Serious questions, is bitcoin still worth anything and has it become even remotely easy to obtain and spend? I still like the idea of it but, last I heard any real news about it, it was how people were loosing tons of it to scams and flams.
It's pretty easy to get hold of BTC imo. You can either use a dedicated service like Coinbase, or buy them from sellers directly using sites like LocalBitcoins.
Yeah, it's still alive and kicking. I try use it when I can, it has a lot of nice properties. As an unregulated industry it is abound with scams and fraud, but if you use common sense, and avoid anything remotely "get rich fast" or "altcoins" you'll do fine. If you're interested in it, I'd highly recommend signing up with circle.com or coinbase.com and buying $5 or $10 worth of bitcoin to play around
To know if it is still worth anything, check out how much people are willing to give cash for it. At the time of this writing, it is well over $600 for 1 bitcoin, which was worth less than a buck a few years ago. Is it worth anything? You tell me https://www.google.com/search?q=btc+to+usd
Recently, I heard people were doing flim flams with US $ and the internet. Should I keep using those?
What does Musk have to do with the modern Paypal, that is generally disliked. The primary issues with Paypal come from the freezing of accounts, that doesn't affect the majority of users. It mostly only has effects for business with spiky sales that may appear fraudulent.
But the current view of PayPal is different from the historical view. PayPal was a brilliant service through the end of the 90's and early-00's, while Musk was involved. You can't retroactively apply the dislike the service has generated since their paths diverged. And even then I would contribute much more of the social impact to Thiel.
I pointed out a primary reason we often see these kinds of posts, (freezing accounts), in one paragraph.
Then in the next, I mention the overall view of Paypal is more negative than it used to be, when you could have actually attributed something about that to Musk.
I think the main issue is how much they rely on automated flagging to do this for them, and then how difficult it is for a normal user to get in contact with a live human to get things sorted out.
Trust me, you'll understand why people hate PayPal so much once it happens to you.
They were mentioned in the Credit/Debit card section just not by name. Mostly it's because they use proprietary code that the organization doesn't feel aligns with it's ethics.
". Most merchants outsource to third party card processing facilities (which won’t be mentioned here), typically redirecting to a page on that providers website, for accepting payments. The problem with this is that they often serve proprietary JavaScript"
I appreciate what the FSF has done, and I generally appreciate their hard-line stance on free software issues ... but it's corner-cases like website javascript where I think they've gone off the rails.
The browser running the javascript can be free/libre, the OS it is running on can be free/libre, the javascript language and browser environment is relatively standardized, it's sandboxed ... The JS is really just part of the page and/or service API.
FSF doesn't have as big a problem calling banks that use closed-source telephony software or making api requests to closed-source webserver backends, there's really not that big a difference from a fully free/libre client interpreting a script in a standardized sandboxed environment, which it just received from a service, as part of using that service.
The other odd FSF corner-case is that firmware blobs that you can't update are OK, but firmware blobs that you can update are not OK (even if they are freely redistributable). I'd say having a hardline stance on this is just not helpful.
Re: Javascript, all the FSF wants is a bright line for libre JS and proprietary JS & choice for what users want to run, and the ability to substitute in alternative javascript to replace the closed source JS on most sites. We're basically in the same place as Mono (Silverlight) and Shumway (Flash) did/could have ended up, where sure the engine to run the code is libre, but the code itself is not, and worse yet it is not clearly licensed.
On firmware, the FSF has drawn a bright line on where hardware ends and software starts, and where they've drawn it is on whether firmware on device can be updated or not. If its not updatable, its a piece of hardware, plain and simple. If its updatable, then it is software, thus said code should be freely licensed and not Tivoized.
I hope this question is fine to ask, eternal beginner here. The few times I've looked for alternatives to stripe I'm inundated by choices and unfortunately, stripe doesn't work in my country. Nor is Atlas an option. What are good alternatives to them?
Same problem with PayPal. I can't get the money out. The closest I've been able to get was when I found a website a few weeks ago where I could buy game cards, gift cards. Doesn't help much when one wants to pay for bills and groceries. Is it too much to ask for a service that works in Central America?
The company I work for supports a ton of payment processor integrations, and Central and South America are always a bit rough for coverage. Depending on your country, Credomatic or Paguelofacil might work?
Thanks, I'll look into those. Last year or so people here on HN were talking about a payment processor from Latin America (can't remember the name). The general consensus was not to trust it. I'll definitely look into those two, thanks again.
For my small business, that makes a non computer related gadget, I have a static web page and an order form that is a few dozen lines of plain HTML that I maintain in a text editor. It hasn't changed much in a few years, except to add new products and articles from time to time. So I don't have a web server or a reason to have one.
I've looked into some of those services, though not all. Most of them seem to require me to maintain a Web server and to write back end code (hope I'm using the correct terminology) to route the customer's payment to the payment processor. This isn't something I know how to do, especially if I want it to be secure, and paying to have it done for me would be an expense.
So it's PayPal for now until something better comes along. I check out the alternatives every year or so.
It's the opposite, I think: most payment processors require you to have a web server to get the "invoice" after the customer pays—but certainly don't require you to route the customer's payment yourself, because that would violate PCI compliance (ideally, with these payment processors, you're not supposed to ever receive the customer's credit card information.)
To be fair - the main reference was inside the EU. And fees for international transfers inside the EU have been subject to regulations are are now generally close to zero. Different story for outside EU, though - absolutely agree!
As soon as you start getting x > Sepa transfers banks will drop you quickly, or sooner if anything goes wrong like a fraud xfer comes in, and you aren't a huge account worth the bank's trouble.
I'd love a new alternative but it has so much popularity and it's hard to find an alternative people use. I try to use Snapcash whenever possible or an app I found on the Android Store - Cash. Was surprised Venmo was owned by Paypal.
I feel like i read screeds like this starting in about 2000. Unlike then, there _are_ other options now. And in the US, the CFBP regulatory banhammer is about to drop as well.
>The new CFPB rules are sweeping not just in their treatment of prepaid accounts, but in their broad interpretation of what a prepaid account is. The regulations will cover reloadable cards, cards used for government benefits, payroll cards, and some popular electronic and mobile systems. Venmo and PayPal, for instance—which allow users not only to pay each other directly, but to store money within the platform—will also be required to follow stricter guidelines and assume more liability for fraud, loss, and account errors. The CFPB has included digital-wallet options in its rules in spite of strong objections from the industry, which maintains that its products don’t pose the same risks to consumers that prepaid cards do.
[0]:http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/10/cfpb-pre...
Seems this is a very one sided view from the sellers perspective. I believe most people want to use PayPal to be more secure. I've paid plenty of bills through simple wire transfers, but those were large reputable utility companies or merchants I trust. Small websites which are completely unknown to me, don't deserve the trust to wire money to, immediately, sorry, but I rather not have to hire a lawyer to get my money back in case something screws up. That's what PayPal and CreditCards are for.
One day I was in an airport and wanted to use the wifi. Unfortunately I burned through my free 30 min way too quickly and had to pay a dozen dollars to the boingo hotspot crap.
I was on my phone so no way to change my MAC address unfortunately.
So I use paypal. I accept to pay the amount. And that was it.
Now a week later I connect to the free wifi in the same airport. And the thing decides to charge my paypal for one hour of browsing. I never opted to open my paypal account for boingo crap to have unlimited withdrawals.
So I contacted paypal and told them there was a fraud. I had never allowed these transactions. Paypal refused to do anything.
If you misroute a wire transfer (get some detail wrong), the receiving bank will get the money anyway. They will wire it back---with probably close to a hundred bucks missing.
Unless it ends up in a wrong bank in the other system in US, who do not have SWIFT codes. If it's gone then, because back routing info can and has been lost.
I took a look at the products while visiting the site. Where would one go to find laptops that are preinstalled with free software but are also powerful? high-end cpu and the like.
I'd just gone through the process of moving some ~40 accounts on various websites from having a Yahoo email address to a Gmail one. By far the most unpleasant experience was with PayPal.
First I changed my email address. I received a confirmation and re-activated my account. Nice so far. Then I thought I'd generate a new, longer password. I pasted the 24-character password into the settings form. It was saved successfully.
After trying to login again though, it just wouldn't accept my login! So I went through the password recovery process. I received a link and then was asked to answer security questions. The security questions were ancient, so I facepalmed at first, but I was pretty sure I got the answers right after some thinking. It took me 10 tries to get the proper variation of the answers (it doesn't tell you which one is wrong).
Then I was presented with the new password form. I tried to paste the new 24-character password again. This form didn't allow you to paste the password in, you had to type it in manually for "added security". Then I realized the password was limited to 20 characters, and the previous form (in account settings) was just happily letting me paste a 24-character password while trimming the end silently!.
Don't get me started on their support for two-factor. Really, I have to sign up via obscure forms (at least at the time) for a Symantec VIP app that's incompatible with other such apps? And occasionally I'm asked to retype my password with the VIP digits appended to the end? https://www.paypal-community.com/t5/Access-and-security/PayP...
As other comment says [1], this is true for in-house transactions, but is hell for foreigners. I had to quit my job as a contractor for an American company because the bank in my home country blocked all the wired transfers after the sum of all the money started to exceed an annual limit of USD $25,000. I tried to create an international bank account in Chase, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, HSBC, and Citi and they all rejected my application because a) I don't exist in the credit system and/or b) my home country has a bad reputation.
I tried to use PayPal but their fees are too high and I realized that there was no easy way for me to get that money out of their system since their service is not popular where I live. Right now there are 15 days worth of my salary in my PayPal account that I cannot touch. If getting a work visa wasn't hard enough, now I cannot work for any international company (as a remote contractor) because I cannot get paid, nice, very-very nice — the perfect way to kill people's dreams.
I have just looked into Estonian e-residency. The idea was that the Estonian government would establish a legal framework, which they did, and that Estonian service providers would take it from there, which they didn't. ["in reality they usually refuse to open bank accounts because in their minds e-residents have no links with Estonia."]( http://www.estoniancompanyregistration.com) Especially financial service providers are not following. Hence, you would be no more "e-resident" of Estonia than of other countries, just by entering that programme. In fact, other countries, such as even the UK, have better and more convenient programmes for this, which enjoy better support in general.
Thanks, I just checked the process and benefits, it seems like a good solution. However, when I was filling the form [1] I realized that the list of countries where you can pick-up the document is limited to 35 unique states, none of them is in South America which is where I live, so if I choose any of them I would need to get a visa to travel to that country just to get this document, which is kind of ironic.
Wire transfers may work well in Europe, but they do not work well for making transfers from Europe to most banks in the U.S. The reason why is because banks in the US do not use IBAN numbers, and very few have SWIFT codes.
To do an international wire transfer into the US, it must first be routed through one of the few large banks that have their own SWIFT code (e.g. Wells Fargo), then often through a second intermediary bank before the payment reaches the receiver's bank. All the routing in the US is done using ABA numbers, which is unique to the US.
Few European banks seem to be able to handle this convoluted process. More often then not, when we've attempted to receive an incoming wire transfer from from a European customer, the payment has gotten misrouted because the sending bank neglected to fill out the application form properly.
By contrast, we've had very few problems receiving international payments via PayPal.
Speculation: her ID is probably outdated. The author is trans[1] and transition in the UK is notoriously difficult. In particular, it takes at least 2 years to change the gender marker on one's ID[2].
TLDR: Paypal is shit and other payment processors are meh. But we realized we only take really high value payments, which means that wire transfers make more sense.
A lot of people label Paypal as evil. Usually because they or somebody they know has suffered as a direct result, but I don't think that shows malicious intent.
Paypal is just lazy —or efficient, if you're on their side— when it comes to risk. That is to say that if they have reason to believe they might lose money with a transaction you make, they make you absorb that risk as inconvenience. The most commonly complained about is holding back funds while they wait for your customers to issue chargebacks. Chargebacks are HORRIBLE because the underlying payment people demand they just happen. It can be a huge loss point for payment intermediaries.
With that sort of potential loss, it's simply easier for Paypal —the lawyer-breathing behemoth that they are— to assume you're more likely to suck it up than try to sue (have you read the T&Cs). And they've scaled this so it all happens automagically. How very efficient/evil of them.
If you want the best rate as a seller, you have to be a super-low risk and find somebody that understands your business, its risk and is willing to undercut the standard-risk market to process your payments for you.
---
Direct wire transfers put [almost] all the risk on the consumer. There used to be a timeframe you could "intercept" a transfer but with things like Faster Payments in the UK, transfers are practically instant and irreversible without a court order.
So no, for the purposes of buying stuff, wire transfers aren't better for us. They're free for you, but we take on a LOT of risk.
> Cryptocurrencies are generally difficult to deal with, accounting-wise
Not true, use BitPay.com and you never need to touch that dirty dirty internet money if you don't want to.
>In UK tax returns, you also need to convert everything to GBP
Done, use Bitpay or similar service to accept cryptos and have the increasingly worthless GBP deposited directly into your bank account.
> so this means we’d be forced to use a BTC exchange.
Not directly at least, you just made this up didn't you?
You don't like the current model but are unwilling to even look into the best alternative available? Bitcoin is money, you can accept the money or not, but don't blame the money just because you don't like that particular shade of green.
58 comments
[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 26.5 ms ] threadBank wires can cost $20-50. Unless we are sending you thousands its rarely cost effective to wire funds.
Use bitcoin for your donations like everyone else in the 'freedom' game.
Recently, I heard people were doing flim flams with US $ and the internet. Should I keep using those?
Not quite "thousands", but its not like they're proposing you spend an extra $20-50 to make a cup-of-coffee-sized "donation".
But the current view of PayPal is different from the historical view. PayPal was a brilliant service through the end of the 90's and early-00's, while Musk was involved. You can't retroactively apply the dislike the service has generated since their paths diverged. And even then I would contribute much more of the social impact to Thiel.
I pointed out a primary reason we often see these kinds of posts, (freezing accounts), in one paragraph.
Then in the next, I mention the overall view of Paypal is more negative than it used to be, when you could have actually attributed something about that to Musk.
Trust me, you'll understand why people hate PayPal so much once it happens to you.
They have their disadvantages too, but the writer doesn't even evaluate them.
". Most merchants outsource to third party card processing facilities (which won’t be mentioned here), typically redirecting to a page on that providers website, for accepting payments. The problem with this is that they often serve proprietary JavaScript"
The browser running the javascript can be free/libre, the OS it is running on can be free/libre, the javascript language and browser environment is relatively standardized, it's sandboxed ... The JS is really just part of the page and/or service API.
FSF doesn't have as big a problem calling banks that use closed-source telephony software or making api requests to closed-source webserver backends, there's really not that big a difference from a fully free/libre client interpreting a script in a standardized sandboxed environment, which it just received from a service, as part of using that service.
The other odd FSF corner-case is that firmware blobs that you can't update are OK, but firmware blobs that you can update are not OK (even if they are freely redistributable). I'd say having a hardline stance on this is just not helpful.
On firmware, the FSF has drawn a bright line on where hardware ends and software starts, and where they've drawn it is on whether firmware on device can be updated or not. If its not updatable, its a piece of hardware, plain and simple. If its updatable, then it is software, thus said code should be freely licensed and not Tivoized.
There's a reason people care enough to hate them.
I've looked into some of those services, though not all. Most of them seem to require me to maintain a Web server and to write back end code (hope I'm using the correct terminology) to route the customer's payment to the payment processor. This isn't something I know how to do, especially if I want it to be secure, and paying to have it done for me would be an expense.
So it's PayPal for now until something better comes along. I check out the alternatives every year or so.
Domestically? Sure.
Internationally? Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
Why do you think so?
I was on my phone so no way to change my MAC address unfortunately.
So I use paypal. I accept to pay the amount. And that was it.
Now a week later I connect to the free wifi in the same airport. And the thing decides to charge my paypal for one hour of browsing. I never opted to open my paypal account for boingo crap to have unlimited withdrawals.
So I contacted paypal and told them there was a fraud. I had never allowed these transactions. Paypal refused to do anything.
Won't the wire fee be like 30 bucks or something? 300%.
Going to US? Better bring $30.
First I changed my email address. I received a confirmation and re-activated my account. Nice so far. Then I thought I'd generate a new, longer password. I pasted the 24-character password into the settings form. It was saved successfully.
After trying to login again though, it just wouldn't accept my login! So I went through the password recovery process. I received a link and then was asked to answer security questions. The security questions were ancient, so I facepalmed at first, but I was pretty sure I got the answers right after some thinking. It took me 10 tries to get the proper variation of the answers (it doesn't tell you which one is wrong).
Then I was presented with the new password form. I tried to paste the new 24-character password again. This form didn't allow you to paste the password in, you had to type it in manually for "added security". Then I realized the password was limited to 20 characters, and the previous form (in account settings) was just happily letting me paste a 24-character password while trimming the end silently!.
And this is 2016 on the web...
As other comment says [1], this is true for in-house transactions, but is hell for foreigners. I had to quit my job as a contractor for an American company because the bank in my home country blocked all the wired transfers after the sum of all the money started to exceed an annual limit of USD $25,000. I tried to create an international bank account in Chase, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, HSBC, and Citi and they all rejected my application because a) I don't exist in the credit system and/or b) my home country has a bad reputation.
I tried to use PayPal but their fees are too high and I realized that there was no easy way for me to get that money out of their system since their service is not popular where I live. Right now there are 15 days worth of my salary in my PayPal account that I cannot touch. If getting a work visa wasn't hard enough, now I cannot work for any international company (as a remote contractor) because I cannot get paid, nice, very-very nice — the perfect way to kill people's dreams.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12697811
[1] https://apply.e-estonia.com/
To do an international wire transfer into the US, it must first be routed through one of the few large banks that have their own SWIFT code (e.g. Wells Fargo), then often through a second intermediary bank before the payment reaches the receiver's bank. All the routing in the US is done using ABA numbers, which is unique to the US.
Few European banks seem to be able to handle this convoluted process. More often then not, when we've attempted to receive an incoming wire transfer from from a European customer, the payment has gotten misrouted because the sending bank neglected to fill out the application form properly.
By contrast, we've had very few problems receiving international payments via PayPal.
> Western Union?
> This requires the director of Minifree to show her ID to a cash pickup point, which she doesn’t want to do.
Showing proof of identity in order to pick up cash seems pretty reasonable to me.
[1] https://libreboot.org/gnu/
[2] https://www.gov.uk/apply-gender-recognition-certificate/over...
This is ridiculous either way, I'll gladly use PayPal any time and I use Bitcoin any time too.
I'd say "FFS FSF" if it was still FSF, but alas the right to make such wordplay was denied to me.
This is ridiculous either way, I'll gladly use PayPal any time and I use Bitcoin any time too.
I'd say "FFS FSF" if it was still FSF, but alas the right to make such wordplay was denied to me.
[1]https://transferwise.com
Paypal is just lazy —or efficient, if you're on their side— when it comes to risk. That is to say that if they have reason to believe they might lose money with a transaction you make, they make you absorb that risk as inconvenience. The most commonly complained about is holding back funds while they wait for your customers to issue chargebacks. Chargebacks are HORRIBLE because the underlying payment people demand they just happen. It can be a huge loss point for payment intermediaries.
With that sort of potential loss, it's simply easier for Paypal —the lawyer-breathing behemoth that they are— to assume you're more likely to suck it up than try to sue (have you read the T&Cs). And they've scaled this so it all happens automagically. How very efficient/evil of them.
If you want the best rate as a seller, you have to be a super-low risk and find somebody that understands your business, its risk and is willing to undercut the standard-risk market to process your payments for you.
---
Direct wire transfers put [almost] all the risk on the consumer. There used to be a timeframe you could "intercept" a transfer but with things like Faster Payments in the UK, transfers are practically instant and irreversible without a court order.
So no, for the purposes of buying stuff, wire transfers aren't better for us. They're free for you, but we take on a LOT of risk.
> Cryptocurrencies are generally difficult to deal with, accounting-wise
Not true, use BitPay.com and you never need to touch that dirty dirty internet money if you don't want to.
>In UK tax returns, you also need to convert everything to GBP
Done, use Bitpay or similar service to accept cryptos and have the increasingly worthless GBP deposited directly into your bank account.
> so this means we’d be forced to use a BTC exchange.
Not directly at least, you just made this up didn't you?
You don't like the current model but are unwilling to even look into the best alternative available? Bitcoin is money, you can accept the money or not, but don't blame the money just because you don't like that particular shade of green.