WordPress To Accept Bitcoins 205
angry tapir writes "WordPress has said it will accept payment in bitcoins, opening up the blogging platform to payments from users in countries not supported by PayPal or credit card companies. WordPress is free, open-source software, but the company Automattic offers paid-for features such as blog designs, custom domains, hosting partnerships and anti-spam measures."
maybe... (Score:3, Interesting)
Is Paypal feeling threatened yet?
Re:And Paypal's response will be, (Score:5, Interesting)
So?
Cast your mind back 12 years to what slashdot and similar communities were like when Linux was just beginning to be taken seriously.
"Linux will never mainstream until it does X"
Very similar to how bitcoin will never be mainstream until it's accepted by X. And of course in the mean time big companies like Sun (who?) Silicon Graphics (who?), Digital (who?) and MS of course all ignored it. In some cases it did X. In some cases it didn't. Nevertheless, it ended up as about the #1 operating system in the world. I doubt there's anything in wider use overall out there.
Re:Few replies (Score:3, Interesting)
It's not a ponzi scheme.
Silk Road works just fine (I know several people who have bought drugs successfully using SR but I suppose the FBI is "just waiting to make a big bust" or whatever excuse you've got).
Re:hm (Score:5, Interesting)
Money laundering now seems to mean not paying the bank their 6%. I shift a lot of money around the world through some very questionable countries but as long as I pay the bank, no one minds. If I take a lot of cash onto a plane to avoid the bank fees I am a money launderer. It is BS and I no longer take it seriously, to me it is a challenge. I am not a criminal but I will do all I can to avoid paying stupid banks in other countries money that they do not deserve.
Does anyone understand how real money laundering works? It is easy and it does not have to move countries. Just get a shop and sell stuff. If you want to clean some money you sell more on paper than you really sold. It is that easy. You do not need to go to another country with a suitcase of cash, that is stupid.
I really want Bitcoin to become a reality because then I can save 6%. Now the people I work with all want Swift payments or Moneygram. I try to avoid Paypal and Western Union as they charge way too much.
Re:And Paypal's response will be, (Score:5, Interesting)
I think "Linux on the desktop" is an interesting analogy for Bitcoin, but it's not the only one available. If Bitcoin follows the trajectory of desktop Linux then it will grow and grow until it saturates its niche market, at which point usage will level off. Unable to tackle the challenges needed to advance to the next level, it will become something of a calling card for certain communities but will just be a curiosity to the rest of the world. The underlying ideas or philosophies, though, may have influence out of proportion to its usage (eg, Android being open source was certainly heavily influenced by Googles experiences with Linux).
That's one scenario. Another is that rather than being similar to desktop Linux, Bitcoin is more similar to the web. Bitcoin is about 3 years old, but really it's only more like 2 years old because for the first year it languished in absolute obscurity. If you think back to the internet in the early to late 90s, the net was this technically complicated and intimidating beast. You needed a crazy thing called Trumpet WinSock, and then you needed an ISP (only a few small ones existed) and then you needed even more software and often it just wouldn't work at all, and when it did there was no friendly start page or anything, you just had to know where to go. The de-facto standard for "normal people" was CompuServe and AOL. Movie trailers had AOL keywords at the end, not web addresses.
Despite that the web eventually triumphed and became the standard, replacing the sophisticated and well organized corporations that previously reigned supreme. Why? Well, it was an open and international system where everyone could take part. The protocols were documented, anyone could write software for it. Because it was open that's where the research was taking place. Then the existing institutions started to provide limited forms of web access alongside their walled gardens, lending it legitimacy. It's easy to forget that back then the net was frequently painted as swamped with immoral, degenerate or even illegal activity. In 1995 TIME Magazine ran with a cover story claiming the internet was completely dominated by porn [time.com], based on statistics about USENET that later turned out to be completely bogus. Parallels with some contemporary stories around Bitcoin are easy to see.
Anyway, there's no guarantees of success and either scenario is equally likely, IMHO (in the absence of a dystopian crackdown by governments that simply ban any financial system they cannot exert total control over).
Re:Seems like a no-brainer (Score:2, Interesting)
On that basis, why would you *not* accept BitCoin [...]
I suppose that was a rhetorical question, but one reason would be that paypal and others refuse to allow them to use their (paypal's) service because of it, as has been rumored to happen before. Or was that some other payment service ?
Re:hm (Score:5, Interesting)
you do realize that bitcoin is mostly used by criminals for illegal transactions and by people who want to avoid income tax
And you know this.. how?
It is certainly used by criminals - like any other currency - but "mostly" is just baseless speculation.
Re:maybe... (Score:2, Interesting)
Honestly, I agree that BitCoin will fail. I thought the flaw was already apparent - people can game it for profit. It's as simple as having enough money to buy up tons of them, causing the relative value to go up, and then selling them all off at once. Causing the price to crash, so I can start all over once the dust settles.
I called that before it even happened, and people looked at me like I was a tard. Yet, it happened. And it will happen again, just as soon as people start buying into again. And If I can come across a mere ~$50M I'll be the one to do.