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

[granito]

On 2014-03-28 12:40, Dan Frumin wrote:
> On March 28, 2014 at 8:36:59 PM, Sajith T S (sajith at hcoop.net) wrote:
>> Nathan Kennedy wrote:
>> 
>> > 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.
>> 
>> Thank you for articulating this here, and in the older thread. I
>> agree with Nathan. I too would be uncomfortable with totally
>> anonymous sign-ups. Presumably we're not talking about sign-ups yet?
>> 
>> (My personal bias against Bitcoin originates from the couple of times
>> a whole bunch of the CS department's machines were left essentially
>> unusable for everyone else by mining processes.)
>>  
> 
> Yuck! Why would people do that? 
> Anyway, I agree with you and NTK that we shouldn't allow signups with
> bitcoin, but I don't see much problems (apart from the technical ones
> perhaps) with allowing people to up their balance with BTC. That is,
> *through* a BTC payment service; all the accounting is still done in
> dollars :)
> 
> PS: thanks to Clinton for updating the portal :]
> 
>> --
>> "the lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne."
>> -- Chaucer.
>> 
>> 
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>> 
> 
> 
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Depending on how Stripe implements bitcoin payments we'll see if we need 
the initial credit card transaction to verify member's identities. I 
wouldn't be comfortable with allowing wholly anonymous members either. 
Unfortunately sometimes there's problems like what is currently 
happening in Russia 
(http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/03/21/292565077/declined-visa-mastercard-freeze-out-targeted-russian-banks) 
where people get blocked out of the international payments system for 
political reasons. Only allowing existing members to use bitcoin as 
payment is a good intermediate step while we figure out other ways to 
verify people's identities.

I don't think Hcoop should hold bitcoin until (if?) we can pay for our 
services in bitcoin. If our costs are in dollars we should hold dollars. 
Hcoop is not in the business of currency speculation :D.

Sebastian.