganda against bitcoin and pushing BCH on people to force-create use cases for it since over the past year it still remains useless.

[EdenHazard]

I believe this is to cover the cost to spend the coin that bitpay receives from the payment of the invoice.

That's a BS excuse they like to pull to encourage people to switch to bcash. They wanted me to pay an extra ~$0.70 when the 6 blocks fee was 1 sat/B. Since I just wanted to buy a pizza that would amount to an effective fee of almost 10%.

Several times make a purchase through bitpay on namecheap these days and yuppp they are indeed looks like force users to swap to bitcoin cash with its higher fee on bitcoin. I'm not happy with that , not a big fan of bitcoin cash though.

Bitpay getting fucked with their recent  policy change .. especially about how KYC needed for certain amount on transactions.

[gentlemand]

That's a BS excuse they like to pull to encourage people to switch to bcash. They wanted me to pay an extra ~$0.70 when the 6 blocks fee was 1 sat/B. Since I just wanted to buy a pizza that would amount to an effective fee of almost 10%.

To be fair to them, not that they really deserve it, there have been high spikes in fees for a few hours here and there relatively recently. In an ideal world they'd have some sort of monitoring and live adjustments of what they charge but that could be hard to put together.

They're in the business of getting payments confirmed.

Bcash will always cost fuck all to use. BTC on occasion will definitely not.

[AB de Royse777]

Several times make a purchase through bitpay on namecheap these days and yuppp they are indeed looks like force users to swap to bitcoin cash with its higher fee on bitcoin. I'm not happy with that , not a big fan of bitcoin cash though.

Bitpay getting fucked with their recent  policy change .. especially about how KYC needed for certain amount on transactions.

I do not have bCash shit. So even if I wanted to pay using bCash, I can not. To save ~0.50 or $1, I am not going through all these hassle to buy bCash shit and then pay through bitPay. I will directly pay using my BTC and this is what I do in fact. I am a namecheap customer so I use BitPay very often however I do not like this BitPay shit.

I hope a new business comes up and replace their service which will be Bitcoin focused.

[jackg]

Volatility doesn't seem like a legitimate excuse for why they charge more for bitcoin than cash. I get that cash transactions are really cheap and these companies probably were convinced by bitpay to accept bcash so that could be why but its going to cause huge problems if a less secure and cheaper version of bitcoin gets advertised to everyone. Most of the major pools would be able to launch a 51% attack on bcash on their own and completely murder the coin...

[NeuroticFish]

From what I see Roger Ver is one of early investors in BitPay, so probably he can dictate such behavior.

He invested over a million dollars into new bitcoin related startups including Ripple, Blockchain.info, Bitpay and Kraken.

I didn't know he is infiltrated there too... 

[gentlemand]

From what I see Roger Ver is one of early investors in BitPay, so probably he can dictate such behavior.

No competently run business would follow the orders of a solitary investor. If he owned it that would be a different matter, but he doesn't.

Clearly they're aligned enough with his thinking. Bitmain also put money in. I presume they've been offered a financial incentive of some sort.

Kraken are full Segwit. They also have many more serious investors. If he told them to drop it they would tell him where to stick it.

[malevolent]

To be fair to BitPay, the fee might be higher when they need to spend the coin they receive in what could be weeks in the future.

They could be combining unspent outputs/spending when transaction fees are low, they're also probably big enough that they could get fiat first from someone else and then settle the bitcoins with them later.

[DaveF]

To be fair to BitPay, the fee might be higher when they need to spend the coin they receive in what could be weeks in the future.

They could be combining unspent outputs/spending when transaction fees are low, they're also probably big enough that they could get fiat first from someone else and then settle the bitcoins with them later.

That could wind up being a lot of fiat. As in 10s of millions of different countries money across the globe. It's easy to say they can combine when fees are low, but if BTC has an up or down swing that causes fees to be high for a week or so it can start to become an issue. Most of their clients get fiat the next day. If fees are high and BTC is down 5% they now either have to float it and hope it goes back up or eat it and take the loss.

A couple of weeks ago I got a new laptop from newegg BTC at that point was $11825 give or take a buck. Within hours of my purchase BTC was at $11,400 and fees were stupid high and would stay high for a few days after too. Guess what newegg got their money in their account and didn't give a shit.

So, their business model requires them to have to be able to move in the next block and you get to pay for that.

We, can argue if it's a good business model or not, we can argue if it's a sustainable business model or not. But it is the one they choose to have.

So their additional fee if you look at it, tends to be the 2x highest fee needed to be in the next block over the last few days. Note, not the average highest fee, the highest fee.

Around here, some gas stations charge more to take credit cards because they have to pay the 3%+ fee to take them, so they pass that to the consumer. You can accept it and pay with your card or pay a bit less with cash or drive to the next station. Same with merchants using BitPay.

-Dave
Edit added 2x above about 15 minutes after initial post. Brain freeze on my part as they tend to move your BTC after 1 or 2 confirms and then move it again later. Not sure why.

[jackg]

Well them being owned by Roger ver, bitmain and kraken means a lot.

Kraken - want the conversion fees
bitmain - mine bcash so want more
Roger - some weird attachment to bcash...


Point is, fees should be included. If I paid by visa on the same site it should've cost the same as bcash.

[figmentofmyass]

To be fair to them, not that they really deserve it, there have been high spikes in fees for a few hours here and there relatively recently. In an ideal world they'd have some sort of monitoring and live adjustments of what they charge but that could be hard to put together.

they definitely have an algorithm that adjusts to network congestion---their "network fee" has been swinging back and forth between $.50 and $2.50 for the past month. but they're still drastically overcharging, sometimes by as much as 10x the true cost for fast confirmation. they basically charge users a very high estimation of what it costs to immediately sweep your output (no segwit of course). and they never immediately sweep outputs.

i'd be surprised if "network fees" weren't a line item in their revenue now. it started with them legitimately believing BCH would be a real competitor IMO but now it seems like charging these fees is just part of their business model.

[gentlemand]

they definitely have an algorithm that adjusts to network congestion

Interesting. I haven't used them in a long old time so I had no idea there was something dynamic in place.

If I remember rightly it's a bitch to find out what actual address you're sending to. Is there anyone who has looked in to what fees they pay to move the coins on from there? I wonder if they lay it on fee wise for their own move or keep a nice wee chunk and skimp which must add up. I can't believe they'll be throwing money away.

[figmentofmyass]

If I remember rightly it's a bitch to find out what actual address you're sending to.

they don't show it on the invoice, but any bip70-compliant wallet (i use electrum) will show the output address. it will also show up in your wallet's transaction history.

i realized at some point they probably implemented bip70 to force people to send from actual wallets rather than from exchanges. people paying invoices from exchanges = lots of expired invoices and refund headaches.

Is there anyone who has looked in to what fees they pay to move the coins on from there? I wonder if they lay it on fee wise for their own move or keep a nice wee chunk and skimp which must add up. I can't believe they'll be throwing money away.

here's a recent bitpay sweep: https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/379295a5d3c0ef84fb8cc839ef42a658868bcd7eeac422841dfa8a12095c563c

at the time, they were charging a "network fee" ~ 0.000045 BTC. with 412 inputs being swept, that's ~0.01854 BTC total collected from customers. they actually paid 0.0172644 BTC to do the sweep.

i'm guessing they make a marginal profit on "network fees" during low congestion times like these, and perhaps more during high congestion times. it's tough to analyze because it's unlikely that everyone paid the same exact fee.

[PrimeNumber7]

To be fair to BitPay, the fee might be higher when they need to spend the coin they receive in what could be weeks in the future.

They could be combining unspent outputs/spending when transaction fees are low, they're also probably big enough that they could get fiat first from someone else and then settle the bitcoins with them later.

They can’t wait an infinite amount of time to spend their coin and there is no guarantee that fees will ever go down. Also being a for profit company, they have the right to earn a profit and they have the right to try to influence others. 

The amount they earn from these fees likely varies depending on if tx fees are increasing or not, and if so by how much. I don’t think it is a given they will always have positive profit from eventually spending the coin they receive.

[jackg]

I don't want to release the exact transaction I made but I bought something from a computer hardware store and this is the 2nd hop: https://m.btc.com/9dbeb5a3e0922080ec44b536deb0fd396c8de549128566b0c53af0ad68cef2de

They ended up with 15btc. That store could bring in those size inputs potentially since it sells a lot of different items from usb hubs to smartphones and laptops so this might be an interesting look if anyone wants to delve further...


Maybe they're right and it's about double the tx fee so they can cpfp if the transaction doesn't go through in a fast manner and they don't want to slow down the rest of the chain.