Should App.net Accept Bitcoin?

https://bitcoin.app.net

by dalton • 13 years ago

84 60 13 years ago

bitcoin.app.net

kordless• 13 years ago

The obvious answer is "yes", but asking a question you don't expect a response from is silly. Why not just say "Send us enough Bitcoin and we'll add Bitcoin payments to our framework." and then take action if you get enough sent in?

That way, there's no leading question, and you communicate exactly what it is that you want from us.

danielamitay• 13 years ago

Let us suppose that there is an organized group of Bitcoin enthusiasts with a combined amount of Bitcoin holdings of around 100,000BTC. Would an article "App.net begins accepting Bitcoin" increase the BTC/USD exchange rate by more than 0.01%?

To me it seems that a continued stream of press is good for Bitcoin, and I am genuinely curious is there is such a group of enthusiasts that strategically spend Bitcoins for PR.

drpancake• 13 years ago

At this point I doubt it -- and the exchange rate fluctuates so wildly it would be heard to measure anyway. It seems to take macro scale events to move the price these days, e.g. the policy announcements by the Chinese government.

ajaimk• 13 years ago

The answer is yes. period.

natrius4• 13 years ago

Bitcoin is the first practical solution to a longstanding problem in computer science called the "How do I get cheap PR for my company" problem.

vecinu2• 13 years ago

I completely agree with this and I think that has been the aspect that most companies have taken advantage of over the last few months.

I haven't even heard of the companies that have begun accepting BTC, including Overstock.com.

It is only the people with vested interest in BTC that are celebrating every adoption and making a big deal out of everything BTC related, in my opinion.

dopamean• 13 years ago

You never heard of overstock.com until they started accepting bitcoin?

danmaz74• 13 years ago

Yes. Unfortunately, it's not a long term solution.

wmeredith• 13 years ago

The public is fickle. There is no long term solution.

snitko• 13 years ago

I like it how HN sentiment went from "let's ridicule Bitcoin" to "let's ridicule those who consider accepting it because now that everyone does it, it is stupid to make a big deal out of this".

natrius4• 13 years ago

It's not really ridicule. If you do a Kickstarter-style fundraiser to accept Bitcoin instead of just accepting it, it's a pure PR move. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

pbreit• 13 years ago

I tend to agree but I would not understate the value of marketing. The downside is pretty modest.

JonFish852• 13 years ago

Yeah, I had actually completely forgotten that App.net existed.

Blahah• 13 years ago

It's still not at all clear to me what it is, and why I would want to sign up. Even after reading the site.

schmichael• 13 years ago

I had completely forgotten about app.net's existence, so mission accomplished on the free marketing front.

baddox• 13 years ago

First practical solution? It's one of dozens of practical solutions I see on the HN front page every single day.

downandout• 13 years ago

Absolutely agreed. This is complete nonsense. Since people can already "commit" BTC to this cause, they have already implemented a Bitcoin payment solution. This blows up the entire premise. I don't recall all of the details of App.Net's launch, but I do remember lots of similar, desperate PR tactics aimed at convincing people to contribute money to it back then.

There are some entirely new business models that Bitcoin enables, and IMO those may deserve some attention. This, however, is far from one of those cases.

BrokenPipe• 13 years ago

YES!

GigabyteCoin5• 13 years ago

So app.net will accept bitcoin if we bribe them with $10k in purchases?

You either believe in the currency and wish to implement it into your platform, or you don't.

Have they not already taken the time and effort to implement it by placing coinbase buy buttons on their website?

Am I understanding this correctly? If app.net does not receive some arbitrary amount of purchases made in Bitcoin before some arbitrary date, that they will disable Bitcoin as a payment option out of spite?

I certainly wouldn't spend any of my Bitcoin on such a hostile company.

dalton2• 13 years ago

There are lasting legal, technical and support operations that we are willing to take on long term if the market's big enough to support it. Otherwise, it's not worth the effort to implement those long term.

GigabyteCoin5• 13 years ago

How so? They're transacting through coinbase. It's no different than accepting PayPal payments legally or technically.

Buyers understand that if there is a dispute they will only receive the amount paid in USD, not BTC.

martindale• 13 years ago

There are ways to make this easier on you--for example, BitPay [1] offers to take on the burden of handling the BTC, and gives you next-day deposit in USD. Far better (read: faster) than Credit Card processing in most cases (no chargebacks).

[1]: disclaimer: they just hired me.

pdeuchler2• 13 years ago

As someone who spent a lot of time working with BTC in a professional sense, this statement rings a little hollow considering you're using Coinbase.

Can you elaborate?

JohnTHaller• 13 years ago

You either believe in the currency and wish to implement it into your platform, or you don't.

Or you implement it using something trivial like Coinbase (o BTC pricing, you get USD only, Coinbase assumes the risk) and trumpet that you accept BTC for a quick PR boost (see: most announcements in the last month).

GigabyteCoin5• 13 years ago

That's exactly what they've done. There are no extra legal fees or anything to worry about like the other respondant to my original comment stated either.

They're threatening to withdraw a simpler form of payment if we don't cough up the $10k and fast, basically.

dasil0032• 13 years ago

Why is it hostile for a company to want customers to put their money where their mouth is? Anyone can say they want to pay with Bitcoin, but are those people actual customers? As a company you can't really tell that based on a bunch of internet hot air—especially about something that inspires the kind of fanaticism that Bitcoin does.

I'm not sure why this makes you so angry and where you draw your sense of entitlement from, but it's certainly not free to support Bitcoin just because you proclaim it to be.

yapcguy• 13 years ago

App.net to developers: Give me money, so you can use a Twitter like infrastructure. PS. It's not open-source and you have to pay an ongoing subscription.

App.net to investors: Give me money, in return I will give you equity ownership of the technology we built thanks to the money from developers. Don't worry, the developers don't own any equity so more for you and me.

App.net to Bitcoin supporters: Give me money, blah blah blah.

GigabyteCoin5• 13 years ago

It's hostile because they're threatening to remove a payment option that is literally no overheard for them to implement (all the work is being done by coinbase, they just have to cash the checks like usual).

I am not angry in the slightest, I just think it was a poor decision by app.net to place the time limit and threaten the Bitcoin community with permanent rejection of Bitcoin if they fail to cough up the $10K within 30 days.

baby• 13 years ago

You either believe in the currency and wish to implement it into your platform, or you don't.

seems like you're wrong about this one.

pravka• 13 years ago

If you did the same thing for Dogecoin, I can almost guarantee that it would be committed within a day.

steveklabnik2• 13 years ago

Coinbase's killer merchant feature is automatic BTC -> USD conversion. You'd need that for Dogecoin (which doesn't yet exist) for it to see uptake for merchants.

lucb1e• 13 years ago

What is app.net? I've visited their homepage and read the "learn more", but can't really figure it out. At first it seems like an Android an iOS simulator that lets you install the apps virtually so that you can use them ("get access to great apps on $platforms"), but they focus so much on social apps only... Are they an alternative App Store/Play Store then? I don't get it and I don't really feel like creating an account just to find out.

Edit: Ah the bitcoin.app.net page explains it further down.

amorphid• 13 years ago

I just bought my first Bitcoins. As I was trying to buy a fixed amount in USD, the price in Bitcoins kept changing. It'd be weird to shop in Bitcoins, trying to guess the approximate price in USD as I was making the purchase. Whether the purchase price was volatile, or the value of the Bitcoins were volatile, I'm just not used to that!

drcode• 13 years ago

App.net still exists?

s9ix• 13 years ago

With all due respect, isn't Bitcoin easy enough to implement that you shouldn't need any commitment (10BTC? Really?) to accept it? Especially since the currency is floating, so 10BTC today (~$8400USD) may be half the amount or etc. on any given day...

igorgue• 13 years ago

Should App.net just stop operations?

[yes | no]?

Void_• 13 years ago

What is a member subscription? The main page says it's free.

dutchbrit• 13 years ago

So what happens to the coins/accounts if they do not reach their 10 BTC goal?

rch• 13 years ago

The secondary goal could be interesting (pure end-to-end transactions in BTC), but I'd prefer if app.net would disclose the terms and fees up front.

philliphaydon• 13 years ago

Wow, this makes me NEVER want to use app.net

I don't understand why they need to start a kickstarter style campaign with "stretch goals" to decide if they should support Bitcoin. I'm no user of bitcoin, but either use it, or don't. Don't try to con users into using it just to decide if you should support it.

Should App.net Accept Bitcoin?

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