
Coinbase Commerce: merchants can accept multiple digital currencies - barmstrong
https://medium.com/@coinbasecommerce/coinbase-commerce-the-easiest-way-for-merchants-to-accept-digital-currency-54ba64966f8d
======
blunte
The KYC/AML regulations require essentially 1:1 human effort for every new
person who attempts to buy any practical amount of cryptocurrency (within the
US and EU, and probably elsewhere).

So the #1 problem is that people who want to buy some cryptocurrency cannot.
They wait days or weeks to get verified. And the exchanges and money changers
want to provide the virtual currency to the hungry customers, but they cannot
afford to hire enough people to process all the verification applications.

Given this extreme bottleneck, I don't see the significance of news about how
much easier it is for people to spend virtual currency.

Ironically, Coinbase is one of the most complained about in terms of slow
verifications.

~~~
vosper
I'm in this boat now - I've been a Coinbase customer for years, and then
randomly they blocked my ability to withdraw my money (MY money, BTW) from the
account. Nothing had changed about my account setup.

Now they want me to go through the Photo ID process, but I don't have a US
drivers license, only a permanent resident (green) card for ID. Which should
be fine, after all it works as ID for literally everything else I could need
ID for in the US - including flying. Support have been fairly responsive, but
they keep sending me back to through their photo verification process, and I
keep telling them "but this is not a driver's license, please look at the
pictures!".

It's really annoying - this is a federally-issued photo ID I'm required to
carry with me, and yet Coinbase seems to be struggling to accept it. In the
meantime my money is stuck and I don't know how to get it back.

~~~
mancerayder
The error of the ways of Coinbase seems to be allowing various transactions
and money transfer activity, sometimes for lengths of time, on unverified
accounts. Then, suddenly boom, there's a problem, and customer support is
already backlogged.

Kind of like they opened the door to unlimited new subscribers and sobbed that
they were overloaded. With some of the HN crowd playing the violin music of
poor, fast-growing start-up (the "growing pains" cop out).

Naughty (greedy) Coinbase.

~~~
vosper
Yeah what's particularly frustrating is that I'm not a new user, I've had an
account for years. If I had a problem signing up, and couldn't start using
their service, that would be one thing, but that I already have money in there
and they're preventing me from getting it back is what's really frustrating
me.

------
edshiro
What does this mean for a crypto project like Request Network
([https://request.network/#/](https://request.network/#/)) which is trying to
become the "Paypal for cryptocurrencies"?

I am genuinely curious as I own some REQ, believe in the team, but also like
what Coinbase has done to bring crypto to the masses (minus the outrageous
fees of course).

~~~
josu
My personal opinion about Request and similar projects.

I have been using bitcoin for a while, I have payed for real goods and online
services with it and I've following the crypto ecosystem for a few years. I
really can't see the reason for more than just a handful of competing
cryptocurrencies becoming mediums of exchange.

Request's goal is noble, but I think that they'd be better off working on
implementing payment gateways for existing cryptos. The first mover advantage
seems to be huge in this space, and I really can't see how Request, or any
other crypto can scale fast enough to dethrone bitcoin or the rest of the big
competitors.

~~~
edshiro
I also think there are way too many projects in this space and most of them
are very obvious money grabs. Ultimately only a few projects will survive and
gain mainstream adoption.

I am really on the face regarding bitcoin though: it is the grandfather of all
those crypto projects and massively moves the market, but I don't quite
understand how it could ever replace a currency given its very limited supply
and astronomical unit economic price: it was not supposed to be a store of
value like gold when it started.

Ultimately, I think a few projects with much higher coins in circulation and
faster transaction times will end up becoming more valuable due to greater
usability.

It's a shame it feels like REQ is a bit late to the game, but they do have
ambitious plans, one of them is to enable cross-currency transactions
(including fiat). No-one has yet gained the first mover advantage in this
space so the jury is still out.

~~~
whataretensors
REQ is not late to the game. It's still extremely early. I think multiple dex
that translates currency to any other currency will emerge. Dexs can compete
on fees, features, risk, etc. Additionally supply will be distributed as
automated arbitrage becomes an easy way to make money.

I also don't believe in the convergence of coins with enough dexs. There are a
lot of design features that people will want that are incompatible across
coins, but still useful. Some coins will fail sure, but people still trade
bitconnect(200k volume yesterday).

------
decorator
There's also the GloBee[0] payment processor. It accepts Monero, so you're
able to maintain your privacy whilst consuming like a capitalist zombie.

[0] [https://globee.com/](https://globee.com/)

~~~
Cthulhu_
That's not going to last long, it's basically an open invite for money
laundering.

~~~
decorator
I can't think of anything that is universally good other than God. & from what
I've heard about the Old Testament that's not even true!

So we a situation where people can't even _construct something from their
imagination_ that is virtuous in all concerns. & people want financial
technology to meet that bar? Seems unlikely to me.

Could there be some money laundering? Probably. Will there be attempts by the
owners of the payment processor to stop such a thing? Probably. Will there be
perfection? Probably not.

From what I understand, most money laundering occurs in the traditional
financial system. Does it follow we should tear it down?

& besides, I thought crypto(assets) were a fad. A bubble. A figment of the
imagination. A plaything for greater fools. If that's true, it's hardly worth
worrying about.

~~~
notahacker
The traditional financial system carries out trillions of transactions which
are not money laundering, yet is required to jump through enormous amounts of
red tape to prove its customers are not money launderers, and companies still
get into trouble with regulators if they're not satisfied with their AML
policies.

A new payment processor advertising the ability to accept completely anonymous
transactions as a key benefit over the traditional ecosystem is going to
attract a much higher ratio of money laundering to legitimate merchant
accounts, and even without that, marketing Lack-of-AML-as-a-Service is sort of
thing that gets regulators interested in shutting you down...

~~~
decorator
> The traditional financial system carries out trillions of transactions which
> are not money laundering, yet is required to jump through enormous amounts
> of red tape to prove its customers are not money launderers, and companies
> still get into trouble with regulators if they're not satisfied with their
> AML policies.

I'd agree the traditional system would probably have less money laundering. It
also has less freedom, & could have significantly less innovation in the
future.

> marketing Lack-of-AML-as-a-Service is sort of thing that gets regulators
> interested in shutting you down

I think they're run from South Africa, so I'm not sure if regulators could
shut them down. Crypto is global & crypto is on the internet. Wherever
cryptocurrencies go, human minds will follow. People will create them with
their computers (mining) & transact with those who accept them.

Coming down hard on crypto assets could create a parallel economy. Untaxed &
_no regulation_. Then what do regulators do? Nothing, because they just lost
their jobs & any control over anything.

~~~
notahacker
Criminal economic ecosystems have existed since long before cryptocurrency, as
has AML law even in mere regional financial hubs like South Africa.

The real question is to what extent is it beneficial for _non-criminal_
businesses to invest in the capability to handle niche currencies like Monero
used by hardly anybody and attractive primarily to money launders. Because if
it's predominantly criminal businesses using them, it's not really making
regulators' jobs more difficult.

~~~
decorator
> Criminal economic ecosystems have existed since long before cryptocurrency,
> as has AML law even in mere regional financial hubs like South Africa.

Even if South Africa shut them down, I'm sure others will find a way to run
such payment processors. Where there's money, there's motive.

> The real question is to what extent is it beneficial for non-criminal
> businesses to invest in the capability to handle niche currencies like
> Monero used by hardly anybody and attractive primarily to money launders.

People who launder large sums of money would likely do it through the
traditional financial system. How does one launder, say, a billion dollars
through a Monero today? I don't think they could. That type of money is being
laundered through the banking system[0].

> The real question is to what extent is it beneficial for non-criminal
> businesses to invest in the capability to handle niche currencies like
> Monero

If it's easy to implement & their niche likes to use them, then I would say
it's probable.

Crypto can win bit by bit. Country by country. There are some jurisdictions
that seem to be embracing the tech (like Japan & Switzerland).

That's some people using it. If it continues to grow & you know it's going to
grow faster than any other asset it makes sense to do some speculation. Then
with that speculation, you start to learn about crypto. It starts to spread as
people become aware of returns, & it continues to grow, & so on.

It's resilient. I like resilient assets. I think a little bit of crypto can be
a good investment. If anything it's fun. That's one of the reasons I think
young people like it.

Do it for fun, spend it when people accept it. People even give discounts for
buying in crypto.

[0] [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hsbc-probe/hsbc-to-
pay-1-...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hsbc-probe/hsbc-to-
pay-1-9-billion-u-s-fine-in-money-laundering-case-idUSBRE8BA05M20121211)

------
sangnoir
If you ever added your US bank account to Coinbase by giving it your online
banking credentials(!)[1], you might want to know that your financial/banking
information was crawled (income, costs, average balance), and is available for
resale[2] to 3rd parties.

1\. This is very, very, _very_ bad for security, but is only possible because
US interbank transfers are way behind the rest of the world (including 3rd
world countries). Everywhere else, all you need to transfer money is the name
of the bank, account holder and account number.

2\. see "Products" on [https://plaid.com](https://plaid.com). Plaid provides
Coinbase's bank integration.

~~~
zachperret
Plaid co-founder here. We don't resell data. In the case of Coinbase, they're
setting up ACH transfers (see Auth on our products page), to avoid the 3-5 day
delay in connecting a bank account for ACH.

~~~
sangnoir
> We don't resell data.

There must be some confusion on my part, because I consider this product
([https://plaid.com/products/income/](https://plaid.com/products/income/)) as
selling the income data, I'm guessing it's unrelated to Coinbase.

In any case, are you able to unequivocally state that you do _not_ collect
this data for coinbase users, even if it's not for reselling? I know you might
have good intentions, but there's no telling where that data will end up once
it's collected (past the point of your 'exit' event).

~~~
zachperret
Our Income product is distinct from Auth, and not used by Coinbase. The only
way for a consumer's Income data to be collected, analyzed, and sent is when
the consumer directly permissions an application to receive it.

Let's say you're applying for a loan via a lender that's a Plaid customer and
you want to verify your income. In that case, you'd have to link your bank
account with that lender (via Plaid), giving that lender permission to collect
data about your Income. There's no way for that lender to get your income (or
any other) data from Plaid without you explicitly connecting your account.

------
steveeq1
I wonder what they're policy is on adult. I do some work on an adult site and
ccbill has got to be the worst credit card provider out there. Adult payments
need to be disrupted.

~~~
diggan
Agree, lots of value can be provided to services in the grey-area.
Specifically Coinbase doesn't allow this.

Under "Prohibited Businesses" you can see "Adult Content and Services" being
listed. Source:
[https://www.coinbase.com/legal/user_agreement?locale=en](https://www.coinbase.com/legal/user_agreement?locale=en)

~~~
chatmasta
Really funny how we've come full circle to the same centralized cabals acting
as the gatekeepers decentralized currency was meant to destroy.

It just goes to show, as long as the world runs on fiat currency, and you need
to convert from cryptocurrency -> fiat to live your life, the conversion point
(e.g. Coinbase) will always be a point of failure and regulatory capture.

~~~
themihai
Nothing really stops you from processing crypto-coins unlike credit cards
where Visa and MasterCard have the last say. With crypto you no longer need
approval from the platform owner. If you don't like Coinbase you can create
your own coinbase-like platform. You have to remember that with fiat you don't
have much control over your money either unless it's cash so I believe crypto-
coins are a big step forward.

Buying fiat with crypto is another issue but as long as crypto coins are
accepted widely there will always be ways to buy goods, services and even
fiat.

~~~
wastedhours
Are there any checkout systems pre-built solely for holding crypto afterwards,
and not for converting to fiat? Guessing Coinbase has to have it like that
because they interact with wider networks.

If you wanted to sell a saucy story, how'd it work? Essentially a hot wallet
with a webhook?

~~~
wampwamp
You’d just need an extended public key that gives unique addresses to buyers
and a price API to provide rate conversions. Your private key can be offline
or on a hard wallet. Also see btcpayserver for an open source bitpay clone
that does what you are thinking and more

------
tyfon
I've never used bitcoin but to my understanding it can take quite some time
for a payment to be processed.

What happens if you buy something and pay, then when the merchant receives the
bitcoins the value of them has dropped say 10%? Does the merchant take the
loss in this system?

~~~
joeyrideout
Bitcoin alone is responsible for this reputation of slow transaction times
among cryptocurrencies. Litecoin and Ethereum have the same blockchain
architecture but are mined faster, so they are faster, but this linear
improvement may not be sufficient for scaling. Minerless "DAG" coins like Nano
may prove to be more practical in the long run because they scale
exponentially.

re: Value change during a transaction: volatility is a fundamental problem
with any currency. Adoption and volume will decrease volatility, which this
announcement is moving towards :) Ripple's value-add to the banking industry,
for instance, similarly relies on adoption in order to create an international
pool of liquidity in order to facilitate efficient cross-border currency
exchange. The more volume, the less volatility there is, which means less cost
to banks using XRP as a payment "bridge". The same is desirable for merchants
and consumers.

~~~
kylell
your logic is funny, is like having a busy site with a postgress db, and
saying postgress is at fault, look at my mysql wordpress site with 1.3
visitors per day, how fast it is.

Ethereum will colapse on itself sooner of later, no one managed to sync a node
recently.

~~~
joeyrideout
Where exactly is my logic funny? Mined blockchains scale linearly. Increasing
block size, etc. can increase speed temporarily but can still only scale
linearly. Busy site or not, the ledger needs an architectural change to handle
exponential growth. Your busy Postgress db would also need to change in
architecture from a single resource to something more distributed in order to
scale exponentially. A less busy website of the same architecture also
wouldn't handle exponential growth. What am I missing?

Edit: To clarify, yes, some mined blockchains feel faster now simply because
they are less busy. They are still doomed to Bitcoin's fate _at scale_ unless
distributed systems techniques like sharding (or Nano's block lattice) are
used. I'm not saying that the less busy blockchains are any better.

~~~
hobofan
> To clarify, yes, some mined blockchains feel faster now simply because they
> are less busy.

Yes, and for now it's not proven in practice that Nano will also stay
responsive when it hits the same scale/busyness.

~~~
joeyrideout
Fair enough. _In theory_ Nano's design can handle something like O(2^n)
transactions per second where n is the number of nodes, while mined
blockchains can handle O(n) transactions per second where n is roughly the
block rate multiplied by block size. _In practice_ who knows. The former has a
fighting chance, at least.

------
vim_wannabe
Looks exactly like Sprite's offering right down to the scary 15 minute window
you are expected to complete your Bitcoin transaction in, doesn't it?

~~~
johnpowell
I just bought a computer from newegg with bitcoin and I think they used bitgo.
They also had the 15 minute window thing. But the transaction didn't have to
be confirmed in that time. It just needed to be out there somewhere which only
took about a minute. And that was back when BTC was around 15K and it would
takes hours for a actual transaction to be confirmed. But it would lock in the
transaction quickly and then it would take a while for newegg to send me a
email saying the payment was confirmed.

I just checked and the time between my order and initiating the sending of BTC
to bitgo in Electrum to newegg saying the payment was accepted was just a
little under five hours.

------
thesehands
No mention of the time delay between accepting funds and withdrawing the
funds. How would a merchant refund the customer in fiat or crypto?

~~~
sethgecko
They are also working on Lightning Network integration.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtXe-
wQyrWw&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtXe-
wQyrWw&feature=youtu.be)

~~~
paulie_a
Does lightening address coinbases incredibly long and arbitrary delays in
deposits to an actual bank account?

~~~
wereHamster
No, lightning (not lightening, btw) addresses the relatively long delays in
confirming transactions. Merchants who are unwilling to accept unconfirmed
transactions must wait tens of minutes (depending on risk they want to
accept). With lightning it's as fast as you can transmit packets through the
internet (order of milliseconds).

------
piratebroadcast
I have a coinbase account, but it looks like like a Coinbase Commerce account.
Commerce wont accept my regular Coinbase login. I guess I have to create a new
account?

------
JustAnotherPat
So this just shows you an address to send crypto to and calculates the
equivalent amount needed with a 15 minute window??

No conversion to fiat at a guaranteed rate?

Can't you game this with such rapid price fluctuations? Time buying a high
priced item during a crash maybe?

------
traeregan
[https://www.coinpayments.net](https://www.coinpayments.net) has been doing
something similar for a few years now.

------
hesdeadjim
I used to be bullish on crypto. Now I see something like this and wonder "why
the fuck do I want to use crypto to buy something when cash is instantaneous
and my credit card provides consumer protection?". Add on to this the
necessity of dealing with capital gains on my taxes at the end of the year
just for buying something? No thanks.

I also fully expect to get downvoted to oblivion for this opinion based on
what I have seen in the past.

------
gymshoes
This has a good scope for humblebundle

------
oculusthrift
awesome! look forward to trying it

------
solarkraft
Not only is Coinbase an extremely slimy, untrustworthy company seemingly
entirely driven by bad AI, the amount of different currencies they accept is
also very limited.

~~~
__blockcipher__
What?

GDAX is one of the best companies out there in the field.

Note to others: a portion of the internet seems to relentlessly attack
Coinbase because they listed Bitcoin Cash (BCH) months ago

~~~
freejulian
Bitcoin Cash was listed in an incredibly dishonest way. They “surprised”
announced it at 8pm on a Tuesday night. Along with the “launch” they had
disabled selling bch from the fork (you could only buy). The launch coincided
with Roger Ver and numerous CNBC “stories” trashing Bitcoin. It was so shady
Coinbase agreed to launch an insider trading investigation.

Worse, coinbase is dragging their feet improving their Bitcoin technology
stack. At this point it appears intentional.

~~~
__blockcipher__
That is not an accurate chain of events.

I understand why they did not pre-announce. They would have been attacked by
rabid BTC fans, plus a bunch of astroturfers and bots.

