Expedia To Accept Bitcoin 87
An anonymous reader writes With the debacle of Mt. GoX, Bitcoin's future was looking a little murky. But in a significant mainline acceptance, Expedia has said they will begin accepting Bitcoins as a form of payment. At first, they will accept it for hotel bookings only, will accept it only in USA, and also will not be holding Bitcoins for any length of time — converting it to dollars as soon as they can. But, quoting Emily Spaven, managing editor of Bitcoin news site CoinDesk, as told to the BBC, the move was "brilliant news" and it "brings digital currency further into the consciousness of the mainstream." So you can't quite fly to Galt's Gulch to your newly Bitcoiin-purchased real estate without switching currencies.
Re:We're not there yet (Score:5, Insightful)
...Bitcoin will not fulfill its promise: keeping cash flow untaxable, allowing people to hold on to their hard-earned income instead of the state taking it away from them at gunpoint.
Bitcoin makes no such promises. The only "promises" (goals, really) bitcoin purports to make are centered around the current trust-based model of payment processing and it's unnecessarily high transaction costs. [bitcoin.org] Only people (like you, apparently) with an agenda/ax to grind believe bitcoin promises anything else.
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and it's unnecessarily high transaction costs. [bitcoin.org]
Which is naive at best and ignores the fact that its only 'free' on the bitcoin network now for ancillary reasons that will go away. As time goes on, the same fees will be syphoned off bitcoin transactions as well if it continues.
Its really silly to think that processors aren't going to their as much extra as they can.
BitCoin is MORE expensive to actually process than a CC transaction, and it gets WORSE over time. Processing fees aren't there because of the cost, they are there because they CAN charge ext
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Do you have any actual numbers to back this assertion?
But as the market grows, volatility decreases, which makes it possible to deal directly in Bitcoin. This is very different from credit cards where network effect limits competition.
Bitcoin fees will have to grow eventually ... (Score:2)
As popularity grows, so will fees.
But as the market grows, volatility decreases, which makes it possible to deal directly in Bitcoin.
That will not eliminate fees. The Bitcoin model will eventually require increased fees on each and every transaction. As mining becomes more difficult and less rewarding, miners need an incentive other than solving blocks. That will be the fees embedded in each transaction.
Keep in mind that miners do not only create new coins. They also verify the transactions in the block chain and get the embedded fees. Without a large number of independent miners this block chain can be corrupted and individual transa
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But as the market grows there will be more transactions and therefore more fees generated without actually increasing them.
Doesn't work that way for miners. Their hardware has a max capacity that they are already running at. And that hardware is expensive. If the return is not sufficient they will not invest in new hardware and will just stop mining. That can destroy a virtual currency. Transaction fees will go up as fewer and fewer new coins are awarded over time.
Re:Bitcoin fees will have to grow eventually ... (Score:4, Informative)
The effort required to mine a block is (almost) independent of the number of transactions in it. Mining happens against a tree hash of all the transactions in the block, so the only difference between mining a block with 1 transaction and a block with 1,000,000 is generating that tree. And that is something desktop computers do routinely, for example magnet links used for P2P are based on hash trees. So a larger amount of transactions always leads to a larger total reward for mining.
A bigger technical challenge is whether a broadcast network can handle transaction rates resulting from large-scale adoption.
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There's a market system in play. The available fees are statistically divided among miners according to their processing power. If mining isnt economical, people stop doing it - which means the fees are divided among those left, making it more profitable. If more people start mining there is a smaller slice of the pie for each, and the reward for each falls. If all goes as planned, it'll settle into an equilibrium where the money to be made from transaction fees is just above the cost of powering and housin
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bitcoin has to much fluctuation for them to hold i (Score:2)
bitcoin has to much fluctuation for them to hold it. and do you want to show up at the hotel and be told you have to pay more to make up the short fall and or be told you can only get a room at the walk up / Max rack rate that can be sat 3-5 times the Expedia rate.
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bitcoin has to much fluctuation for them to hold it. and do you want to show up at the hotel and be told you have to pay more to make up the short fall and or be told you can only get a room at the walk up / Max rack rate that can be sat 3-5 times the Expedia rate.
You would never "show up at the hotel and be told you have to pay more". Normally I would just call you an idiot. But it is not your fault. The Mainstream Media has done you a disservice. When you pay a merchant with Bitcoin they can choose to have it INSTANTLY converted to cash or save a portion of the Bitcoin payment. There is no "fluctuation risk" for the merchant unless they choose to hold Bitcoin.
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Well you are doing a disservice to Slashdotters by poking holes in their mindless dribble. Just let them be and allow them to wallow in their fantasy worlds, they're happier there!
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Assuming the merchant instantly converts Bitcoins into cash for say, a $100 equivalent transaction, what is the difference in transaction cost when compared with a credit card? I know credit card transactions cost roughly 2%, or $2 in this case.
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1. "bitcoin has too much fluctuation for them to hold it" - correct
2. Do you want to show up at the hotel and be told you have to pay more to make up the short fall - What shortfall? See #1.
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Expedia is using something like Bitpay for their Bitcoin processing, right? If that's the case, they get their payment in cash right away and do not need to worry about any price fluctuations.
Bitcoin lost 11.6% of its value this week ... (Score:5, Informative)
Unfortunately, American regulatory practices mean that for the foreseeable future, businesses will convert Bitcoin to cash as soon as they get it, and deposit it into ordinary bank accounts. As long as that goes on, Bitcoin will not fulfill its promise: keeping cash flow untaxable, allowing people to hold on to their hard-earned income instead of the state taking it away from them at gunpoint.
Its not American regulatory practices, i.e. the recent IRS advisory about virtual currency being an asset not a currency. It is, and has been since before the IRS spoke, bitcoins volatility that causes merchants not to **hold** bitcoins.
Also, merchants don't have to convert bitcoins to fiat currency. They may never even touch or see a bitcoin. Various bitcoin exchanges have merchant services where the merchant tells the exchange the price in fiat currency and the exchange calculate the equivalent number of bitcoins to display to the customer, provides an exchange payment address, and when bitcoins are received at this address the exchange credits the merchant's account the exact fiat currency amount they originally stated regardless of any bitcoin fluctuations. The merchant does all its pricing and accounting in fiat currency and receives the exact correct payment in fiat currency. It merely receives the payment from a 3rd party, the exchange rather than directly from the customer.
Again, all of this was in place **before** the IRS advisory. It was due to bit coin's price volatility, which continues today. This week bitcoin lost 11.6% of its value. Bitcoin acts much like an asset, i.e. gold, stocks, etc.
That said, bitcoin is an excellent payment system. It will probably replace paypal and such, put a dent in credit cards, but probably not compete with the US Dollar, the Euro, etc to a large degree. Bitcoin has to become a stable store of value before it can become a serious currency.
And of course if you are a speculator bitcoins have a value there too.
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That said, bitcoin is an excellent payment system. It will probably replace paypal and such, put a dent in credit cards.
In its current form, there's no way any cryptocurrency replaces paypal or credit cards. The major problems: Anonymity, Lack of protection from fraud, susceptibility to loss (lose your wallet, oops.), and user unfriendliness (expecting the average Joe to deal with wallet software and bitcoin addresses is major stretch).
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In its current form, there's no way any cryptocurrency replaces paypal or credit cards. The major problems: Anonymity, Lack of protection from fraud, susceptibility to loss (lose your wallet, oops.), and user unfriendliness (expecting the average Joe to deal with wallet software and bitcoin addresses is major stretch).
I don't necessarily see all of those things as problems, but let's go through them, shall we.
1) Anonymity: While it is possible for a dedicated person with resources to track crypto transactions (since by it's very nature all transactions are stored in a giant public ledger), the transactions themselves do not identify you. It is in this sense pseudonymous, you know which wallet has bitcoin X in it, since you can follow it's path on the blockchain, but since you cannot identify who a said wallet belongs
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All of what you said simply re-enfoces the fact that the general public will never accept this form of payment period. I fail to see how YOU can't see that. People are risk adverse, especially with money. They lock them up in banks with trivial amounts of interest vs. holding or investments because they're terrified of losing / investment losses. You seriously think the common man will accept this in a world of "I lost my CC, can you please issue a new one?" VS.. Oh shit, I lost my digital wallet thing, my
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Point 1 is a severe flaw. There is a reason why all large money transfers are tracked nowadays to best extent possible.
Point 2 is even more severe of a flaw. It means that currency itself becomes an enemy of any customer protections already in place. If bitcoin will ever advance as an actual payment rather than speculation vehicle it is today, this will endear it to the fradulent merchants and serve as a severe detriment to any customer wishing to make a purchase and honest merchants who won't want to assoc
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I think volatility also plays a role.
Certainly I wouldnt hold on to bitcoin longer than I had to, maybe some people are comfortable with that level of risk but I certainly am not.
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This is partially offset by their cost for materials going down but bottom line is that companies will need
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"American regulatory practices"
Such as...?
Bitcoins have the paperwork overhead of stocks ... (Score:5, Informative)
"American regulatory practices"
Such as...?
A recent IRS advisory said virtual currency is to be treated as an assent not a currency. So lets say you receive some bitcoins. At some future date you spend these bitcoins. Since these bitcoins are an asset you have to account for their gain or loss in value for the days you held them an declare a loss or gain on your taxes. In short spending bitcoins has the paperwork overhead of selling stocks, its not like spending dollars at all.
Ex. You buy one coin at $500 and another at $600. Coins are priced at $800 at the time of a future purchase. You buy something for $1,200, 1.5 coins. Using FIFO (first in first out) your basis for the outgoing 1.5 coins is $500 + $300 = $800, and the basis for the returning 0.5 coins is still $300. You experienced a gain of $400 on the 1.5 coins at the time of the sale and that $400 would seem to be taxable income. Apologies if I botched the math, hopefully the point gets across.
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Thanks for the response. The asset vs. currency advisory is a relevant point and I admit that I missed it.
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keeping cash flow untaxable, allowing people to hold on to their hard-earned income instead of the state taking it away from them at gunpoint.
how did that work out for Greece when it turns out nobody was paying taxes and the community (cities) had to borrow the cash so the trash men would be paid ?
if society doesn't want tax revenue it wouldn't exist, but as a collective you need roads, trash, schools etc, the American idea of "fuck you i got mine" isn't healthy when trying to be a civilized society.
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If you desire an all-bitcoin environment, then this is a required precursor. If a business is accepting bitcoins, and they in turn do business with another that accepts bitcoins, then someone there will soon realise that skipping the dollar-conversion in the middle saves a lot of commission costs.
Bitcoin does have a few advantages aside from those sought by crypto-anarchist idealists. For one, it's conveniently international - even Paypal isn't active in all countries. It means you can offer a service globa
Future Turing test (Score:2)
So you can't quite fly to Galt's Gulch to your newly Bitcoiin-purchased real estate without switching currencies.
For Christ's sake, stop hijacking the story and trying to show off your cleverness, especially if your snarky comment could've been written better by a ten-year old. A slow ten-year old at that.
The editor comments are generated by algorithms. The site beta tests algorithms for future Turing tests. :-)
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WTF is a "Bitcoiin" anyway?
A bitcoin is an entry in a financial ledger ... (Score:1)
WTF is a "Bitcoiin" anyway?
A bitcoin is an entry in a financial ledger. A ledger that is open and transparent and verified by multiple independent (hopefully) parties.
A bitcoin wallet that a particular person may posses never contains any bitcoins. What it does contain is the digital signature that allows bitcoins associated with a particular account in the ledger to be transferred to another account.
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Everybody is blind to the typo or what?
Not blind. Its simply that the typo is irrelevant. Many readers do not know what a bitcoin is so ignoring the sarcasm and treating the question as real is useful. Especially since many will not notice the typo.
would be interesting if they report numbers later (Score:3)
I've seen a reasonable number of announcements regarding accepting Bitcoins, but am still looking for a good case where it accounts for a significant proportion of someone's business. People either seem never to report the numbers, or only those with relatively poor Bitcoin numbers report them.
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People either seem never to report the numbers, or only those with relatively poor Bitcoin numbers report them.
Perhaps they are reporting the numbers, but most of the numbers are "poor"?
The "carrot" has always been "we can use this as currency for purchasing goods!" but the reality has always been that Bitcoin is in reality a speculative commodity that is rarely used in commerce.
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That's my suspicion, yes. The few numbers I've seen reported more or less boil down to "we implemented Bitcoin [purchasing | donations] and got like, $27.95 total from that route over six months". If there are stories of companies implementing a Bitcoin payment route and doing significant volume through it, I haven't been able to find them. Well, at least if you're looking at companies selling legal things.
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My company routinely has customers pay in Bitcoins and I've stopped converting them to USD as there are plenty of avenues to spend them...
What's your spot price for a kilo?
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I've seen a reasonable number of announcements regarding accepting Bitcoins, but am still looking for a good case where it accounts for a significant proportion of someone's business. People either seem never to report the numbers, or only those with relatively poor Bitcoin numbers report them.
To be honest most of the large merchants/service providers announcing that they accept Bitcoins never actually see a bitcoin. They contract merchant services where a bitcoin exchange acts as an intermediary that converts the price to bitcoins, accepts bitcoins and then pays the merchant in the currency the original price was stated in. And they pay the exact amount originally stated regardless of any bitcoin fluctuations.
All accepting bitcoins means for most of these merchants is that they work with a di
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That's true, but they can still collect stats on payment methods, which is pretty routine. What I'm curious about is whether switching to a payment processor that accepts Bitcoin results in anyone actually buying things with Bitcoin. Is it more like adding support for EUR, or more like adding support for the Kazakhstani tenge?
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"am still looking for a good case where it accounts for a significant proportion of someone's business"
Silk Road? :>
Re:they do not accept bitcoins (Score:4, Insightful)
Yup, they do not accept Euros either. They convert your Euros into US dollars, which they accept.
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In fact there are three freely convertible currencies in the Galaxy, but none of them count. The Altairian Dollar has recently collapsed, the Flanian Pobble bead is only exchangeable for other Flanian Pobble Beads, and the Triganic Pu has its own very special problems. Its exchange rate of eight Ningis to one Pu is simple enough, but since a Ningi is a rubber coin six thousand eight hundred miles along each side, no one has ever collected enough to own one Pu. Ningis are not negotiable currency, because the Galactibanks refuse to deal in fiddling small change. From this basic premise it is very simple to prove that the Galactibanks are also the product of a deranged imagination.
Bitcoins are insane (Score:1)
They have no intrinsic value, similar to tulip bulbs back in the day. Gold has intrinsic value. Currency has intrinsic value in that it's tied to the GDP and ability of its issuer to pay bonds. It's true monetary policy can grow or shrink a money supply, but see above. When a bitcoin is generated, it was generated from not virtually nothing, but literally nothing.
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fail..... NOTHING has 'intrinsic' value. Many things have a set of attributes (that goes for gold too). People tend to place 'value' on certain attributes... and disagree with other people about what attribute(s) have 'value'. .. where do you think Federal Reserve Notes (aka USD) get generated from? Oh... thats right, out of nothing... at the whim of some shadowy central bank types... who are totally unaccountable for their actions.
As for 'generated from nothing'
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Gold has some intrinsic value: You can do useful things with it. It's very useful in electronics for a start - it doesn't have the best conductivity, but gold contacts never corrode. A very desireable property.
The intrinsic value is a lot less than the actual financial cost though, because it is desired primarily as a status symbol. People want it because it is rare and expensive, so it serves as a way to flaunt wealth.
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That's not intrinsic. If you don't want to do those things, it has no value for them. All value is subjective.
Gold's utility value is way below its current market valuation though.
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A lot of things don't have intrinsic value. A collection of bits on my hard drive is just that, a collection of bits. However, some people feel it has value, they charge 99 cents if it represents a song, say. Or a book, or something else. The representation has no value since my hard drive will always have bits even if it isn't those bits. What those bits mean, though has value to some people.
Tulip bulbs has intr
Bitcoin main developer warning (Score:1)
MtGox is not Bitcoin (Score:2)
With the debacle of Mt. GoX, Bitcoin's future was looking a little murky
Not to anyone who actually follows Bitcoin. MtGox was old news in 2013, a year before it actually failed. Bit coin's success was never based on MtGox - it was the other way around. And the failure of a fraudulent company in the Bitcoin space made Bitcoin stronger, not weaker.
Tired of hearing this illogical assertion repeated.
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Bitcoin stories shouldn't mention MtGox any more than dollar stories should mention Enron.
TSA wants credit card number for Air travel.. (Score:2)
The TSA does a whole lot of pre-flight data mining on passenger lists. I recall some discussion a while back about how they included included things like the credit card numbers, billing addresses etc in the mix.
Paying with Bitcoin has the same problem as paying with straight-up cash - it sets of all sorts of red flags because there's no real way to see if you're "connected" to other "interesting" people or not. No data = guilty until proven innocent etc.
When you're on the clock for getting to your depart
Seriously (Score:1)
I don't know why, but I have a felling that Bitcoin is nothing more than a piramid scheme...