Visa Plans To Enable Bitcoin Payments At 70 Million Merchants (btctimes.com) 88
On Fortune's Leadership Next podcast yesterday, Visa CEO Alfred Kelly said that the payment processing behemoth is willing to facilitate not only bitcoin purchases, but also spending functionalities. "We're trying to do two things," said Kelly. "One is to enable the purchase of Bitcoin on Visa credentials. And secondly, working with Bitcoin wallets to allow the Bitcoin to be translated into a fiat currency and therefore immediately be able to be used at any of the 70 million places around the world where Visa is accepted." BTC Times reports: According to Kelly, Visa is working hard to earn its role as an intermediary in financial transactions even after Bitcoin sees mainstream adoption. Other than Bitcoin, the payment processor also plans to allow for the use of stablecoins. He admitted that the company recognizes "a strong potential for those to become a new payment vehicle." Kelly said Visa is collaborating with about 35 partners involved with stablecoins, explaining that "these are currencies that are fiat-backed, but we're allowing this translation, if you will, into a fiat currency and in a wallet where there's a Visa card and again that Visa card can be used with the translated digital currency over to the fiat currency to purchase at any one of our 70 million locations."
This is seemingly referring to Visa's partnership with Circle, the firm behind the USDC stablecoin. According to a report released by Forbes at the end of 2020, the payment processing giant partnered with Circle to integrate USDC into its infrastructure and allow credit card issuers to use USD Coin on their platforms and send and receive USDC payments. Visa's head of crypto Cuy Sheffield said at the time: "We continue to think of Visa as a network of networks. [...] Blockchain networks and stablecoins, like USDC, are just additional networks. So we think that there's a significant value that Visa can provide to our clients, enabling them to access them and enabling them to spend at our merchants."
This is seemingly referring to Visa's partnership with Circle, the firm behind the USDC stablecoin. According to a report released by Forbes at the end of 2020, the payment processing giant partnered with Circle to integrate USDC into its infrastructure and allow credit card issuers to use USD Coin on their platforms and send and receive USDC payments. Visa's head of crypto Cuy Sheffield said at the time: "We continue to think of Visa as a network of networks. [...] Blockchain networks and stablecoins, like USDC, are just additional networks. So we think that there's a significant value that Visa can provide to our clients, enabling them to access them and enabling them to spend at our merchants."
Bitcoin is for money laundering and wasting energy (Score:5, Insightful)
Can I buy carbon credits with bit coin? (Score:2)
Can I give to Earth First and Save- the- Polar-Bears using Bit coin credits?
Re:Bitcoin USD (Score:5, Insightful)
Bitcoin is a superior money. Why do you want to use a bad money (USD...) when a good money (BTC) is available again!
Bitcoin is not money at al, superior or otherwise. Bitcoin, at best, is an investment vehicle.
You do not want a money system that is increasing rapidly in value. This is "deflation", and the result is that people hold on to the coinage rather than spend it, because it's more valuable to hold than to spend. Money that people don't spend isn't money.
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Bitcoin is the digitization of the Gold Standard. Gold was money for 1000+ years. Bitcoin is the only real money left!
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You've had since 2009. Stay mad I guess?
Re: Bitcoin is for money laundering and wasting en (Score:1)
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Re: Bitcoin is for money laundering and wasting e (Score:1)
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Yes, I mean... Just like TOR is only a tool for criminals, right? Right? /s
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The next step will be paying people in BTC (Score:1, Troll)
It'll be a new company script. Combine this with 21st century company towns [engadget.com] and we're rapidly pissing away the rights our ancestors fought for and running headlong back to feudalism if we're lucky and fascism if we're not.
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That is insane and backwards. Our ancestors didn't fight for strict government control of commerce but exactly the opposite!
Bitcoin and cryptocurrency are an enabling technology. Every transaction outside the hands of the worlds wealthy elite controlling banking and outside the direct control of government is a slice of liberty pie enabling a free person's autonomy. Without that we are nothing but ants in a colony.
Our ancentors fought for a 40 hr work week (Score:3)
Those are the things we're giving up. And what are we getting in return? Hero worship?
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Is there something about handing over your autonomy, leverage, and liberty that magically delivers a living wage, clean air and water, some 'right' to organize or a say in your government?
There is nothing about Bitcoin that gives up any of that.
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The entire point of Bitcoin/Crypto is that there is NO central authority. No elite.
Except it's not going to be BTC (Score:1)
The next step will be paying people in BTC
You are close, but in reality what people will be paid in is called CBDC [americanbanker.com].
That's what UBI will come through, and what will replace physical money, a digital currency managed by the government.
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There will be no UBI, if you want sufficient money to live on you'll have to work.
Money is already digital, most US dollars are not physical cash. That is how government has been paying people for decades. The USD as digital money happened likely before you were born.
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No there won't, because those of us that took the trouble to make something of themselves, and have to work each day of the week, are tired of paying for parasites already. Maybe they'll just have to get a fucking job like the rest of us and quit being adult babies.
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It's scrip. No t.
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Bitcoin has no links to feudalism or fascism. If anything, it is rampant economic liberalism, and a libertarian wet dream; a substance that, because it is not actually real, cannot be printed by all the damnable printing presses and lying ledgers. The force required to shut down Bitcoin is absolutely immense; money-printers will instead attack the cryptography and spread FUD in hopes to stop the existence of JUST ONE THING that they cannot print.
How do they handle volitility? (Score:2)
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"Bitcoin is 100% resistant to debasement, but Bitcoin shows some volatility. Your choice!"
Uh-huh, wait until the banks get their hooks into it. Just like how they manipulate precious metals markets by creating infinite paper derivatives and futures contracts without the benefit of having something physical you can store for when that system collapses.
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No, he's correct. Bitcoin costs nothing to verify- this is true, because everything is in that ledger. If a transaction has occured, it is reflected in there. It costs nothing.
Bitcoin is also very cheap to move. We have seen transaction costs over the last few years ranging from like 3 dollars to 20 dollars. I challenge you to get gold or almost ANY physical object to cross anything larger than a driveway for less than 20 dollars.
And of course there's a variety of tricks and crap to make it cheaper tha
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This is an underrated comment. Bitcoin being a public ledger has always been a pretty big deal for it, and has always worked against the same exact shenanigans that have been levied against gold and silver. If you could think for a moment and sense the location of all the gold to exact precision, it would be harder for the derivative chain to be believable. The more things that happen OFF the blockchain, as it becomes viewed as a settlement layer, the more banks move to a position to suppress the price.
S
VISA is the one handling the volitility (Score:3)
At this point VISA is not going to try to help people pay you (or BestBuy) in BitCoin. They're letting people convert their BitCoint to regular currency at the time of the transaction resulting in the companies being paid in USD, Euro etc.
It's in the article summary (not that the article itself is much longer than the summary).
"And secondly, working with Bitcoin wallets to allow the Bitcoin to be translated into a fiat currency and therefore immediately be able to be used at any of the 70 million places aro
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It'll be fun to see how they do that with multi-day settlements for BTC transactions. When the bottom does fall out of BTC it will happen in a couple hours, maybe minutes.
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Very simple, there is zero risk to Visa since they are immediately turning into actual money. They aren't assuming anything about the game token that is Bitcoin.
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Commodities including gold and silver fluctuate by as much on speculative markets and yet you can buy frozen orange juice at Walmart, jewelry, and most sane people would eagerly accept gold/silver as payment in place of fiat, even prefer it. Oven's fluctuate by as much and yet a smaller than 20% margin of average temperature cooking requirement can be facilitated to cook a soufflé.
Speculative markets don't instantly impact trade. Most retailers also aren't on as tight of margins as you imply, regularly
Walmart doesn't let me pay them in gold (Score:2)
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Fallacy, this isn't about bitcoin for merchants at all. Visa will convert into money from the game token bitcoin at time of purchase. Zero risk to Visa, zero risk to merchant. If bitcoin (again and again as before) plummets in value the only one taking a beating will be the holder of the game token bitcoin, the purchaser.
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Yes, I'm looking at Tesla. Tesla does not accept bitcoin; Tesla has speculated by buying an amount of bitcoin that is small compared to their cash on hand. Tesla's bitcoin holdings have the carbon footprint of 1.8 million cars, thanks Musk.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news... [yahoo.com]
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Musk and Saylor's hopes and dreams don't make bitcoin any less a speculative game token, don't make it money, don't give it future value. It is 21st century tulip mania II only. It will crash when the hype train runs out of steam.
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a first U.S. dollar from late 18th century is still legal tender today. The U.S. dollar will fail if and only if the USA will fail, and then we'll have bigger worries than what anything in a digital wallet is worth. U.S. dollar may not be the greatest thing, but it's better than casino chip or game token which is the category of things that include bitcoin.
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> a first U.S. dollar from late 18th century is still legal tender today
I can't actually figure out if this is true or not. The dollar in question is the flowing-hair dollar, which, at 90% silver, is about .85 ounces of silver, currently worth about 22 dollars using the spot price of silver as a guide (though good luck getting ANY silver at spot price). I don't know if it is still legal tender though.
> The U.S. dollar will fail if and only if the USA will fail
Thirty five dollars used to buy you an o
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USD is money as long as it is accepted; that won't change anytime soon. Certainly a game token, that fails tests of money such as liquidity e.g. bitcoin is no threat to it
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slow inflation isn't failing, since it's still around and used dollar hasn't failed. Anyway bringing up dollar, money, into a discussion of game token bitcoin is making a rabbit trail offtopic. Bitcoin isn't money, fails the tests of money. Architecture is too constipated so it is illiquid, not accepted everywhere, is too volatile.
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Nope, bitcoin has no intrinsic worth besides not being money. Can't compare it with gold or silver, below that and our currency. Not insured either. It will crash soon again when the tulip mania is over.
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Inflation isn't proof of the dollars failure. The currency is designed to inflate with the devaluation being the forward pressure to keep money circulating and driving the economy.
Of course inflation is far in excess of what is being tracked with the official metrics being a small list of mostly goods and services with prices manipulated by government subsidies and taxes.
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Cool, not money you can spend everywhere paypal, visa, mastercard, bitpay and a host of other processors are accepted.
I've been willing to accept bitcoin in lieu of cash for any transaction for a decade or so now and I think I'll just keep on doing that. I regret bitcoin I've spent/sold but certainly not bitcoin I've accepted. I mean in that decade it has gone from ~$15 to ~$60,000, crazy volatile. There were times I let someone pay me back in bitcoin for covering their lunch and I'd just have to keep cove
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The only flaw is fragmentation of the market. You can't counterfeit bitcoin but you can make a counterfeit bitcoin via forking.
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blah blah blah more nonsense without any logical basis. No amount of sneering at things with distract anyone from the true value of your opinion.
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"Tesla's bitcoin holdings have the carbon footprint of 1.8 million cars"
This is debunked repeatedly. Bitcoin has no innate carbon footprint and even the worst offender, China is estimated to use over 40% green hydro to mine it. The logic in which you dump blame for carbon output on bitcoin is equally inapplicable to Tesla's own cars which consume huge amounts of energy and are also neutral to the source of that energy.
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Imagine thinking Visa is a fiat currency.
Why would I want to pay Visa fees on crypto. (Score:5, Insightful)
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without the government setting hard limits on transactions.
That worked out so well for the Silk Road.
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It may well do so but by the time that happens VISA/MASTERCARD will own serious mining power and a huge portfolio of coin. Miners are the card processors of crypto, they get all the fees.
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Visa takes way too high a cut on each transaction. My hope for crypto was to do away with this plague on society.
By paying high transaction fees to someone else?
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The real question is, will VISA add their tiny transaction fee to the gigantic bitcoin one?
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Is this what we wanted? (Score:2)
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I prefer to think it is like when Blockbuster got into streaming. They had 7500 stores at that point.
Bitcoin for pizza (Score:2)
Remember the guy that bought two pizzas with 10,000 Bitcoins... [bitcointalk.org]
Good luck not making a mistake that like again (or if you're the vendor having the price crash right before you need to buy more supplies...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2021-02-10/who-bought-pizza-with-bitcoin-he-has-some-advice-for-tesla-fans [bloomberg.com]
Serious question (Score:2)
What happens if I lose my password or someone manages to steal my bitcoin?
Re: Serious question (Score:3)
Can you remind me, because I forget. How long does it take to perform transaction? How fast can I convert my Bitcoin into euros?
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What happens if I lose my password or someone manages to steal my bitcoin?
Same thing that happens to paper money.
If you lose it, it is gone (consider it destroyed essentially as the likelyhood of somebody else "finding" it is an astronomically impossibility short of quantum tech)
If it is stolen, then the person who stole it has it. But unlike with paper money, there is a public audit of all transactions so the person who stole it has a wallet that can be seen by the entire world. So if those funds move out of the wallet to another wallet or is consumed at some place physical that