
WordPress.com accepts Bitcoin - skeltoac
http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2012/11/15/pay-another-way-bitcoin/
======
Breakthrough
Muhuhahaha ( _evil laugh_ ), and my parents thought I was crazy when I told
them there was a new digital currency you kept in files, that had no
inflation, was (almost) completely anonymous, and - get this - that it was
real and traded on actual markets. When I started talking about Bitcoin
mining, that was when they seriously thought I was going off the deep end. And
really, most non-tech-savvy people would think the idea was crazy.

Crazy enough that it's genius.

I smile a little every time I see "Bitcoin Now Accepted Here". I personally
don't use them, but the ideology behind the currency is fascinating and
remarkable. Not to mention the credibility WordPress gives it (and hopefully
soon, Reddit...).

~~~
javert
_ideology behind the currency is fascinating and remarkable_

I'm going to take the liberty to nit pick.

There isn't any ideology behind bitcoin. It's just a protocol.

Among existing serious bitcoin users, there's a pretty diverse range of
political opinions (some of which I find pretty distasteful), plus
disagreement on the actual merits and potential demerits of bitcoin.

~~~
wmf
Bitcoin does have a particular monetary policy coded into it, which can be
seen as an ideology.

~~~
javert
"Monetary policy" and "ideology" are two distinct and separate concepts.

I'm not even sure I would be in favor of labelling bitcoin as having a
"monetary policy." Monetary policy describes governmental policy-making. The
rules of the bitcon protocol are also unlike "policy" in that they can never
change.

I know I'm nit picking, but I think that it's really important to keep
concepts clear and crisp. (There's a bit of ideology for you!)

~~~
Danieru
I disagree, bitcoin does have a hardcoded monetary policy of nominal money
supply targeting. The policy is primitive and will not provide any of the
benefits of contemporary monetary policy, but it should provide an interesting
case study.

Wikipedia has a good list of the common policy options:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monetary_policy#Types_of_monet...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monetary_policy#Types_of_monetary_policy)

Notice how many are focused on inflation (CPI and price level as measures of
inflation/deflation). All of them are used by central banks to influence the
markets. None make much sense for an virtual medium of exchange.

Now supposing there was a central bitcoin bank I'd suggest a policy of
targeting low volatility. Bitcoins utility as a medium of exchange is a
function of transaction cost and volatility risk. Still even without a central
bank both attributes will improve with time. Thus the lack of central bank may
become a feature by removing human fallibility.

~~~
jacoblyles
What are the benefits of a contemporary monetary policy? There was a piece I
saw by George Selgin lately showing that modern monetary policy has caused the
economy to be measurably less stable than in the old days. I haven't followed
the responses to it, though.

The Milton Friedman/John Taylor position is that markets will adapt to pretty
much any monetary rule as long as it is stable and predictable. Bitcoin's
monetary rule is about as predictable as you can get.

The one part of the Keynesian story that I find compelling is the part about
inflation being needed to address the problem of sticky wages. But wages in
web sectors tend to be much less sticky. Free money's time has come.

------
netcan
Ideologically, bitcoin is a currency. But, apart from fringe speculators,
ideologues & novelty seekers its gaining traction as a _payment method_.

That's great because a better payment methody something we really need. A
payment method for a world where computers exist. Credit cards, paypal and
friends are doing this job terribly, inequitably, opaquely and at a high cost.

For "card not present" transactions credit cards work like this: (1) a
merchant tells CC company (through payment gateways) that a customer wants to
pay them some amount (2) the credit card company says OK (or no) (3) If at any
point in the next 6 months the customer demands that money back, they take it
out of the merchants account. If this happens too often, they cut off the
merchant's ability to accept credit cards.

Step 3 puts the entire cost of fraud on the merchant. They then find their own
way of minimizing it. There's the cost of the actual payment processing
(2%-4%), the cost of fraud & the cost of preventing fraud. That's around
2.5%-10% of _gross_. In some cases it just completely prevents entire business
categories. This also amounts to a pretty steep competency requirement just to
accept payments.

There are a lot of businesses and business categories that just don't exist
because the basic infrastructure of the digital economy (money) is crap. We're
basically using seashells.

------
zhoutong
Accepting Bitcoin is much easier than it was a year ago. At NameTerrific[1] we
use Blockchain Wallet[2] to temporarily hold transactional funds.

Whenever a customer places an order and chooses to pay by Bitcoin, we will use
Blockchain API to generate a Bitcoin address for the invoice. After the
customer pays, they can press a "Check Payment" button and then the system
will simply check the balance of the Bitcoin address generated. If it's
greater than or equal to the invoice balance, it's considered "paid".

We keep a history of Bitcoin exchange rates (the NameTerrific rate) for tax
purposes. All invoices have records of the applied BTC/USD exchange rate so
they can be translated into fiat amounts in the books. For Australians, the
GST is being accounted using the daily rate method (BTC/USD rate from the
invoice, and daily AUD/USD rate from an official source).

The wallet gets cleared every 10 BTC or so to prevent theft.

[1]: <https://www.nameterrific.com>

[2]: <https://blockchain.info/wallet/>

EDIT: WordPress.com accepting Bitcoin is huge.

~~~
fuckzhouttong
ZhoutTong IS A THIEF AND NAME TERRIFIC WILL STEAL YOUR MONEY

~~~
jlgreco
Care to provide some more information / collaborating evidence?

~~~
rorrr
His user account was created an hour ago. Ignore the troll.

------
mrb
Another recent news is stunning for Bitcoin, but somehow got unnoticed:

A company pouring $1M+ to develop a 65nm Bitcoin mining chip:
<http://blog.zorinaq.com/?e=69>

~~~
smsm42
Personally, I like the idea of digital currency, but the knowledge that it is
based on completely useless computations (gold at least has many practical
applications and looks nice) annoys my programmer side. I know money do not
have to be otherwise useful, but still the feeling is there.

~~~
mtgx
Compared to the Federal Reserve that creates money out of thin air, whenever
they want, and dilute the value of the currency in the same time? That doesn't
worry you at all?

~~~
JoeAltmaier
"Whenever they want" says it all. When its needed. Bitcoins work on an
algorithm, that is insensitive to need. Which allows boom-and-bust coinage.

Here in the US Midwest, in museums there are old coupons, tokens, wooden
nickels printed by local banks, business, bars(!) and pressed into service in
the 1800's when coins became scarce. The US Mint didn't respond for years,
leaving us essentially without money. Caused a local recession.

~~~
paddy_m
For monetary policy to respond properly the fed has to read aggregate demand
and react accordingly as quickly as possible. There are extreme incentives for
the fed to keep interest rates low to encourage borrowing and economic growth,
there is little encouragement to think long term and turn up the interest
rates so that currency is protected.

Bitcoin may be flawed, but at least its obviously and predictably flawed. This
stability should in the long run allow for much better planning on an
individual level.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Opposite of stability, in the presence of changing demand, geometrically
growing population using it for a growing number of uses.

------
tosh
Very interesting to see a major brand starting to accept Bitcoin. I guess
that's a huge next step. So where are the reliable exchanges right now?
Haven't really looked into BTC since the Mt Gox incident.

Also <http://bitcoin.com/> looks way more accessible and polished compared to
last year. What are the major obstacles for mainstream adoption?

~~~
javert
> So where are the reliable exchanges right now?

MtGox is a really good exhange.

Bitfloor is also really good and seems to be run by great people (plus it's
located in NYC instead of Japan, which I think is nice), but you have to be
willing to forgive them for a security breach in the recent past. (Never leave
large amount of BTC in an exchange.)

CampBX is another good option, they are located in Atlanta, GA.

Sorry if I've left out anyone's pet exchange.

A (generally) better way to acquire bitcoins for spending (as opposed to
speculation/wealth storage) is to use bitinstant. You can literally buy
bitcoins at Wal-Mart and CVS (which are super ubiquitous where I'm from) using
bitinstant.

edit: apparently you can also buy them using coinbase (a YC company). I didn't
realize you could do that until someone else mentioned it, since they
advertise themselves as a hosted bitcoin wallet.

~~~
Steko
>> So where are the reliable exchanges right now?

> MtGox ...

> Bitfloor ...

If this is the first two you come up with I'm guessing none of them are
reliable.

~~~
Jach
As far as I'm aware, Mt. Gox is the most secure exchange around right now and
hasn't had an incident since its big one last year. Even so, you only have
three fears: 0) You poorly secure your account and someone logs in as you and
takes your coins 1) Bitcoin's value plummets and you lose all your invested
money. 2) Mt. Gox loses some of their actual coins, and refuses to let you
withdraw from your balance with them. 0 and 2 are theft, which is a constant
concern to anyone regardless of what is being stolen. While I don't think Mt.
Gox insures any of its deposits with something similar to FDIC insurance, I
bet there's an insurance company out there that will insure your bitcoins for
a fee.

Also, it's easy to get rid of #0 as a fear. Does your bank (or more
analogously if you have stocks, your account for some company's online trading
interface) support YubiKeys or similar? <http://www.yubico.com/> Mt. Gox has
given quite a few of them away for free. (Mine was free.)

~~~
weinzierl
I have a fourth fear with Mt. Gox. For a European the only way to directly buy
Bitcoins there is a SEPA transfer. Mt. Gox will only accepts this after I send
a scanned identification document and a proof of residency without ANY
alterations.

I understand why they need this and I appreciate that they are thorough in
their measures to prevent fraud and money laundering. I even sent my passport
to other companies, but only altered in a way that makes it unusable for
identity theft.

But still: I don't trust them enough that I don't fear my passport scan gets
leaked some day and is used for identity theft.

~~~
Jach
I worried about the same thing about sending something that exposed my Social
Security Number. So I submitted my driver's license and car insurance policy
for identity and residence respectively. (It was kind of a pain to find a
proof of residence they accepted since I had no bills in my name.)

For anyone browsing the thread, this is part of an email their support desk
sent me for accepted documents, which is significantly more permissive than
the upload page for verification suggests:

    
    
        1 A copy of your government issued photo ID such as:
        - Passport
        - Permanent residence card
        - Driver’s license
    
        2. Proof of Residence that is not older than 3 months such as:
        - Monthly utility bill
        - Internet Bill
        - Cellphone Bill
        - Tax Return document
        - Residency Certificate
        - Voting registration form
        - Medical insurance
        - Pay Slip
        - Car Insurance Policy
        - Medical Bill

~~~
weinzierl
Thanks, I think I'm much more comfortable with sending a copy of my Driver's
license.

------
pdog
For those wondering what you can actually pay for, here's the store for
premium upgrades:

<http://store.wordpress.com/premium-upgrades/pro-bundle/>

\--

Here's what you can buy:

Pro Bundle (all upgrades in a single purchase)

Custom Domains

Custom Design

Premium Themes

VideoPress

Extra Storage

Ad-Free

Guided Transfer

Offsite Redirect

~~~
westi
Thanks.

Actually, the Pro Bundle doesn't include all our other upgrades just a
selection of our most popular upgrades at a discounted price.

The Pro Bundle includes:

A Custom Domain (Either a new one or map one you already own). The Custom
Design Upgrade - Fonts, Colours, CSS. VideoPress video hosting. Makes your
site Ad-Free. An extra 10GB of storage for your images/videos.

You can see the full store listing here: <http://store.wordpress.com/premium-
upgrades/>

------
ridiculous_fish
According to my understanding, the bitcoin economy is small enough that all
clients can have a record of all transactions. Bitcoin was designed for a
truly distributed model, but this aspect is untested in practice.

It seems to me that the move from "everyone knows everything" to a truly
distributed model entails a lot of risk, and it's possible that the protocol
just may not work at this scale. Is this a reasonable concern?

------
fsiefken
With Wordpress accepting BTC, Reddit considering it and a complete hardware
store <http://www.bitcoinstore.com/> bitcoin comes of age, now trading at 11
USD.

~~~
Steko
Totally come of age. It's been literally months since the top US exchange has
been hacked.

~~~
cwkoss
Hasn't it been over a year since the MtGox hack?

~~~
LCoder
MtGox is actually out of Japan. He is referring to the bitfloor hack which is
based in the US.

------
Groxx
Wow, that's big news. Now they just need a client that doesn't take days to
download the block chain :| Seriously, I wonder if one of the bigger barriers
to bitcoin adoption is the lame official application.

~~~
pacpac
The future is here my brother:

<http://multibit.org/>

<http://electrum.ecdsa.org/>

~~~
Groxx
Thanks! I haven't seen these before.

Electrum looks interesting, due to simplicity. What does it mean by using a
remote server though? Do they just use a single block chain remotely and tell
you what your balance is for keys <a-z> ?

~~~
haarts
I'm not sure about the balance part, but I do know that they basically have
the block chain on their server(s) and verified it's integrity. Still, now I
have to trust some third party.

------
nym
If you are interested in buying bitcoins, please check out a guide I help
maintain called "How do you buy bitcoins?". It's 100% free, and we are on a
quest to provide custom guides for every country. It's really easy to buy
bitcoins these days, especially in the United States.

<http://howdoyoubuybitcoins.com/>

------
Munksgaard
On trying to access bitpay.com I got redirected to this:
<http://www.homeimprovement.com/bitpay.com/> ?

Edit: Aha, the article links to <http://https//bitpay.com/> instead of
<https://bitpay.com>

Edit2: Aaaand it's fixed. Disregard this post.

~~~
Pwnguinz
<https://bitpay.com> is working for me.

------
nowarninglabel
This is rather exciting, as I've written in the past, the main problem with us
not being able to adopt Bitcoin is the legal uncertainty surrounding it. With
Wordpress plunging full-steam ahead, that question should get resolved in the
next few months.

~~~
javert
> as I've written in the past

link?

~~~
mvleming
I'd like to know as well. And for that matter, is there any interesting
material out there that talks about Bitcoin?

~~~
javert
Yes. For example, both the FBI and the ECB have written on bitcoin in a way
that acknowledges it as a useful medium of exchange.

What are you looking for? <https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Main_Page> has a lot of
good info on a lot of stuff. reddit.com/r/bitcoin is a pretty helpful place to
ask casual questions.

~~~
mvleming
I'd love to read on thoughts about how a digital currency will change economic
policies, the market, and just things in general. If its decentralized (i.e.
the currency is not distributed from a central bank), then presumably you
can't deflate or inflate the value of the currency in order to encourage
economic growth (am I getting this right?). Also I'm wondering what Bitcoin
means in terms of banks. If I don't need a physical safe to hold my money
anymore, then obviously banks will be forced to go digital as well right? And
what does that mean for financial instruments? How does a digital currency
play in with high-frequency trading?

So many questions. Bitcoin is really making re-evaluate a lot of things. I
think I've given you a sense of what I'm looking for.

~~~
peterjancelis
Here's a recent report by the ECB itself:
[http://www.ecb.int/pub/pdf/other/virtualcurrencyschemes20121...](http://www.ecb.int/pub/pdf/other/virtualcurrencyschemes201210en.pdf)

Here's an analysis of that report by economic analyst Tuur Demeester:
[http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-11-04/bitcoin-seen-
throug...](http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-11-04/bitcoin-seen-through-eyes-
central-banker)

Here's an interview of Tuur Demeester by Max Keiser about his report:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5vowdygIPU#t=12m42s>

Long story short: The ECB is worried about Bitcoin because unlike e-gold and
other centrally clearing solutions, the peer-to-peer bitcoin doesn't have a
central guy doing all the transaction clearing so there is no-one to bully and
arrest.

~~~
haarts
I found the whole Tuur Demeester (a disciple of Ludwig von Mises
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_von_Mises>) analysis rather inflammatory
and left leaning.

Still a good read if only for a perspective change.

------
beering
Aren't there regulations around trade with certain countries? Can anybody
speak to the issues around a US company accepting payments from people in
countries that aren't too friendly with the US?

~~~
jacquesm
How will you prove that you traded with a country, company or individual that
is embargoed?

~~~
beering
Easy: some blogger in an embargoed country gains some notoriety, and then
somebody else notices that they have a premium WP.com subscription. That's
probably enough suspicious evidence to cause some headaches for the service
provider.

------
piokoch
That's very interesting. There are two things, which seems to be crucial if
Bitcoin will become more popular.

\- How banks would react? They would loose they power of creating money (which
is good, since they create mostly sick kind of money -
<http://www.moneyasdebt.net>)

\- How goverments would react? Would they try to tax Bitcoin incomes, if yes,
how to do this?

------
merty
For some reason, I always thought it was matter of time that Bitcoin would be
declared illegal. People say different things regarding its legality so I will
continue to stay away from it, at least for now.

Though, I think Automattic wouldn't accept it as a form of payment if there
was such a possibility.

Is there anyone who can enlighten me about the legality of Bitcoin?

~~~
zhoutong
Bitcoin is an unregulated financial asset, similar to gold. The fact that it
exists in digital form makes the whole situation much more complicated.

------
pelle
BitCoin's price seems to be stabilizing a bit, which means it's less
deflationary. This I think is whats starting to encourage people to use it for
commerce instead of just holding.

It will be interesting to see what happens to these initiatives next time
there is either an upward or downward move in price.

~~~
mtgx
The bigger the economy behind it starts to become, the less it will be
affected by speculation-based transactions, too. So in the future I doubt
we'll see crashes like the one from $30 to $10 again.

Does anyone know if Paypal gave a reason for blocking Bitcoin? Is it simply
because it can be a competitor in the future? Oh well, more market for
Coinbase and the others then.

~~~
cwkoss
I think they have a general policy against using PayPal to exchange digital
currencies?

The _real_ reason is that lots of scammers used paypal to buy bitcoins, and
would then initiate a chargeback. High chargeback rates are painful for
payment processors, and lead them to dropping those merchants with the highest
rates.

------
alokhar
Would Bitcoin be considered another currency to stand alongside the USD and
the CAD?

~~~
mtgx
And the Euro. But yes, I think so. My only concern is that if it becomes a 1
trillion $ worth of economy, you'll be talking in very small decimals of
Bitcoin. Everything will cost like 0.000000x Bitcoins. I think this will be a
very poor UX for most people. Unless they give the smallest decimal another
name (Bits, coins, nanocoins, whatever), and then everyone deals in nanocoins,
rather than Bitcoins.

I wish the designer of Bitcoin would've thought about this before creating it.
Maybe he just didn't think Bitcoin will become that popular, and become orders
of magnitude more valuable than a dollar in a more distant future.

~~~
cryowaffle
Actually Satoshi discusses this in his original paper many years back. People
will just transact in a smaller unit, like micro bitcoins. The official client
has the ability to display your balance in a smaller unit. It all works quite
well.

------
lucb1e
One of the addresses they (or bitpay) use:

[http://blockchain.info/address/1JDELvQTsa7fGo9BQHhvSVUiYzy3u...](http://blockchain.info/address/1JDELvQTsa7fGo9BQHhvSVUiYzy3uRkTm2)

------
joblessjunkie
What will WordPress do with the Bitcoins they receive? Do they have business
costs that can be paid with Bitcoins, or will they simply trade them for a
"real" currency like USD?

~~~
zhoutong
They use BitPay, which automatically converts them to USD.

------
alenam
lots on news this week n accpeting bitocoin! reddit is looking into this too!
the world is shifting to bitcoin!! if it is indeed less
inflationary/deflationary than we can just transfer USD into bitcoin on
www.coinbase.com (which is pretty much paypal for bitcoin) - S12 YC company

~~~
jacquesm
> the world is shifting to bitcoin!!

I think that wins the prize for the most hyped remark on HN, ever. Really, the
world has not shifted to bitcoin, it won't shift to bitcoin in the near future
and possibly never.

Bitcoins are interesting, a very nice implementation of the idea of a digital
currency with some thought provoking possible consequences. (See:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_market>), but it isn't a general
currency at all, let alone that the world is switching to it.

What you are seeing is that a few companies have caught on to using bitcoin as
a way to promote themselves because 'accepting bitcoin' is a way to get free
press.

Can you get by for a month just spending bitcoin without any other resources
than bitcoins at the beginning of the month, sufficient for a normal months'
worth expenses?

When you can go to your local greengrocer and buy an apple with bitcoin I'll
cede to you that the world has indeed switched to bitcoin. Until then, it's
neat but not quite there yet.

~~~
BladeMcCool
give it 20 years. bitcoin will be the worlds reserve currency.

~~~
jacques_chester
I'll take that bet.

I'll accept payment of US$250 or €250, whichever is the higher value.

~~~
jacquesm
Will you take bitcoin ;) ?

~~~
jacques_chester
thatsthejoke.jpg

------
dewiz
quick question, regarding the people that can't buy Wordpress services with
Paypal or credit card, how do they buy bitcoins?

~~~
GaryRowe
Lots of choices here: <http://howdoyoubuybitcoins.com/>

------
thisismyname
And now for Amazon...

~~~
josephagoss
I know it doesn't matter, but I think its still kinda funny that revenue in
one day on the Amazon store is more than the entire net worth of the whole
Bitcoin network.

This just means its early days for Bitcoin. I fear governments will present
themselves as a major obstacle in the next 5 years. Lets hope i'm wrong, the
idea of Bitcoin is really interesting (in a good way).

