Topic: Online Payment Systems Have Been Decimated - page 2. (Read 3211 times)

bitpay.com and mtgox.com are NEXT

imagine how much money is being laundered through them... must be hundreds of millions

previous LR users are looking for a better payment system. PM and WM are possible alternatives, except they may both share LR's fate one day. HD Money is another site that I recently learned about, some people say exchanges will accept it soon. looks like a scam to me. Bitcoin is a possible alternative, but many people don't like BTC due to the volatility.

I don't see Bitcoin becoming a real alternative to LR any time soon.

This assumes a fixed userbase, and doesn't address OTC sales.

At a glance I can see people selling their $10 a day exchange quota for a profit.

Sorry to bump into this thread but this is all from Americas point of view.
In Europe there are still no problems getting funds in or out, even instantly.
And when Europe starts a more aggressive approach, btc will just move on.

Here is a little thought experiment for you:

Let's say the government shut down all the methods to get fiat in and out of the bitcoin exchanges but the exchanges themselves weren't touched.

Let's say that there was only one method you could move cash in and out but you were limited to $10 a day. It was still free, instant, and unlimited to move bitcoins in and out of the exchange.

What do you think would happen to the price?

Even if bitcoins were very desirable, eventually the price would plateau because there wouldn't be enough fiat in the system to boost the price up. When the last dollar that could be sent to the exchange that day was spent, there would be no one to buy your bitcoin that you had for sale and the market would stagnate and price would crash.

Also remember that there are 3,600 bitcoins mined each day. There needs to be enough fiat added to the system to balance out these bitcoins. Otherwise there will be an excess of bitcoins and a shortage of fiat causing bitcoins to crash relative to fiat.

In other words, it is essential that we be able to move fiat into the exchanges to keep the bitcoin market working and keep the prices stable and high. If the US govt were to attack bitcoin, they'd focus on the how the banks send and receive money from the exchanges and they'd block that. And we'd be in the hypothetical situation I described above.

I feel like we've had this discussion before. Yes, you won't be able to get fiat in or out of exchanges. That means volume would fall drastically. People would no longer be able to spend their bitcoins on anything and so they would look to change it into fiat as quickly as possibly (perhaps they'd use localbitcoins). But few people would be buying bitcoins because they know they are going to be hard to sell. Bitcoins would cease to be useful as a currency. And it would cease to be useful as a store of value. Therefore, the price would crash.

Yes, it would continue to be appealing to those trying to escape tyranny but that is not what has been driving the price the past 6+ months. If the govt attacked bitcoin, we'd lose the general public, we'd lose the startups, we'd lose the institutional investors. BItcoin would go back to the sub-10$ range.

Recall that bitcoin has gone up with governments attack fiat (like in cyprus). If governments attack bitcoin, fiat (and gold) are likely to go up in response.

This, again, still, RLY??   
+1 Ashley

A lot more. Artificially repressed supply means price will go up, and I fail to see how repressed supply AUTOMATICALLY leads to lower demand. People didn't stop buying drugs because the government made it harder to buy them; people didn't stop downloading torrents because a few torrent download sites were shut down. And bitcoin is a heck of a lot more intrinsically useful than drugs; I'm sure even the silk road cocaine addicts among us would agree.
Just because supply is repressed doesn't mean people will automatically go "oh darn, they're harder to get; all of a sudden I don't want them anymore."



PLEASE FOLKS, follow your logic through. If the goobermint shut off legacy banking access to bitcoin (closed down exchanges, bank wires, funding options, etc) this means that people can't easily get fiat into exchanges - but it also means people can't easily get fiat out of exchanges. There wouldn't be a significant imbalance, and certainly not on the sell side since the last thing large holders want to do is pay 20% of their fiat profits in capital gains tax.

Not only will you have to resort to localbitcoins or IRC-OTC/escrow to buy bitcoins, you would have to do the same to sell them. Not a significant imbalance.

Plus, bitcoin has anti-fragile properties. This means that the more it is attacked by goobermints, the more appealing it becomes to those trying to escape tyranny.
Some people think that Bitcoin will only succeed long-term if Grandma can go to the gas station and buy cigarettes and petrol with bitcoins on her iPhone. I say phooey!

If no one can put money in to buy bitcoin then the price won't be going up anytime soon.

This is very very bad for bitcoin because it means bitcoin is next.


Well not bitcoin directly but any bank or service that deals with bitcoin could be shut down at any moment.


How much do you thnk bitcoin would be worth if you can't exchange fiat for it?

While this can be good for Bitcoin, I weep for humanity.

Its downright insane. I never thought I'd see anything quite so insane as this. They literally shut down every single exchanger that was remotely trustworthy that allowed you to buy Liberty Reserve. Thats insane.

Times are changing ...and changing fast.

With change comes a roller coaster. Hang on.

I cannot believe this has not had a significant upward effect on the Bitcoin price. The entire online payment systems network that isn't bitcoin or paypal-ish has been utterly destroyed with the shut down of Liberty Reserve.

Its not just Liberty Reserve. Its all the exchangers that went with it.

If I have money in one of the centralized e-currencies like Perfect Money. How am I going to get it out, exactly? There is no easy way. Aurumxchange is there, thats pretty much it. And it only exchanges, it doesn't allow redemption for a Bank Wire. I have to take multiple steps to get from something like Payza (paypal-ish) to Bitcoin. Egopay has gone derp and won't let anybody log in. Perfect Money won't allow US Residents to use it.

Online payments as of now are basically dead unless you are using an e-currency like Paypal with built-in consumer 'protection'. Other than Bitcoin, that is. How are people not making the switch? Is it because all the exchangers are dead? When the wires suddenly start clearing, will the Bitcoin price go on some crazy jump upwards? Or are people just freaked out of online payments entirely and are leaving?