Bitcoin at Starbucks (or anywhere)

[Piper67]

Actually, what we need is for someone like Paxum, bit-pay or even mtgox itself to make the process of conversion transparent, on demand and instantaneous.

For example, say I have 342.45 BTC in my mtgox account and I'm at Starbucks. I swipe my mtgox debit card, pay $24 USD (or whatever the bastards are charging for coffee these days) and it gets debited from my mtgox BTC account.

Replace mtgox with Paxum, who already have a MasterCard system in place, or bit-pay, who are the best at making things happen, and suddenly we can start living our lives in BTC instead of dollars, euros or pesos.

Bit-pay presented such a service at CES, you pay in BTC and they get credited in cash at their account!

I know about the service Bit-Pay showed off at CES, but what I'm suggesting is almost the exact opposite. You hold an account in BTC with Bit-pay (or Paxum, MtGox or some new company), and you can use their debit card anywhere that takes a debit card. You pay in whatever the local currency is, but the money gets debited from your BTC account at the exchange rate for the moment the transaction occurred.

In fact, it could even be the same card Bit-Pay uses, going both ways. But so far no one has come up with this particular model.

It would instantly allow people to start using BTC as the default repository of value for them. You could get paid in dollars, then instantly convert those to BTC and just use your debit card to make day to day payments.

The problem BTC has, in North America and Europe, is that people don't understand the gigantic implications of having a naturally deflationary currency. For that, Narydu, we need people like your, or me, who have felt the ravages of an inflationary currency first hand.

Give people a debit card based on Bitcoin, and it suddenly doesn't matter how much or how little inflation will hurt the US dollar, the Euro or the British Pound. The choice would be obvious.

[1714123697]

1714123697

[rjk]

Actually, what we need is for someone like Paxum, bit-pay or even mtgox itself to make the process of conversion transparent, on demand and instantaneous.

For example, say I have 342.45 BTC in my mtgox account and I'm at Starbucks. I swipe my mtgox debit card, pay $24 USD (or whatever the bastards are charging for coffee these days) and it gets debited from my mtgox BTC account.

Replace mtgox with Paxum, who already have a MasterCard system in place, or bit-pay, who are the best at making things happen, and suddenly we can start living our lives in BTC instead of dollars, euros or pesos.

Bit-pay presented such a service at CES, you pay in BTC and they get credited in cash at their account!

I know about the service Bit-Pay showed off at CES, but what I'm suggesting is almost the exact opposite. You hold an account in BTC with Bit-pay (or Paxum, MtGox or some new company), and you can use their debit card anywhere that takes a debit card. You pay in whatever the local currency is, but the money gets debited from your BTC account at the exchange rate for the moment the transaction occurred.

In fact, it could even be the same card Bit-Pay uses, going both ways. But so far no one has come up with this particular model.

It would instantly allow people to start using BTC as the default repository of value for them. You could get paid in dollars, then instantly convert those to BTC and just use your debit card to make day to day payments.

The problem BTC has, in North America and Europe, is that people don't understand the gigantic implications of having a naturally deflationary currency. For that, Narydu, we need people like your, or me, who have felt the ravages of an inflationary currency first hand.

Give people a debit card based on Bitcoin, and it suddenly doesn't matter how much or how little inflation will hurt the US dollar, the Euro or the British Pound. The choice would be obvious.

There is another thread about a magstripe based payment card here. It seems that the best thing to do would be a combination of the QR code for incoming payments, and a magstripe for outgoing payments. Bit-pay would be the broker for the magstripe payments, and the QR code payments would go right to your wallet, and you could spend the contents of the wallet from your mobile to other QR codes, or use an app to send them back to Bit-pay to be used for magstripe payments.

[Piper67]

Actually, what we need is for someone like Paxum, bit-pay or even mtgox itself to make the process of conversion transparent, on demand and instantaneous.

For example, say I have 342.45 BTC in my mtgox account and I'm at Starbucks. I swipe my mtgox debit card, pay $24 USD (or whatever the bastards are charging for coffee these days) and it gets debited from my mtgox BTC account.

Replace mtgox with Paxum, who already have a MasterCard system in place, or bit-pay, who are the best at making things happen, and suddenly we can start living our lives in BTC instead of dollars, euros or pesos.

Bit-pay presented such a service at CES, you pay in BTC and they get credited in cash at their account!

I know about the service Bit-Pay showed off at CES, but what I'm suggesting is almost the exact opposite. You hold an account in BTC with Bit-pay (or Paxum, MtGox or some new company), and you can use their debit card anywhere that takes a debit card. You pay in whatever the local currency is, but the money gets debited from your BTC account at the exchange rate for the moment the transaction occurred.

In fact, it could even be the same card Bit-Pay uses, going both ways. But so far no one has come up with this particular model.

It would instantly allow people to start using BTC as the default repository of value for them. You could get paid in dollars, then instantly convert those to BTC and just use your debit card to make day to day payments.

The problem BTC has, in North America and Europe, is that people don't understand the gigantic implications of having a naturally deflationary currency. For that, Narydu, we need people like your, or me, who have felt the ravages of an inflationary currency first hand.

Give people a debit card based on Bitcoin, and it suddenly doesn't matter how much or how little inflation will hurt the US dollar, the Euro or the British Pound. The choice would be obvious.

There is another thread about a magstripe based payment card here. It seems that the best thing to do would be a combination of the QR code for incoming payments, and a magstripe for outgoing payments. Bit-pay would be the broker for the magstripe payments, and the QR code payments would go right to your wallet, and you could spend the contents of the wallet from your mobile to other QR codes, or use an app to send them back to Bit-pay to be used for magstripe payments.

Yes, that would be fantastic... Bit-pay could take this one and run with it, or they could strike a deal with Paxum, who already have a card system that works, and just take care of the BTC conversions.

[Phinnaeus Gage]

Or somebody starts something like this at Starbucks: http://www.npr.org/2012/01/15/145241450/corner-perk-cafes-customers-pay-it-forward

[btcinstant]

Hello all,

We can take bitcoins and send a virtual credit card with $$ instantly for this + re loadable to boot.  So you could be a Starbucks and want to pay w/ Bitcoin you send coins to us and you are emailed a credit card. The only thing is its not a physical card so not sure how that would work but it is all doable +  I love starbucks!

[Dan The Man]

The real future will be when you can buy Bit Coins with Star Bucks.

[PrintCoins]

Someone tell me why there are About 1,450,000 results when you search Starbucks and Bitcoin (without quotes) on Google.

because google is broken nowadays.

it's called fuzzy logic, or as my dad would say "artificial stupidity".

give me the old google where search queries were interpreted literally.

I was trying to search for results that matched a set of technical terms for a project I was working on recently. It opened my eyes to the new fuzzy search stuff that is going on in google.

That, along with the removal of the + operator has caused me to jump ship. I now just use http://duckduckgo.com

[payb.tc]

Someone tell me why there are About 1,450,000 results when you search Starbucks and Bitcoin (without quotes) on Google.

because google is broken nowadays.

it's called fuzzy logic, or as my dad would say "artificial stupidity".

give me the old google where search queries were interpreted literally.

I was trying to search for results that matched a set of technical terms for a project I was working on recently. It opened my eyes to the new fuzzy search stuff that is going on in google.

That, along with the removal of the + operator has caused me to jump ship. I now just use http://duckduckgo.com

me too now actually, thanks for mentioning it.

it takes a little while to get used to though, because after setting it as my default search engine in chrome, i still get a bit tripped up when i'm wanting to search google images or maps.

i.e. for maps, it used to be enough just to type a street address into the url bar, but now i gotta manually go to maps.google.com first.

in chrome when you right click there's a menu option that says "search duckduckgo for '*****'", it would be cool if i could get 2 additional menu options... search google maps for **** and search google images for ****

actually the ability to totally edit that list of menu items would be awesome.

[giszmo]

That, along with the removal of the + operator has caused me to jump ship. I now just use http://duckduckgo.com

+1