Topic: Uber or Airbnb running on bitcoin - page 4. (Read 1789 times)

Uber still saves me money, I just had a trip a few weeks ago where a Uber ride cost me less than 10% of a normal radio taxi ride. Not kidding. Shocked me. I still use all the Uber clones when I travel too (Grab, Bolt, Taxify, Yandex). Saves me at least 50% but normally much, much more than a regular taxi in most countries. Same as Airbnb, so I'm not sure what you're talking about.

Why not BTC? You're right, but only because today, Lightning Network is fast approaching the maturity we'd need for something like that to work properly: near-instant transactions, near-zero transaction fees.

You already get that with debit-card run Uber etc: instant, no fees. Bitcoin is a thousand times more secure probably, but users don't care. Users will probably also care that if card txs can be refunded if something goes wrong. BTC can't.

Responses above already tell you why on-chain txs will never, ever be able to take hold.

But oh, a taxi rickshaw company has done it in Scotland! With Lightning;)

Depends on where you're at. I'm currently in the Philippines and have used ride-hailing services and Airbnb whenever I need to visit a province and stay there for a day or two. Oftentimes, an Airbnb stay is better than staying at a hotel wherein the accommodation is fancy but the room you have is, well, sub-par. Plus the amenities are limited too. Whereas on an Airbnb accommodation, I can do whatever the hell I want and use any amenities I want when I want them exclusively, and oh, at a cheaper rate as well. For ride-hailing services, they have Grab here and have ousted Uber due to non-compliance I believe. It's cheaper on short distances but not really good for long distance travels due to traffic and whatnot.


I believe you can use an app that helps you pay bitcoin for these type of services, though I don't exactly know what the fate of that app is.


Nope. You still have to pay for those. Internet connectivity isn't free, and if yours is then perhaps you're the only example for your statement.


The thing is the operators know that people will pick their service over traditional taxi cabs any day due to the comfort and security they offer. They might release discounted rides, a promo or two, or whatever and people will think that's the better deal when public transpo can also take them to where they wanted--on a much cheaper rate, sans the extra comfort, obviously. I'll blame human psychology for this, because the adverts instilled to the minds of the current generation that these services are the way to go and not public transpo, which is why operators like Uber can milk the hype as long as they like.


This will happen if competition becomes tough and I'm sure of it. With or without the involvement/integration of bitcoin to their payment systems, it's bound to happen in our future society.

The decentralized network and slow transaction process of Bitcoin can be a major issue for Uber to not accept Bitcoin as a payment method and I think somewhere the company is worried about tex theft because most of the governments are confused about legalization of Bitcoin so I think these issues can be a barrier for Uber to not accepting Bitcoin as a payment method.

As online taxi service start getting popular, government also started imposing taxes on it. Same holds true for bitcoin also, as its getting popular governments all around are imposing strict regulations. Apart from that bitcoin own issues like price volatility and slowness are main problem that are acting as barrier in commercial use of bitcoin.

The total supply of Bitcoin is not critical in becoming a means of payment. The total supply of bitcoin is 21 million bitcoins but it is very expensive for each bitcoin, so it is completely possible to use bitcoin to pay bills. The problem here is that bitcoin is unpopular in payment, which is the confirmation time is too long and the cost is too high. Imagine buying a $ 1 bill as your transaction fee would cost $ 2. It's too hard for it to be popular in the future

What you need to understand is that, it takes time for people to understand the true value of bitcoin and its purpose.  The adoption of bitcoin is gonna be a gradual process we just have to patience and wait till majority understand why bitcoin is needed...

From my experience regarding this issue that the payment system would be the main barrier for confirming the payment, Hope to see some project on half of getting easier of this issue, but at first you have to establish an easy-going system of the cryptocurrency, day by day cryptocurrency is getting complicated because of having some unworthy and scam project of the cryptocurrency, but many people like me are hopeful that 2020 will bring to us a good news regarding cryptocurrency which could be helpful for every aspect of our life, to be very realistic, we have to go another long way in order to get such thing.

Now expected developments are taking place. Bitcoin has been on this market for 10 years. Now we have to be amazed at these developments. People got used to bitcoin. I think the big companies need to start trading with Bitcoin.

At least in my country the Uber and similar activities aren't that expensive and if they would have become cheaper I don't know if the time would be worth for the drivers.

In my view human transport would become cheaper only with the arrival of electronic cars and/or AI powered cars that would make the presence of the driver unjustified.

You can just use crypto to buy airbnb gift cards

How do you say that that you could save money on Uber ? Uber is always an expensive service if you compare it with you own car fuel. If you use your own car, it will be less expensive than using the services of Uber.

Secondly, Uber or Airbnb does not support bitcoins because not many people know about bitcoin yet.

Sorry, but you could not sound more ignorant to they system in general. 21 million which currently gets broken down to 8 decimal places more than provides room for it to be used as currency well into the future. In regards to high costs, I don't see it. For what I have to pay for the privilege to have a bank account for 1 month not including additional fees, I can send roughly 50  payments using BTC depending on the value and my inputs. There can be times when the cost gets excessive, but it rarely lasts into problematic territory unless being manipulated through spam transactions by bad actVers.

Your point on time for coffee is valid, I posted above that I don't see that as a viable use case at the moment. There are other ways around it as I don't think we should strive for a 1 coin solution, that's a different story though.

@coinanc first of all both are different sectors and there’s no comparing these two different sectors, secondly long distance call became free because of the growth in internet, so how do you propose to make cab riding free and rental free homes at minimum charges without an organisation being there to control it.

While I do like the idea of paying in bitcoin and at half the rates from current prices, but can you guarantee me that I’ll get the same kind of safety when these organisations are no longer providing these services.
 
What will happen when you get scammed by those drivers who take your money and refuse to drive, or those owners who provide you rooms that didn’t match the description whom will you complain too?.

I hope you do understand my point that we’re not only paying for the luxury, but also for our peace of mind that we will not get scammed and that we will get what is advertised by Uber and Airbnb.

I really like bitcoin but I still need to say that bitcoin is not suitable for being a payment currency. Bitcoin is too slow and has a high cost, imagine you have to wait for hours to pay for a cup of coffee. Besides, the number of bitcoins is too small, 21 million bitcoins is not enough to become a currency.
Certainly in the future should have a currency fast and cheap enough to perform the payment function.

The issue is the confirmations. It takes an hour for six bitcoin confirmations (even though most retailers know bitcon is safe and needs only one confirmation, they still insist on six).

Litecoin and Doge have quicker confirmations - but counterintuitively most exchanges require about 10 to 20 confirmations for them, taking about half and hour to 45 minutes.

Someone booking an Airbnb might wait the hour to do the confirmations, but an Uber won't wait. And then of course was the famous mempool backlogs of 2017 which did more to destroy bitcoin's ecommerce credentials than anything else.

I use Airbnb almost every time I need a place to stay. Unless it is a major center off peak from tourist season it is still generally a great deal on accommodations; that or I book late when they are eager to fill a spot. If not I find somewhere else, as I'm not about to just throw away cash.

Airbnb as opposed to Uber is a great opportunity to use BTC. Currently you need businesses where the transaction isn't a time sensitive interaction, so pre-booking anything is perfect. Really anything with travel, flights car rental you name it. If you have a few hours to days in advance it would be just fine, Uber is tougher as has been pointed out by needing to frontloaded and is generally a short time frame for the interaction. It's similar to how buying a cup of coffee just isn't practical.

Going back to services that are already suited to these transactions, I think mining hardware manufacturers have the right idea in regards to refunds. It can be a bit of a lottery especially when spread over months on a pre-order but the refund amount is equivalent to the USD(or whatever currency) value at the time of payment. BTC and crypto aren't mature or stable enough to tie things into strictly BTC refund amounts. Otherwise on a price increase you risk individuals cancelling services to squeek out a few dollars in profit, which would be unfare to a business accepting crypto.

Either way any company that implements crypto payment options needs to still offer FIAT strictly for their ability to appeal to a wide customer base. It doesn't have to be all or nothing, small steps in the right direction is still progress.

I remember a project that tries to do this. They develop their own blockchain and basically allows their users to pay on whatever currency they want, from crypto to fiat. Blockchain is used for the tx logging, id management etc. It is not yet launched so we still have to wait how it will work out in real life.

They already have their own ride-sharing company that is fully functional so it is not started from scratch. A good thing considering it will be really difficult to acquire new users if you're a new company.

You have a good idea but there is no guarantee that in the real world it can be working or that the project will not morph into just another Uber or Airbnb. And just because the project is using Bitcoin is not guarantee that the services or products can be cheaper than those already in the market, heck it can even be more expensive and more hassle with the consumers at the end. However, I do understand your frustration all maybe because we are really expecting a lot from Bitcoin, cryptocurrency and the blockchain a lot. We are all dreamers here in this space, and I am hoping that one day we can see many platforms implementing the blockchain and Bitcoin in a way that we the consumers will really appreciate and love.

I disagree--both of those services aren't that old at all, and it took many, many years for long distance phone calls to become cheaper, and those aren't free by the way, just cheaper than they used to be.

I could see something like Airbnb working with bitcoin, but I'm not so sure about Uber unless you paid in advance with enough time for the payment to confirm on the blockchain.  I've never used Uber, so I'm not really sure how the payment system works, but I'm assuming it's just like any other cab service.

Well said, and I was thinking about most of what you wrote when I read the OP here.  The main issue I see is one of bitcoin adoption in general.  I have no doubt bitcoin could be integrated into services like Uber, Airbnb, or anything else but people just aren't clamoring for ways to spend their bitcoin if they even own any to begin with.

It will probably happen soon. Bitcoin is consistently growing in terms of merchant acceptance. Uber and AirBnB are not yet on that track but I guess Uber is very much interested in cryptocurrency. One sign of that is when it signed up as a partner of Facebook in its Libra project. Sadly, it did not push through as planned, although it could still be launched in the future. I guess time is only the factor before these major companies and others will join the Bitcoin or crypto world.