CNN did a short skit about dwolla .

[jjiimm_64]

CNN did a short skit about dwolla .   hmm send money free to anyone, where did I hear that?

http://money.cnn.com/video/technology/2012/01/13/t_dwolla_credit_cards.cnnmoney/

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[Yankee (BitInstant)]

Awesome!

Thanks CNN for the free schematics of Dwolla's office.

Such a shame, a great business model run by complete morons.

I feel bad for that restaurant owner, little does he know Dwolla can take any of his money without him realizing and *poof*

[Melbustus]

Awesome!

Thanks CNN for the free schematics of Dwolla's office.

Such a shame, a great business model run by complete morons.

I feel bad for that restaurant owner, little does he know Dwolla can take any of his money without him realizing and *poof*

So, are there negative implications for bitcoin due to Dwolla's growth? As I see it, there are a few primary uses for bitcoin *right now*:
1) Sending any amount of money anywhere in the world for free or cheap, legally.
2) Same as #1, but for illegal stuff.
3) Speculative store of value.
4) Seeds of being a replacement for broken fiat currencies (this is obviously a nice design characteristic of bitcoin, but not a primary use right now).

Seems to me that Dwolla has huge potential to seriously cut into #1, and a little into #2 (though they'll try to play nice with authorities to prevent #2). There are lots of people who have a use for sending money anywhere in the world quickly and cheaply who don't necessarily care (or think) too much about anonymity and reversibility. Sure, the folks who *do* value those features of bitcoin will never transact through Dwolla, but the ranks of ordinary people who don't care so much are orders of magnitude bigger, and represent one very nice potential means for bitcoin to gain some wider adoption while growing into its true potential.

[Yankee (BitInstant)]

Awesome!

Thanks CNN for the free schematics of Dwolla's office.

Such a shame, a great business model run by complete morons.

I feel bad for that restaurant owner, little does he know Dwolla can take any of his money without him realizing and *poof*

So, are there negative implications for bitcoin due to Dwolla's growth? As I see it, there are a few primary uses for bitcoin *right now*:
1) Sending any amount of money anywhere in the world for free or cheap, legally.
2) Same as #1, but for illegal stuff.
3) Speculative store of value.
4) Seeds of being a replacement for broken fiat currencies (this is obviously a nice design characteristic of bitcoin, but not a primary use right now).

Seems to me that Dwolla has huge potential to seriously cut into #1, and a little into #2 (though they'll try to play nice with authorities to prevent #2). There are lots of people who have a use for sending money anywhere in the world quickly and cheaply who don't necessarily care (or think) too much about anonymity and reversibility. Sure, the folks who *do* value those features of bitcoin will never transact through Dwolla, but the ranks of ordinary people who don't care so much are orders of magnitude bigger, and represent one very nice potential means for bitcoin to gain some wider adoption while growing into its true potential.

Yes, but your forgetting the huge point. Dwolla is the middle man, the central authority.
All your money must come from a bank, and Dwolla controls price, limits, fees ect. They can ban you if they want, its not anonymous.

Dwolla is a good example of why to NOT trust companies like them. TradeHill has lost over 100k to Dwolla and is in arbitration with them. MtGox has lost more. Us at Bitinstant have caught Dwolla multiple times.

Last week, a customer tried ACH'ing funds into his Dwolla account, he then used his Dwolla Balance to make a Bitinstant transfer. It turns out, the customer removed all the money from his account AFTER Dwolla credited him and he sent us the funds. To cover their losses Dwolla tried pulling the funds from MY account with no email, no notice, nothing...just a lower "Account Balance" to cover their loss when the customer scammed THEM.
We downloaded the statements after every transaction so we were able to catch them in the process. I then called Dwolla (Phone call was recorded, I have it) and caught them in a bunch of lies which they tried to cover their asses.

We had to build our own verification system on bitinstant- not to protect ourselves against scamming customers, but solely to protect ourselves from Dwolla.

-Charlie

[Melbustus]

Awesome!

Thanks CNN for the free schematics of Dwolla's office.

Such a shame, a great business model run by complete morons.

I feel bad for that restaurant owner, little does he know Dwolla can take any of his money without him realizing and *poof*

So, are there negative implications for bitcoin due to Dwolla's growth? As I see it, there are a few primary uses for bitcoin *right now*:
1) Sending any amount of money anywhere in the world for free or cheap, legally.
2) Same as #1, but for illegal stuff.
3) Speculative store of value.
4) Seeds of being a replacement for broken fiat currencies (this is obviously a nice design characteristic of bitcoin, but not a primary use right now).

Seems to me that Dwolla has huge potential to seriously cut into #1, and a little into #2 (though they'll try to play nice with authorities to prevent #2). There are lots of people who have a use for sending money anywhere in the world quickly and cheaply who don't necessarily care (or think) too much about anonymity and reversibility. Sure, the folks who *do* value those features of bitcoin will never transact through Dwolla, but the ranks of ordinary people who don't care so much are orders of magnitude bigger, and represent one very nice potential means for bitcoin to gain some wider adoption while growing into its true potential.

Yes, but your forgetting the huge point. Dwolla is the middle man, the central authority.
All your money must come from a bank, and Dwolla controls price, limits, fees ect. They can ban you if they want, its not anonymous.

...

I'm definitely NOT forgetting that point in this discussion; I'm just saying that most people won't care. Much like with PayPal. The issue is that Dwolla is FAR cheaper to use than PayPal, and so cuts into one of bitcoin's early use-case markets of sending money cheaply.

Don't get me wrong - I fully understand that Dwolla is the middle-man, and a central authority. To me, that makes it no different from a thousand other non-ideal ways to transact money. But again, most people aren't going to care unless they actually get screwed (and Dwolla, like PayPal, will probably figure out how to manage their business appropriately to maintain customers). And unfortunately, Dwolla will probably be an easier sell to ordinary users than bitcoin because they'll think of it as "oh, like PayPal, but cheaper", whereas bitcoin takes a marginal amount of thought to appreciate.

[LoupGaroux]

Interesting that they showed an instant transaction, but all the exchanges here tie up your funds for days and days once a Dwolla withdrawal is requested. Guess that whole, we need to verify thing goes both ways, or the exchanges here just prefer to sit on the use of your funds for a couple of extra days and have found a convenient excuse.

[Jered Kenna (TradeHill)]

Interesting that they showed an instant transaction, but all the exchanges here tie up your funds for days and days once a Dwolla withdrawal is requested. Guess that whole, we need to verify thing goes both ways, or the exchanges here just prefer to sit on the use of your funds for a couple of extra days and have found a convenient excuse.

If you're completely automated then yes it can be credited instantly. The issue is watching out to make sure Dwolla doesn't take your cash. Like Charlie said, they'll just pull it right out of your account. If you deposit with Bitinstant your account is instantly credited because we know that if he is defrauded he'll eat it unlike Dwolla. We use Bitinstant because the risk with Dwolla is far too high and they've already stolen from us.

If you're talking about an instant dwolla to dwolla transaction that is like comparing a TradeHill to TradeHill transaction which is also instant.


My big question is where they think they're headed. Stay 25 cents forever? Grow really big then charge the same fees Paypal does or a little less? Sell their analytics? It's going to be interesting.

Jered

[Yankee (BitInstant)]

My big question is where they think they're headed. Stay 25 cents forever? Grow really big then charge the same fees Paypal does or a little less? Sell their analytics? It's going to be interesting.

Jered

I agree, I still don't understand what their business model is or where its going

[RaggedMonk]

Awesome spot!  Dwolla is a gateway payment system to Bitcoin.

[teflone]

They jack it up in the future.. just like everyone does..

[Matthew N. Wright]

Interesting how an instant payment system with a mind to take over payments across the world that is run by some dudes can be considered legitimate and legal and yet bitcoin..... riiight.

[Yankee (BitInstant)]

You know what pisses me off the most?

Bitcoin can be accredited to Dwolla's recent success. Think about it, before Bitcoin and the exchanges used them NO ONE heard about Dwolla.

When Dwolla hit their first million in transactions, coincidence its the same month MtGox started accepting Dwolla, and TradeHill as well.

CEO Ben Milne claims he loovveeesss Bitcoin, meanwhile when I spoke to him back in June he had NO IDEA what bitcoin was!

Remember a few weeks ago, Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures (One of the largest VC firms in the USA), wrote on his blog how much he loves Bitcoin?
Link: http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/11/bitcoin.html

....Well my press contacts tell me (and this is totally hearsay so don't quote me on it) but Fred Wilson is about to lead Dwolla into a multi-million dollar fundraising round.

WTF??

Nice going Fred, next time we have lunch your gonna hear it from me......

-Charlie

[rjk]

You know what pisses me off the most?

Bitcoin can be accredited to Dwolla's recent success. Think about it, before Bitcoin and the exchanges used them NO ONE heard about Dwolla.

When Dwolla hit their first million in transactions, coincidence its the same month MtGox started accepting Dwolla, and TradeHill as well.

CEO Ben Milne claims he loovveeesss Bitcoin, meanwhile when I spoke to him back in June he had NO IDEA what bitcoin was!

Remember a few weeks ago, Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures (One of the largest VC firms in the USA), wrote on his blog how much he loves Bitcoin?
Link: http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/11/bitcoin.html

....Well my press contacts tell me (and this is totally hearsay so don't quote me on it) but Fred Wilson is about to lead Dwolla into a multi-million dollar fundraising round.

WTF??

Nice going Fred, next time we have lunch your gonna hear it from me......

-Charlie

Yeah I can say I had never heard of them until MtGox said they supported them. I wonder though, if it is almost only bitcoiners that are giving them exposure and making them look interesting to a VC, what will the general public actually think of them? As far as I know, no one that I know outside of Bitcoin has ever heard of them.

[Matthew N. Wright]

Wait...you guys are actually confused as to why they wouldn't be 100% against bitcoin? You know it puts them out of business in the long run, right?

Bitcoin is not a consumer solution. It's an industrial large scale solution.

Bitcoin doesn't replace Western Union, it replaces the core of Western union INSIDE of Western union, to save them money for providing the same service.

If you think of it this way, Dwolla is doing awesome keeping it a secret.

[Yankee (BitInstant)]

You know what pisses me off the most?

Bitcoin can be accredited to Dwolla's recent success. Think about it, before Bitcoin and the exchanges used them NO ONE heard about Dwolla.

When Dwolla hit their first million in transactions, coincidence its the same month MtGox started accepting Dwolla, and TradeHill as well.

CEO Ben Milne claims he loovveeesss Bitcoin, meanwhile when I spoke to him back in June he had NO IDEA what bitcoin was!

Remember a few weeks ago, Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures (One of the largest VC firms in the USA), wrote on his blog how much he loves Bitcoin?
Link: http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/11/bitcoin.html

....Well my press contacts tell me (and this is totally hearsay so don't quote me on it) but Fred Wilson is about to lead Dwolla into a multi-million dollar fundraising round.

WTF??

Nice going Fred, next time we have lunch your gonna hear it from me......

-Charlie

Yeah I can say I had never heard of them until MtGox said they supported them. I wonder though, if it is almost only bitcoiners that are giving them exposure and making them look interesting to a VC, what will the general public actually think of them? As far as I know, no one that I know outside of Bitcoin has ever heard of them.

EXACTLY! Thats my point! Without us, Dwolla is nothing. Would you agree on the assumption that Bitcoin makes up at least 60% of Dwolla's revenues?

Allow me to outline the reasons I think Bitcoiners use Dwolla:
1- Its a cheaper ($0.25) stripped down version of Paypal
2- It has the simple ability to pull from your bank account, and push back into your back account in 1-3 days
3- They have been relatively friendly to bitcoin (Although treat their merchants like shit)

Essentially, Dwolla will become obsolete once Bitinstant, or an exchange becomes licenses MSB in the US, at that point we can pull ACH directly-totally bypassing Dwolla.

...Dwolla your days are numbered...

Wait...you guys are actually confused as to why they wouldn't be 100% against bitcoin? You know it puts them out of business in the long run, right?
Bitcoin is not a consumer solution. It's an industrial large scale solution.
Bitcoin doesn't replace Western Union, it replaces the core of Western union INSIDE of Western union, to save them money for providing the same service.
If you think of it this way, Dwolla is doing awesome keeping it a secret.

Sure, thats a given. They realize the financial benefits of being friendly to Bitcoin when everyone else is not, but that doesn't make them better people, their motives are driven by money (Which is not a bad thing, Im just pointing it out)

[Melbustus]

Yeah I can say I had never heard of them until MtGox said they supported them. I wonder though, if it is almost only bitcoiners that are giving them exposure and making them look interesting to a VC, what will the general public actually think of them? As far as I know, no one that I know outside of Bitcoin has ever heard of them.

I think this is naive. Dwolla has lots of exposure outside the bitcoin community. Sure, bitcoin exchanges gave Dwolla a huge customer-base boost at a critical time in their cycle, but Dwolla has grown well beyond relying on bitcoiners.

And regarding non-bitcoiners knowing about Dwolla....Dwolla is attracting LOTS of attention from a wide variety of people right now. I'm a software consultant working mostly with web startups. About two weeks ago, one of the execs at one of the companies I work for excitedly brought up Dwolla on a call, and one of the former Wall St. guys we were on the phone with was WELL aware of Dwolla already. These were not techy guys (aside from me) on the call - this was a CPA, an MBA, and a sales guy. In fact, I first heard about Dwolla from the founder (another MBA guy) of a startup my wife worked for, before I heard about bitcoin.

I think it's pretty clear that Dwolla is going to get a lot bigger before it hits any serious roadblocks, regardless of bitcoin.

[LoupGaroux]

Dwolla is controlled by Veridian Credit Union. Since we have relationships with Dwolla, or can have with a $1 deposit, we are also eligible for accounts with Veridian. As a Credit Union they act and set policy on the basis of membership vote. Guaranteed that 50,000 new accounts with corresponding votes would gain a couple of seats on the various boards, and would probably give controlling interest over all policy for Dwolla.

[Dinkytoyz]

We use Bitinstant because the risk with Dwolla is far too high and they've already stolen from us.

What about TradeHill stealing from all their customers?

[EuSouBitcoin]

Many Bitcoin traders need to move USD
1) from a bank to a BTC exchange and vice-versa
2) do so quickly
3) do so at a low lost
Dwolla does these things well. I understand the issues that exchanges have with Dwolla passing on fraudulent activity to them. But as I'm not a BTC exchange, that is not a problem that I have to deal with. For now, Dwolla is my first choice for moving USD to and from a BTC exchange.

[blueadept]

Essentially, Dwolla will become obsolete once Bitinstant, or an exchange becomes licenses MSB in the US, at that point we can pull ACH directly-totally bypassing Dwolla.

Do you have plans to do this? That's exciting, and I can't wait to see it!  It'll make it much easier for me to tell all my friends "just register with BitInstant and go buy yourself some bitcoins."

Dwolla is controlled by Veridian Credit Union. Since we have relationships with Dwolla, or can have with a $1 deposit, we are also eligible for accounts with Veridian. As a Credit Union they act and set policy on the basis of membership vote. Guaranteed that 50,000 new accounts with corresponding votes would gain a couple of seats on the various boards, and would probably give controlling interest over all policy for Dwolla.

This is also a brilliant idea, if true. I can't confirm that on their site. Where did you get the information that having a Dwolla balance (or account) makes us eligible for accounts with Veridian?