[HCoop-Discuss] Improved Portal Payment Page Preview (Including Stripe!)

[Nathan Kennedy]

I voiced my bitcoin complaints on -discuss before w.r.t. coinbase.

My opinion is unchanged; I won't ragequit if we start accepting bitcoin, 
but I would strongly urge that:
1. Any payments are settled in USD so HCoop isn't subject to Bitcoin 
commodity risk (I haven't read through, I assume that's the case).
2. I didn't say this before, but I don't really have a huge problem with 
previously authenticated users (via credit card) topping up their 
accounts in bitcoin if that floats their boat. We already know who they 
are as well as we ever have.  But I would strongly urge that the initial 
payment be required to be made by credit card.  Or that we have some 
other minimally meaningful method of verifying identity if someone signs 
up with bitcoin, which to me sounds like a huge hassle.  Does stripe do 
this? Their bitcoin page seems to have no information.

If there's a consensus that we will allow essentially anonymous sign-ups 
via bitcoin, then I think we should hold off on that, make a loud 
announcement to -announce to give people a chance to weigh in and/or 
move anything half-way sensitive off of HCoop. There's both security and 
governance problems allowing completely unauthenticated users to join, 
get shell access, and participate in co-op affairs.

Then there's also my personal bias that bitcoin still is far from 
mainstream and just inheritably unsuitable as a means of value store 
(not to mention a tremendous waste power and electronics), so I'm not 
terribly enthusiastic about touting it, but that's all secondary to the 
security concerns.  Maybe I'd have a different opinion if I'd gotten in 
on the pyramid scheme four years ago, but that's where I stand.

Nathan

On 03/27/2014 06:35 PM, Clinton Ebadi wrote:
> granito <granito at hcoop.net> writes:
>
>> On 2014-03-22 04:06, Clinton Ebadi wrote:
>>> I've added Stripe support (currently in test mode, you
>>> can/are-encouraged-to try out the payment experience using one of the
>>> cards listed at https://stripe.com/docs/testing#cards and any fake
>>> address). I also improved the Paypal experience a bit.
>>> ...
>> Well hello there Stripe! https://stripe.com/bitcoin. Awesomeness will
>> ensue :D
>>
>> Sebastian.
> This might complicate things a bit: for Stripe to work, we're relying on
> them charging a credit card which has a valid Name/Address associated
> with it (no gift cards etc.) and using that as weak identity
> verification.
>
> I know ntk and bpt both had opinions on the matter, so ... discuss.
>