[HN Gopher] PayPal launches crypto checkout service
___________________________________________________________________
PayPal launches crypto checkout service
Author : JulianRaphael
Score : 302 points
Date : 2021-03-30 12:15 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| cube00 wrote:
| > The company will charge no transaction fee to checkout with
| crypto
|
| Will this be like what they do when they offer "no transaction
| fee" currency conversion but build it into the rate they use?
| zozin wrote:
| Obviously. Intermediators love volatility and big spreads!
| Users will probably lose a few percentage points on every
| transaction, so for PayPal this is basically a license to print
| money.
| buildbuildbuild wrote:
| This is not a BitPay competitor until PayPal allows users to
| deposit cryptocurrency. Until then it is a closed loop system,
| users and merchants cannot yet deposit or withdraw crypto itself,
| similar to Robinhood.
|
| Highly disappointed that Square (Cash) has not launched a BitPay
| competitor and still only supports Bitcoin. They've allowed BTC
| deposits and withdrawals for years (with great UX!) yet are
| lagging far behind in release cadence.
|
| The biggest barrier to spending crypto is still finding merchants
| that accept it, even through third parties. PayPal's huge
| merchant userbase will allow dominance if/when they flip the
| switch to an open loop, "deposit your crypto" approach.
|
| Only PayPal and Stripe can flip that switch at scale with a
| hosted checkout experience. Merchants don't care how a user paid,
| they want fiat.
| ericcholis wrote:
| I've found that OpenNode is a pretty reasonable hosted-checkout
| bitcoin processor. They support Lightning, and BTC to Fiat at
| time of purchase.
| UShouldBWorking wrote:
| The biggest barrier is Bitcoin Core's deliberately high fees.
|
| Who is going to pay a $10 fee to buy a cup of coffee.
|
| Of course Satoshi had the fee problem and scaling solved from
| day one but when Blockstream hijacked the GitHub repo they
| diverted BTC to have high fees in an attempt to push users to
| their second layer products like Liquid and LN.
| cactus2093 wrote:
| > The biggest barrier to spending crypto is still finding
| merchants that accept it
|
| I am a huge fan of BTC and have held some for many years. But
| it seems to me the reason this hasn't really happened yet is
| just that it's not really a big problem that needs solving. Why
| do people need to spend crypto on online purchases, as opposed
| to converting to fiat and spending that?
|
| I'm sure it'll happen eventually, it's not a bad thing to give
| people more options of how to pay. It just doesn't seem like a
| huge need for anybody in countries like the US, Canada, UK,
| Europe, Australia, Japan (which are the vast majority of the
| market for companies like Paypal, Stripe, and Square).
| CryptoPunk wrote:
| Being able to spend crypto at any merchant massively
| increases the liquidity of crypto - it provides more places
| where one can convert their crypto assets into goods and
| services. Reducing dependence on a small number of
| centralized crypto exchanges for liquidity provision is good
| for the decentralization and robustness of the crypto market
| as well.
|
| Also fiat networks can be censored by financial institutions
| and government, as we saw with the financial blockade on
| WikiLeaks a few years ago, and have seen happen against pro-
| democracy protestors in Hong Kong recently. Direct merchant
| acceptance of crypto provides an alternative when such
| financial controls are put in place.
|
| Merchant adoption of crypto is an unmitigated good for
| crypto, from any perspective you look at it from. It's
| puzzling to me when some crypto enthusiasts see no point in
| it, when it is really the entire point of cryptocurrency.
| cactus2093 wrote:
| I would certainly disagree that being able to online shop
| using Paypal is the whole point of cryptocurrency. Having
| the ability to easily and securely exchange with others is
| the whole point, but doing it conveniently on a daily basis
| over existing payment rails is not the whole point or even
| that important.
|
| If a government decides to censor fiat networks to prevent
| certain transactions, the fact that paypal accepts bitcoin
| for those transactions is irrelevant. The company you're
| buying from as well as Paypall will still need to follow
| KYC laws and will be obligated not to transact with you.
|
| In that scenario you're already fully living outside the
| law, you'll have to transact as anonymously as possible,
| exchanging crypto in secret in person or over the dark web
| or what have you. It doesn't matter whether major above
| board institutions like Paypal or Stripe accept bitcoin or
| not.
| d--b wrote:
| If paypal allows people to deposit their crypto and pay
| merchants in fiat, you can be sure that they'll quickly become
| the biggest seller of bitcoin out there. With the illiquidity
| of the btc => usd conversion, they'll have to pay the merchant
| before selling the btc, which means they'll have to take a huge
| margin to cover potential slippage.
|
| No one wants to be the guy who sells bitcoin on a massive
| scale.
| stale2002 wrote:
| The problem of slippage/margins is overstated.
|
| Other websites already support this. They just charge a 1%
| fee and call it a day.
|
| Average credit card fees are already much larger than any fee
| that would be required to cover price changes.
| mlcrypto wrote:
| They can hold the BTC forever and pay the merchant with their
| massive cash reserve or 0% interest debt. Profit
| oh_sigh wrote:
| They could also accept pebbles and sand as payment, hold
| them forever, and pay the merchant with their massive cash
| reserve or 0% interest debt. Profit.
| the_local_host wrote:
| Pebbles and sand might be safer to hold if they are less
| volatile than BTC. A company like Paypal needs stability,
| not a directional bet on an asset.
| tertius wrote:
| The potential downside on this is 100%. The potential
| upside on this is... Unknowable.
|
| They would never get away with this as a publicly traded
| company.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| Why would they not? This is effectively buying Bitcoin,
| slowly, at a discount (they'll surely slap hefty
| fees/unfavorable exchange rates on it, because there are
| many people who will happily pay extra for the privilege
| of paying with crypto, just like people will pay a lot
| more for anything slapped with an "organic" label).
|
| Tesla, a publicly traded company, got away with buying
| $1.5 billion in Bitcoin just fine.
|
| PayPal can also sell that Bitcoin to customers who want
| to buy Bitcoin.
| tertius wrote:
| Tesla is not a payment processor. Nor is it in the
| business of profiting off of crypto as a fundamental
| change in it's business model.
|
| I'm replying to a comment saying they should use their
| cash reserve to buy bitcoin instead of
| dividends/buybacks.
|
| And yes, they can sell it and have some level of "float"
| to support crypto buy/sell exchange. But the comment was
| a hodl comment to "make them more money."
| [deleted]
| ajkdhcb2 wrote:
| There are always debit cards that let you 'spend' crypto,
| paypal is obviously less useful than that. The volume would
| also be nowhere near big exchangers since trading is by far
| the biggest activity in crypto
| runeks wrote:
| > With the illiquidity of the btc => usd conversion, they'll
| have to pay the merchant before selling the btc, which means
| they'll have to take a huge margin to cover potential
| slippage.
|
| Bitcoin sell liquidity is currently $162MM USD on Bitfinex at
| 0.5% slippage. Buy liquidity is $543MM USD (at 0.5%
| slippage). For comparison, the sell liquidity on Coinbase Pro
| at the same slippage is only $4.5MM USD.
|
| My site https://cryptomarketdepth.com/ tracks the liquidity
| of various cryptocurrencies over time (for the exchanges:
| Binance, Bitfinex, Bitstamp, Bittrex, Coinbase Pro).
| rocqua wrote:
| Is that USD or USDT?
|
| The fiat on-ramp is probably a pretty big blocker for many
| new adopters. If paypal fixes that, it could have a large
| effect.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| The problem isn't volume, it is latency. It can take 30m
| for a btc transaction to settle. That's a nontrivial amount
| of volatility to exposure yourself to.
| xur17 wrote:
| Then use the lightning network, it's really what should
| be used for smaller payments like this anyways. You don't
| pay for coffee with a wire transfer, for the same reason
| you shouldn't be using layer 1 for small everyday
| purchases like this.
| minsc__and__boo wrote:
| Lightning requires the bitcoin network to verify the
| transaction though. It's like using a personal check -
| until the bank clears it you're at risk.
| xur17 wrote:
| That's not true at all. You can perform lots of
| transactions over lightning, and settle with a single on
| chain transaction. The money clears instantly, and is not
| at risk, even if you keep the funds on layer 2.
| jkepler wrote:
| No, the previous comment was correct, in that an open
| lightning channel balance is inherently at risk, if
| you're wallet software isn't monitoring that the
| lightning nodes you're dealing with follow the protocol.
| If a node broadcasts an older HTLC transaction to
| bitcoin's main chain and your software isn't watching,
| you may loose some/all of your channel balance.
| xur17 wrote:
| That is correct, but the GP said:
|
| > It's like using a personal check - until the bank
| clears it you're at risk.
|
| Which is 100% not true, it's not like a personal check.
| You are only at risk if:
|
| * your counterparty decides to try and cheat you (despite
| knowing they will lose even more money if they attempt to
| screw you and you notice, so some game theory is
| involved)
|
| * you are not watching onchain for a period longer than
| the monitor period (typically several days)
|
| * you have not elected to have someone else monitor on
| your behalf (in exchange for a small cut of the "profits"
| if your counterparty tries to cheat you)
|
| My point being - it's nowhere near the same as a personal
| check.
| minsc__and__boo wrote:
| That's just like a personal check. The same methods you
| cheat someone with a scam check applies to the IOUs on
| Lightning.
|
| * Bad actors exist and will do this with checks or
| lightning, game theory applies to _both_
|
| * It doesn't matter if you're watching the chain, you've
| already transacted with the buyer
|
| * 3P Escrow is not unique to Lightning and is sometimes
| used with checks too
| UncleMeat wrote:
| But you need dollars on the other side. For this to work
| without PayPal hosting the BTC you need the following:
|
| 1. You send BTC to PayPal 2. PayPal sends equivalent
| dollars to the merchant.
|
| But what is "equivalent"? What is the price of BTC at any
| given moment? It fluctuates a lot and you can't "lock-in"
| a price without waiting minutes (as opposed to
| milliseconds in other financial systems). So between the
| time that you sent dollars to the merchant and when you
| sold the coins you are exposed to risk of holding BTC.
|
| Lightning does not help with this.
| xur17 wrote:
| That's a fair point. In order to use lightning, PayPal
| would either need to hold some BTC in reserves on layer
| 2, or work with an exchange that accepts lightning
| transactions.
| oconnor663 wrote:
| Could PayPal make this the customer's problem, by only
| allowing them to exchange or spend settled funds?
| CryptoPunk wrote:
| Can't they sell before confirmation? Probably on the
| order of 99% of transactions that propagate to the whole
| network with a sufficient fee end up being confirmed, and
| that only takes a few seconds to happen.
| sfjailbird wrote:
| I would go further to say that for a large portion of
| merchant transactions, confirmations are a non-issue. It
| is not trivial to pull off a double spend and no one is
| going to do it for a cup of coffee. The miniscule number
| of times that it might happen could be written off as the
| cost of doing business, the same way the big credit card
| companies quietly eat all the credit card fraud that
| happens.
| joshstrange wrote:
| Also, and I could be mistaken, my understanding is the
| double spend can only happen when the person trying to
| double spend controls the private/public key to the
| coins. Normally when you deposit crypto in an exchange
| (or this hypothetical Paypal wallet) you lose that access
| and your balance is just a row in a database while "your"
| coins are swept into a large hot/cold wallet run by the
| service you are depositing into.
| dillondoyle wrote:
| I am probably way out of my depth here. But if Paypal or
| Square have a large enough market/volume of transactions
| couldn't they act as their own market maker, settle
| immediately internally? Kind of like the whole storm over
| Citadel GME. And then also not have to pay the BTC fees?
| sireat wrote:
| I am curious how in the world does Bitfinex offer USD
| liquidity these days?
|
| I mean lets say you trade USD/USDT on Bitfinex.
|
| How do you get USD (not USDT) out of Bitfinex?
| ipaddr wrote:
| A Regular bank wire withdrawal is sent out from Bitfinex
| within 5-10 business days and credited to your account
| following processing by the receiving party.
|
| 2. An Express bank wire withdrawal is sent out from
| Bitfinex within 1 business day and incurs a 1% processing
| fee.
| graeme wrote:
| If I'm interpreting this right, it means the bitcoin market
| on bitfinex is a bit over 3x more sensitive to sells than
| to buys? And the possible sell volume on coinbase before
| slippage is tiny.
| runeks wrote:
| That is correct. But this is only for March 30. On the
| day before the buy/sell liquidity were roughly equal.
|
| You can click on a point in the time series graph to see
| this.
| miohtama wrote:
| PayPal also does not need to hold the underlying assets. They
| can buy Bitcoin derivates instead of spot Bitcoin to maintain
| the reserves. Not sure if they are doing this, though, but it
| could be more capital efficient.
| d--b wrote:
| At some point someone needs to sell the spot though...
| dheera wrote:
| > allows users to deposit
|
| And exchange crypto for fiat or at least USDT/USDC/some other
| stablecoin. Without that nobody will use the platform.
| downandout wrote:
| _This is not a BitPay competitor until PayPal allows users to
| deposit cryptocurrency._
|
| Yes, I don't see much point to this service without the ability
| to send crypto to your Paypal account. I don't buy crypto
| through Paypal, and I suspect nobody else that knows what they
| are doing does either. They've tiptoed around the idea of
| allowing crypto deposits by allowing instant, free, fiat
| withdrawals to Paypal from Coinbase (where it can then be
| spent). But they absolutely refuse to allow it directly.
| deweller wrote:
| Can I actually send bitcoin to an address to pay? Or is this only
| paying with my PayPal crypto balance - which has no blockchain
| deposit or withdrawal capability?
| StavrosK wrote:
| Probably the latter, given the article. It just auto-exchanges
| to fiat (knowing PayPal, for a big fee) so you can pay at
| PayPal-accepting vendors.
| pingec wrote:
| _Can I transfer Cryptocurrency into and out of PayPal?
| Currently, you can only hold the Cryptocurrency that you buy on
| PayPal in your account. Additionally, the Cryptocurrency in
| your account cannot be transferred to other accounts on or off
| PayPal._
|
| https://www.paypal.com/us/smarthelp/article/cryptocurrency-o...
| tsjq wrote:
| Ray Dalio says US likely to ban crypto soon. OTOH, PayPal adding
| support to crypto, Visa adding support to crypto. Are these being
| accelerated by Wall St / hedge fund types who stand to lose many
| Billions of US bans crypto
| sakopov wrote:
| It's easier to tax the hell out of it than ban it at this
| point.
| mrb wrote:
| << _US likely to ban crypto soon_ >>
|
| I have been hearing that for 11 years.
| Helloworldboy wrote:
| I love reading about crypto on HN because everyone here knew
| about it early enough to be a multimillionaire but thought they
| were too smart for it. The salt in these threads is amazing
| christiansakai wrote:
| Paypal/Visa/Mastercard doing rent seeking again. Sign of old
| guards trying to be relevant.
| rawtxapp wrote:
| They probably don't want to get their lunch eaten like news
| publishers that didn't pay attention to the internet.
| XorNot wrote:
| Or it's a move to satisfy investors who want to know that
| they've "got a strategy for crypto".
|
| The market of crypto being used to buy things is incredibly
| small.
| Geee wrote:
| Actually they are pretty relevant, because they can provide
| merchant protection, currency exchange, scalability and privacy
| to cryptocurrencies. You don't need to use them, but they're
| useful to many.
| bluecalm wrote:
| >>currency exchange
|
| If you mean at the worst possible price often forcing you
| before you can cash it out or presenting you with misleading
| choices so you are likely to stumble into their expensive
| option then yeah - that offer that.
| Geee wrote:
| True, but it solves the problem of using cryptocurrency
| with merchants who accept only fiat currencies. You might
| want to pay for that convenience.
| krageon wrote:
| > merchant protection
|
| None of the listed agencies do this in practice.
|
| > privacy
|
| Now I'm starting to believe you may actually be joking. Is
| that the case?
| red_trumpet wrote:
| If I pay with Visa, the seller is not able to see my
| account balance. With bitcoin, the balance of every wallet
| is publicly available.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| That's not how Bitcoin works. You're conflating receiving
| addresses with wallets.
|
| And in the PayPal use case, you wouldn't even see a
| single receiving address, as it's entirely opaque to that
| and it'd all be handled in some internal PayPal ledger.
| The receiver of the payment would only see a transfer to
| them denominated in local fiat currency. They might not
| even know the source of the funds was crypto at all.
| herendin wrote:
| Every address, not every 'wallet' - it's a big difference
| lottin wrote:
| What's the difference, exactly?
| iso8859-1 wrote:
| There are wallet like Wasabi and joinmarket-clientserver
| with a single UI for managing coins and anonymize coins
| that are then difficult for an outsider to connect to
| each other.
|
| Even without these privacy-focused wallets, you can use
| an HD wallet, where "child addresses" derived from a
| never-directly-used root key cannot be connected by a
| third party, unless you do something to connect them, by
| e.g. transacting with coins from both wallets from the
| same IP or in the same transaction.
| lottin wrote:
| Bitcoin avoids the double-spending problem by using a
| public ledger. This means all bitcoin transactions are
| known to any observer. There is no way round it. The best
| you can hope for is some "anonymity through obscurity"
| but this only gives a false sense of anonymity.
| intotheabyss wrote:
| On Ethereum you can break the chain by using Tornado Cash
| which uses zero knowledge proofs with a secret, anonymity
| sets and time to make it impossible to trace a link.
| warkdarrior wrote:
| See https://coinalytics.co/
| codehalo wrote:
| A wallet can have multiple addresses. You can spend from
| different addresses without mixing.
| Geee wrote:
| I have to correct myself. Bitcoin doesn't need merchant
| protection, because transactions are irreversible. Paypal
| can provide buyer protection, i.e. chargebacks.
| uncletammy wrote:
| > Bitcoin doesn't need merchant protection, because
| transactions are irreversible.
|
| They first have to get confirmed and that can take a long
| time on BTC. Replace By Fee offers another attack vector
| on transaction finality.
|
| Other than those two very important points, I completely
| agree with you.
| Geee wrote:
| Not the best privacy obviously. However, they hide
| transactions from third parties.
| Dirlewanger wrote:
| Uh, why do you think after signing up for one credit
| card, you magically start getting offers for other cards?
| CC companies have been selling transaction data for
| decades before FAANG made it trendy to do so.
| [deleted]
| backtoyoujim wrote:
| I do not want to pay federal taxes on every purchase I make.
|
| Paypal's service won't change that.
| srockets wrote:
| No, for that you'll have to move to the Caymans.
| brotherofsteel wrote:
| No, they didn't. They launched a service where you can buy
| certain cryptocurrencies from PayPal and then sell it back to
| them at a later time, which may happen to be at the same time as
| you are paying a merchant fiat money. You can't even transfer
| your cryptocurrency to or from PayPal.
| baby wrote:
| so like Revolut
| tootahe45 wrote:
| So in addition to fleecing me on USD -> AUD with a rip-off
| exchange rate, they're adding an extra step for users of their
| fake BTC as well. But really multiple steps because you have to
| actually buy the fake BTC through PP first. The funny part is
| that no transaction take place on the blockchain, the BTC is
| just held at a third-party custodian. This is what VISA is
| planning too i think.
|
| ThIs iS AdOptIoN gUyS
| Spivak wrote:
| This is the only way to actually scale crypto to the
| transaction volumes that PP and Visa actually deal with. You
| hold stash of crypto and manage your own transactions in-
| house and then do one actual on-chain transaction to settle
| up with your peers. Anything else is wasting money on
| transaction fees for no real benefit to you or your customer.
|
| Also I'm surprised that groups that are so freedom/privacy
| oriented want literally every exchange of crypto to be on-
| chain, public, and traceable without using a money laundering
| service. Sure yes wallets are pseudoanonymous but if every
| purchase you ever made was on-chain it would be super super
| easy to de-anonymize you.
| herendin wrote:
| >ThIs iS AdOptIoN gUyS
|
| Please don't do this juvenile crap here. If you have an
| argument to make, then make that argument.
| fuzzer37 wrote:
| Nothing wrong with poking a little fun at the buttcoin
| people.
| dencodev wrote:
| He did, just because you don't like the way he did it
| doesn't mean it isn't valid. Lighten up.
| anddddd1 wrote:
| One step at a time...
| dwringer wrote:
| It's been possible to buy and sell cryptocurrencies in one's
| PayPal account for months (including right before buying
| something with the resulting balance in fiat currency); what
| seems to be new here is that one can have PayPal handle the
| conversion at checkout without first having to click "sell" or
| paying added transaction fees (simply selling would incur a
| hefty 1 or 2% based on the amount sold).
|
| It is true that one cannot transfer cryptocurrency holdings
| into or out of PayPal.
| TacoToni wrote:
| I wonder if they will allow transfers in the future.
| tootahe45 wrote:
| Transfers in and out would cause huge source-of-funds type
| compliance issues and fraud problems, as well as support
| tickets from users setting the wrong fees and getting
| scammed. They would've bought something like Bitpay long
| ago if people cared to transact in crypto. The reality is
| 99% are happy just to store it on paypal,coinbase, etc and
| be charged exorbitant fees and hope the price goes up.
| spurdoman77 wrote:
| The source-of-funds problem is solvable, otherwise
| companies like coinbase wouldnt be allowed to exist.
| Paypal just needs to buy some chain analysis service, and
| implement SARs and other related AML stuff.
| vmception wrote:
| I'm fine with the option of that.
|
| I would like deposits, withdrawals and rotating private key
| access, like Coinbase does.
|
| But sometimes I just want exposure and the ability to spend it
| in the same service. This checks that box.
| cstever wrote:
| With "big" companies coming in on the Crypto bandwagon is Crypto
| really worth anything? I don't understand (and maybe someone can
| explain it to me) how Crypto is for "the little guy" when those
| who started out at the beginning have "all" the crypto already.
| There is no way I am going to be able to "mine" more crypto than
| those who started years before me or those who have more
| "traditional" money than me currently to buy crypto. It's still
| money. It's still a bond, a promissory note; it's not real and is
| only worth what the big guys (whether traditional or crytpo big
| guys) say it is worth. But I am no economist or financial expert.
| So why should I use crypto? I'm still at the bottom in that game.
| vmception wrote:
| That's a fascinating list full of conflicting ideas, is there
| any circumstance where your first question is ever true?
|
| Go earn some crypto. People will pay you in it. If you want
| goods and services, go get cash with it or.... deposit it in
| Paypal as of today lol.
|
| What specific standard do you need crypto to meet? Answer that
| for yourself. I'm fine with it.
| cstever wrote:
| That's the nature of my understanding of crypto and why I
| asked the question. I don't know if Big Companies can dilute
| the effectiveness of crytpo. It's why I asked. Maybe off
| topic for this HN post. I don't know. Cryto intrigues me with
| the thought of a decentralized currency, but does it level
| the playing field? I don't know.
| vmception wrote:
| Which playing field?
|
| I really don't know which pitch you are latching on to.
|
| Crypto does not address the reality that people who have a
| lot of resources can simply buy a lot of crypto. It doesn't
| attempt to. There have been time periods, including now,
| where people with a lot of resources are ignoring crypto
| because the world is comfortable enough for them, and you
| can buy before they or their heirs do. The entire decade
| has been that way and it has been completely accurate, and
| it is also accurate that this makes a lot of people
| uncomfortable about the sustainability of the exchange
| rates.
|
| Crypto addresses other playing fields. There are many
| intermediary liquid systems (cryptocurerncies) that you can
| use to send unlimited amounts to people anywhere in the
| world, and they can cash out in their own local currency.
| All the other systems had limits because governments
| controlled the financial institution running the system.
| This has nothing to do with you deciding to own a lot more
| crypto than you need at that point in time, it is also
| accurate that a lot of people do keep excess holdings
| because they realize that they never have to go back to the
| local currency, and realize that others will come to that
| same conclusion too.
|
| There are many other areas that crypto does okay at, and is
| working to get better at.
| cstever wrote:
| I appreciate the information. This is the kind of thing I
| am needing to understand it better. I have a lot of
| misconceptions about crypto, which is why I am asking the
| questions. I do the same thing in other areas as well
| (COVID/Vaccines, etc). So again, thanks for the info.
| XorNot wrote:
| This is what people are talking about when they note the
| problems of deflationary currency.
| code_duck wrote:
| >There is no way I am going to be able to "mine" more crypto
| than those who started years before me or those who have more
| "traditional" money than me currently to buy crypto
|
| I have the same problem with US dollars, that some people have
| more than I do, but I still use dollars often.
| cstever wrote:
| I just thought Crypto would level the playing field. that
| seems to be a misconception on my part. Sounds like it's more
| that I can have access to my money all the time because of a
| centralized system. Although I am finding in research that
| there are centralized Crypto exchanges. So I need to figure
| out how that is different.
| reedf1 wrote:
| It allows you to be your own bank - you aren't depending on any
| central authority to allow you access to your "cash". This
| might be one of those things that is Not For You if you can't
| think of a use for it, and that is Okay.
| uberswe wrote:
| So the difference is that there is no central authority that
| can just print more crypto. It's decentralised which means you
| don't need a bank, bank card or ATMs, you can store your crypto
| on a piece of paper. So the big guys can own a lot of crypto or
| a lot of dollars, with crypto there are no banks for them to
| control and no government to print out new notes.
| throwawayzRUU6f wrote:
| Is there anything preventing large players like exchanges or
| payment processors from adopting fractional reserves? That's
| effectively printing more crypto by centralized authorities.
| chii wrote:
| But looking at this paypal payment, you cannot use your own
| crypto from your own stick, but have to first sell that
| crypto to USD, transfer that USD to paypal, then purchase
| crypto back in paypal, in order to spend it.
| tppiotrowski wrote:
| I wonder what the dispute resolution mechanism will look like.
| "Item not received" and "Unauthorised Transaction" complaints by
| users are the ones mentioned by Paypal Seller Protection [1].
|
| [1] https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/security/seller-
| protec...
| bitcoinmonger wrote:
| How does this affect the environment?
| uncletammy wrote:
| Obvious troll is obvious
| cybert00th wrote:
| Ugh PayPal, haven't used them in ages, avoid them whenever I can
| - nowadays they're good for one off donations and that's about
| it.
|
| They take a fee here and a fee there, and before you know it
| they've helped themselves to 4% of the takings.
|
| Sigh, and then there's the seemingly endless nagging about
| verifying extra users
| [deleted]
| mamon wrote:
| I'm not even sure what the use case for PayPal is - what can it
| do that Visa or MasterCard cannot?
| ipaddr wrote:
| I use paypal. When I want to pay I click the paypal button
| and the visa is charged.
|
| You can still use visa.
|
| What I get is a one button checkout on smaller sites I may
| not feel safe giving my credit card number for them to store
| and/or process.
| tartoran wrote:
| Same here. Not sure why I should avoid paypal, it seems
| that it's a middleman but their cut is unnoticeable. I also
| use paypal to pay for things on ebay as well as venmo for
| other expenses.
| analog31 wrote:
| Like any other business service, PP works for some businesses
| and maybe not for others. I'm in the category of a small home
| business making a hardware product that only ships within the
| US. PayPal has got me covered. They have the customer
| protections that people seem to like when dealing with a nearly
| unknown business. They let me run my business from a passive
| web page and an e-mail address. They offer USPS first class
| mail as a shipping option, which saves me a lot of money on
| shipping. The USPS website forces you to use priority mail.
|
| Would I pay less for the same service? Sure. Am I aware of the
| horror stories? You bet. Do I explore other services? Yes.
|
| On the other hand, a purely digital business that already has a
| website, and is moving stuff internationally? Maybe there are
| better options.
| Abishek_Muthian wrote:
| PayPal has some weird priorities, their existing checkout
| doesn't support CSP and the bug issue remains open for over a
| year without proper official updates on whether it will ever be
| fixed.
|
| [1] https://github.com/paypal/paypal-checkout-
| components/issues/...
| bluecalm wrote:
| It's more like 6%. Standard 2.9+% for transactions and then
| forced 2.9+% for currency conversion unless you're lucky and
| you accept transactions in your local currency.
| ajkdhcb2 wrote:
| What's the point if you cant even deposit crypto to paypal? Does
| the crypto ever even exist?
| dgellow wrote:
| Just in case some of you try the service: don't forget to
| consider capital gain tax in addition to PayPal fees/conversion
| rate.
| johnnymonster wrote:
| Exactly my reservation with using something like this! the US
| still classifies virtual currency as Property NOT currency!
| This is a HUGE problem when trying to use crypto to buy things
| where there will be a paper trail that the US govt can get
| ahold of it.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| They can also just check your PayPal account balance. And
| your blockchain. Every transaction using Bitcoin is public.
| lottin wrote:
| I guess PayPal will provide a tax report? Otherwise could be a
| nightmare.
| xiphias2 wrote:
| In US I can imagine that the exported transactions can be
| imported to a software that understands Bitcoin taxation. But
| outside US? It's a crazy world....I rather stay with big
| buys/sells/borrows until taxation is resolved.
| frankbreetz wrote:
| With this news and the Visa news yesterday Bitcoin still is not
| at the ath. It seems mostly a very small group of people are
| driving this bull cycle, Namely Musk(I am assuming he has some
| influance over PayPal ), Saylor, Dorsey, but somehow that equals
| "institutional investment". Everyone else involved seems to be
| more selling "shovels and picks".
| intotheabyss wrote:
| The Visa news was not relevant to Bitcoin, as the news is about
| Visa settling payments using USDC on Ethereum.
| loceng wrote:
| Or it's the investment firms/partners that still have BoD sway
| or influence over?
| frankbreetz wrote:
| What is BoD?
| Cypher wrote:
| bearish... why sell the crypto
| yalogin wrote:
| Who pays at stores with PayPal? Is that a thing?
| frankbreetz wrote:
| They have a credit/debit card, so if you wanted to keep only
| cyrpto seems like an okay option
| Trias11 wrote:
| Positive for crypto in general.
|
| However judging by PayPal track record and scary stories of
| arbitrarily freezing accounts I'd advice all my friends to keep
| their cryptos away from PayPal hands or any of their services.
|
| Not your keys - not your coins
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| On with the hype train. Just like in 2017 when they all announced
| crypto support and then it silently got removed ( square, steam,
| ... )
| seibelj wrote:
| There is literally nothing positive that can happen in crypto
| without the HN hate train arguing it's meaningless / "just use
| mysql" / "am I the only one that thinks this?!?"
| ketamine__ wrote:
| Do you know anyone that pays in crypto? I don't.
| StevePerkins wrote:
| A few people that I work with order THC gummies from some
| sketchy source, delivered via mail, that they pay for with
| crypto. Pornhub still exists, despite having their credit
| card processing de-platformed, so I guess _somebody_ is
| paying them some crypto.
|
| But no. I've never met anyone in real life who uses crypto
| for mundane transactions, where fiat currency is an option.
| madamelic wrote:
| >A few people that I work with order THC gummies from
| some sketchy source
|
| I have heard from a friend that typically those 'sketchy
| sources' are just buying gummies from stores in legal
| states ( _cough_ California) and shipping them out.
|
| My friend would get the gummies in the bags ready for
| retail sale. Same with other items like vape pods.
| bluecalm wrote:
| I am as much a crypto skeptic as you can find but even I
| know people who could only pay in crypto and I lost
| business by not being able to accept it.
|
| The financial regulations around the world are often very
| strict. A lot of people need to go around them. Sure, a lot
| of them are drug dealers, gambling operators etc. but there
| are also people in China struggling with capital control
| regulations as one example.
| brotherofsteel wrote:
| Hi there. I regularly pay for things with Bitcoin Cash.
| Geee wrote:
| Do you know any people who use the Internet? I don't.
| Roark66 wrote:
| I was actually paid in crypto for few days of some
| programming work once. I wish I held to it all rather than
| spending most of it.
|
| Personally I think the biggest issue with crypto now is,
| one that it promotes huge value inflation and Ponzi-like
| schemes (we are seeing it with BTC and ETH), two horrible
| energy use inefficiency. From a bitcoin transaction that
| requires orders of magnitude more energy to process than
| any other transfer of value known to humanity to Ethereum
| "virtual machine" for smart contracts that is most
| inefficient way to execute arbitrary code ever invented...
|
| I used to be a big proponent of crypto overall. I still
| have some holdings in it, but I can't unsee the idiocy in
| PoW crypto once I saw and understood it clearly.
|
| I wondered for a while what is so specific to crypto that
| it became today's tulips? (Rather than gold futures,
| stocks, real estate etc) and then I understood all those
| asset classes are already used like this. Every kind of
| asset that can will eventually be used in some kind of
| pyramid scheme. Just look at the price of gold compared to
| few years ago, real estate in many large cities, stocks
| etc. It was absolutely inevitable that crypto as it became
| a trusted store of value would become a vehicle for
| speculative bubbles/pyramid schemes.
|
| So then the question is, can crypto fulfill the role of a
| currency (requiring some level of value stability) and be a
| vehicle for speculative pyramids at the same time? I don't
| think so.
|
| Proof of Work is one problem with crypto that perhaps Proof
| of Stake will resolve.
|
| The other problem is much more fundamental. How do we
| create crypto that maintains stability without having to
| resort to typical "stable coin" strategies like holding
| other currencies and selling/buying them to artificially
| adjust the value. Is it possible to create crypto that
| would maintain its value in the long term in distributed -
| no central authority manner while discouraging pyramid
| investment schemes.
|
| And finally, once someone invents such crypto would anyone
| actually hear about it as most promotion of crypto seems to
| be done by people who got in early and hope for their
| holdings to increase in value.
| boc wrote:
| Agreed. It's the difference between deflationary assets
| and inflationary currency. Bitcoin's core, fundamental
| problem is that it's deflationary. Therefore it will
| never be useful for economic transactions, because any
| society which fully commits to bitcoin as their currency
| will have their economy grind to a halt. Why would I buy
| a new car today when it's going to be cheaper tomorrow?
|
| There's a reason why the Fed targets a ~2% inflation rate
| for the USD.
| Geee wrote:
| Think again. You have been brainwashed. You buy a car so
| that you can go to work. You know that the car produces
| more value than 2% deflation. You don't buy the car if
| you don't have a job.
|
| What happens to economy if people buy only things that
| last a very long time or things that increase their
| productivity? What happens to economy when companies are
| forced to produce those things?
|
| Inflationary economy is a total disaster. We produce
| things that don't last to consume things that don't last.
| Insane amount of human work output is wasted.
|
| If you measure economic growth by amount of pointlessly
| running in circles, then yeah inflation is good for
| economy.
| stormbeta wrote:
| That and the energy cost, both direct as well
| environmental.
|
| It always surprises me how little cryptocurrency
| advocates seem to understand basic macroeconomics and
| unintended consequences, especially on sites like this.
| s7atic wrote:
| > The other problem is much more fundamental. How do we
| create crypto that maintains stability without having to
| resort to typical "stable coin" strategies like holding
| other currencies and selling/buying them to artificially
| adjust the value. Is it possible to create crypto that
| would maintain its value in the long term in distributed
| - no central authority manner while discouraging pyramid
| investment schemes.
|
| The value of a cryptocurrency is mostly tied to its
| adoption. Future adoption is uncertain, so there is
| naturally a lot of volatility right now. If adoption
| stabilizes, the volatility will likely decrease markedly.
| In fact, since many cryptocurrencies have a fixed supply
| (or the supply follows a predetermined set of rules), one
| could argue that they could end up less prone to
| speculative pricing than fiat.
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| It's not hate. I don't want to pay 22$ for a 1$ product with
| bitcoin, when it gets popular.
|
| I'm also not going to put my money in a joke coin like
| dogecoin.
|
| I like the blockchain, but crypto is just an implementation
| of it and without a use-case currently ( blockchain has
| multiple use-cases though).
|
| Instead of trying to go on the emotional side with "hate-
| train"?
|
| Try to convince me with facts.
|
| Ps. I owned crypto until 2017 and then sold it then, because
| i didn't see a valid use-case ( and 20 k was high enough for
| me)
| rawtxapp wrote:
| > Ps. I owned crypto until 2017 and then sold it because i
| didn't see a valid use-case.
|
| Do you think maybe you have some biases against it now,
| because it would have made you a lot of money if you held
| on to it?
|
| Nobody is paying 22$ for a 1$ product, I'm not sure how you
| can even remotely come to that while ignoring all the layer
| 2 developments.
|
| There's a ton of really useful projects happening on DeFi,
| you can see the blockchain data for yourself and see that a
| lot of people are using it, maybe _you_ don 't see the use
| case, but that doesn't mean there isn't any.
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| I actually made a lot of money with it. So I don't think
| I'm biased because of that. It dropped to 4k afterwards (
| I could have purchased again, but if something falls from
| my watchlist, i don't care about it anymore).
|
| What is probably biasing me, is that I had a digital
| magazine and the #1 hit was for "how to recover Bitcoin
| password".
|
| Which also leads me to my conclusion: "There's currently
| no replacement for a official and trusted centralized
| authority in Crypto".
| tomiplaz wrote:
| I presume you are not familiar with the Lightning Network?
| I suggest reading https://github.com/lnbook/lnbook
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| Yes I am, but not in specifics. It's already been
| mentioned since 2017...
|
| Fee's are still high. Crypto still can't handle a lot of
| traffic as far as i'm aware today.
| brotherofsteel wrote:
| Who doesn't love worrying about "watchtowers" and
| "inbound liquidity"?
| gruez wrote:
| Are those hard concepts to grasp?
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| Compared to cash in my wallet, a credit card, or
| cryptocoins held on chain? Yes.
| krageon wrote:
| Given how breathtakingly simple the space actually is,
| inventing big words and forcing other people to learn
| them really only serves to stroke an ego.
| gruez wrote:
| "watchtowers" is a big word now? as for "inbound
| liquidity", I guess you can argue it's big because it's a
| compound word, but it's relatively easy to understand
| ("liquidity" is a standard term in finance, for instance)
| and I can't think of how you can shorten it further
| without reducing comprehension.
| throwaway10110 wrote:
| Ive been using bitcoin since 2011ish i think, one of the
| first few people on bitcoin-otc first trade was $40 for 10
| bitcoins (paid with paypal transfer funily enough) i must
| have bought and sold hundreds over years, still have few
| dozen
|
| In some cases yeh bitcoin has not lived up to initial
| promises, literally first line of satoshis paper is no
| longer valid, but it could yet be like early internet and
| take off (or something similar)
|
| i wouldnt write it off but yeh you are also right its not
| what we thought it be, the whole store of value thing these
| days instead of currency
| brotherofsteel wrote:
| You should try Bitcoin Cash (BCH), the version of Bitcoin
| that actually works as it was meant to. It has subcent fees
| by design.
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| You mean it's not controlled by those who mine the most?
| Which would be miners in CH that could execute a 51%
| attack? :)
|
| And what about the whole tether scam?
|
| There are more problems to crypto currency than that any
| crypto solves now.
| weego wrote:
| Let's see what they peg their exchange rate to
| nimbius wrote:
| or just, you know...pay the vendor directly. capitalism cannot
| abide a market that exists unexploited it seels.
|
| traditional rent-seeking high fee payment processing services are
| going to inject themselves into cryptocurrency at all cost. At
| this point the efforts is getting a little comical.
| loceng wrote:
| Pay vendor directly while not also paying a fraction to all
| other Bitcoin holders at the same time by not using Bitcoin.
| tsjq wrote:
| >pay the vendor directly
|
| That's exactly what India's UPI payment transfer does. Instant,
| Direct, Secure, no fee
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| Except that most vendors would rather pay the fee than
| implement crypto payment processing themselves.
| throwaway10110 wrote:
| Businesses might want to be settled in the currency of their
| home country for ease of accounting/taxes and not be subjected
| to high volatility
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| > and not be subjected to high volatility
|
| So they choose bitcoin?
| mcintyre1994 wrote:
| > PayPal hopes its service can change that, as by settling
| the transaction in fiat currency, merchants will not take
| on the volatility risk/upside.
|
| The whole point is that PayPal shields the business from
| the volatility risk. Buyer buys in Bitcoin, seller receives
| local fiat currency.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Ah, I read that as the opposite way around - wanting to
| avoid their own currency because of volatility. My bad.
| EveYoung wrote:
| Those companies only want to offer BTC as a payment option
| but don't want to hold crypto themselves. So they didn't
| really choose BTC to start with. Which makes sense since
| most companies need to pay their costs in fiat money.
| jypepin wrote:
| It's the same thing as a US company wanting to sell to
| Europe but not wanting Euros, because they pay their
| costs in USD.
|
| I think the point here is probably that Paypal is
| noticing that an increasing amount of consumers have
| crypto and would like to pay with them, so they offer
| this possibility.
|
| Bitcoin is just another currency, and indeed most
| businesses don't want to hold them because they need to
| hold their local fiat. That doesn't mean consumers don't
| want to use Bitcoin tho.
| Geee wrote:
| Decentralized L2 solutions are not ready yet.
| bouncycastle wrote:
| They are, google loopring or zksync
| throwaway10110 wrote:
| This basically kills BitPay who recently made all transactions
| (of any value) in crypto require KYC registration.
| vmception wrote:
| BitPay killed themselves when their invoicing UI stopped
| working over Tor
| ajkdhcb2 wrote:
| It killed itself. I stopped using several services because they
| want me to send fucking passport info to make a $10
| transaction, so unsafe.
| jypepin wrote:
| I never used bitpay but I don't think it's their fault to
| have to request passport verification. As a money transmitter
| they are required to answer to KYC rules, which includes
| passport or other docs verification to ensure you are who you
| are.
|
| If you are wondering why Paypal never asked for your
| passport, it's probably because you eventually linked Paypal
| to another KYC-compatible entity, such as your bank (by
| linking your bank, sending money with your credit card, etc).
|
| I assume in the case of bitpay you would only link your btc
| wallet which in itself doesn't offer KYC verifications.
| ajkdhcb2 wrote:
| Seems untrue to me.
|
| Lots of other services continue to function with no such
| requirements. Bitpay only did it recently after many years
| of business and there was no regulatory change
|
| I also don't understand how it is logically any different
| from the merchant accepting btc themselves and choosing to
| do the conversion themselves
|
| There are many cases where businesses go beyond the legal
| requirements for whatever reason. Coinbase for example has
| explained that they make shady backdoor deals with
| regulators.
| [deleted]
| dgellow wrote:
| It's not like they have a choice. KYC is a standard
| requirements when dealing with money transfers.
| ajkdhcb2 wrote:
| Not for such small transactions
| pingec wrote:
| Are there any alternatives to bitpay?
| space_rock wrote:
| * Bitcoin merchant payments * Fiat conversion options
|
| https://www.coinpayments.net/
| brotherofsteel wrote:
| What PayPal is offering is not even close to what BitPay is
| doing. On PayPal you will only be able to use cryptocurrency
| that you bought from PayPal, you cannot transfer cryptocurrency
| in or out of your account. All you can do is buy cryptocurrency
| from PayPal and then sell it back to them at a later time.
| throwaway10110 wrote:
| I see, wow, then this sucks
| sschueller wrote:
| Imagine if PayPal was handling your cash transaction when your
| are at a store instead of you paying the store directly.
|
| We don't need PayPal or Visa to pay with crypto. These are
| desperate attempts for these middleman to keep the control they
| have. In fact this way they can make the crypto experience worse
| than regular payments with hight fees etc. Pushing people away
| and thinking crypto doesn't work.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Yes. Full agreement here. That said, for better or worse,
| Paypal's move effectively makes crypto into currency. Up until
| now, it was not exactly a mainstream option.
| tartoran wrote:
| I feel in this case they feel that they'd soon become
| irrelevant if they don't handle crypto. But as a customer I'd
| rather use fiat for day to day bills and replenish that fiat
| account whenever I want from crypto - with low fees, security
| and ease of access.
| Trias11 wrote:
| " The company will charge no transaction fee to checkout with
| crypto and only one type of coin can be used for each purchase,
| it said..."
|
| PayPal will likely compensate "no transaction fee" with draconian
| exchange rate or bid/ask spread.
| CynicusRex wrote:
| PayPal launches pyramid scheme checkout service.
| tfang17 wrote:
| PayPal did a complete 180 from their stance on crypto just 2
| years ago.
|
| I worked at Coinbase on the Payments team ~2018. Working to
| integrate PayPal was a nightmare - so much opposition to the
| integration from PayPal execs and compliance team. Even when we
| did manage to finally integrate, PayPal was only enabled for
| crypto sells.
|
| Change in direction at PayPal must have come straight from the
| top.
| anddddd1 wrote:
| They saw the light. Surprised so many commenters here still
| don't see it.
|
| In the words of the late great Steve Jobs: "are you getting it
| yet!??"
| hahahahe wrote:
| @ what fees? and why?
|
| Perhaps Paypal should focus on hiring more customer service
| agents instead of going a full year without a direct line in the
| US? Paypal is one of the most egregious fintech companies in
| existence.
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