
BitPay and PayPal - seansoutpost
http://blog.bitpay.com/2014/09/23/bitpay-and-paypal-an-unbeatable-payment-partnership.html
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trevordev
BitPay sponsored angel-hack Seattle that I participated in this summer. Their
developer api was horrible and poorly documented wasting everyone time. I was
in one of the few groups that got it to work. When asking when we would find
out who won the 5 bitcoin prize for best use of it we were told to contact
bitpay. I contacted them multiple times and support told me to to contact
their CEO who ended up not responding to my emails. I will not use bitpay in
the future.

~~~
martindale
Hey, Eric with BitPay here. If you're still waiting on information about
AngelHack, email me: eric@bitpay.com

We just this past week launched our new REST API, which should be
significantly better than our old API:
[http://blog.bitpay.com/2014/09/18/announcing-the-new-
bitpay-...](http://blog.bitpay.com/2014/09/18/announcing-the-new-bitpay-
api.html) – we spent a long time thinking very carefully about making the
developer experience as smooth as possible, but I'm sure there are things we
can be doing better. If you've any ideas on how we can improve it, please let
me know.

~~~
Rygu
BitAuth is an overly complex system that's seriously standing in the way of
mass developer adoption.

[http://blog.bitpay.com/2014/07/01/bitauth-for-
decentralized-...](http://blog.bitpay.com/2014/07/01/bitauth-for-
decentralized-authentication.html)

~~~
martindale
Hey Rygu! We really appreciate the feedback – we're doing everything we can to
make working with Bitcoin extremely simple. What can we do to reduce the
complexity?

~~~
lilbola
Less complexity.

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andrewljohnson
BitCoin is rocketing on this news it seems:

* [https://btc-e.com/](https://btc-e.com/)

* [https://www.cryptsy.com/markets/view/2](https://www.cryptsy.com/markets/view/2)

* [https://www.bitstamp.net/](https://www.bitstamp.net/)

~~~
sillysaurus3
Correction: Bitcoin traders were looking for an excuse to buy a lot of
Bitcoin. Your eyes are deceiving you. The way it works is, they buy in order
to jump the price. Then other people buy and continue the momentum upwards.
Then, in a few days, they sell, and thus capitalize on everyone else's belief.

This is how it's been for almost a year now.

Ask yourself: Why use Bitcoin? What is the value proposition for consumers
apart from sending money to friends? That's valuable, but it's not multi-
billions of dollars worth of valuable. Examine the fundamentals before you
jump into a gambler's market.

~~~
joshuaxls
This has been a bear market for bitcoin for months—many of the bears have been
rooted out. It's not a conspiracy that bulls are coming in and pushing the
price up. It's expected. Not every bull will close their position immediately.
That's too simple of a view of how markets work.

There is massive value in bitcoin. Payments, asset tracking, international
remittances, etc. Take just one of those markets, and just one company—say
Western Union and international remittances. That's $8.7B worth of market cap
that bitcoin obsoletes.

~~~
notahacker
Bitcoin doesn't render Western Union obsolete until the day remote Burkinabe
villages can walk to their local store and pick up the US-resident cousin's
salary earned in CFA Franc banknotes. A highly volatile intermediary currency
is hardly an advantage there.

~~~
xorcist
That's completely true, but it's also true that _if_ that day comes and
Bitcoin is so entreched in the global marketplace so you can exchange it in
Burkinabe villages, then it will be worth 100x today's price (especially when
taking bubble effects into consideration). For some people in some situations
that can be a rational bet to make.

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rcraft
Is paypal just ignoring the IRS' recent guidelines that bitcoin is treated as
property?

From [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-03-25/bitcoin-is-
property...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-03-25/bitcoin-is-property-not-
currency-in-tax-system-irs-says.html):

Today’s IRS guidance will provide certainty for Bitcoin investors, along with
income-tax liability that wasn’t specified before. Purchasing a $2 cup of
coffee with Bitcoins bought for $1 would trigger $1 in capital gains for the
coffee drinker and $2 of gross income for the coffee shop.

“It’s challenging if you have to think about capital gains before you buy a
cup of coffee,” he said.

~~~
embolalia
Not sure where you get that they're ignoring it. TFA says nothing of taxes,
and that burden falls on the buyer anyway. Unless you're saying that the IRS's
guidelines mean it _can 't_ be used to buy things for some reason, which is
just not true at all.

~~~
rcraft
Ignoring in the sense that Paypal thinks its worth their time to facilitate
consumer transactions based on bitcoin.

As the bloomberg article states, if I have to factor in my my capital gains
tax liability with each purchase of an ebook or mp3, then that is a royal pain
and would lessen my desire to use bitcoin for everyday purchases.

It seems to me that perhaps Paypal just see's the IRS guidelines as a non-
factor for consumers who will largely just ignore the guidance similar to how
consumers are technically supposed to pay state sales tax on online purchases.

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canvia
It wasn't just BitPay, also Coinbase and GoCoin: [https://www.paypal-
community.com/t5/PayPal-Forward/PayPal-an...](https://www.paypal-
community.com/t5/PayPal-Forward/PayPal-and-Virtual-Currency/ba-p/828230)

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highercenter
More choices in how people create value, share it, buy, sell and trade it –
that’s exactly what PayPal is all about,” said Scott Ellison, Senior Director,
Strategy, PayPal.

That's amazing! And me thinking PayPal was all about our money!

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appleflaxen
Nothing could make me less interested in BitPay. PayPal is just such a
negative connotation in my mind that it turns me off of a business partner
just to know they are collaborating.

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earthmeLon
Hmmmm... I thought that a large reason many people helped develop bitcoin and
it's community was to thwart Paypal, its highly-politically-motivated nature,
and others like it.

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ssteinb
Paypal is going to acquire the shit out of them. Calling it now.

~~~
justin_l
That's all I can think of - Bitpay/Coinbase/Gocoin partnered with PayPal
because PayPal offered to acquire one or all of them.

Bitpay and Coinbase* offer only two advantages over PayPal - slightly cheaper
transactions, and the ability to transact in Bitcoin. Due to the merchant
account requirements of each you lose anonymous transactions, so for example
Silk Road could never use one of these services. So it strikes me as extremely
odd that these guys would be partnering with Paypal, basically giving away
their advantage, if there wasn't something bigger in it for them down the
road.

* not sure about Gocoin as I haven't looked at its merchant account offering.

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Everhusk
This is really big news for bitcoin, BTC-e is taking off.

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jtwebman
What do you guys think of Coinbase? Is it a good replacement for BitPay? Sorry
I am new to this are but wanted to start accepting Bitcoins

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SuddsMcDuff
Looks like winkdex.com has gone down under the load

~~~
drcode
Nice catch- It'll be great to check Google trends in a few days.

