mike-burns thanks
jeez, btc at $650 now
;-)
i think i will start accepting btc immediately...  anyone wanna pay with bitcoins? ;)
i'd have to process it manually for now, but wtf, let's do this...
my one question I've had is .. would you lock the price in BTC or USD ?
i have no idea...  with coinbase, i can set up a "pay" button with a USD amount, and it'll ask for the equiv btc
aka I've thought about a service company such as yourself charging in BTC .. but would your prices in BTC float as the USD currency floats? (hard to track for users) or would you fix your prices in BTC (hard for people to pay that are buying BTC to pay as BTC price goes up) ..
oh well then, that answers my question, you'd track USD price of 1 BTC and simply just get paid in BTC ;-)
I would have a reason to use BTC in my business and would be willing to pay in BTC directly ;-)
Heh, maybe we could run miners on our VPSes to pay for themselves.
CaZe: LOL
CaZe: you're not aware of the asics that do mining that take months to recoup costs today
CaZe: yeah i don't think mining today in software is worth it anymore
not unless up_the_irons would be willing to plugin asics on colo boxes we'd ship his direction...
toddf: I am.
toddf: Although it really depends on the market price of BTC.
I think it's probably a bubble though.
CaZe: at some point services will no longer reflect market price of BTC and BTC cost of goods will stabalize. in the interum, 1 BTC will buy more and more loaves of bread, so to speak
toddf: That's a long way off.
i'll plug these into any dedi: http://www.butterflylabs.com/monarch/
;)
CaZe: anybody can guess what the market price of BTC will be in the future. as more and more of the world gains interest and wants in, it certainly is likely to continue to climb. with some dips. I hope to catch a dip soon ;-)
toddf: Well, it's like any fiat currency. It depends on people's faith.
Faith is hard to predict.
CaZe: the fiat currency has government hands and burocracy and random political pressures. the bitcoin has algorithms and no such interference.
(I've always wondered why companies that make ASIC miners sell them rather than mine for themselves)
((Answer: To get cash now))
brycec: cost of power and maintenance
that too
toddf: It's still fundamentally the same. It depends on people's faith. The government controls don't make the USD any more real.
controls. heh. I noted this today .. http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1qsaxm/if_you_didnt_realise_the_monumental_societal/
I don't consider it a faith issue. it is a meddling issue.
There  was an arstechnica article about one of Butterfly's ASICs a little while ago.
seriously. $3000 to australia is $300 to transmit in fiat vs $.02 for BTC
someone explain to me how fiat and BTC are even remotely in the same league.
I just told you.
They depend on people's faith.
enjoy your theories. make sure you watch for the right faith before buying any BTC. ;-)
It's not a theory.
as does all money. limited supply and history (e.g. gold) only helps increase faith.
If enough people have faith in BTC, and it reaches a level of critical mass, it will take off.
If not enough people buy into it, then it won't.
Peoples faith in the USD is really their faith in the US government.
I don't think BTC has really reached critical mass yet, and the recent surge is due to something else.
Manipulation, speculation, whatever.
the recent surge is just a bubble
some are blaming china's surge in interest.
I'm concerned that BTC doesn't have much of its own economy. A lot of it seems to be either arbitrage or people immediately transfering to or from traditional money.
there is an increasing list of vendors able to accept BTC.
However those vendors cannot yet pay their bills with BTC, so the currency still dead-ends.
that doesn't help if they're going to transfer to local government-sanctioned money immediately on receipt
personally, I put in $11 USD on 10/29 and now its worth $33 USD.  Whenever I decide to spend it, I'll likely go to egifter.com or gyft.com and get a gift certificate to buy what I want. leave the rest to grow. if I can't spend it on a vendor who accepts BTC directly ;-)
Unless up_the_irons can find a hardware vendor to take BTC
there are places that sell hardware for BTC.
True, but for now they're fairly small shops and up_the_irons will likely get a better deal elsewhere.
Even so, now that vendor has BTC... what then? Another deadend.
it's going to be hard to run a business with the exchange rates as volatile as they are
but if up_the_irons takes BTC think of all the income he'll get from us even if there is no further drift of BTC vs USD prices .. to not pay the visa 2% fee or whatever.
I gotta head out, talk to you guys later, BTC ftw ;-)
yeah the ~ 2.9% adds up
BTC fluctuates more than 2.9% over the course of a month though
(granted it's been going up, but that may change at any time)
up_the_irons: fwiw, I would pay by cheque if it were an option.
(of course, I'm already paid up for the next 10mo or so...)
brycec: like, paper cheque?
Yes
Technically, I'd do it through my bank's billpay... but they'd mail you a paper cheque
anything that isn't automated i can't effectively support long term (for btc, i'd code it up to be automated; but i can't automate paper check cashing)
Understandably
brycec: a friend of mine from Finland once said to me, "I'd never seen a paper check before I came to the US."  That really got me thinking, and ever since I'd got rid of all paper processing in my business.
I pay all vendors with EFT
everyone pays me with CC or EFT
so glad i never deal with paper checks anymore.  such a waste of time.
No doubt. I still get paid by cheques... But at least there's an ATM on my way home I can just toss the cheques into.
cool
You don't have a check scanning app?
CaZe: I could, except I refuse to have any banking done on my phone for obvious security concerns. Also the last time I did the scanning, it would often reject the image, always required me to write out the full account number and details, and required me to keep the paper for 3 months.
So, have a helluva time fighting some scanning app and then have paper to keep track of, or slip it into an ATM :)
heh I get paid by paper check mailed to me. And I still write a deposit slip and take it by the drive through.
Ugh, I don't enjoy dealing with the tellers... all that up-selling.
not here. smaller bank. I don't think they operate outside of south carolina
I didn't mind dealing at the credit union I used to use... though they took a direction I didn't like (tried to Apple-ify their branches and raised rates, not cool). Their ATMs didn't take cheques anyways, so I had to go in, wait in line, etc.
I never use ATMs. I take enough cash out when depositing so there's never any need
Apple-ify... I don't want to imagine that
i don't even remember the last time i had to deposit a check, let alone write one
I have one right now that's been sitting around waiting to be deposited.
how would you automate bitcoin?
Bitpay, Coinbase
a script that credits accounts when payments are confirmed on the blockchain?
yeh that works too
i know a provider that does that
(VPS provider)
there's a description field right?
there is
accounts are recommended to be created per invoice as you have no reall 100% way to track where a payment came from only where it went to
I see. so the script is slightly more complex
another advantage of BTC, no chargebacks
toddf: with Coinbase, they have their own layer on top of the btc stuff that facilitates recurring payments.  you'd have to be a coinbase user to have it automatically "debit" your account, otherwise you can just pay the invoice manually each month (not as convenient, but since btc is a "push" tech, you'd have to start somewhere)
Don't such middleman services also offer chargebacks?
automating receipt of payment is different than automating transmission of payments
mkb: Coinbase says that if it has been about an hour since a payment, and you haven't received a cancel notice, then it is "verified" and cannot be taken back (or something to that effect)
oh so I'd have to xfer funds into my coinbase account, I could live with that I guess
too bad coinbase is US only :(
staticsafe: yeah :(
I don't have a coinbase account, but I use coinbase. When I purchase the Humble Bundle, they direct me to a Coinbase page that gives me an addres and an amount to send. Once I've sent it, I click "i've sent it", they verify they've confirmed the transaction and redirect me back to Humble.
So I'm pretty sure it isn't US only
Oh like PayPal. That's nice
Yeah, there's probably callbacks happening behind the scenes
But I have no experience with the vendor/merchant side of Coinbase... Maybe there are different ways set it up
brycec: yeh but I can't use coinbase for buying bitcoins since it needs a US bank account
same for converting BTC to USD
brycec: mkb staticsafe : oh, it's probably that buying / selling BTC *directly* is the US-only part
yeah, that's how it looks
us bank acct link or something for buying
well i can buy BTC via quickbt.com but haven't figured out yet on the converting to CAD part
what's the draw to buying btc anymore?
^
I just spend BTC I have... No idea about "buying"
yeh i only recently got into the whole BTC thing
As for having a coinbase account, that only applies if you're using them as your wallet (eg bank).
tbqh, now is an AWFUL time to buy BTC
Given the bubble
yep
Maybe I have a different perspective on the thing because I mined mine.
brycec, when?
But I just can't see "buying" BTC as a good idea
mkb: Some time around 2008, I think.
Would've had to be a long time ago. I agree. I'll consider accepting them in exchange for goods/services but I don't see any reason to change USD into BTC.
brycec: how do you suggest people new to it get into the market then?
staticsafe: I recommend people avoid it.
I see it as imaginary, magical play money
brycec, so when are you going to cash out?
mkb: Did that once, bought a computer. Left the remaining <1BTC in my wallet and play with that these days
(back the first time it spiked a year or two ago and was $150ish)
(well it wasn't the first spike, just the first spike I was aware of)
If I'd cashed that out now, I'd have $15k... damnit
yeah... imaginary or not, they've created a massive trading platform
The idea is neat, but I don't "respect" it as a currency
It seems to me to be an exchange platform rather.
ugh, gta 5's driver ai does a great job of reminding me why i hate driving
coinbase also requires a text phone # via us, signup for voip.ms, enable texting, problem solved, but anyway
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/c-programming-k-n-king/1100878468?ean=9780393979503
why is that so expensive?
er that coinbase comment I just made was to apply to buy/sell ..
I see bitcoin as a perfectly viable currency, some people obviously need time to adjust
as someone once said about the space elevator, "it will happen about X years after people stop laughing"
the benifits for all merchants are inherently obviously 2 fold.. 1) much lower transaction fees 2) no chargebacks
sure original people got their btc via mining
I bought some at $208 and now its over $600 so I'm obviously smiling about that gain, only wincing because I didn't have more to purchase back then .. I do realize its a bubble and I have a limit trade set to go off at a lower price than now .. expecting some controversy to drive it down temporarily .. if not, then well ..
buying btc for usd to pay for services in btc at equivalent to usd prices while btc continues to climb makes it likely that I buy in at X price and I pay for services with less than I intended to spend, leaving me with btc leftover .. oh darn!
hehe
obviously thats half sarcasm but anyway .. ymmv .. its clearly new tech currency alike, and whether it gets viable interest from enough people to have lasting value is of speculative potential ..
the way the US rapes the USD in its ponzy scheme they call currency .. well, somehow I feel more comfy with bitcoin ..
robonerd: Seems like a typical price.
toddf: i tend to agree