
Reddit Considering Accepting Bitcoin - met3
http://betabeat.com/2012/11/reddit-considering-accepting-bitcoin-as-payment-for-reddit-gold-subscriptions/
======
cs702
Just the fact that someone at Reddit is _publicly discussing the possibility
of accepting Bitcoin_ is compelling anecdotal evidence that Bitcoin is on the
usual path to wider adoption of all innovative products. It now appears to be
expanding from a tiny number of innovators to a still-small but considerably
larger number of early adopters.[1] I'm persuaded Bitcoin is likely to gain
much wider adoption over the long haul.[2]

Kudos to Reddit!

\--

[1]
[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/45/DiffusionOfInn...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/45/DiffusionOfInnovation.png)

[2] I've written down my reasoning at
[http://cs702.wordpress.com/2011/05/29/on-the-potential-
adopt...](http://cs702.wordpress.com/2011/05/29/on-the-potential-adoption-and-
price-appreciation-of-bitcoin-in-the-long-run/)

\--

Edits: added context; made my point clearer.

~~~
Goronmon
If a lay person were to ask how they get back their Bitcoins if they are
stolen from their account, say due to a person gaining access to their
computer, what do you tell them?

~~~
smanek
If a lay person were to ask how they get back their dollars if they are stolen
from their wallet, say due to a person mugging them, what do you tell them?

~~~
wmf
To put their money in a bank. But there are no secure Bitcoin banks.

~~~
drivebyacct2
I'm willing to bet that I have more protection securing the contents of my
Bitcoin Wallet than Wells Fargo has protecting my account at any level.

~~~
Goronmon
>I'm willing to bet that I have more protection securing the contents of my
Bitcoin Wallet than Wells Fargo has protecting my account at any level.

Would you say this is true for most users?

~~~
lucb1e
Currently? Of course not. But when the idea of storing money on your computer
(e.g. in a file) becomes more widespread, then the answer would be yes. Or at
the very least it would be equally secure.

It's not that hard to provide people with a secure environment, as long as
that environment is designed with with security in mind. A non-jailbroken
smartphone is probably good enough, though a dedicated device might be better.
And you can use live boots.

I can see a future where we use such (or similar) things to do money
transfers.

~~~
majormajor
Wells Fargo is a bigger target, but they also have many more layers of
protections and an interest in providing customer service. My hunch would be
that it would be easier for a criminal to profit off of attacking WF than
attacking a personal bitcoin user, but that it would be easier to actually
cause financial harm to a personal bitcoin user (even without profiting
themselves). But to clarify that, I have a couple of questions about how
storing your own bitcoins works, since I've never used it:

* How does bitcoin storage work with offsite backups? If someone compromised the backup, would that give them access to your money?

* If you lose the file (hard drive crash, home burns down, backup system fails, whatever), does neither you nor anyone else have that money anymore? I.e., someone wouldn't have to gain access to the money themselves to deprive you of it?

~~~
BladeMcCool
keep your wallet file encrypted and back it up to multiple locations on a
regular basis (to update the backups with new private keys that are created by
your client software).

there are also ways of generating bitcoin keys completely offline as well as
producing signed valid bitcoin transactions completely offline. This way you
can forward funds to keys that are not on a machine connected to the internet,
or keys that are backed up only on paper (in multiple safety deposit boxes if
you like). And also you can then put signed transactions from the offline
machine onto a usb stick or whatever and then use a networked machine to
forward those valid transactions to the bitcoin network.

Coinbase is doing something like this for their storage of customer funds.
Coinbase seeks to be a bitcoin bank that wont get hacked or that if it somehow
does get hacked ( _cough_ inside job, _cough_ ) that only very small losses
could occur.

~~~
nym
For what it's worth, Coinbase has no reported cases of fraud. We are tracking
these kinds of things here:

<http://howdoyoubuybitcoins.com/>

For example, Bitfloor (which had 250K USD stolen):
<http://howdoyoubuybitcoins.com/from/bitfloor/>

Verses Coinbase, which has no such history:
<http://howdoyoubuybitcoins.com/from/coinbase/>

------
blhack
This really sounded more like Yishan was just acknowledging that he personally
knew what bitcoin was. Notice that he didn't "distinguish" his comment as an
Admin?

Generally when an admin is speaking "as an admin" they turn their username
red, and get a letter A next to it.

Like this:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/12v8y3/now_is_the_time...](http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/12v8y3/now_is_the_time_to_invest_in_gold/c6yefec)

~~~
nowarninglabel
Yes, this is the same issue we had at Kiva when I and another engineer said we
were going to explore accepting Bitcoin. I provided a lot of caveats but there
were already two blog posts about it out on the interwebs the next day.

As I noted in the thread where Yishan mentions looking into Bitcoin, there are
a lot of barriers to entry, barriers that we were not able to overcome at Kiva
(at least for now). Maybe as a for-profit entity they will have better luck
though as they have more options open to them, I'd just caution people about
getting their hopes up.

~~~
TylerE
The Bitcoin "community" really is it's own worst enemy.

------
StavrosK
This is an odd coincidence, one of the Dead Man's Switch subscribers asked me
if I supported Bitcoin, and I ended up adding a MtGox button on the site (it's
pretty nifty, it even autoconverts to whatever currency you want and supports
IPN):

<http://www.deadmansswitch.net/pricing/>

I've been warming up to Bitcoin, the same subscriber clued me into
<https://blockchain.info/> and it looks pretty good. The only thing I'm
worried about is that Bitcoin isn't very stable, but I don't really care since
MtGox autoconverts all payments. There's no downside in accepting it, as far
as I can see.

Plus, I can just keep them as Bitcoins and pay right away with very low fees.

EDIT: I also decided to dabble in a bit of MtGox trading with my newly-
acquired 4 BTC, so I sold high and bought higher. It... didn't go very well.

~~~
sgornick
"Autosell" is the term Mt. Gox uses as the name for the parameter in the
shopping button API to sell immediately once the transaction has confirmed.

But that's the thing. Merchants are worried about the downside risk, and
basically ignore that there is an upside gain possible as well. Sure, the
merchant shouldn't be speculating with revenues that go to employee's salaries
and inventory purchases, but if there's 10% profit, keeping 10% of revenues
without converting that to USDs might be beneficial.

BitPay is a merchant processor that lets the merchant specify what percent of
revenue to convert and remainder of bitcoins are paid out without conversion.

~~~
StavrosK
Eh, if I want to gamble, I'll go to a casino. I pay my employees in Euros,
that's what I want revenue in. I even want it exchanged from dollars, so I get
X Euros every time.

The autosell feature means I can add Bitcoin as a payment method with no
hassle, I'm enjoying it greatly.

------
fwr
Wow, an entire article based on a vague non-promising comment. Internet
journalism at its best.

------
rm999
These promises are incredibly vague, the most specific thing I saw was in
another thread: "Alternative payment features are in the works"
([http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/12v8y3/now_is_the_time...](http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/12v8y3/now_is_the_time_to_invest_in_gold/c6yefec)).

Does reddit have the manpower to deal with a non-mainstrem payment system like
bitcoin?

~~~
jamoes
The manpower to support bitcoin payments is minimal. A single engineer could
integrate with a bitcoin payment provider such as Bitpay (or Walletbit or Mt.
Gox Merchant) in less than a day. These bitcoin payment providers have APIs
that are very similar to Paypal and Google Checkout. After the initial setup,
ongoing support would likely be minimal. These payment providers also offer to
convert BTC to USD (or many other currencies) at the current market price. So,
your company doesn't even have to deal in bitcoins.

Bottom line: if you're already accepting Paypal, accepting Bitcoin as well is
easy.

------
dmix
For users who have never used Bitcoin, the cost and time involved in acquiring
something as small as $3.99-$29.99 is quite high. It would likely cost as much
as 10-50% of that cost in fees.

So I'm not sure if this will create new bitcoin users. But more vendors always
helps.

~~~
nym
Coinbase.com will allow you to buy up to $100 with a 1% fee. It's pretty much
what I'm recommending these days to Americans.

<http://howdoyouusebitcoins.com/>

~~~
dmix
See my post below. I factor the deposit fee not just the wallet transfer fee.

~~~
nym
I replied to your post, although if your bank takes 10% off the top to begin
with, the issue isn't with bitcoins, it's your bank's deposit fee.

~~~
dmix
Cavirtex takes a flat rate of $3 when depositing money directly into their
bank aact regardless of the amount, as I mentioned above. Not 10%...

~~~
ferroh
Oh please, and then they charge you 3.0% when you do a trade on your first 100
bitcoins.

So if you buy $5 worth of bitcoins, it costs you 61.2% in fees.

If you buy $50 worth of bitcoins, it costs you 9% in fees.

If you buy $100 worth of bitcoins, it costs you 6% in fees.

~~~
dmix
Ouch yeah, another example of Canada lacking proper competition in an
industry.

------
evoorhees
I'll buy a Reddit gold subscription if I can pay in Bitcoin. Who uses Paypal
anymore??

~~~
lucb1e
Many people use Paypal and I think it works fine. But yes, I'd be more likely
to buy Reddit Gold in Bitcoin too!

~~~
alenam
coinbase.com (YC company) is like Paypal for Bitcoin.

------
macspoofing
Reddit is not profitable? It feels like the difference between profitability
and non-profitability is an extra ad on each page.

~~~
SnydenBitchy
Who on earth would want to advertise on reddit, given the site’s thoroughly
unpleasant audience, the notoriety of which has been growing by the month?

Reddit _might_ be able to court the same sponsors (porn sites and such) that
sustain the likes of 4chan, as long as said sponsors are willing to associate
themselves with a far more misogynist, racist, child porn-defending audience.
But this would likely inspire a revolt among redditors, who hold themselves in
laughably high self-regard.

~~~
jrockway
I think the contributors to racist, misogynist, and child porn-defending
subreddits are only a tiny minority of Reddit's users. Most of the popular
subreddits are fairly benign (AskReddit, IAMA, etc.)

Interestingly, all your recent comments seem to be about how you dislike
Reddit. Consumption of a chill pill may be in order.

~~~
king_jester
Subreddits like AskReddit do have a lot of racist and misogynist shit posted
all the time, esp. those leading questions people post to AskReddit. The
Reddit moderating system doesn't make Reddit a safe space for people, so I can
see what the OP is getting at in terms of Reddit being an unsafe space.

------
narrator
How about an optional bitcoin miner running in the background while using
reddit using webgl (so it can make use of the GPU) that accumulates bitcoin.
As the user browses around reddit it will be active, slowly generating
bitcoins as part of a pool. When the user has accumulated enough for reddit
gold, it automatically buys it for them. Maybe it would take two years or so
to accumulate a bitcoin to buy reddit gold but that's at least turning users
into money.

Am I an idiot or did I just discover an alternative to the ad supported model
for free content sites?

~~~
ferroh
If ASICs are shipped in the next couple of months, then very soon GPU mining
will do as little as CPU mining does today.

------
jonknee
I'd love to be a fly on the wall with the upcoming Reddit / Conde Nast
accountant meeting.

~~~
icebraining
Condé Nast isn't their parent company anymore, they moved up to Advance
Publications (the parent company of CN).

<http://blog.reddit.com/2011/09/independence.html>

------
peepee
I would also buy a reddit gold subscription with Bitcoin.

------
vinayan3
I don't see much of a downside as long as Reddit gives a price quote in bit
coins and convert it the main currency Reddit uses, probably USD. The main
problem for main-stream business using Bitcoin I think is the volatility.
Losing money because the currency fluctuates around 10% every 30 days is
horrible.

~~~
kirian
There are services (e.g. Bitpay) which remove the currency risk for the
seller. The seller can set their price in US $ or whatever and receive the
payment in that currency while the purchaser has the option to pay in bitcoins
at the going rate at the time.

------
zzleeper
Are there any privacy concerns with bitcoin? For instance, suppose I know the
day someone got reddit gold. Could I then check the bitcoin transaction
database (eg: bitcoin block explorer) to extract the ip of the users that
created the account that day, and link this account to other transactions and
try to pin down the individual?

This is just a far-fetched scenario, but I'm wondering what would change when
money stopped being so anonimous as it is now..

~~~
haldean
You would be able to find their wallet address, but good practice is to use a
different wallet address for each person you send payments to. The blockchain
doesn't keep track of IP addresses to preserve anonymity.

------
pyrotechnick
Original source:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/12vg6t/the_admins_a...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/12vg6t/the_admins_are_considering_bitcoin_as_a_new/c6ykjba)

OP, _"Please submit the original source. If a blog post reports on something
they found on another site, submit the latter."_ \-
<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

~~~
shazow
-1. The Reddit comment has almost no context. The BetaBeat article explains Reddit, Reddit Gold, Reddit Gold pricing, Bitcoin, contains a full quote of the comment, and a number of other things that random Hacker News readers might lack complete context on.

~~~
pyrotechnick
Whatever helps you sleep at night.

