Square Market Now Accepts Bitcoin 94
An anonymous reader writes "Square today announced it has added support for paying with Bitcoin. As a result, buyers can now use the digital currency to purchase goods and services on Square Market, which allows sellers to create an online storefront with online payment processing. The mobile payment company promises the experience won't feel any different for sellers and they 'don't have to change a thing, except potentially expecting new trailblazing customers and more sales.' In other words, Square wants them to be able to offer Bitcoin as a payment option without any headaches."
Stripe is also adding beta support for Bitcoin as a funding source. No word from Paypal yet.
Buy Now (Score:1, Insightful)
It's going mainstream. Buy now - this is the last push before it gets to $800 - $1000 per Bitcoin (again) and settles for quite some time.
If you're looking to speculate on BTC, this is the last chance to buy in and get near-guaranteed profits of 50-80% in the short term.
I currently hold zero Bitcoins, but I may pick some up again. (I mined all my previous BTC.)
Re:Buy Now (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:They're getting into Bitcoin NOW?!? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not the first time Bitcoin would change its value that rapidly or that much. But its volatility doesn't really matter much when using it as a transaction medium - you get BTC, you immediately sell it for USD, and that's that. And why would a US-centric service care about what Russia or China do?
Re:Missing the point of bitcoin (Score:2, Insightful)
The thing with Bitcoin is that you *can* avoid the middlemen, if they're not doing a good job, censoring you or taking too big a cut. Middlemen who provide a valuable service can still exist in the Bitcoin world.
Re:They're getting into Bitcoin NOW?!? (Score:4, Insightful)
So basically, if you're willing to risk it, now is the time to get in.
Acknowledge it as a threat by said superpowers. It could hardly get better advertising.
Re:They're getting into Bitcoin NOW?!? (Score:5, Insightful)
You are conveniently forgetting the conversion to and from USD also involves transaction fees. Not only that, but you also have to trust the trading institution that is holding your dollar balance to not abscond with your dollars, otherwise you have to ALSO transfer your dollars into and out of the institution immediately.
So we are now talking about three transaction fees at a minimum, and five transactions if you don't trust the institution doing the dollar conversion. Plus someone has to eat whatever change in trading value occurs during the period where the transaction is being stored in BTC.
This immediately causes numerous problems, not the least of which being that the trade value of BTC is no longer deflationary if nobody doing real commerce is holding a balance in BTC. In addition to the fact that it won't be deflationary anyway because there can be any number of crypto-currencies in existence.
We are considering the question of volatility and whether it matters. The answer is: Yes, it does matter, and for some obvious reasons.
Consider the two holders of BTC. The speculators, and those trying to use it for commerce. You need stability for commerce-users to hold a BTC balance of any significance. Without stability the only people holding BTC are the speculators. When speculators are the only game in town, instability is guaranteed.
Now consider the so-called deflationary property of BTC (which is a phantom property in my view... wishful thinking at best). What happens to the two holders of BTC if you actually get deflation? What you get is hoarding by the commerce users (i.e. it stops being used for commerce) and more speculation by the speculators. Result == even worse volatility. Hoarding can easily destroy any currency as has been proven over and over again throughout history.
-Matt
Re:Well... not really (Score:2, Insightful)
I had a similar experience in the '90s with a dot-com stock that was spun off from my employer's stock plan. It fell from $20 to $60 to $12 to $2. Unfortunately, I bought more at $12.
Re:Well... not really (Score:4, Insightful)
That is, unfortunately, a very typical story. Buying during a fall thinking you are getting a good deal because the price was once higher is probably responsible for as many losses as those who buy at market tops and ride their 'investments' down.
It's basically due to the investor either not being able to come up with a reasonable approximation of intrinsic value with which to judge whether valuation is a buying or selling opportunity, or simply running on base emotion thinking that because the commodity was once at a higher price that it must therefore return to that higher price if only one waits long enough.
In the case of BTC, people come up with all sorts of crazy valuations (like '$500,000 per BTC') based on grade-school thinking and onto bandwagons of other's opinions thinking that it must be right because so many people believe it is right. So right that they can't lose even when value is falling through the floor. A lot of these people wind up eventually putting their entire life savings at risk, even if they didn't intend to originally. You see that money and potential profit and lose all semblance of reason. But in the end all they accomplish is to hand their money over to the other, smarter people.
It's not even necessarily an issue of greed... it's a problem of being driven by sentiment or specious arguments... depending on other people's opinions to form the basis for your own instead of generating your own opinion from basic principles (and not fooling yourself or pulling your own punches). Easy fodder for momentum-driven trading.
Consider for the moment that there is a buyer for every sale on an exchange. Who's doing the buying when the market is clearly going down?
-Matt