Bitcoins?

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Sarge Misfit
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Bitcoins?

Post by Sarge Misfit »

I had a "vision" for two buildings to add to Regio Excelsior and have been happily lost in working away on those. But, I also know to take a break every once in awhile. It was during one of those breaks that I read an article on Wired about Bitcoins. I hadn't really paid much attention to BC, though I know what they are, until this article, which is about how some homeless people and non-profits are using them to help themselves and others. I'm going to find out more about them and maybe see what I can do. And I had a thought.

What about cashing out KC into BC?
Living life on the wrong side of a one-track mind.

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Ilan Tochner
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Re: Bitcoins?

Post by Ilan Tochner »

Hi Sarge,

There are big legal and financial implications to making Kitely Credits into a convertible currency - ramifications that come into effect if there is some path using which you can turn KC into real money. As Bitcoins can be bought and sold for real money, allowing KC to be converted into Bitcoins has the same negative effects as allowing KC to be converted into real money directly.

Kitely Credits are a non-convertible virtual currency and will remain that way. You can read a bit more about the reasons here:

http://www.hypergridbusiness.com/2013/0 ... eal-money/
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Sarge Misfit
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Re: Bitcoins?

Post by Sarge Misfit »

I understand that, Ilan, and am simply opening a discussion as I don't know all that much about BC.

So, perhaps as a Market currency like US$?
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Dundridge Dreadlow
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Re: Bitcoins?

Post by Dundridge Dreadlow »

yep, paypal.

I do find it disturbing that other countries can dictate what people can and cannot do.
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Constance Peregrine
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Re: Bitcoins?

Post by Constance Peregrine »

Dundridge Dreadlow wrote:yep, paypal.

I do find it disturbing that other countries can dictate what people can and cannot do.
I vote that the Republic of Minerva coin be the new world standard!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_minerva
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Ilan Tochner
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Re: Bitcoins?

Post by Ilan Tochner »

Hi Sarge,

Our system is designed to handle multiple currencies but we always want to give people the option for paying in USD if they don't have the currency the item's price is using. We can provide a fixed rate for paying for KC-listed items using USD when you don't have enough KC because we control the exchange rate ourselves.

I'm not sure of the legal ramifications of selling items using Bitcoins but I do know that the Bitcoin currency's exchange rate with USD fluctuates too greatly for us to be able to allow people to pay using USD for items with prices listed in Bitcoins (you can't show a person one price and charge them a different one when they checkout their cart).
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Re: Bitcoins?

Post by Serenity Sinclaire »

Hey Ilan and everyone

I'm bumping this thread for an update on the bitcoin option.

I've known about it for a couple years but didn't research it much until about 2 months ago. I realize you're kind of locked in to the paypal thing but I strongly encourage you to research bitcoin and find a way to implement it for use with Kitely, both for sign ups and for commerce.

Below are two links that would give Kitely yet another edge over all the competition. One is a company called BitPay, which is a payment processor similar to pay pal but for helping companies set up to use bitcoin. It's also an option for in world merchants to consider.

Because of the fees and higher risks associated with paypal - that will get worse as bitcoin gains more traction in the payment processing space - and because of its virtuality, I can guarantee that some grid out there will get set up with bitpay or circle, or even quickcoin (using facebook integration to send bitcoin to friends)...

The venture capital being thrown into developing more infrastructure to take bitcoin mainstream is enormous...and Kitely could easily make the switch entirely to a bitcoin based economy, save everyone enormous fees, trade goods and services more efficiently, and grow the overall bitcoin economy. If you don't wish to make the leap from one to another, then even adding it as another option to test user value isn't a bad idea.

Just testing a transaction when I added funds to my account, I was astonished to send $25 bucks to someone in Canada for 5 cents.

As an addition, you mentioned the rules and regulations, but since you are not considered a money transmitter, many of them wouldn't apply to you...so you'd be able to better implement bitcoin payments for Kitely users who would like to use it instead of paypal (many totally would!) without huge costs to you, and without all these regulations. Transaction fees are reduced to near zero for everyone involved allowing more value to be transferred between all parties.

Instead of charging higher and higher fees to offset the regulations and higher fees associated with paypal, money transfers, and banking, you and Kitely users can eliminate all those middle man fees with direct p2p transactions and all merchants can rest easy that the chargebacks and fraud are eliminated due to the way bitcoin transactions are irreversible. Think how that can solve many of the content theft problems....

You could eliminate the kitely credits entirely because bitcoin is already its own decentralized distributed digital currency...so users are doing business between themselves.

Bitcoin is rapidly growing - and has since this original post Sarge made. I have no clue if you've looked into it since then or forgot about it but I'm genuinely encouraging you to look again. Please, if you haven't already, learn more about bitcoin and how to implement it for Kitely. And not just for Kitely but for your own personal financial interests.

Patrick Byrne, CEO of Overstock contacted coinbase and bitpay and said he was set up to accept bitcoin payments in a few hours.

https://bitpay.com/
http://www.circle.com
http://www.quickcoin.co/
http://www.coinbase.com
http://www.blockchain.info
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Ilan Tochner
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Re: Bitcoins?

Post by Ilan Tochner »

Hi Serenity,

Please note that these services don't work with the country from which our business operates. For us to use these services we would have to open a bank account in another country, have to start filing taxes there, etc.
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Shandon Loring
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Re: Bitcoins?

Post by Shandon Loring »

personal perspective (fueled by a big sucking noise and a huge hole in my wallet).... Bitcoin is Evil!
wait.. let me rephrase.. the concept behind Bitcoin is awesome, the use of Bitcoin could be awesome, except... the Feds and Big Banking have gotten themselves into it now, and so it has been corrupted and become evil!
---end of personal rant---

ps yes, i understand BTC concepts, fiat currency, FinCEN regulations, and I have investigated, and invested, deeply in the arena... as I say this is just my personal observation and perhaps it will help someone when they are considering their options. YMMV
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Serenity Sinclaire
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Re: Bitcoins?

Post by Serenity Sinclaire »

Shandon Loring wrote:personal perspective (fueled by a big sucking noise and a huge hole in my wallet).... Bitcoin is Evil!
wait.. let me rephrase.. the concept behind Bitcoin is awesome, the use of Bitcoin could be awesome, except... the Feds and Big Banking have gotten themselves into it now, and so it has been corrupted and become evil!
---end of personal rant---

ps yes, i understand BTC concepts, fiat currency, FinCEN regulations, and I have investigated, and invested, deeply in the arena... as I say this is just my personal observation and perhaps it will help someone when they are considering their options. YMMV

Nothing could be further from the truth. They'll definitely *attempt* to regulate things or certain businesses but there is no possible way bitcoin can be controlled like that, it's antithetical to the entire structure it's built on. There is a lot of misunderstandings and confusion going on about bitcoin but the easiest way to understand it, ironically, is this: think linden dollars for the world. You exchange fiat for digital coin and move it seamlessly anywhere in the world, and exchange it back to fiat if you choose, at a profit if the market value rises, loss if it drops.

Bitcoin has not been corrupted nor is it evil. Bitcoin is a tool that makes online transactions easy, safe, and inexpensive. No more, no less. It is operated via decentralized distributed network, so nobody owns bitcoin in the same context nobody owns the internet. Specific businesses or bad behavior is handled the same way it's handled with regard to internet sites and businesses. But it's just a tool and some people exploit tools to use them badly - the same way fiat has been used to fund war, murder, genocide, child porn, abduction, drugs, theft, and on and on and on...and the same way knives, baseball bats, cars, and hammers are tools but have also been used as murder weapons.

Don't demonize the tool, demonize the ones using it in negative ways. Bitcoin is just a tool that allows you to make value transactions of any amount sent as instantly as sending email, with little to no fees.

Bitcoin solves real problems

Imagine sending 3 bucks to someone between us and uk...it won't happen...and if you send it via paypal, you have paypal's fees, plus interest, plus bank fees. Imagine sending 500 to someone in another country through pay payl or western union...it'd cost 50 bucks or more in fees. With bitcoin, you can send 5cents or 50 million dollars for pennies, or no cost at all.

This utility is the reason why bitcoin is being more widely adopted across the world and there are billions of dollars being invested in a number of businesses launching to help businesses be able to make payments and transactions in bitcoin and many phone apps to be able to swipe the phone and make the payment. Even Google Glass is being released with an app bundle that includes an app called EAZE which is a payment processor using bitcoin and only transacting in bitcoin.

Bitcoin is not evil nor corrupt

Bitcoin isn't evil...please learn what it is before commenting on what it is.

Why you'll inevitably be using bitcoin within the next year, same way you use internet

It's been said bitcoin isn't currency, it's the internet of currency. It's two things in one - a decentralized distributed network protocol and a built in unit of value.

This form of online, digital currency is going to be the way we do money and is positioning itself to be mainstream in the next 2 years. It's the difference between 1998 internet and 2001 internet. Early adopters would also enjoy the benefits of making money (imagine had this been an option for the internet itself back in the 90s, and you could "buy in" back then...you'd be sitting pretty right about now :D )

The more utility bitcoin has, the more people buy bitcoin to use across the internet, and that, in turn, raises its market value (and price). It's going up. For example, a week ago the price of bitcoin was about $450. Today, it's $570. I invested in bitcoin back in the $390s/$400s. Today, that's profit I'm seeing. I sent a payment "tip" of $25 each to two people and another $25 to my ex via bitcoin. One was in Canada, one was in Israel, and one was in Washington State. I spent, in total, about 15 cents for all three combined. The receipt was instant...and the entire history of transactions is shown on the public ledger.

No chargebacks, no fees, no transaction costs, no credit card payments/fees, no bank hassles.

It's going to continue going up because right now, bitcoin is about the same stages as the mid 90s internet - when people told you you're going to need a website and an email address and to start doing business online...the ones who got on board made the mark...and 20 years later, everyone's online. The same thing took place for all major innovations and bitcoin is changing the world and will be as big, if not bigger than, the overall change of the internet itself.

As for kitely and bitcoin, I can't say whether bitpay itself is only us based but I do know they'd expanded to Amsterdam, and there are US companies that help you do business no matter where you are in the world. And there wouldn't be taxes and banks...the whole operation can be done to eliminate the need for banks, taxes, and payment processors like paypal.

I urge you to delve deeper and research it, and the number of options...the truth is, provided Kitely doesn't go out of business any time soon, you'll end up having to go bitcoin within the next 2 years anyway and paypal stands to lose a ton of business in the process, so they'll try to offset it by raising their fees, imposing withdrawal restrictions, complaining to the government to make competition go away...and then it'll either adapt and work like bitcoin or it'll go out of business.

My suggestion was to jump in, do the research and be an early adopter making it an option...keeping the bar high for other grids to have to live up to! I will make this prediction though - some other grid out there will implement bitcoin within the next year...the rest will *follow* suit. I just believe in Kitely and I know bitcoin would give Kitely even more edge.

Please give it some thought!
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