Topic: [VIDEO] Expanding the Bitcoin Business Community - page 2. (Read 5797 times)

One helluva presentation. Bravo!

Thanks guys!

wow over 1000 views already on YouTube.  people are starting to be educated!

Fantastic talk Tony. BitPay is one of my favorite Bitcoin companies. It's an operation that inspires confidence. I hope that we can get 2-of-3 escrow infrastructure up and running next year so we have a complete answer to the chargeback question.

Jeff...all your points are good ones.  I see Bitcoin as a great foundation.

This is absolutely the way bitcoin should be presented. Well done, Tony!

http://screwbanks.net

From 1000 merchants in september to 2000 in december, not bad! Thanks for that update.
Anyone in mood for predictions on how many merchants it will be in june 2013? I say 5000 and still growing fast.

Where is a link to the cartoon played in the beginning?

BitPay FTW!! 

Excellent video! Tony, you are getting better and better! Thanks for sharing.

No argument.  But again, that is purely the merchant's view.

Consumers, at least here in the US, have been trained by well known consumer advocates such as Consumer Reports, Clark Howard, NACA members and the local news "consumer beat" that credit card purchases, in particular, have a level of consumer insurance built into them.  Every 5-10 years, a new layer of consumer protection regulations are added or updated as well.

The hurdles at the consumer level are twofold, assuming a future world where bitcoins see 1000x consumer and merchant acceptance (hey, 1000x is easily realistic in a few short years, given how small we are right now):

1) Education.  "Use an escrow transaction" is a foreign language, an alien concept to Aunt Tillie.  It is not realistic for average consumer use, unless the software tools and legal system both evolve significantly from where they are today.

2) Rational economic actor choices.  The current credit card system provides significant economic and legal protections to the consumer, while hiding the costs by making the merchants bury merchant fees inside the item price.  Buying an item sans merchant fees is not likely sufficient economic incentive to abandon the legal protections currently available, for average consumers.

Now, please, don't misunderstand.  What BitPay is doing is great -- I retweeted and promoted the video.  And it is a necessary step in bitcoin's evolution.

In an optimistic forecast, one could see bitcoin taking over the majority of hard-cash-like transfers.  I imagine merchants would prefer bitcoin over having to deduce whether or not a $20 bill is counterfeit, even using the latest ink tests and scanners one sees deployed at Wal-Mart, Target, payday loan and pawn shop locations.

But the huge amount of built-in consumer protections -- and associated consumer advocacy at all levels -- is an unquestionable hurdle.

It seems more realistic that bitcoin credit cards will arise, as an optional, supplemental layer on top of the base currency:  credit cards, with standard protections consumers expect, denominated purely in bitcoins.  Much like credit cards are an optional, supplemental layer atop the US Dollar right now.

That would at least be a familiar system to current consumers.

Jeff there is a big difference between a cardholder filing a dispute with a merchant, a cardholder using the dispute process to execute a scam ("friendly fraud"), and a cardholder having their account compromised with unauthorized charges.

To the merchants, all 3 of those scenarios appear the same, in the form of a chargeback.  However the account numbers being compromised are by far the major contributor to the $100B payment fraud.  Friendly fraud is also on the rise as people have learned how to abuse the system to commit shoplifting.

Bitcoin would eliminate both the unauthorized access and the friendly fraud.

The legitimate disputes can be resolved by using an escrow transaction.

They also love lower prices, and Bitcoin acceptance can potentially allow a merchant to share some of the savings in payment processing fees with his customers.

No-chargebacks is a selling point for merchants (admittedly the target of the video), but consumers love chargebacks.  And there are ultimately far more consumers than merchants.

Bitcoin can be better-than-cash for any merchant or consumer who already deals in cash, but that is just part of the bigger picture.

From the video:
- Amazon pays about a billion dollars a year for payment processing (most of that cost would go away if they switch over to bitcoin).
- Amazon's annual profit is also a billion dollars.
- Amazon would double their profit if they could simply switch over to bitcoin.
- oh yeah, and no chargebacks.

Good stuff.  Shared to my social media streams.

Protip:  bitpay has a twitter feed... use it!    This kind of thing should go out on twitter.

That right there is the best Bitcoin salesman I've seen so far. I tip my hat to you Tony, you rock.  

Pay attention people to his presentation, that's how it's done if we want the general user base onboard.


(I'm going to sticky this thread, at least for a while, that's how good I think the presentation was.. if someone has a problem with that pm me please)

Watching now....

EDIT:

Done! Amazing!

Here is a video of my presentation this weekend at the Bitcoin Summit in Philadelphia.

If you are looking for talking points and simplified examples to talk to businesses about bitcoin, you will really find value in this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hH4rH6wu25U


EDIT: Sources for some of the material:

LexisNexis True Cost of Fraud

2011 http://lexisnexis.com/risk/downloads/whitepaper/tcf_2011.pdf
2009 http://www.lexisnexis.com/risk/newsevents/press-release.aspx?Id=1258571377346174
(search Google for other years)


Visa Data center with the moat

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/news/story/2012-03-25/visa-data-center/53774904/1


Apple storing 400,000,000 credit card numbers on file for iTunes users

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/11/apples-stash-of-credit-card-numbers-is-its-secret-weapon/


Apple transmitting AppleID & passwords in clear text

http://www.zdnet.com/apple-tries-to-block-ios-in-app-purchase-hack-fails-7000000985/


Global Payments leaks 1.5 million credit card numbers

http://money.cnn.com/2012/04/02/technology/global-payments-breach/index.htm