6-8 Weeks Until Bitcoin Debit/Credit Card, says BitInstant

http://codinginmysleep.com/6-8-weeks-until-bitcoin-debitcredit-card-says-bitinstant/

by enmaku • 14 years ago

108 75 14 years ago

It's interesting how Bitcoin is now becoming exactly what Bitcoin was always against: a centralized bank. A bad and unreliable one at that.

It kind of shows you the evolution of our banking systems and why we need one.

enmaku8• 14 years ago

Even if I concede the point that Bitcoin is becoming a centralized bank - which I don't - how exactly is it "bad and unreliable"? At least this bank is run algorithmically by the crowd/cloud and can't rape pillage or otherwise screw you out of your money on the whim of a handful of rich white men... Perhaps I'm showing my politics too clearly here, but I do honestly believe that math is a better tool for deciding what happens to my money than the board of directors at Goldman-Sachs.

anologwintermut2• 14 years ago

I may or may not subscribe to your politics, but you are sorely mistaken if you think bitcoin stops most of the problems with the worlds financial system( unless you consider how Central Banks handle the money supply such a problem). Using BTC instead of USD or GBP changes nothing for Goldman-Sachs or Barclays but the denomination used to value the financial instruments they manipulate ( oh and maybe who's tax laws they have to evade).

Even if we are talking about comercial banking as apposed to investment banking, little changes.Bitcoin is just a protocol. However, as more people interact with it via exchanges that may hold their private keys(think mtgox,bitconica, etc), we start to see things that look a lot like comercial banks: organizations run by people entrusted with the currency you store with them. The owners of these "banks",whether we white guys tanned by trips to the cayman islands and the vineyard or monitor-tanned cipher-punks of some more cuddly ethnicity/gender, can and eventually will abuse that privilege. The will abscond with peoples money, commit fraud, issue bad lonas and do any number of other things with it. Moreover, in the case of bitcoin exchanges,there is very little regulation and no legal recourse in the event of theft or default(since all transactions are final and there is no FDIC for bitcoin).

quotemstr• 14 years ago

Bitcoin has deflation baked into the system. Deflation is _terrible_ for the economy because it encourages people to hide cash under mattresses instead of spending it on useful projects. (Or in more abstract terms, deflation raises the minimum viable rate of return on investment.) We've learned this lesson well. All the really terrible depressions --- the 1870s, the 1930s --- featured crippling deflation that kicked the economy while it was already down. When Williams Jennings Bryan seared "you shall not crucify mankind on a cross of gold", he was talking about how using gold for money kept inflation too low and hurt ordinary people in the economy. (Bryan's "free silver" movement would have been inflationary and beneficial.)

One important thing stopping the current depression from being as catastrophic as the great depression is the policy of the Federal Reserve (which is hugely influenced by Goldman Sachs) of printing money and keeping interest rates at 0%. If they didn't do that, we'd be far worse off right now.

So yes, as far as regulating the money supply goes, I'd trust the directors of Goldman Sachs over some algorithm any day, especially when that algorithm seems to have been designed by people with a very dogmatic theory of value, a theory that history demonstrates is incompatible with happiness.

drivebyacct2• 14 years ago

What?

How can a currency become a bank? You have a very strange definition of the word bank. I don't even know what you're trying to say.

Downvoting, really? That's like me saying "USD is becoming a bank! And that's awful!".

swalsh2• 14 years ago

I think he's referring to the centralization rising up around the currency, not necessarily the currency itself.

pkulak• 14 years ago

Kind of how Gmail has turned email into a centralized communications system? The existence of a bank based on Bitcoin doesn't remove your ability to store your wallet on a flash drive any more than Gmail removes your ability to run your own mail server.

femto• 14 years ago

Keep in mind that every transaction, whether it be email or bitcoin, has to involve two parties. If the centralised solution become widespread, it becomes difficult to avoid it because the chances are that the other party is centralised, even if you're not.

discountgenius• 14 years ago

The limitations in the usability of Bitcoin are slowly being shored up by third-party opportunists. Just because Bitcoin is starting to be able to be used the way people use banks does not mean it is becoming a bank.

ekianjo• 14 years ago

Unreliable ? Where?

rheide• 14 years ago

This seems like an excellent opportunity for authorities to physically track people who use their bitcoins for illegal purposes.

enmaku8• 14 years ago

Only if they're stupid enough to fund cards tied to their real identities with coins from a shady past. Bitcoin is as anonymous as you make it, put in the effort and you'll be ok - don't put in the effort and expect sirens.

sgornick4• 14 years ago

Since this is just one of the many options available for spending bitcoins or cashing out, the criminals are probably not planning on using these.

grakic2• 14 years ago

It would be more fun to have card balance in BTC. I do not know how fast will it be to load the card with new BTC.

enmaku8• 14 years ago

Card balance can be kept in BTC, according to the IRC logs at least. It's an international card so it can apparently hold balances in multiple currencies at once. Also, according to the logs, BTC transactions < $1,000 USD will be accepted on the first confirmation, so about 10 minutes to load the card.

grakic2• 14 years ago

Can you quote user bitinstant from the IRC log on this. I see only the following:

> <bitinstant> JimN, the card is denominated in USD, EUR, GBP so far

brianwillis2• 14 years ago

>6-8 Weeks

After Stack Overflow, we should really start referring to this as an "Atwood period".

enmaku8• 14 years ago

LMAO I thought the exact same thing, actually...

kolinko• 14 years ago

Can you explain?:)

brianwillis2• 14 years ago

When asked how long version 1.0 of Stack Overflow would take to produce, Jeff Atwood famously replied "six to eight weeks" without any sort of serious planning or consideration. It took quite a bit longer. Listeners of the Stack Exchange podcast got to hear Joel Spolsky make fun of Jeff for this many times.

vijayboyapati• 14 years ago

This will be a huge factor in increasing demand for bitcoin if it comes through. The biggest problem with bitcoin now is that it's not widely accepted for payment (i.e., it's not yet a medium of exchange). A debit/credit card is a big step in allowing people the ability to exchange their bitcoins for real goods. What will be really exciting is the day when you can actually see goods priced in bitcoin. E.g., that cupcake is going to cost you 0.1 bitcoins.

taligent• 14 years ago

Really you think THAT is the biggest problem with Bitcoin.

Not the fact that its value fluctuates so wildly ?

jerguismi2• 14 years ago

> Not the fact that its value fluctuates so wildly ?

This does not worry me at all, since the value has been mostly fluctuating upwards. The positive risk outweights the negative.

With this card, people can invest in to bitcoin small amount each month, and they still can use their bitcoin reserves when they need.

sgornick4• 14 years ago

Miners are receiving nearly $100K USD per day but the share to the smaller operators is often just small amounts, oftentimes $20 or so per month. The cost for them to cash out using the bank system is often expensive. This provides an economic method to cash out small amounts without incurring high fees.

swalsh2• 14 years ago

That's mostly a volume problem I think, granted one of the problems with Bitcoin is it was specifically designed with no levers. Stability can never be manipulated, so we're at the whim of nature.

paulsutter2• 14 years ago

I hope it's for real.

I was just looking for a backup debit card for international travel. This would give me a low-risk but high-utility reason to finally try bitcoin. And avoid opening another damn bank account

enmaku8• 14 years ago

These are exactly the kind of thoughts I like to see people having about Bitcoin.

maayank3• 14 years ago

But isn't international credit/debit cards (even such with "limited charge") a solved problem? Except when under 18, all my credit cards were always international.

jerguismi2• 14 years ago

There it is lots of vapourware in the bitcoin scene, lots of projects announced that we will not hear about again in long time. So I'm not too hopeful.

I think BitInstant is not special in this sense, they promised bitcoin to cash withdrawals like months ago but haven't managed to ship it.

maayank3• 14 years ago

An honest question: assuming you have more than 1 credit card, aren't all/most of them international? Are local-only credit cards the norm in the U.S.?

And do you really need a bank account per credit/debit card? I'd assume you have "external" credit/debit cards, where the only connection to the account is that it is charged monthly.

otto• 14 years ago

Many cards in America have foreign transaction fees. There may be other fees associated as well.

That said I have looked into cards with no foreign transaction fees for future international travel. They do exist, but one more issue is making sure they support "chip and pin" for European countries.

freehunter• 14 years ago

A friend from Finland came to the US for a mutual friend's wedding. He did some shopping at the mall while we were out together, and his Finnish credit card wouldn't read at Abercrombie, so they had to pull out the old slider to copy the card.

Using cards internationally can be hit or miss.

paulsutter2• 14 years ago

Good question.

- You never know when you'll have a fraud alert and a disabled card. When you're travelling overseas, even if you call ahead to notify the card company, you're a lot more likely to get a fraud alert. You know how you can get stuck on hold with your card company, lost in touch-tone hell? Well imagine that on cell phone roaming charges with a dying battery on a noisy street corner.

- You never know what will be accepted. Some machines only take chip and PIN (which is the norm in Europe and Asia, they think signing a receipt is weird), sometimes a clerk doesn't know how to do chip and sign or swipe and sign (which is universal here in the US).

- Most of all, you're in a country where you dont speak the language, the ATMs look different, you might not be able to read the signs or even have a conversation with a cab driver.

When your card gets rejected, you want to have a backup. So, two credit cards (from two different providers) and two debit cards (from two different providers).

raverbashing• 14 years ago

You can get a pre-payed card for that.

RoyceFullerton• 14 years ago

I have lived outside of the US for 6 years and can hands down recommend Charles Schwab Bank. All ATM fees in the US and abroad are reimbursed and there are no foreign transaction fees. That shady private ATM in the bar charges $5 per transaction? You are totally insensitive to it.

When was the last time you walked into a bank with a checking account question? You are here on HN so I assume it is rarely or never

But...it's a debit account, so if you need a credit card this may not fit your use case.

atmz• 14 years ago

Seconded; not sure how easy it is to get one if you don't already have a brokerage account, but no annual fee, no foreign transaction fee, and no ATM fees is great. It's a debit card, but that's better for international travel, as you'll need to take out cash, and I don't think you can get credit cards that won't charge a fee for a cash advance.

(As an aside - never never change cash for travelling abroad, the commissions/spreads are ridiculous)

As for bitcoin, I feel that the volatility with respect to regular currency make a debit card not that useful unless you're an ideologue or want to speculate/easily get cash out

zokier• 14 years ago

> You own the address on the card, though BitInstant has not yet determined the best way to hand over your private keys, or whether they should even offer such an option

Sounds like trouble.

shell0x2• 14 years ago

Anyone of you got more bitcoins then me?(0) ;) I tried to get a single bitcoin for multiple times, but it never worked out ;) I guess my hardware is too bad.

Tichy3• 14 years ago

Your hardware is too bad if you don't have a dedicated miner with specialized hardware.

tuananh• 14 years ago

hmm so who own the best hardware win the game? what if Google decided to join!?

icebraining• 14 years ago

Due to the heavy competition, mining BTC on a standard machine is no longer worth it. Unless you have access to "free" electricity, you're better off buying one.

sgornick4• 14 years ago

Consumer-grade mining is a temporary phenomena. In a few months, the block reward will be dropping in half, and most people with GPUs will no longer be able to operate them profitably for mining. This is because FPGA mining hardware has been shipping in volume.

In addition, if ASIC hardware starts shipping, GPU is completely out of the game and FPGAs will be hard pressed to stay powered on.

GPU mining had a good run for nearly two years, but it is about to be obsoleted.

shell0x2• 14 years ago

So, the only way to get some bitcoins for a single person would be hacking sites like bitcoinica or users? Also, is there a live statistic, which shows how much bitcoins exists right now?

kybernetikos2• 14 years ago

It amazes me that the initial bitcoin set up was basically a pyramid scheme and this doesn't seem to put anyone off.

Not to mention the fact that all that computing work is wasted doing nothing useful.

I'd much rather see grid computing networks offer signed certificates proving that you did a certain amount of work for them in place of money, but also allow you to swap them for cash.

That way, the computing power did something useful. Sure every grid computing network would be it's own 'central authority', but as long as they all adhere to a common api, I don't think that's a problem.

zargon• 14 years ago

The computing work secures the block chain. That's the opposite of wasted.

In your computation certificate proposal, would you be able to trade certificates? If so, each grid network would be able to trade counterfeited certs (generate certs for which no work was performed). If not, it isn't a currency. Not to mention that exponential increases in computing power would cause the system to be inflationary, where a goal of bitcoin is to be deflationary.

malandrew• 14 years ago

They should change the name to Bitstant. It's two syllables and rolls off the tongue more smoothly.

kami8845• 14 years ago

The sound of BitStant reminds me of "stunt" like a trick, or stunted like stunted growth. Either way not words i'd like associated with my brand were I a credit card company.

joering2• 14 years ago

How does "chase" sound to you?

In my country we have a bank that is called "roberry". Very popular. Look it up its called "skok" bank szewczyka.

TazeTSchnitzel2• 14 years ago

Also, BitInstant, for its length, is more memorable and makes sense.

batgaijin• 14 years ago

If MasterCard actually lets this happen I'll eat my hat.

diminoten• 14 years ago

I'm still so afraid the market will crash again, it still makes me hesitant to take bitcoin seriously.

6-8 Weeks Until Bitcoin Debit/Credit Card, says BitInstant

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