Topic: What's the best technology to use for a face-to-face BTC transaction. - page 2. (Read 5030 times)

Learn the firstbits of one of your addresses, give it to the payer. They are often 6 chars or shorter. Firstbits.com.

For verification, just watching them pay is pretty good unless it is a huge amount. If huge wait to see it in blockexplorer.

awesome features for new coming businesses but we were talking a different issue here as the thread title states...

Steve is right that we want to eliminate that issue.  For bitcoin "purists" like yourself (for lack of a better word, sorry) the multi-sig is a great solution.

In the meantime, merchants have a contract with us just like they have a contract with Visa or Mastercard.  Any business that accepts payments from Visa or MC has those funds held by Visa or MC for a period of 24 hours, perhaps up to 72 hours in case of a 3-day weekend.  

Businesses just want to take peoples money in a convenient and reliable manner, and trust that the funds will be delivered.  That's what we do.  We automate bitcoin payments for the business so that, from their perspective, it works just like Visa, Mastercard, or PayPal.  But of course Bit-Pay is better with the whole no-chargeback benefit.

We don't store people's bitcoins at bit-pay, but we do move them...so, yes, while you do need to trust us, you don't need to trust us with very much at any given time (about 1 day worth of revenues is all we'll have in our system at any given time).  With an account based wallet service, you're asking people to trust you for longer periods of time and with potentially a lot more value.  I think rather than argue with DeathAndTaxes, we should listen.

In order to be completely decentralized, people will need to install and run their own nodes and such...the software will continue to get easier and make this more feasible for more people...at the same time, no matter how easy it gets, there will always be something you want or need that isn't easy and that takes time.  In the case of merchants, there will be those that will want to manage everything themselves...I think they'll mostly be smaller merchants with technical skills, or very large merchants that can afford to hire someone manage the bitcoin aspect of their business.  But I think there will also be many small or mid sized merchants that will want the cost efficiency of outsourcing the bitcoin aspects to bit-pay (or btcinch or others that have merchant services in the works).  At some point, you have to trust either yourself to manage the bitcoin stuff, or you have to hire someone to do it for you and trust them.  You can hire someone directly on your payroll, or utilize a service like bit-pay.

I totally agree with you on that - I did not mean to imply that Bitcoin is going to replace any fiat currency.

But if somebody sells some of his stuff on e-Bay (or equivalent) for BTC, gets donations for his blog in BTC, etc. and uses these Bitcoins to pay for hosting or to hire some graphics designer, then there is no need for any centralized service. With more opportunities to earn and spend Bitcoins (ie. the Bitcoin economy growing) I see no alternative to that development.

So as long as you don't see the Bitcoin economy itself shrinking, the need to go to/from fiat before/after each trade is going to become less over time. Therefore the need for centralized services is going to decline.

My point is that Bitcoin has no need for any centralized services unless for interfacing with the traditionally centralized fiat world.

Death and taxes,  Understood

Maybe you should read more and attack less given your company rep it attached to your posts.

I 100% DO NOT ENDORSE BITPAY.  I WON'T USE IT.  I WON'T RECOMMEND OTHER USE IT.  Not in its current form.  I am glad to hear the Steve has indicated he lacks control over users funds.  Now granted he may be blowing smoke up my ass but that doesn't really matter because I won't be interested in BitPay UNTIL it has some mechanism where implicit trust isn't required.

Again,  another centralized bitcoin service.   Trust me man.. it's going to continue to keep going in that direction... some will fail.. some will do well.. some will be run by crooks.. others by saints....  it's the free market and that's how it evolves.

Which IMHO would be more conveinent to use than coins.  The only problem I see is that it currently is impossible to produce a coin/bill without implicit trust in the creator.  That risk limits their utility.

Weird for some reason his centralized system is kosher,  but everyone else's isn't...   I am NOT bashing bit-pay.. I think his service rocks...  I'm just pointing out that for some reason you endorse that centralized system while saying you don't endorse centralized systems.

Hence the problem I have with the below post...  it appears it's not actually a centralized system that bugs you...  it's something else that I quite don't get... hopefully you can clarify how running bitcoins though a centralized server is different than running bitcoins though a centralized server.

All I am stating is that honestly it's gotta be centralized to get some things done... such as secure payments from one to another instantly without 6 confirms... etc etc... 

Casascius can print some paper money backed up by bitcoins.

Thanks Steve, I like this idea - also I'm thinking a Bitcoin address could be stored in the QR too, to allow a trusted merchant to send change from a transaction if it were being spent in a retail store.

Also I like the idea of the only copy of a wallet being stored on a piece of paper - it would be sort of like a bearer bond from those thriller movies! Only even better with no counterparty.

Steve I am glad you wrote that.  I had very little interest in Bitpay because of the trust issue.  Satoshi paper was devoted to the concept of secure commerce without the need for trusted third parties.  


I am glad to see you seem to share that belief. I will pay more attention to Bitpay's development.  There is a genuine need for services like Bitpay (or Flexcoin) especialy if Bitcoin ever becomes more mainstream.  Look at fiat based e-commerce.  Plenty of "shopping cart" systems because most people trying to sell something aren't IT pros.  However IMHO the long term goal should be to develop systems that are both user friendly but AND eliminate or minimize the need for third party trust.  

I think multi-sigs are an important missing component to that vision. I look forward to the day when exchanges, wallets, and shopping cart services all lack the ability to move funds without consent of the owner.  It's not that I don't trust you, I want to be able to not NEED to trust you.

Common man,  your system is centralized for a period of time as well.    It's like saying "transfers from bit-pay aren't a bitcoin until they leave your system" implying that you do control their money for a period of time.   

I know you,  I can vouch for your system being 100% honest...  but as a whole there must be some centralization...  and there will be... as there is now...   as much as we want to avoid it it will happen (and already has) because everyone that uses bit-pay or flexcoin uses a centralized service, period.

can you please keep posting on topic here ppl ?

@FreeTrade the android wallet would be "Bitcoin Wallet" by Andreas Schildbach, we're handling an digital currency here so an electronic device would be involved in all transactions
If he doesn't have a smartphone, tablet or eeepc he could bring a wallet.dat on an usb stick or if he trusts you will meet him for sure he can transfer the funds before showing up at your place. I don't use online wallets and recommend all my friends avoid them at all cost. They learn new things in the process too. Any person letting another person take care of his/her security should not handle bitcoins or money at all.

I completely agree.  I eventually want to make use of multi-sigs for bit-pay such that bit-pay never has the ability to move the coins we collect without collaboration from our merchants.  Also, we don't seek to be a point of centralization (if we ever had enough merchants such that you could claim we were a dangerous point of centralization, it would be more merchants than we could possibly provide good service too)...we view ourselves as providing a service (think of it as bitcoin IT outsourcing for merchants that can't or don't want to hire someone specifically for that task).  Online wallets need to evolve to a point where they aren't requiring their customers to entrust them with the ability to spend their coins.  This can be done and made easy for the novice.  It's safer for the customer and it's safer for the wallet service (if you can't move your customers' coins, you won't be a target for theft).  I know people are working on it, it's just a matter of time before we have an online wallet that is easy to use and preserves user control over the coins.  I appreciate the convenience of existing wallet solutions, but they need to evolve.  An account balance in an online wallet is not a bitcoin.

then we'll agree to disagree,   I don't think the USD, Euro or Yen or any other national currency is going to be replaced by BTC...  at least not tonight.. or in the forseeable future. 

I personally believe that BTC is not a currency but more like a commodity...    again we can agree to disagree...

I beg to differ - the Bitcoin client will become more lightweight, more secure and more feature rich - soon there won't be much need for a central service just to provide access to your coins "easily from anywhere".

Also the other services you listed which are arguably in heavy use today, are only interfaces to "legacy" currencies like USD or EUR - within Bitcoin itself you don't need any of them.

You probably should drop the project then.. because that's the direction it will and has been going.   Look how many paypal 2.0's are out there now?

How many people have coins in mt.gox,  tradehill, campbx, flexcoin or use a solution where at least a small part of the time the coins go though a centralized solutions like bit-pay ?  all these are paypal 2.0 ... 

"Flexcoin is one of the only solutions that would enable you to access your coins easily from anywhere. "

So does Paypal except those are USD "coins".  Making centralized systems is easy, trivially easy.   If Bitcoin ends up as a proxy for a bunch of Paypal 2.0s I have no interest in the project.

Making real decentralized solutions is hard but that is where the value comes from.