Topic: who wants more bitcoin expansion locally + a job (Read 3760 times)

Small businesses stand to profit the most from accepting bitcoin as they have the least negotiating power with credit card processors and as a result tend to pay the most to have credit card payments processed.

p only ever recommend people putting pocket money amounts into webwallets for temporary measure.. like the example given here, but i understand your point about theft risks. thats why i thought for the local stores that a person of that town manages, it would be easy for merchants and customers to slap them with a wet fish if they did steal it... by living in the same town..

but that was just one option, i did mention others

So to buy I have to keep my funds in a web wallet where it's really someone else who owns the coins and all I have is an IOU?
No, too many people have been burned.

Too many web wallets keep private keys on publicly accessible servers and there is no way for me to know until they say "sorry, all your coins are gone"

Yes, but they are worried that the taking bitcoins will cost them more if the value against USD drops before exchange.
So that's why they want to work with instant transfer to USD which I think bitpay offers, but that only results in an illusion of using BTC - it's still fiat based (and bitpay isn't free to them either)

as a customer the wallet can be HTML5 based(website based suitable for any smartphone)

but the android tablet part most of us are talking about is a simple display terminal for merchant to show customer a QR code that is generated by bitpay/coinbase/wherever

This is a very interesting idea. Being an entrepreneur I will be doing some brainstorming with this. There are not many ppl that even know what bitcoin is in my little town, but many could benefit from it, especially business owners who are tired of sending a % of their earnings to visa everytime someone swipes a card.

Well I assume if I am paying at a local vendor I am paying from an Android wallet, I don't lug my laptop around everywhere.

I have the android app installed but I won't fund or use it until it has had a quality code review, and I don't think anyone should.

Using bitcoins for local purchases is not an option until we have a mobile wallet with a proper quality code audit.

EDIT

I know this is bitcoin forum, but maybe with 10 minute confirm times, bitcoin isn't the best for local purchases.

1) yes that is a problem, walmart at the moment with all the conversations i have had, are very tight lipped and not rally showing that loving feeling.. if any feeling at all.. but if we can get the independents in first, even if thy are few and far between, then that is then ammo to use on their corporate competitors.

2a) the only way to avoid the 15minute burden but still have atleast confirmed coins. is a pre payment wallet. if any of you have used mtgox or btc-e, where they have 'btc-e codes' and 'mtgox codes' you would understand this. basically people put in their $50 of bitcoins at the start of the week into the service, this gets confirmed, then when customers 'spend' bitcoins the system just moves funds from customers account to the merchants account using codes.. (kind of paypal-esq idea)(research offchain transaction)

2b) well you are the bitcoin representatives, if you want to start your own exchange, or tally the prices to localbitcoins, coinbase or anything else, take it on.. its all your project, your own service and its all your own profit to play with.

3) the QR codes would be generated on webservers so the flaw of android wont be usd.. all the android would be ultimately used just for merchants to send a dollar amount to the web service, and then display the QR code.. the android wont do any calculations or anything, its just a display terminal in essence.

The problem I have is in my area, all the independent bookstores, coffee shops, pet stores, etc. are vanishing to corporate mega-stores with managers who can't make this kind of decision.

And I don't like bitpay. Maybe they fixed some issues since I last looked, but 15 minutes to pay? And if you miss the window, you have to ask for a refund? And QR codes without showing the address in text?

I don't like bitpay, I don't think it is the right solution. It is a solution but I don't think the right one.

I also don't trust the android client enough to use it, not after they trusted the flawed Android random number generator. So paying local vendors with bitcoin isn't something I can recommend until the bitcoin foundation (or someone) pays for a serious third party audit of the android wallet(s).

agreed owning the exchange rate of your town is a solution, but when you start getting to country size level and lots of money transfers, you better have the paperwork ready. but there is nothing stopping you, your not dreaming.

I know the OP is about keeping it simple, but is it possible that we could do a small crowd source thing to develop a solution to bypass bitpay?  It would be our responsibilty to find out about fincen rules and state laws, but some software solution that allows us to plug in account credentials for exchanges and merchant bank accounts?  Eventually making it a free solution?  Feel free to tell me I'm dreaming.

jeff garzik (one of the bitcoin-core devs) works for bitpay. if your looking for a software solution, seek him out.

as for the tablet. it doesnt have to be a big deal. if the merchant already has a smart phone then he can just book mark a website that API calls bitpay. or buy a cheapy $50 item himself. i even have merchants that just show a single QR code that is laminated to customers.. so the upfront costs are not as critical as you may think.. but trying to add product costs into the small commissions is not really good for your profit line nor the amount of work you are technically doing before it ROI's.

This is a really cool idea, I'm no salesman or I would jump on something like this. I think there are many Bitcoin related services that haven't gone mainstream yet.
It will be cool to see how things turn out. It does look promising tho.

hide the commission. if the merchant has a sale total of $100 then he should get $100, put the commission as the bitcoin rate after all there is a big difference between bitstamp and lets say btc-e's bitcoin prices so bitcoiners know that the bitcoin price is variable. as long as the merchant gets what he would have if he just asked for cash.

also if you dont offer upfront fee's or get him to buy a tablet, to then take the costs out in this hidden commission. your 1% turns into alot less,
so lets say bitcoin average is $650 and the transaction is $65, show a price of 0.101 (0.001 is the commission paid by the cstomer) meaning you can cash out $65 to give to merchant, you dont want then to have to se the 0.001 commissions for stock as you will b waiting along time before ROI to get another tablet for next merchant.

imagine it average merchant sale is $65= 0.001 commission.. the merchant has to do atleast 80 transactions like that just to cover the costs of cheapest tablet PC you can find(~$50). so the effort of you handing him his FIAT (costing you time) wont make you profit until atleast the 80th transaction.

now ask yourself, how many people in your town know of bitcoin, use bitcoin to go to that merchants shop.. is it maybe 1 person a day, a week. now calculate how long you will be waiting while just to break even. and then due to him not owning the tablet as its part of some commissions contract, you either have to insure it for damage or expect the possibility of having to be around for the repairs/replacements of that tablet.

so its better to simply get him to get his own tablet, or pre purchase one rather then it being paid off slowly..

I love this idea with the tablet and such.  I would be interested in being a local payment processor instead of relying on bitpay, however, I'm not a developer.  I'm in IT and I can get something very clunky and ugly working full of bugs and exploits.  Do you guys think getacoder.com would be a good route or am I begging for back doors?

Also, whether I'm the payment processor or bitpay is, are there any additional bookkeeping responsibilities that the merchants have as far as IRS compliance?  Does bitpay provide enough historical transaction info?

i bet you say this to merchants
"bitcoin is a peer-to-peer cryptographically secured and decentralised ledger"

instead of saying
"bitcoin is not secured by one company, but by anyone and everyone. even hackers cant break it because its everywhere, making it more secure money than banking".

i bet you even spend more time talking about mining, and not the purchase/sell aspects of bitcoin

Most people around here that have business are of certain age (40+) these guys have a hard time understanding what the fuck im talking about when I try to get em on Bitcoin. On my dorm tho we are like 50 students on the building and i've gotten a lot into bitcoin, this forum and some of them even are trying to buy some machines to mine, even tho I told them it's pretty pointless at this point. It's really hard for most people tho, to grasp the concept of Bitcoin unless they are somewhat familiar with technology. For some reasons they just cant get it, and think they'd rather stick to fiat.

1, guess you missed all the hype about bitcoin over the winter period
2, great an independant that can make decisions
3, their chinese so they probably send money to china to relatives..

3 reasons why you SHOULD atleast ask them. dont be shy, they are only human. imagine them naked.... if that helps at all

Maybe coinmap.org or https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Real_world_shops would help?

Interesting however this would only benefit people with a lot of BTC already (if we work on the fact that BTC will increase in value if more shops accept it).
This is not beneficial to the people trying to sell the idea of BTC to shops as there is nothing to say someone else can't do the same thing.