The stated conversion rate is very close to Coinbase's. They claim no transaction fees.

They're going to have to make their money somewhere, but it doesn't appear that they're charging for anything except the initial card at the moment.

Right -it's part of their Beta program, so that's not unexpected. I understand that it is a prepaid Visa, but it functions as a debit card. I'm able to use it to draw funds from an account with a third-party provider (Coinbase), so the details of how that's done in the legacy financial system isn't my concern.


If they're still in Beta a year from now, that might be a problem. Their problem, by the way - not mine.


They do, see screenshot above. They sent me a text message within 30 seconds of each transaction today.


Well, I might be out the 110 millibits I have in my Coinbase account. If you think I'll ever have significant money sitting in my Coinbase account, you're nuts.

I'm also explicitly not recommending anyone go out and try to get one of these. There are real risks involved, even if Shift is 100% legit. While it seems they are a small operation, I have no reason to believe they aren't acting in good faith. Even so, I'm not dumb enough to assume they're doing so, and I'm taking affirmative steps to limit my liability exposure.

Hell, the biggest "red flag" in this whole situation is that they are obviously trusting their users not to buy $500 of stuff just before emptying their connected account and running like hell. That doesn't strike me as very scalable - but it's their problem, not mine.

Current daily limit is $500 (see previous post).

ATMs currently don't work, because the card doesn't have a PIN. They specifically say they're working on making that happen.

I presume Shift is loading each card with $500, and topping it off as transactions settle each night. They then debit your Coinbase (or other wallet) account for the amount settled.

It is not anonymous, but it also wasn't crazy intrusive. I believe they asked for a physical address and an SSN - or perhaps just the last 4 digits, I don't recall. I don't remember doing the "three questions" that are traditionally associated with a more thorough background check, but it's possible I did.

I honestly wasn't expecting it to ship right away. I figured I'd throw $20 at the possibility of eventually getting a Bitcoin debit card, and if the company disappeared with my money I would just write it off as a gamble.

It's also intresting to note that while Shift might not have a DNA sample, Coinbase assuredly does. Shift has Blockchain.info on their list of suitable wallets, but it's currently inactive. Using that sort of service would limit your exposure of personal information. I'd personally very much like to see GreenAddress.it added to their list, but it would likely require additional coding on Gait's side to support it.

There is a website and a mobile app. Here's a screenshot of my account, showing my pending purchases for the day:



They appear to be keeping a register of pending transactions on their side. Prior to transaction approval at point of sale, they take your wallet balance, convert it to USD, then subtract pending transactions. If the result is more than your purchase, they approve it.

The daily limit is $500, but that's clearly communicated as a limitation of the Beta program. The limit once it hits public release hasn't been defined.

I somehow managed to get into the second Beta rollout for Shift Payments, and my card hit my mailbox yesterday. So far, I'm very much impressed. I've used it at a national restaurant chain and at a local retailer, and both transactions went without issue.

The world is rapidly changing, and it's honestly just amazing to see how quickly cryptocurrency is being adopted. It's one thing to talk to other enthusiasts and stash away coins as you can - it's quite another to suddenly be able to use Bitcoin in your daily life.

Consider this - I have my bank account hooked to Coinbase, and I can buy Bitcoin instantly from my phone. Now I've got a Visa card that I can use to spend those same coins, even if the merchant I want to use has never heard of Bitcoin. Sitting in central Virginia, I can literally buy, sell and use Bitcoin more easily than I could Euros.

But, enough of the glowing praise and fanboi diatribe - let's talk limitations.

The card is issued in Japan, and doesn't have my name on it (it says "TAYTWO POINTMEMBER"). The numbers aren't raised. The back is in Japanese. Shift sent a letter with the card explaining these issues, and it's important to understand that it is a BETA PROGRAM. I'm frankly amazed that they've managed to get them out the door so quickly at all. They're working on issuing personalized card with their own design, but didn't want to hold up the Beta program. Awesome

The card costs money. I've honestly forgotten how much, but I want to say it was around $50. Their site says this is to help manage demand, and I have to say that I really like that they have come out and said this. A company charging more money to limit demand for their product, then acknowledging that they are doing so? That doesn't seem to happen often in the US, and I'm happy to support such a company.

Their settlement system leaves much to be desired. I have two transactions pending right now, and my Coinbase account has not yet been touched. The funds are spent from my Bitcoin account when the transaction settles 24-48 hours later. If I wanted, I could buy $500 worth of stuff then empty my Coinbase account, sticking Shift with the difference. It *is* a Beta, but this must be fixed before releasing to the public. If Shift is to survive, they must be able to effectively manage their exposure.

They ask for permission to spend unlimited funds from my Coinbase account. I don't generally keep funds in any hosted wallet like that (I use GreenAddress.it for my short-term savings), so it's not an issue for me - but it could be for others. There's no way I'd want to give them access to purchase Bitcoin on my behalf either, althought they have apparently considered it judging by past interviews I've read.

All in all, I'm happy. Bitcoin has come a long way since I got involved, and if Shift can pull this off on a large scale it will literally change the world. We live in exciting times.

My intuition says it's much simpler than that.

It's been evident for the past year or so that Bitcoin is going to be adopted by businesses as a payment method. As services like Coinbase and Bit-Pay began to mature, others who agreed with that statement bought Bitcoin as a speculative investment, thereby driving up the price.

As it shot up through the hundreds of dollars, we had a bubble. People piled on, and the price shot up to USD 1,200 practically overnight. The slight distrubance, and *pop* - the bubble burst, and the price came tumbling down.

It stabilized around 600 USD, and stayed there for a long time. Months went by, and it became clear that the majority of people who were invested short-term had already dumped their coins - but still, the downward trend continued.

Basically, as merchants began to implement Bitcoin as a payment method, some portion of the people using it were using coins that were previously not on the open market - coins they had mined, or had saved for some time. Those coins were sold on the open market immediately when they were spent to merchants, thereby exerting a negative price pressure. This is the source of the months-long slight downward trend in the USD/BTC price.

When we broke 500 USD on the way down, people panicked a bit and sold. Others saw it as an opportunity and bought, causing a nice little bounce. Still, the trend continued and we got down to USD 350. People panicked again, and we dropped to USD 300 in a heartbeat. As I write this, Coinbase is reporting a buy price of USD 307.

At this point, I believe USDBTC should be at about USD 375 - it's currently about 20% undervalued. I also believe that the USD 300 line is a psychological barrier, and once its broken many people are going to lose confidence and try to get out - or they won't buy, which is effectively the same thing. I wouldn't be surprised to see USD 200 Bitcoins within a month. I also wouldn't be surprised to see USD 700 Bitcoins within a month. It all depends on what the public at large is thinking, and no one has any real way to anticipating that.

Either way, the longer-term downward trend will continue as long as Bitcoin continues to be adopted by merchants, unless there comes a new wave of adoption where people are more interested in "buy and hold" than "buy and spend". This might be a financial crisis in a country with a modern economy (a'la Cyprus), it might be war, it might be the high-profile success of crypto ETFs... I don't know. I do believe that such an event will occur eventually, and Bitcoin price will not bottom out due to merchant sell pressure.

I stand by my previous judgement that Bitcoin will be the foundation of the future world economy. Given the limited number of coins available and in circulation, if my prediction comes true then the price must rise by several orders of magnitude in order to support the volume of transactions that would require.

I've bought Bitcoin as low as USD 0.8, and as high as USD 1170. I'm buying Bitcoin now at USD 307, and I'll be buying it at whatever market price happens to be tomorrow, so long as the fundamental nature of the currency remains unchanged.

Exactly.

I'd phrase it as "New MGs have always been legal for trusts, but it took both the public and the BATFE 18 years to figure it out."
"

nLockTime transactions do that now - they allow you to sign a transaction that cannot be accepted onto the network before a certain block height. If you decide you don't want that transaction to go through, move the coins to a new address, and issue a new nLockTime transaction.

On a regular basis, I spend Bitcoin on domain names through Namecheap. I also often purchase gift cards to Papa John's and CVS through Gyft.com, and use those to purchase things.

Whenever I travel with my family I buy my plane tickets, book my hotel, and rent a car with Bitcoin through cheapair.com.

When Bitcoin is rising in price, I tend to hedge my gains by purchasing precious metals through amagimetals.com.

My "working wallet" is GreenAddress.it. I keep less than 2BTC there - enough to buy something substantial if a deal arises, or to sell some Bitcoin face-to-face to someone who is interested in getting involved.

All of my savings are in long-term cold storage. I have custom 3d printed objects with my protected public and private keys and corresponding QR codes. Those are BIP 32 HD wallets, so I never deposit to the same address. The physical keys are BIP 38, so you'd need both the root private key and the passphrase to matter.

Finally, I may or may not have multiple passphrases used for the same private key. If the time ever came where I was forced to reveal my passphrase, an attacker could not be sure that he'd gotten all or even most of my reserves.

No, it's not manual.

To be confirmed, the transaction must be included with the signed block when it's broadcast to the network. There is a limited amount of space in each block, so not all pending transactions can be included with each block broadcast. The Satoshi implementation includes an algorithm that determines transaction priority that takes into account transaction fees, the length of time the coins resided at the source address(es) before being spent, and the size of the transaction itself. Miners using custom software (these days, effectively all of them) can use whatever system they like to decide what transactions to include. Some miners will send blocks with no transactions at all - that's a bit rude, and they're leaving transactions fees on the table, but it happens. Most miners use the algorithm from the Satoshi implementation.

If the majority of miners were to decide not to include transactions without fees, then you'd need to fulfill their requirements to get included in the blocks they mine. If those fees become too high for the network to support, then Bitcoin would lose value, which in turn means miners lose profitability. Like most everything else in Bitcoin, this is a case of financial incentives of multiple parties being balanced against one another. If miners require high fees, fewer people will use their service and they'll lose money. Perhaps off-chain transactions would become the big thing, or perhaps sidechains. It's in the best interest of miners - individually and as a community - to continue to accept fee-less and low-fee transactions if there is room available in the block.

I have two daughters. The first has my first name and my wife's middle name. While I am male, my name (Lyndsy) is much more commonly given to girls, and both of our names have family history going back five or six generations each.  My second daughter got a virtue name - "Liberty Grace".

I would name a son Satoshi without much of a second thought. I'd name a son or even a daughter "Satoshi Bitcoin" for the current equivalent of $70k without much thought for it either. We could call her "Satie", and I doubt most people would even know that there was a story behind the name.

In fact, I'll go a step further. My wife and I aren't planning on having another child - but for 200 BTC, we'll either have another or will adopt, and name them "Satoshi Bitcoin" regardless of sex.

Shoot me a PM and we'll figure out escrow, set up a contract, and I'll phone my wife and get to work.

I've not taken an interest in the day-to-day price for a few months at least, but MtGox caused me to watch a a few things - particularly the LTC/BTC rate. If that had started to rise while BTC/USD fell, I was going to take it as a sign that enough people saw the Bitcoin name as damaged enough to move money to LTC, and I wanted to get in on the surge.

I would very much like to see a corporate-sponsored, resource-backed, pre mined cryptocurrency.

I think it would ease the transition for people who can't quite wrap their heads around gold not being necessary.

+1

He lasted a *long* time at level of scrutiny. Either he was extremely careful, or he was a plant. I seriously doubt it was the latter.

That's in implementation issue with LocalBitcoins.com.

I work on Gittip, which is a similar-but-different service. We've been wanting to add Bitcoin support for some time, but due to the recurrent nature of what we do, we've not come up with a good solution. I suspect Flattr is struggling with the issues, and I'm interested to see how they implement it.

If you want to get involved in the conversation around Gittip's Bitcoin implementation, check out Github. There are separate conversations going on for incoming and outgoing payments.

Got a citation for that?

I offer Bitcoin sales on my store's site, but it's kind of a pain because my cart doesn't support it. I have it set up as a cash method, and I send out an email manually with an address for the customer to pay to.

I was hoping to use Coinbase or Bit-Pay to let people pay with BTC on eBay as well. I've not seen any eBay policy stating I can't do that, as long as I also offer PayPal.

That's the idea - you're taking a risk by transacting with someone who refuses to agree to be rated.

This wouldn't necessarily exist to the exclusion of the current system, either, but as an augment to it. If someone agreed to a price, then agreed to a pre-authorized rated transaction, and has a good rating already - there's a very good chance they are trustworthy. When those requirements aren't met, you are taking on additional risk.