
Pay for Uber with Bitcoin - jschwartz11
https://bitcoinbuilder.com/uber/
======
Animats
Anonymous business. No street address. Not in Dun and Bradstreet. "Private
registration" domain. And they want you to deposit money with them. Yeah,
right.

~~~
vonklaus
> Anonymous business. No street address. Not in Dun and Bradstreet. "Private
> registration" domain.

This will be more and more common and isn't a bad thing. None of those provide
any real safeguards and frankly, private domain registration is pretty common.
I wouldn't dump > a half weeks paycheck in there, but measuring risk and
reputation will no longer be a simple BBB or Dun and Bradstreet lookup.

~~~
jegutman
"None of those provide any real safeguards". Don't you feel like this is an
overstatement? Like if Microsoft commits a fraud I can sue Microsoft. Like yes
it's possible that in the future these safeguards wont' be available, but
having real legal entities with known individuals you can have a trust based
relationship in society is of tremendous value. Knowing that your counter-
party in a transaction has repetitional risk is definitely beneficial.

~~~
snogglethorpe
... and frankly, at least in a country with a stable legal system, it's a
slight bit of comfort to know that if all else fails (hopefully it never
reaches that point of course), the police can go and arrest somebody that
caused us harm, and/or seize their assets.

------
jron
Bitcoin Builder started out as a way to trade against MtGox's internal ledger
when they halted withdraws. Users could effectively bet on MtGox's future by
using privately held bitcoins to trade with users wanting to sell their "Gox
coins" at a fraction of the market price. Anyone that sold their Gox coins for
less than 100% market value made out far better than those that didn't. It was
a wild idea that basically created a functional market for the greedy and the
desperate. I'm sure millions flowed though the site during its short lived
existence.

Congrats on the new idea, Josh.

~~~
zhoujianfu
Thanks jron!

------
jerguismi
Awesome, and works very smoothly. I really hope that uber won't ban it. Or
even better, I really hope that uber would implement a system where you would
be able to convert bitcoins directly to uber credit :)

~~~
ljk
is there a reason why uber would want to ban it?

~~~
elif
I can think of two cases.

\- the first time there was a confusing instance of chargeback/dispute
resolution.. it's easier to say "this is a TOS violation" than to "figure it
out"

\- if the total amount coming from this account makes different
taxes/regulations apply that aren't beneficial to uber

~~~
ljk
good points, thanks!

------
bosdev
I wonder what happens if you try to charge them for a ride which costs more
than you have in your account. They require a $25 balance, but you can
certainly go on much more expensive rides.

~~~
jerguismi
The bitcoinbuilder option will automatically disappear, when your balance goes
below certain amount. I would guess they would ban accounts which do that
permanently. Anyway, there probably are lots of users who are very happy to
use this system fairly, such as me.

------
abrkn
Awesome service! I've already used this for four rides:
[https://i.gyazo.com/b6ba0bd02566eb7eb54781411b322bbd.png](https://i.gyazo.com/b6ba0bd02566eb7eb54781411b322bbd.png)

------
athenot
It's Uber for Bitcoin! Oops, I mean Bitcoin for Uber! Wait no, it's like
Paypal for Bitcoin for Uber...

These analogies are really messing with me. :)

------
noobie
This will work greatly in India, most of my Indian friends say that most
Indians don't have credit cards/prefer to pay with cash.

~~~
xasos
Doesn't Uber India have cash payments?[http://techcrunch.com/2015/05/11/uber-
is-testing-cash-paymen...](http://techcrunch.com/2015/05/11/uber-is-testing-
cash-payments-in-hyderabad-india/)

~~~
mikeyouse
Yep..

[http://techcrunch.com/2015/07/21/uber-gets-serious-about-
cas...](http://techcrunch.com/2015/07/21/uber-gets-serious-about-cash-
payments-in-india/)

And the Uber design post about how they made it work (in broad terms);

[https://medium.com/uber-design/designing-the-uber-cash-
exper...](https://medium.com/uber-design/designing-the-uber-cash-
experience-649a2749b324)

------
nnx
Really nice workaround until Uber accepts Bitcoin itself.

My only concern:

Does your rides and personal information (eg. name and phone number) become
available to Bitcoin Builder through the Uber Business backend?

~~~
fpgaminer
Good point. According to Uber's website:

> Your company will see trip information about rides that were charged to
> their Uber for Business account, including pickup location and destination,
> product type, time of day, and duration.

~~~
zhoujianfu
Your name and phone number don't get revealed, but yeah, like Uber says, they
do give us the information above. I can promise we don't do anything with it?

------
djhn
This is as close to a frictionless bitcoin transaction (at least in situ) as
I've seen yet in the context of useful, frequent payments.

------
bduerst
I guess don't get the problem that this is solving. Isn't Uber rolling out a
cash option?

~~~
zhoujianfu
I think that was only for a few cities in India?

This works everywhere uber works. Today!

------
fpgaminer
I don't see a mention of how much the service costs; what fees they charge.
Perhaps that becomes transparent after creating account, but it's probably
important information to have immediately available.

~~~
zhoujianfu
Ah, that's because there are no fees!

But, we should probably make that clear!

------
pajop
Used this yesterday and today here in the Philippines! This is an awesome
workaround because only 3% of Filipinos have credit cards
[https://www.techinasia.com/is-southeast-asia-ready-for-
onlin...](https://www.techinasia.com/is-southeast-asia-ready-for-online-
payments/)

------
ShotgunSnipist
This website is really ugly. I wish they had put some time into at least
making it look nice.

------
yjgyhj
That is super cool, and has the coolest website for it.

