We have to get services to accept bitcoin directly. I mean, if we're willing to give our identity away (KYC) and pay high fees (comparing debit cards to crypto), then why use bitcoin in the first place? Personally, I don't see this helping bitcoin in any way.
I agree--there's no anonymity and I don't think there's any advantage to this service that Visa is offering. It's basically just a way for Visa (and probably Coinbase as well) to extract fees from their customers. Same old story that's been going on since the beginning of credit cards, right?
Nice to see bitcoin gaining wider adoption--or
possibly doing so--but I'm not sure this is going to catch on.
And I also agree that it would be so much better if merchants took bitcoin directly, but there's an obvious volatility risk involved, and I can understand why they wouldn't want to do that. Even payment processors only convert bitcoin to fiat, which is what the merchant receives. If I'm not mistaken, there are a few businesses that take crypto directly. Overstock, Veldt Gold, and Protonmail are three of those, though I'm not sure if any of them still receive crypto directly.
You have this debit card for bitcoin, as it's not technically possible to take bitcoin on credit, and to get it you have to give your government issued ID. What's the difference between that and traditional credit cards, or PayPal? Both of them are requiring you to submit them. The way I see it is - this coinbase card is for another currency, that's not dollars, and can't be refunded. The non-refundability alone of this card gives it a huge disadvantage to other cards.
Then you have the issue of accepting coinbase cards from merchants. A lot of them don't even take American Express or Discover cards and some only even take one of MasterCard or Visa cards too. How can we expect Coinbase to have a chance in this market?
If you are ordering something they know where you live anyway.
Yes but they don't need to know my signature, my date of birth, a picture of my face or my passport number (or whether I'm legally allowed to drive). This is practically what coinbase already has for us.
Coinbase cannot go mainstream because it's an exchange geared towards investors. It's not directed to bitcoin alone rather it features a whole bunch of cryptocurrencies that will mind-boggle an average person's head as finance-speak.