Producers and payment options using cryptocurrencies

[Chimerix]

No third party (visa/mastercard/paypal/etc) has to be involved and no financial institution even knows you bought something. You in fact made a transaction with less points of entry containing no personal information. The situation with Adobe wouldn't even be possible if you solely used bitcoin (or another crypto). There's no "charging" your wallet. Someone would have to physically steal your computer and break your passphrase to get your money. You wouldn't need adobe to pay for protection because even if someone hacked Adobe and got your payment address there's nothing they could do with it. If you feel too vulnerable with your current credit/financial setup, this is a way to make you less vulnerable when paying for goods and services. There's no longer a central bank monopolizing your money.

See, I just don't see how this can be true. I have real, physical money, in my case US dollars. I want to exchange them for Bitcoins. The Bitcoin vender is going to want my US dollars, so there has to be a way to transfer those electronically. Which means I'm providing yet another 3rd party vender information to access my realworld money. I suppose I could put cash in an envelope and mail it to the Bitcoin operators, but that seems dicey as well.

[Viridian]

Good lord. Replying to each and every single comment in this thread is a bit overzealous, don't you think? We're here to discuss quicksand, not bitcoin. If you're that adamant about bitcoin, may I suggest this be moved to the Technical or Off-Topic forums?

[mudxdresser]

Bitcoin offers no particular advantage that warrants the risk unless you need to be anonymous or reside in a country like China with currency transfer restrictions. I work with Bitcoin from time to time professionally and can also assure you it is not necessarily all that anonymous ultimately, it is merely what is know as a public ledger system and someone may well eventually find a way to compromise that ledger. Since the mud producers on this forum are producing a legal product, there is no reason for them to handle transactions in Bitcoin.

[Duncan Edwards]

While Bitcoin likely has a future it hasn't arrived just yet. The amount of effort and risk required of producers to accept it doesn't balance with the tiny amount of business that might be gained. Don't expect them to take it before Amazon.com and others have caught on. Especially when each producer already has multiple payment options that work very well.

I understand it's not convenient or easy. You're right that Bitcoin (and other coins) likely have a future but I believe they have arrived. My original question was also a suggestion to see if any of the producers are open to the idea of being on the forefront of this new future of money exchanges. It doesn't hurt to ask or discuss this and if anything my thread at least raises awareness to this so that if one day these coins are prevalent enough that any or all of you could be prepared to get involved sooner than later. Maybe you're right that now is not the time. You likely have larger tasks to be concerned with rather than futzing with a bitcoin exchange. I do know that if one or more of the producers offered this as a payment option, I'd be buying more or your content or subscriptions with bitcoin payments. I may only be one person, but it's something. I would put my bitcoins where my mouth is...or something like that.

I understand where you are coming from. It's just that the amount of effort required to deal with one bitcoin customer is as much as is required to deal with fifty. When there are fifty it might be well worth it. For now all that work and risk just isn't justified for one, two, or five, potential, occasional, customers. When the big online retailers have enough faith in such currencies to iron out the details and create a better infrastructure for using them it will be much easier for small operations to do so. It will happen someday I'm sure.

[Fred588]

There is something about bitcoins and the like that sounds too good to be true. When I can receive payment in bitcoins, take them to a bank or maybe a vending machine, enter the codes, receive the correct amount in US Dollars, then return to my computer and fill the order, THAT is when I will accept them. But even then the extra effort likely means I would have to charge a premium. It is SO much easier to receive an email telling me I have a PopMoney payment or a Quick Pay payment, log in and accept the payment, and then fill the order.

[awdc]

Good lord. Replying to each and every single comment in this thread is a bit overzealous, don't you think? We're here to discuss quicksand, not bitcoin. If you're that adamant about bitcoin, may I suggest this be moved to the Technical or Off-Topic forums?

No I don't think so. People took the time to respond to my question and wanted to reply to them out of respect. This is a forum for discussing things and that's what's being done. Since you don't agree, there's no need for you to be upset, just move along to another thread. I'm not here to focus solely on Bitcoin discussions. If you read my initial post, I was asking about using these coins to pay producers for their goods and services making it 100% relevant to quicksand. I may have chose the wrong sub-forum and for that I apologize. I believe the general consensus and answer about my inquiry is that bitcoin is not something anyone is interested in getting involved with at this time and that's perfectly fine. I got the feedback I was looking for and hopefully through doing so I raised at least a little awareness.

[awdc]

While Bitcoin likely has a future it hasn't arrived just yet. The amount of effort and risk required of producers to accept it doesn't balance with the tiny amount of business that might be gained. Don't expect them to take it before Amazon.com and others have caught on. Especially when each producer already has multiple payment options that work very well.

I understand it's not convenient or easy. You're right that Bitcoin (and other coins) likely have a future but I believe they have arrived. My original question was also a suggestion to see if any of the producers are open to the idea of being on the forefront of this new future of money exchanges. It doesn't hurt to ask or discuss this and if anything my thread at least raises awareness to this so that if one day these coins are prevalent enough that any or all of you could be prepared to get involved sooner than later. Maybe you're right that now is not the time. You likely have larger tasks to be concerned with rather than futzing with a bitcoin exchange. I do know that if one or more of the producers offered this as a payment option, I'd be buying more or your content or subscriptions with bitcoin payments. I may only be one person, but it's something. I would put my bitcoins where my mouth is...or something like that.

I understand where you are coming from. It's just that the amount of effort required to deal with one bitcoin customer is as much as is required to deal with fifty. When there are fifty it might be well worth it. For now all that work and risk just isn't justified for one, two, or five, potential, occasional, customers. When the big online retailers have enough faith in such currencies to iron out the details and create a better infrastructure for using them it will be much easier for small operations to do so. It will happen someday I'm sure.

I also understand your concern and also other people's concerns about this. Thanks for taking the time to give your feedback on it. Adoption of anything new is always an uphill battle and maybe some day if it ever does become relevant I'll be able to participate using these cryptocurrencies.

[awdc]

There is something about bitcoins and the like that sounds too good to be true. When I can receive payment in bitcoins, take them to a bank or maybe a vending machine, enter the codes, receive the correct amount in US Dollars, then return to my computer and fill the order, THAT is when I will accept them. But even then the extra effort likely means I would have to charge a premium. It is SO much easier to receive an email telling me I have a PopMoney payment or a Quick Pay payment, log in and accept the payment, and then fill the order.

I'm skeptical about them also. I've made some concrete money from them and their brethren so I know it's not a scam but that's not what this topic is about. I certainly understand how implementing this payment type would be much more feasible when the entire end to end becomes as seamless as other forms of payment are already. I will say though that I'd be willing to pay that premium charge even if it meant to help support its adoption. None the less, thanks for your feedback on this.

[awdc]

Bitcoin offers no particular advantage that warrants the risk unless you need to be anonymous or reside in a country like China with currency transfer restrictions. I work with Bitcoin from time to time professionally and can also assure you it is not necessarily all that anonymous ultimately, it is merely what is know as a public ledger system and someone may well eventually find a way to compromise that ledger. Since the mud producers on this forum are producing a legal product, there is no reason for them to handle transactions in Bitcoin.

I don't know what that means to work with a bitcoin professionally. Bitcoin or any of the cryptocoins are far more anonymous that me sending my credit card and personal information to purchase content from a producer. I think you've missed my point entirely if you even suspect that I was hinting that producers make and sell anything illegal. I don't believe they do anything illegal and my reasons for paying for their service in bitcoin also has nothing to do with anything illegal. It simply means my bank, credit card company, paypal, etc don't need to know I paid for something that I may not want them knowing about. The bitcoin blockchain will certainly show that my wallet paid their wallet but what stops me from having one specific wallet for buying quicksand content and another for other stuff? Still...no bank gets to know about what money was spent. That's my point of all this.

[Fred588]

I will add one more point which is not about cryptocurrencies but I think is relevant.

If a customer somehow shipped me a pure gold bar, before I filled the order I would need to bring it to a dealer somewhere (which means I'd need to find out where that might be) and sell the gold bar for dollars. Most likely I would receive an amount somewhat less than the price quoted in the newspaper. Only after doing that would I know how much I had been sent. I would have no interest whatsoever in just locking the bar into a safe.

On the other hand, if someone wrote and offered to send a prop I actually wanted, then having a deal is just a matter of agreeing on what the prop is worth.