Stripe: Bitcoin - <AUTHOR> https://stripe.com/bitcoin <comment><USER2> What a fantastic product page. After less that 30 seconds, I knew exactly what Stripe was doing with Bitcoin, how to use the new feature and integrate it.

This is great news for Bitcoin. If all it takes is one extra line of code for online retailers to start accepting the currency, widespread adoption could sky rocket. That's always been Bitcoin's crutch, simple integration. Others like Coinbase and Bitpay have made it much easier to accept Bitcoin, but usually more services are required to accept other forms of payment. This simple catch-all solution is a game-changer. Congratulations Stripe.

<comment><USER3> I think the crutch now is not that it's hard to acquire bitcoins (thanks to coinbase and friends) or pay with bitcoin (thanks to stripe and friends), no, the only crutch is why should I buy bitcoins with my dollars when I can just pay with my dollars directly?

It can be useful for people who either don't have access to credit cards but have access to bitcoins, people who already have a lot of bitcoins and curious tech people.

<comment><USER4> > should I buy bitcoins with my dollars when I can just pay with my dollars > directly?

Cheaper fees (0.5% vs 2.9%) can be potentially passed on to consumers.

And anonymity.

<comment><USER5> bitcoin's not really that anonymous. Sure, the ledger doesn't contain identities, but it's not extremely difficult for the mapping between addresses and identities to "leak" and once they do, it's anything but anonymous.

<comment><USER6> Can you tell us who hacked BTER or Bitstamp then? Since it's so easy to deanonymize people, you know.

Just look at the addresses the stolen bitcoins were sent to.

<comment><USER7> Sounds to me like you just explained why you shouldn't want anonymity in your transaction.

<comment><USER6> There are benefits to anonymity, which arguably outweigh disadvantages.

I was just pointing out that bitcoin _is_ anonymous when used by someone with a brain. (I.e not Ross Ulbricht, who apparently sent money to an assassin from his personal wallet, without using a mixer.)

<comment><USER7> I understand that there are benefits to anonymity, but I don't think anonymous transactions are really a priority at this time, except for people doing illegal business. I certainly don't want politicians to be able to receive anonymous funding.

It's different with something like speech, where we have a rational principle that says "people can speak as a general proxy for hypothetical positions." But you can't make hypothetical purchases, and you can't represent a general population with anonymous purchases. So anonymous purchases don't have a social basis for the same protections.

<comment><USER6> But what about when someone wants to donate to wikileaks, which supports free speech (say), but they don't want governments to know that?

People need money to speak freely (especially when they are persecuted for it), and those donations should be anonymous.

<comment><USER7> People need free speech to speak freely. Your Wikileaks example is cherry- picking: it is not illegal to donate to Wikileaks. It might be illegal to donate to a drug cartel, or somebody like ISIS. Or to that police officer who wanted to give you a ticket. Or that government agent deciding who to give a big contract to.

I think think of far more cases where anonymous transactions are harmful than I can where they are beneficial.

<comment><USER6> It's not illegal per se to donate to wikileaks, but you may be put on a list somewhere.

Do you think all free speech should be only with identified speakers? How would you feel if your entire spending history was in the public domain?

In most of your examples, you can easily pay with cash, which is anonymous.

<comment><USER7> No, I don't think all free speech should be with identity. I would anticipate that it is hard to have free speech under such conditions.

I wouldn't care if my spending history were public, but that's obviously not relevant. I don't believe spending should be anonymous. I don't believe people should be allowed to make any purchase they desire without penalty. I do believe people should be able to speak without penalty, as people are better able to ignore bad words than they are bad money. Money corrupts people far more effectively and quickly than speech.

> _It 's not illegal per se to donate to wikileaks, but you may be put on a > list somewhere._

So? You're already on a list somewhere. Are you arguing that you have a right not to be on lists, and that this has anything to do with currency?

> _In most of your examples, you can easily pay with cash, which is > anonymous._

No, not "easily." You have to go to a bank and sit in front of their cameras while they hand you money. That's not the same as anonymous internet transactions. And the person you are giving money to will see you hand it to them, unless you jump through some hoops. And jumping through hoops is shady when you're doing something illegal. And someone cannot steal your cash without being physically present, and thus requiring knowledge of your location and opportunity to leave a trail of evidence.

I mean, if it were so easy to pay cash, what value does bitcoin even bring to the table? Why are all these bitcoin advocates not just using cash, if they are so similar?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The Bitcoin community might want to take a deep breath and recognize where Bitcoin has the most real-world use. The idea that my mom will someday use Bitcoin to buy books online is about as realistic as the belief that, any minute now, youngsters will realize that the daily newspaper is better read in paper form, because of the texture and experience and the anonymity of paper. For that matter, I am a computer programmer, and I love to play with new technologies, and I'm utterly unable to imagine why I'd ever want to pay with anything with Bitcoin.

There are a large number of people living in China who would like to get around the nation's currency controls. There are a large number of people living in Russia that want to move money without being tracked. There are a large number of people living in Latin America who want to avoid taxes in their own countries. This is what drives the use of Bitcoin. The only large scale need for Bitcoin is criminal activity, in China, Russia, Latin America and elsewhere.

Currency regulated by the government is a classic "good enough" product. It might lack some features that would be nice, but 99% of the public doesn't seem to care. Rather, they want more money, but they don't want to change money. If they had real doubts about the currency, they would dump it in exchange for real goods. But instead, most people work hard to acquire more money, and they show no real concern with the standard proxies for currency (credit cards, checks, etc).

<comment><USER9> The world's simplest reasons why you might pay something using bitcoins is simply when this is the only way, or cheapest way, or safest way to make a transaction.

Example #1: some merchants are hit really hard with fraud, such as intangible goods paid by international credit card transactions. So hard that they decided to stop selling internationally. These merchants discover that Bitcoin re-enables them to sell internationally because Bitcoin completely solves the fraud problem for them (since transactions are irreversible). In that case, as an international customer of such a merchant, paying in Bitcoin is your only option.

Example #2: some merchants offer discounts when paying in Bitcoin (because they don't incur credit card fees). So it is in your interest to pay in Bitcoin: you don't have to pay the fees from exchanging coins for fiat, and you don't have to pay the indirect credit card fees that the merchant would make you cover (via the absence of a discount).

Example #3: as Bicoin's adoption grows, more and more people end up having bitcoins in their hands, like your nephew giving you $50 worth of coins for Christmas. What's the easiest for you to use them? Setting up an account at an exchange (and incurring the associated hassles and fees when selling), or just spending them directly? Of course in this case you would want to spend them directly.

Example #4: say you are travelling out of town and paying for a meal in a restaurant that you suspect might be skimming credit cards... do you pay using a credit card or bitcoins? Using Bitcoin here would be much safer. It has all the advantages of credit cards (and more) without the inconvenience and danger of handling cash (losing it, getting robbed, no ability to "back up" cash, etc). Hardware bitcoin wallets have especially an insane opportunity to innovate in this space (wrt. security and ease of use).

<comment><USER10> It took me no less than one hour to pay for a flight the other day, because of various cc-related problems, not the least of which being the train wreck that is Verified by Visa. I so, so wished for a Bitcoin option...

<comment><USER11> I spent the past three days trying to buy a conference ticket. My card wouldn't get accepted, my bank was being incompetent and unhelpful, claiming they weren't seeing any charges pop up.

I didn't even think of it until your post, yet I was still involved in this not five hours ago. When you look back, it's surprising the amount of artificial shit we have to sift through with CCs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Stripe's Terms of Service reveal that they use Coinbase in the backend to transact and exchange the bitcoins: [https://stripe.com/bitcoin/terms](https://stripe.com/bitcoin/terms) If you are a small merchant planning to do less than $1-2 million dollars in sales, you might still prefer using Coinbase directly instead of Stripe though, because Coinbase waives all fees until the first $1 million dollars (then it's 1%), but Stripe charges a constant 0.5% fee.

There is a tad more info from [https://twitter.com/stripe](https://twitter.com/stripe) :

 _" Our Bitcoin support is now fully live: [https://stripe.com/bitcoin](https://stripe.com/bitcoin) ."_

 _" It's fully-integrated with the rest of Stripe: same APIs, same reporting, same dashboard. (Just like our Alipay support.)"_

 _" While testing our Bitcoin support, we had people from 60 different countries use it to pay. (Howdy, Guatemala, Algeria, Rwanda, Cambodia!)"_

 _" Particular thanks to @Namecheap, @Tarsnap, @HandUp, and @Grooveshark for their feedback as we developed this."_

 _" And as for [https://stripe.com/bitcoin](https://stripe.com/bitcoin) itself -- this is our first, but hopefully not last, page to feature an animated Vim."_

For the record, Stripe's Bitcoin support has been in beta since March 2014. Tarsnap were the first users: [http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2014-03-27-tarsnap- bitcoin.h...](http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2014-03-27-tarsnap-bitcoin.html)

Edit: @ThrustVectoring: it does not take 5 weeks of a developer's time to integrate with Coinbase, especially for the "small" merchants (<$1-2M in sales) that my comment was written for. But I agree the appeal of simplicity if you already take Stripe is there :)

<comment> vertex-four You can integrate bitcoin support into Stripe Checkout with just a few lines of code - one attribute on the client, and 2-3 lines of extra code to create your Charge object in a different way on the server, at which point you process it in almost exactly the same way as a card payment (potentially minus some UI details in confirmation messages, etc).

Integrating Coinbase involves writing your own "payment" abstraction in place of being able to use Stripe's all the way through your application, then implementing both Stripe and Coinbase on top of that. While this might be good in the long run (so you can switch off of Stripe easily), it's not so good for smaller shops/services which don't need that complexity yet.

<comment><USER13> Why is the choice to accept bitcoins client-side? If I want to force a payment in bitcoins, I can add the attribute myself.

Some businesses have legal ramifications for accepting bitcoin or not, even if it's through Stripe. Is there a flag in your Stripe merchant account on Stripe's server to refuse bitcoins?

<comment> vertex-four > Why is the choice to accept bitcoins client-side? If I want to force a > payment in bitcoins, I can add the attribute myself.

No, that's not the case. The choice to display the UI for accepting bitcoins is client-side. Handling the results of that UI still has to be done specially on the server, through the creation of a Charge in a different way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Honestly, this may be what it takes to see more mainstream consumer adoption.

A lot of the apps with high levels of penetration in this generalized demographic seem to use Stripe--if it's truly a frictionless integration, it will be really interesting to see the market's response.

Coinbase & exchange API's were the first step. Single-script hosted payment processing with a UI focus (accessible to tech and grassroots e-commerce alike) seems to be the next.

And to the Stripe team--Thank you!

I've used many merchant processors, from 2004 until now. Along with Braintree you paved the way for this future in MP, and overall created a brilliantly engineered system that's a pleasure to work with.

<comment><USER15> The bigger problem with mainstream consumer adoption is the fact that mainstream consumers don't have any bitcoins to spend.

Then there's the fact that you have to use an exchange to buy the coins in the first place and... let's just say bitcoin exchanges aren't exactly known as secure financial institutions. It seems a large bitcoin exchange is hacked and shuts down just about weekly:

Just hours ago: Cavritex, Canada's largest bitcoin exchange, announced that it was hacked and will shut down

4 days ago: BTER of China was hacked and lost $1.75m

Last week: Exco.in was hacked, apparently lost all customer-held coins, and shut down

Last week: Hong Kong's MyCoin died and was apparently a ponzi scheme that had $387

And that's not even counting the abrupt closures of other exchanges telling users to get their funds out ASAP or lose them.

<comment><USER9> > you have to use an exchange to buy the coins

No you don't. You can sell stuff on Craigslist for bitcoins. You can mine. You can buy coins in person from a friend/from localbitcoins. You can receive remittance from your oversea family in bitcoins. You can buy them from a Bitcoin ATM. Etc. There are tons of ways to acquire bitcoins without "having" to use an exchange.

<comment><USER16> Shameless plug, you can also get paid with bitcoins via [https://www.incoin.io/](https://www.incoin.io/). We need more of this. I'd be happy to see another proper payroll company with the option to pay via bitcoin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I absolutely love the little animated step by step process shown of how it works. Is this done with an open source library?

<comment><USER18> I'm just using a tiny lib that makes things easier: [https://github.com/bendc/animate](https://github.com/bendc/animate) Other than that, it's just vanilla js/css.

<comment><USER19> I just want to say that you're one of my favorite designers out there and I enjoy your various posts out there on the web. Thanks so much for sharing your talent for us developers to peek inside!

<comment><USER18> Thank you, means a lot :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Question for Stripe folks.

 _At creation, Stripe guarantees an exchange rate that is usable for 10 minutes. If the customer sends bitcoin to the receiver after the 10 minutes have expired, we'll still process the transaction but the conversion amount will no longer be guaranteed._

Say I am a merchant, and I want to make $10 on my transaction.

With a 0.5% fee:

\- Without BTC, I charge $10.05 to the user, you take 5 cents, and I am left with $10.

\- With BTC, I charge $10.05 to stripe, which gets converted to BTC at some exchange rate, and gets charged to the user. Does Stripe guarantee me $10? Or am I subject to the fluctuations of Stripe's exchange rate (say the user takes 20 minutes to finish the transaction)? Is there any way to _guarantee_ that I get paid $10 or the transaction fails?

<comment><USER21> I don't know the answer to this but given the user is the one who didn't complete the transaction in 10 minutes they are probably held responsible. I would guess if it was underpaid they would have to send more to the address (the same as if they only paid half the bill). If it's overpaid they probably send the overpaid amount back as a refund to the address it was sent from (or keep it).

<comment><USER22> It would be interesting to see if you could "lock in" a BTC price and then wait 9 minutes to see if BTC goes up or down (meaning you are over/under paying) then decide if you still want to buy. I'd think there would be protections against something like this though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Any idea how stripe is handling confirmations? (I'm a bitcoin newbie, but I know that consensus took a minute or so the last time I had done anything with BTC.) Has that changed?

<comment><USER24> (Christian from Stripe here.) We credit USD to our user's account when we see a transaction that we believe will become confirmed. The time-delay between when the customer pushes the transaction and when we notify our users is typically less than 15 seconds and almost always less than 60 seconds.

<comment><USER25> What happens if it does not get confirmed. Do you debit the account by an equivalent amount or eat it?

<comment><USER24> It's a good question. We want Bitcoin acceptance to be straightforward for our users, so we deal with a failed confirmation on our side. We do not debit the user.

<comment><USER26> Hence the 0.5% fee. :)

I suspect this is the reason Bitpay is able to waive fees completely: they _do not_ take responsibility for unconfirmed transactions.

> _Note: Regardless of the transaction speed settings, a fully paid invoice is > credited to your merchant account after the transaction has accrued six > confirmations._ [1]

[1] [https://support.bitpay.com/hc/en- us/articles/202943915-What-...](https://support.bitpay.com/hc/en- us/articles/202943915-What-is-Transaction-Speed-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> > Stripe charges just 0.5% per successful Bitcoin transaction. There are no > other fees.

Beautiful

<comment><USER28> Wait, am I missing something or does coinbase not do this for free... or do they nab you some other way

<comment><USER29> Coinbase charges a BTC <-> USD fee of 1%. Stripe is essentially charging for the same exchange service, but 0.5% instead.

"Avoid exchange rate hassles—specify amounts in USD and we'll send you dollars. Stripe charges just 0.5% per successful Bitcoin transaction."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I find it hilarious how Bitcoin haters (like the ones we have here on HN) say it's never going to work, but then they spend hours every day trying to talk people out of using it.

<comment><USER31> The value of these things is a Keynesian beauty contest. If enough people decide that Bitcoin is a valid currency then it is a valid currency (just like baseball cards).

I think that would be bad for society. Any new value in the bitcoin ecosystem increases the value held by the early adopters - who are mostly drug dealers or other criminals, and the rest are the miners who enabled them. (bitcoin does have some advantages for some legitimate use cases, but the biggest advantages were for the criminal use cases).

<comment><USER9> > who are mostly drug dealers or other criminals

This is false. And you have no source to prove it. I know a lot of early adopters through various channels. They are geeks, crypto nerds, cypherpunks. Think guys like Hal Finney, Wei Dai, etc. Nice guys who like to explore new ideas.

Maybe you are just upset that you "missed the boat" on bitcoin or something. But you've got to stop believing every Bitcoin user is a criminal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Who wants to use this most?

Porn companies. Their chargeback rates are obscenely high. And Bitcoins can't be "clawed back," as grubles put it.

ed: "wants to" instead of "will"

<comment><USER33> "Their chargeback rates are obscenely high". I've always understood that porn companies have difficulty finding a friendly payment processor, but I've never heard that they recieve a high chargeback rate before. Do you know why that is? What do users gain from chargebacking porn websites over chargebacking dropbox, for example?

<comment><USER34> Their partner sees "XYZ.com" on the bill and goes to look it up. "Why are you buying porn?" "Oh that wasn't me! Someone must have stolen our card" and they submit a chargeback.

<comment><USER35> I'm sure regret is also a part of it as well. "Why did I spend that money?" And of course, outright theft of services, where they watch/download whatever it is they're interested in and then cancel the charge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Disappointed to see that they don't appear any PaymentProtocol[1] integration.

[1] [https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0070.mediawi...](https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0070.mediawiki)

<comment><USER24> (I work at Stripe.) We love the PaymentProtocol, and we have an integration internally. Because the protocol is fairly new, we want to gauge demand from our users before exposing the extra infrastructure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Okay, Stripe. Can I accept bitcoins and automatically convert them to USD? I need an instant conversion back to USD after the transaction so I don't lose money due to volatility. Does stripe let merchants auto-convert their Bitcoin payments to USD? This would solve the problem entirely and I'd be happy to pass the extra savings on to customers.

I could probably give about a 6% discount because I wouldn't take profit from the transaction savings.

In fact, given the fee is .05% of the transaction, this could be the first service to ever enable micropayments. Perfect for a lot of internet/new technology services. The key is to convert the customer's USD to bitcoin instantly, pay with bitcoin, and convert the received bitcoin back to USD instantly again.

<comment><USER38> (I work at Stripe)

Correct! You set your price in USD, we present the amount in bitcoins to your customer, and guarantee you the price you set in USD.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> _" Avoid exchange rate hassles—specify amounts in USD and we'll send you dollars."_ Looks like another Coinbase reseller. Coinbase has a merchant program. They guarantee their buy price of Bitcoin for a minute or two, to cover the volatility between when the web site accepts the Bitcoins and Coinbase dumps them on an exchange. During periods of high volatility, this service is sometimes suspended.

Many shopping cart programs already accept Bitcoins and convert them through Coinbase. Few merchants accept Bitcoins and accept the conversion risk themselves. This kind of service has been available for the last year. It's used a little, but not much.

</comment><comment><USER40> I'm assuming this doesn't work for recurring payments?

<comment><USER41> (I work for Stripe.) That's correct. Stripe does not currently support recurring or repeated payments with Bitcoin. The receivers can only be used for a single payment.

<comment><USER33> Since you could now be considered 'big leaders' in the bitcoin world. You really should lobby for a BIP70 specification which allows for wallets to subscribe people to payments. However, then would be the question of how can both the wallet provider and Stripe agree on the exchange rate.

In short, I'd like to see BIP70 become like PayPal's IPN, so it can notify websites of subscriptions, refunds, payment requests, instant payment confirmation from a trusted third party (Coinbase would be considered trusted to tell us a payments been instantly recieved without having to wait for confirmation), etc.

I've have these ideas for a while but I'm not known in the bitcoin space so my comments don't make any impact. Stripe could considering thinking about such specifications, I hope?

<comment><USER42> Paypal's IPN is the worst piece of garbage ever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I'd never thought I'd read so many comments about people questioning whether using Bitcoins to buy anything is useful or not or even if people would use. Specially in a place like this with so many technology aware people.

Giving more choices for payment is good. Sellers are including more people that can pay for their services/products. If nobody buys anything with bitcoin they lose nothing and business goes as usual. Simple.

Please get out of your bubbles and think a little more if you can't find scenarios where people would use Bitcoins rather than money. In my case If I start seeing more places accepting Bitcoins it's only more probable that I'll use it and put more money in my wallet for that. I can remember of two places I could use Bitcoins right now: Humble Bundles and Namecheap. Given the choice and more sellers using it I will use that option more and more.

Some of the credit card scenarios people are talking is again US specific. If I want to pay for something quick and simple online I have to get really out of my way to do it. I don't have credit cards and lots and lots of people don't have them and avoid them. I don't want to have one ever. Currently for me to pay anything online I have to go to MBNet to create a virtual credit card for each purchase I want to do. That card is valid for one purchase only and for a single shop/seller. There's another option where I can create a virtual card valid for one year but I can only use it in the same seller/shop. Only after that can I use all those payments systems on the internet. If I want to be protected with Paypal I have to add and remove a card each time I need to use it. So lately I just input the virtual credit card info where sellers ask in their forms and don't even care about paypal or amazon or anything else.

Basically I don't really have much of any kind of protection anyway doing all this work above comparing to the simple use case of having bitcoins and just directly giving you the money without caring anymore. Plus I don't have to keep looking at my credit card looking for any suspicious transaction that the seller could at any time issue to me. I give the money exactly that I want and I can just go with my life without thinking about it anymore.

And this is just my point of view. I can clearly imagine many people with very different reasons simply using Bitcoins if that option is available.

Now the only thing really missing is being able to implement a simple shop using Stripe from this side of the Atlantic :P.

Congratulations Stripe and keep the good work.

<comment><USER10> >Now the only thing really missing is being able to implement a simple shop using Stripe from this side of the Atlantic :P.

Why can't you? Stripe has supported the UK and other countries for a year or something.

<comment><USER43> Portugal, Spain, Italy, Germany, France...?

Only thing I know is that it was in beta around some countries.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Can someone tell how Stripe (or other providers) guarantee immunity from price fluctuations?

<comment><USER45> Merchant sets their price in dollars (for example) and the price in Bitcoin is calculated when a transaction is made using the current btc exchange rate.

<comment><USER44> Stripe (in this case) receives bitcoins and it is exposed to fluctuations. So, if Stripe guarantees the seller a price for the bitcoin, I would think that Stripe has a mechanism to limit or even eliminate the risk from that exposure. I am interested in learning how Stripe does it. Do you know how Stripe does it?

<comment><USER46> Can they do the conversion realtime and charge the client whatever rate they get?

<comment><USER44> Perhaps, but they don't say it explicitly. For example, Bitpay says (at [https://bitpay.com/](https://bitpay.com/))

` Charge $1, get $1 Instant conversion, no transaction fee, and bank deposits in US Dollars, Euros, GBP, CAD and more. We take the bitcoin exchange rate risk, your customers get the best rate on the market, and you get a payment you can count on, every time. `

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Interesting that Stripe invested in Stellar ([https://stripe.com/blog/stellar](https://stripe.com/blog/stellar)) which I couldn't help think of as a 'Bitcoin competitor'.

It makes sense that they still increase support for the more established/famous cryptocurrency that is Bitcoin but I thought they would still be interested in somehow relating this to Stellar.

</comment><comment><USER48> Is there a way to just accept Bitcoin using this without automatically converting it into a fiat currency? That would make this complete for me.

</comment><comment><USER49> > Fluctuation-resistant - Avoid exchange rate hassles—specify amounts in USD > and we'll send you dollars.

I don't think I fully understand this part. Does the exchange rate remain static for a period of time, or do they just mean to say it's automatically converted for you? If the latter, how is this fluctuation resistant.

Regardless, I'm very happy. Been waiting for this to come out of beta.

<comment><USER50> Fluctuation resistant for the seller but not the buyer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> This is fantastic. However, I couldn't see any mention of a Bitcoin-specific minimum charge. Is it still 50c as per Stripe's existing documentation[1]?

[1]: [https://support.stripe.com/questions/smallest-amount-to- char...](https://support.stripe.com/questions/smallest-amount-to-charge)

<comment><USER26> I'd really like to see this question answered as well.

Also, I'd really like to know: is the credit card fee still ~2.5% if I receive 50 cents USD using credit card via Stripe? Or is there an additional, flat rate fee?

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Greg Brockman from Stripe said this is exactly what it would take for BTC to take off commercially a year ago:

(after discussing why regular people probably don't want to store value in BitCoins)

> However, Bitcoin has huge potential as a way to transport value. It's > surprisingly difficult to move money today ...compounding the issue, value > transport becomes especially challenging as soon as there's a regional > border involved.

> Cryptocurrencies have given us a real opportunity to solve these problems.

[https://stripe.com/blog/bitcoin-the-stripe- perspective](https://stripe.com/blog/bitcoin-the-stripe-perspective)

<comment><USER53> I thought he said BTC wouldn't succeed as a payment mechanism, but might as a settlement and clearing one.

<comment><USER52> You can specify amounts in USD and get the exact amount back regardless of BTC fluctuations, which seems close to his original premise.

<comment><USER53> Not that close since to the user it is a BTC payment system.

<comment><USER54> Why couldn't the user buy the bitcoin in dollars moments before, using the same price-stabilizing mechanism? Could an exchange engage in both operations simultaneously somehow as a sort of market-maker?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Is this available to canadian stripe accounts too or just US?

<comment><USER41> I work for Stripe. While people anywhere around the world can pay with Bitcoin (and we've seen payments from over 60 countries during our beta), we currently only support merchants who have U.S. bank accounts. (Fun fact: Our first Bitcoin user had a Canadian Stripe account, but also a U.S. bank account.)

<comment><USER56> And can you clarify if by us bank account you mean 'us dollar denominated', or 'us dollar denominated and a us bank'. USD bank accounts are very common in Canada.

Not that needing a US bank account is necessarily a show-stopper, but it's more work.

<comment><USER41> USD-denominated and a U.S. bank for now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> By enabling BTC payments, does this mean that Stripe will change the list of "prohibited" uses? That list is in line with what are usually high-risk card transactions, but by removing that risk (almost) entirely, it seems like this could finally enable a wave of new commerce on diverse and neglected categories.

I'm probably assuming a no as they'll want to keep the card AND bitcoin and not do jut BTC, but a man can dream.

<comment><USER58> The Stripe TOS says:

"Most Prohibited Business categories are _imposed by Card Network rules_ or the requirements of our banking providers or processors" ([https://stripe.com/us/prohibited- businesses](https://stripe.com/us/prohibited-businesses)).

Bitcoin avoids much of the high-risk card issues so will Stripe update its Bitcoin TOS to allow more high-risk transactions and regulated industries?

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> This is great and I intend on giving it a shot to accept bitcoin in the near future.

I would like to see it as an option to keep bitcoin rather than having it automatically exchanged to USD on my behalf.

It would allow people to assess their own risk tolerance if they wanted to hold bitcoin or if they had other services that work well with bitcoin.

</comment><comment><USER60> Could this mean we will soon be moving towards micropayments?

And perhaps less dependence on app stores?

<comment><USER26> Now _that_ is actually an area where bitcoin makes sense.

Use Stripe to put up a payment gateway in front of articles. Just send 50 cents in bitcoin to the address that is displayed, and you can read the article instantly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> Congrats team Stripe! Fantastic feature as always.

In our case, we promise full refund if our users are not happy with our service. Is there a way to refund customers bitcoins as easy as how it is currently with credit cards?

</comment><comment><USER62> Great news! I wish Stripe can be available in more countries soon.

</comment><comment><USER63> What customer loose when paying with bitcoin - protection. On the other hand when customer pays with credit card, merchant essentially do not have protection. But merchants cover that by increasing price to cover accidental fraud. Therefore merchants should lower price by 2-3% (credit card processing fees) + 5%-25% (not sure about exact amount) to cover lost protection by customer and gained protection for business.

When this happen, I bet there will be some people who will be alright getting better price in exchange for loss of some protections. Otherwise it doesn't make sense now to not use credit card.

</comment><comment><USER64> What is the "open wallet" step? That can't mean I _have_ to have a wallet with Stripe, can it?

<comment><USER65> The "Open Wallet" link has a bitcoin URI. If you have a wallet installed, it'll pop open that wallet. More here: [https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0021.mediawi...](https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0021.mediawiki)

Stripe doesn't have a Bitcoin wallet for consumers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> A "how it's made" of the amazing product intro/page would be a very nice read!!

</comment><comment><USER56> Can someone explain if a Canadian stripe merchant processing in US dollars can use this?

</comment><comment><USER67> I'm not really into front-end but man...that page was beautifully executed.

</comment><comment><USER68> Wow.. I know a few startups that just killed after this announcement.

</comment><comment><USER69> Hey Stripe, are you reading this?

I'm deciding between payment processors right now. I plan to have excessively low prices, in the range of 1 dollar per year. PayPal and Amazon offer micro transaction pricing at 5 cents + 5% of each transaction. Care to compete?

<comment><USER70> 0.5% is less than 5 cents + 5%.

For a $1 transaction, Paypal/Amazon would charge 10 cents and Stripe would charge 0.5 cents for a bitcoin transaction. Unless you're talking about credit card transactions.

<comment><USER69> I am talking about credit card transactions. I plan on accepting bitcoin, but I want to accept normal payments as well. Right now it seems like Amazon + Coinbase will be my choice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> Does it allow bitcoin-paid monthly subscriptions?

<comment><USER41> Stripe doesn't currently support recurring or repeated payments with Bitcoin—the receivers can only be used for a single payment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> Can this be used in India ?

</comment><comment><USER73> Too bad BitCoin isn't default and more of an opt-out kind of thing. Eventually...

</comment><comment><USER74> why do we - normal people - want to handle a currency free of any legal oversight or reversibility/traceability even in the case of outright theft?

see this story of ours just from the past month -

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9053621](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9053621)

they know exactly who did it and why/how it happened...

what advantage is there to the coins themselves being completely untraceable, transactions completely irreversible?

suppose your net worth is largely a matter of the value of your startup at its last valuation. would you prefer to just have that many hundred thousand dollars in cash in your home? But with the added benefit that it can disappear at a distance without anyone visiting your home?

Bitcoin is great but isn't it about time to put a sane banking layer on top of it?

Note: like all sane people I believe in a mix of government oversight and personal freedom, maybe 90% the latter. But having an untraceable currency doesn't make me any more free. Unlike every tech luminary, Satoshi can't even identify himself.

<comment><USER75> Because legal oversight and traceability are often bugs, not features. The middlemen required to deal with those two things are often bloated, slow to react, corrupt, expensive, and in some cases, all of the above.

The idea that "I want to send some value to someone else" requires jumping through so many hoops, and having so many bites taken out of it, in 2015, is a bit silly.

How do chargebacks work with cash? Exactly. Yet we still use it.

This honestly smells like the government anti-encryption argument. "You have nothing to hide, so why do so?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> I just don't think this is useful unless you were offering a service that only works with bitcoins. The wide adoption won't change Bitcoin, it's the unpredictable and manipulative market pricing that makes me hesitant to accept it.

With USD you know that if you got 100 it won't turn into $10 in a few weeks but the reality with bitcoin is that the threat exists

</comment><comment><USER77> If Stripe is doing Bitcoin then I now know to stay from and recommend others to say away from Stripe.</comment>


Rare snow rollers spotted in field near Marlborough, UK - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-wiltshire-47108382 <comment><USER2> A couple of videos of rollers forming, in Ottawa and Ohio, both leaders in snow-based technology:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=5&v=_GOMYlGZobk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=5&v=_GOMYlGZobk)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thswcC3Mz_8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thswcC3Mz_8)

</comment><comment><USER3> This reminds me, in a way, of sailing stones [1]. Although they happen in quite different environments (snowy areas for rollers, deserts for stones), they both are an inanimate thing clearly moving around without human or animal help in non-obvious ways.

For convenience, here's the Wikipedia link for snow rollers [2].

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailing_stones](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailing_stones)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_roller](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_roller)

</comment><comment><USER4> And we wonder why people once believed in faeries. If I woke up one morning to see these in my front yard, elf magic would be a pretty reasonable option. If I saw them rolling on their own I might decide to go back inside for fear of crossing paths with an angry leprechaun.

<comment><USER5> Or Brussels and its EU minions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Side note: as a non-American, it's hilarious (and sometimes slightly irritating) to read place names in the <City>,<Country> format usually used by Americans (albeit in <City>,<State>).

Firstly, pretty much everybody I know is aware that Marlborough is a city in the UK. There's even a famous historical figure, the Duke of Marlborough, associated with the place.

Secondly it kind of indicates that at some level the writer believes that US states and foreign countries are similar organisational units, when actually countries have greater independence and sovereignty than do US states.

It's certainly illustrative and useful for a wider audience, but... I dunno... it still feels... a bit wrong.

(And yeah, there's probably a Marlborough somewhere in the US so American citizens might get confused, but that's kind of the point too... like when I say "I'm from Milan" and I get "oh, Milan, Texas?" back as a reply. "No ma'am, Milan, _Italy_.")

<comment><USER7> I'm from the UK. My home address is in Bangor, Northern Ireland. Almost every employer (in the UK) I've interviewed at initially thought I was Welsh.

If I say "I'm from Bangor" to an American and they assume I'm American, which one of these would they think I'm referring to?[0] There are two separate Bangor Townships in Michigan alone.

It makes total sense to refer to the country and city/town when you are addressing an international audience.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangor#United_States_of_Americ...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangor#United_States_of_America)

<comment><USER6> Yes, you are correct. I apologise to you too. I was a bit testy this morning and I came off a more ill-tempered and quarrelsome person than I had intended, and it is entirely my fault.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think the mechanism is different, but the rollers remind me of yukimarimo - [https://weaknuclearforce.wordpress.com/2014/03/20/yukimarimo...](https://weaknuclearforce.wordpress.com/2014/03/20/yukimarimo/)

<comment><USER2> > Yukimarimo were named by T. Kameda on JARE-36 in 1995. "Yuki" means snow in > Japanese, and "marimo" is a ball-like growth of water algae which the > yukimarimo resemble. [1]

> The plant was named marimo by the Japanese botanist Takiya Kawakami[b] in > 1898. Mari is a bouncy play ball. Mo is a generic term for plants that grow > in water. The native names in Ainu are torasampe (lake goblin) and tokarip > (lake roller). [2]

The roller comes full circle!

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yukimarimo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yukimarimo)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marimo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marimo)

<comment><USER8> Nice find! I thought I had done a blog post with the reference to "snow down" (the same phenomenon later named yukimarimo) in Paul Siple's account of the first South Pole winter over in 1957, but apparently wrote that up for something else... Perhaps a bit of wikipedia editing is on the menu for this weekend!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > He said he spotted them in a field he owns and at first thought they had > been manmade but there were no footprints.

Obviously that just means they beamed back up to the mothership.

<comment><USER10> The footprints? That's some fancy tech.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Hard to tell the scale. I'm guessing about 50 cm high?

<comment><USER12> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_roller](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_roller):

 _"They can be as small as a tennis ball, but they can also be bigger than a car. Most snow rollers are a few inches /centimeters wide"_

So, they might be 50 cm, but if so, they would be large examples.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Looks like they have tank treads

</comment><comment> 076ae80a-3c97-4 Slow news day...

<comment><AUTHOR> They call them "Sundays".

<comment><USER14> Especially Super Bowl Sundays.</comment></comment></comment>


Scientists Reconstruct "Movies" from Brain Activity - <AUTHOR> http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822%2811%2900937-7

<comment><AUTHOR> A reporter's account, for a lay-person's description: [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/22/brain-scan-movie- sc...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/22/brain-scan-movie- scenes_n_976580.html)</comment>


Yogababble - <AUTHOR> https://www.profgalloway.com/yogababble <comment><USER3> Just last night I was at an alumni fundraiser for the football program of my alma mater. It's a medium sized liberal arts school, while they've had football for a hundred years, they're known for academics far more than football.

After some hors d'ouevres and cocktails, the head coach took a microphone and came with his ask. What he said was fascinating. He had been doing this for a number of years. About 5-6 years into his tenure, he said, at one of these fundraisers, an alumnus who was general in the US Army came up to him afterwards and said "You're absolutely terrible at this. You spoke for 15 minutes and you never mentioned winning football games. You're the football coach. Don't apologize for wanting to win football games. That's your job for God's sake. These people are here cause they're alumni who like football. They want to win games."

Needless to say, the coaches pitch is now "Here's how we win games if you give us money." But I think the general had the right idea. Companies shouldn't be embarrassed or shy away from talking about how they want to make money, especially if they're pitching to investors.

<comment><USER4> As a tech co person on the business side, let me tell you it is consistently amazing to me how much resistance I witness to the idea of a company making money. There's a huge confusion going on right now about how business works, the utility of profit, what capitalism is (and why it isn't [ _gasp_ clutch your pearls now!] evil... Especially in the Bay Area, the companies I have worked with and in are chock full of people who are opposed to the systems they rely on and have a vague idea that Something Like Communism is the "right way" to operate.

<comment><USER5> I think you're misreading the aversion to making money.

Tech entrepreneurs in SV have been trained for years to avoid revenue, profit, etc at all costs. The reason? Because as soon as you have profit, the conversation and metrics at fund-raising time are entirely different, and rather than lala land they will be rooted in a reality that no one wants to be in.

I've seen many founders, even some with decent revenue and growth, actively steering away from that to avoid valuation based on traditional metrics.

<comment><USER6> You're both right. The aversion to showing positive numbers (because a negative number could become anything!!) is real, and so is the vague uneasiness and deep unawareness of how capitalism works among people working within a system it created.

<comment><USER7> The capitalists are in a very awkward spot after 2008. A motivated anti- capitalist can quite plausibly point out that the system as it stands after the financial crisis is more about protecting the rich with free bail outs and rules changes than securing material prosperity by keeping competent people in charge of resources.

Defending capitalism will start being a little like defending communism - <USER2> great idea in theory; where is the evidence that it can be implemented without succumbing to corruption? It'll never be as bad because it doesn't come with the death toll, but people don't seem to take that part of the argument seriously.

I'm among the most hardened capitalists I've seen on HN but I really don't see the credible counter-argument to the divergence of wages and productivity combined with spiralling asset price inflation. Something needs to be done to make it easier for people who work hard but don't like risk to tap into the rewards of capitalism.

I'm not sure what physical metric to turn to to show poor people are holding steady, let alone seeing an improved quality of life.

<comment><USER8> Like most things, it's not a matter of extremes, it's a matter of balance.

<comment><USER9> Agreed, but that seems to be a big problem with capitalism. It's rather difficult to reign in. The class gap and wage disparity it's created over time becomes so large it starts to look pretty ridiculous and hard to ignore, so there's naturally going to be lash-back.

No doubt all systems have issues, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be critical of capitalism and _gasp_ maybe try to improve it... without being labeled a "Communist" (in response to saas_sam's dismissive comment). IMO that label's starting to lose some of it's McCarthyism weight anyways...

P.S. It's not just the Bay Area questioning ball's out capitalism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't know anything about mission statements, valuations, IPOs, or yoga. I do know a little about regression, though, and that regression line is pure bullshit. (Ironic, considering what they're purporting to analyze.) The downward trend is mostly due to a single high leverage[1] outlier[2] in the upper left. Take that out, and you still have a datset that not only exhibits heteroskedasticity[3] (much higher variance on the left than on the right) which invalidates many of the assumptions of ordinary least squares regression[4]. Even if it didn't, the slope is so mild, the sample size so small, and the residual variance so large that's there's no way you're going to be able to reject the hypothesis that the true slope is equal to zero[5].

I recommend you throw away the scatter plot and regression line and instead use Kendall's tau[6], a non-parametric statistic which considers only the rank order of each variable and is therefore appropriate for ordinal variables like the 0-9 "bullshit" scale.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leverage_(statistics)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leverage_\(statistics\))

[2]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outlier](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outlier)

[3]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heteroscedasticity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heteroscedasticity)

[4]: [https://statisticsbyjim.com/regression/heteroscedasticity- re...](https://statisticsbyjim.com/regression/heteroscedasticity-regression/)

[5]: [https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/344006/understandi...](https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/344006/understanding- t-test-for-linear-regression)

[6]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kendall_rank_correlation_coeff...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kendall_rank_correlation_coefficient)

<comment><USER6> Can't a guy throw a joke graph up in his post mocking startup bullshit without folks going full Nate Silver on him?

> Ironic,

Yes.

<comment><USER10> On Hacker News? _Not if I can help it._ :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think a lot of people are missing the point.

As someone who was there when the dot com bubble collapsed, I think part of his point is that sooner or later, companies based purely on BS, or that have high valuations because they've BS'ed people... are going to come back down to earth.

Judging what is BS and how much there is, is not something you can do in a real scientific way.

<comment><USER12> I was around then too and what's happening now is so much worse than then it borders on the absurd and the coming crash will be unimaginably and absurdly worse.

<comment><USER13> Peloton ipo'd at 8 billion.... literally a bike and a tablet app

I wasn't around during dotcom but plenty of people my age can tell this market is absurd

<comment><USER14> Peloton has almost a billion a year in revenue, and rising fast. I don't have a dog in this fight, but I don't see that a valuation of 8 billion is obviously wrong.

<comment><USER15> You can have infinite revenue if you sell dollar bills for $0.50. What matters is profits, not revenue, something the majority of these bullshit VC-funded startups overlook because they don't actually have a viable business model and hope for a miracle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > According to LinkedIn, there are more corporate comms personnel working for > Bezos at Amazon (969) than journalists working for Bezos at the Washington > Post (798).

Holy shit.

Edit: I interpreted that as 969 working on Bezos' personal brand. On second glance they probably just mean 969 corporate comms personnel in Amazon. In which case I retract my "holy shit"

<comment><USER17> Yeah, this feels like a bad comparison.

One is a major international company with close to a million employees, hundreds of billions in revenue and operations in a 100+ countries.

The other is a small media firm based in one country with a thousand employees and a few hundred million in revenue.

To make matters worse, Amazon has a reasonable mission statement - to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online, whereas WaPo's mission statement is "Democracy Dies in Darkness". Yogababble score - 10/10

<comment><AUTHOR> > _One is a major international company...the other is a small media firm > based in one country_

The point is a single company's PR force rivals a major newspaper's entire staff. The Fourth Estate is outmanned and outgunned.

> _WaPo 's mission statement is "Democracy Dies in Darkness"_

No, it's a seven-principle list [1]. Stringing together points one and two, it is "to tell the truth as nearly as the truth may be ascertained...concerning the important affairs of America and the world."

"Democracy dies in darkness" is a tag line.

[1] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/ask-the- post/wp/2016/01/...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/ask-the- post/wp/2016/01/01/policies-and-standards/#missionstatement)

<comment><USER18> Can the Yogababble scale go higher than 10?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Microsoft early mission statement: "A computer on every desk, running Microsoft software". They changed that because they _achieved_ that.

<comment><USER20> With regard to OS, they held a 90%+ market share in the 90's.

Today they retain a 70%+ market share of desktops and laptops.

And with Surface they are a top 5 hardware manufacturer as well.

It's impressive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> > According to CNBC, this week the We board fired CEO Adam Neumann. No, the > board didn't fire him. The media, academics, and math fired him. The board > enabled him and either was a co-conspirator in the fraud, or they were just > idiots.

Can we be sure that they are idiots? Given how much control founders have over their companies these days, we don't know how much they had their hands were tied. They may not have been able to do anything until the tide of opinion (on the board) turned against the CEO, to the extent that even the CEO's allies decided they needed to save their own butts.

Between We and FB, we might start to see the pendulum start to swing back the other way, with regards to founder control of companies.

</comment><comment><USER22> A strange article. There's some good information in there but he seems to undermine himself, leaving me confused as to his intent:

> _When firms are still searching for a viable business model, the temptation > to go full yogababble gets stronger, as the truth (numbers, business model, > EBITDA) needs concealer.

...

My new firm, Section4, was going to "Restore the Middle Class." My colleagues rolled their eyes so hard I wondered if they'd been coached by my 12-year-old son. Then we were "NSFW Business Media" or "Streaming MBA." We're trying to figure it out. Next week, I'll tell my board we've assembled a group of talented people, are producing short-form video and podcasts, and hope to educate and inform. We'll go from there. _

<comment><USER23> He's demonstrating that he ate his own dog food. Instead of "restoring the middle class" (bullshit), they are producing short form video and podcats (not bullshit).

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> It'd be interesting to do DL/NLP sentiment analysis of S-1s and quarterly reports and correlate that with market returns to see if someone can come up with a model to predict IPO, and stock, success/failure.

Though I'm sure some people are already looking into that.

<comment><USER25> Lazy Prices [1] is a paper I was looking at for a while (I work on a Quant Research team) that does this in a simple way and the authors had good results. It takes the changes in language in some key sections of financial fillings as signals.

[1] [https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1658471](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1658471)

<comment><USER24> Thanks for pointing to the paper, haven't read it yet.

But it sounds pretty interesting, especially if you correlate it with things like insider's tradings (both buy and sell) and of course whatever external events there may be.

Talking of quant, would you mind sharing what is your typical stack, especially non-proprietary, non-confidential, stuff such as languages and libraries.

<comment><USER25> I don't do anything low latency so its mostly the common scientific python stack -- numpy, pandas, sklearn, etc. Mostly linux, lots of Spark, some R and C#. We're really flexible on what we can use to solve our problems but the team has pretty much settled on python as both developers and analysts can work together more easily.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> > _The chart below summarizes our research._

The chart is some cherrypicked bullshit that ignores the importance of outlier rejection. Put your thumb over Google, Zoom, and Tesla and then look at the chart again.

<comment><AUTHOR> > _The chart is some cherrypicked bullshit that ignores the importance of > outlier rejection_

The vertical axis is the author's subjective opinion on a scale of "I'm a professor of marketing who likes dogs" to "I am a spirit Dawg that unlocks self-actualization." That should give away that it's, at best, a back-of-the- envelope gut check.

"This thesis doesn't fall apart on basic scrutiny" is the best point it can make. Which, given it's leaps and bounds more scrutiny than Theranos or WeWork got, is part of the joke.

<comment><USER26> > _" This thesis doesn't fall apart on basic scrutiny" is the entirety of its > point_

The thesis DOES fall apart on basic scrutiny. The chart represents the entirety of the exploration, and the chart doesn't support shit. Minus the outliers, the chart presents a conclusion entirely different from the author's.

<comment><AUTHOR> > _The thesis DOES fall apart on basic scrutiny_

Based on what?

To be serious for a moment, it has been repeatedly found that "prospectus conservatism is positively related to underpricing, with the relation more pronounced for technology than nontechnology firms" [1]. While the ability for "prospectus conservatism...to predict the firm's post-IPO operating performance" has historically been limited to non-tech IPOs, it's plausible for that effect to now incorporate all IPOs.

> _the chart doesn 't support shit_

The chart's underlying "data" are shit. It's "guy rates mission statements." It's a joke.

(Or maybe it's not. Bullshit isn't something one can objectively measure. It's dependent on context and the specifics of the observer.)

[1] [https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Grace_Hao/publication/2...](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Grace_Hao/publication/255728167_The_Effect_of_Issuer_Conservatism_on_IPO_Pricing_and_Performance/links/5bc63fbb92851cae21a85a99/The- Effect-of-Issuer-Conservatism-on-IPO-Pricing-and-Performance.pdf)

<comment><USER26> That's a fair response. I've given you an up triangle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Not really fair to include Peleton in his analysis of one year post-IPO performance based on a single day of trading. Particularly because it's fairly well-known that IPO pop isn't really any kind of useful indicator.

<comment><USER28> An IPO flop is more reliable, though.

<comment><USER27> Not really, no. An IPO flop generally just means the bank screwed up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "WeChrist shat in the punch bowl."

If you had to sum up Adam Neuman and WeWork in one line, I challenge anyone to beat that.

</comment><comment><USER29> Would it be fair to read his argument as saying that companies that exaggerate their prospects sell at higher IPO prices than companies that are more conservative in their marketing? Since the company's goal is to raise as much money as possible at the IPO while selling off as little of the company as possible, this would indicate that exaggeration is a good strategy, and one might predict that this trend of hyper-hyping is going to continue for a while. Sure, over the long term the company still needs to succeed, but if you are an pre-IPO investor who is holding for the long-term, as long as the IPO is successful, you'd probably prefer for the company to have more money in the bank over seeing a large post-IPO jump.

<comment><USER30> > companies that exaggerate their prospects sell at higher IPO prices

If anything I think it's that they easily raise VC money, which then inflates the IPO price because people compare it against what VC's paid for it. WeWork VC value was about 4x what the IPO marked thought it might be worth.

> raise as much money as possible at the IPO

Seems more like the smart money is looking for dumb money to follow it, and a way to convert their VC held shares back into dollars via a liquidity event.

But yes, a large post-IPO jump could be considered money left on the table, since people will pay for it, but the company didn't get it - the people buying at the IPO price then selling pocket that money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm confused, what does yoga have to do with this?

<comment><USER17> Yoga, as its practiced in the West, is mostly a fitness program. Yoga teachers in the West, however, mix pseudo-scientific or New Age BS into their practice ("unite the chakras", "harness your inner goddess", "elevate your spirit") to make themselves be seen as being more than fitness instructors.

I think the point to author is trying to make is that companies often add BS to their mission statements to 'elevate' themselves from a regular company into a lifestyle.

references: [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/yoga- babble](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/yoga-babble) [https://omyogadiva.com/2016/03/25/yoga-babble-muddies-up- the...](https://omyogadiva.com/2016/03/25/yoga-babble-muddies-up-the-yoga- experience/)

<comment> rolha-capoeira > Yoga teachers in the West, however, mix pseudo-scientific or New Age BS into > their practice ("unite the chakras", "harness your inner goddess", "elevate > your spirit") to make themselves be seen as being more than fitness > instructors.

You're right about the author's point, but this is a gross generalization and is unfairly dismissive of a lot of different practices that people find personally beneficial.

<comment><USER32> People can find any belief system, no matter how unfounded in reality, personally beneficial, look at Scientology.

Doesn't mean it's based on anything coherent or real.

<comment><USER33> When the word "real" is used as it is here, I sense that it often has nothing to do with reality, and more to do with some kind of arbitrary consensus- reality-concept, which may or may not have anything to do with reality. This is useful insofar as it allows me personally to occasionally "fiddle with the knobs" on my own perspective, which is easier to do when I don't actually believe in it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I like this guys youtube channel.(I think it's the same guy anyway.)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjksNqQAVbA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjksNqQAVbA)

<comment><USER35> He also does a great podcast with Kara Swisher: [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pivot/id1073226719](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pivot/id1073226719)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> There is yogababble and there is trash talking.

There is ying and there is yang.

Mr Galloway is very entertaining and he has got his scalp. But ultimately he has the same flaw as the yogaistas.

Overconfidence.

</comment><comment><USER37> How do you protect yourself from someone that somehow rolled a 30 for charisma and also has no scruples? Calling people idiots when they've fallen under the spell of such a person isn't helpful. What would be helpful is this: suggest ways to adjust the system so that cults of personality can't gain traction when the stakes are high.

<comment><USER6> Maybe looking at people's character as demonstrated by their actions rather than acting like numbers and metrics are all that matters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> That graph has a pretty weak correlation. If you remove the two outliers for stock performance it's basically a cloud.

<comment><USER27> It's also misleading in that at least 7 of the data points have not traded publicly for a full year, and one of them has literally only traded for one day. And, there's no adjustment for market conditions. So it's as valuable as plotting the average height of a cornstalk at harvest, but using one that was just planted, one that was planted a month ago, 3 that were planted 4 months ago, 2 that were planted 8 months ago, and 7 at harvest (3 of which in a drought year, 3 in a record setting year, and one in an average year).

<comment><USER39> I don't think you're wrong about that factor, but I also don't think that chart is possible any other way given that many of those IPOs are so recent.

Also, the other axis is entirely subjective. The main point is well-taken that high-minded fluff rarely translates to high-performing firms.

<comment><USER27> You could just use companies that have been public for more than 1 year. And you absolutely could survey 50 people about the mission/business alignment and get a useful number that would actually examine the point he's making. The main point is that he wants to make a certain point, but not back it with any kind of data beyond cherry-picking to make it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> He brought up Chamberlain's pact with Hitler to make a point, but I also ended up seeing a coincidence: What Chamberlain did was called appeasement, and selling off the We jet is appeasement.

</comment><comment><USER41> 'Yogababble' is more than a bit offensive to people who take Yoga as a spiritual and religious practice seriously. It shows how little the author knows about the culture they're referencing.</comment>


Show HN: Would you use this with your RSS subscription? - <AUTHOR>

Hi guys, I'm just out of "close beta" with one of my side projects related to rss feeds and would appreciate your feedback. http://www.feedsapi.com is the project with a premium subscription model, the free plan is monetized with Ads and Branding while the Premium plan comes with an API Key to remove tha Ads and the branding, and fetch more feeds. Would you use something like this? Any feedback about teh monetization strategy?
For Tests purposes, you can use this APi Key: hackernewsbeta11
Thanks! <comment><USER2> I personally wouldn't use it, I don't feel the pain that this service is trying to solve. Maybe some better examples on the landing page would persuade me.

The design and layout needs a lot of work. At the moment it's got that "Designed by a developer" look and feel.

Only one redeeming feature.

The video.

Who is that ? How did you persuade them to be so excited about RSS.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback and suggestions Ian, as for the design, well, it's a themeforest template ( <http://themeforest.net/item/oneland-landing- page/156922> ) and that guy seems to know his stuff. Glad you like the video, I wasn't sure about that, I had the choice between this and a demo video...RSS is very exciting for some folks, the guy love the service, so not much work to convince him. The pain we are solving: Removing all the ads and junk from rss feeds article, turning shortened rss feeds article to full text articles, creating an rss feed for a static page without RSS...that's just some of the problems we are trying to fix, have you tried it with the Hacker News Feed? here it is: <http://feeds.feedburner.com/feedsapi/gakK> you are fully right about having some example on the landing page, will update

<comment><USER3> You really have to demonstrate in which situations it is superior to just a "regular" rss syndication service like <http://netvibes.com> Maybe create some "cases" where you can show the true benefit from your product as mentioned before. At the moment the API makes it sound like a b2b tool (i.e. a tool only for those that work with APIs already?) and I am not sure in how far they would use such a service (familiarize with the API) over just coding something similar themselves.

But what I could indeed see as a very successful service is something, where you just enter a shortned rss feed and it spits out solely based this information a full-text rss feed. You got to pick one of these aspects, focus on it and clearly communicate it - otherwise the API thingy is making it very tricky to interpret what it does. Oh and one more thing... the testimonial guy has in my opinion already a bit of "overexposure" through the web. Be careful about that. I hope you know what I mean...

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, got it with the testimonial Guy :) , will replace the video by a new demo highligting the features for normal Joe's.

"But what I could indeed see as a very successful service is something, where you just enter a shortned rss feed and it spits out solely based this information a full-text rss feed." That's exactly one of thing it does, I will try to focus on that in the video demo-ing the product, and maybe write a new tag line focussing only on this feature. Thanks for the great suggestions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> clickable: <http://www.feedsapi.com></comment>


What Does Bias Look Like?  - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/02/what-does-bias-look-like/71153/

<comment><USER2> Someone should point back to this article every time there is a discussion about the lack of women/blacks/latinos in tech. I don't generally go into a situation thinking people are looking to exclude me, but I've experienced instances of many of the institutional biases throughout my life.

I've always tried to be open to all sorts of people and situations, but it can be very hard to be surrounded by people who simply assume their way of being is the norm. I've been in situations where everyone except me is talking about the concert they went to. Why? Because no one thought to invite me since it wasn't a rap/r&b concert.

It makes me nostalgic for my high school years where there were so many kids of so many different ethnicities, incomes, and interests that we always had to take special care to understand each other.

</comment><comment><USER3> > They're all right, of course: you can't simply infer bias from statistical > underrepresentation

Technically speaking, if something is statistically under- or over- represented, then there is a source of bias ("an extraneous latent influence on, unrecognized conflated variable in, or selectivity in a sample which influences its distribution and so renders it unable to reflect the desired population parameters"). Whether that bias reflects overt or covert discrimination on the part of those in academia is another question, of course.

</comment><comment><USER4> _One meta-analysis of studies, for example, found that "discrimination against blacks was more likely to occur when potential helpers had more opportunities to rationalize decisions not to help" by invoking "justifiable explanations having nothing to do with race."_

Isn't this saying that when people had reasons to make a decision not based on race, they actually did make a decision based on race. How can you actually produce that conclusion?

<comment><USER5> No, it's suggesting that, for example, when interviewing a black and a white candidate, each of whom has a reference letter and a set of test scores, the interviewer would favour test scores if the white candidate had higher test scores, but would favour reference letters when the black candidate had higher test scores. If only test scores or only reference letters were available, they'd hire based on merit.

In other words, people engaged in discriminatory behaviour when there was a way to rationalize/cover it up, and pretend they weren't doing it -- possibly telling themselves that, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Power.

That is the answer pure and simple. You can cloak it in deep discussions about statistics and attitudes and backgrounds. But there it is, naked for all to see. Liberals OWN acadamia and will not give it any of their power over the curriculum, philosophies, budgets and directions to any group who holds other ideas, much less ideas the may change the balance of power they hold.

Sadly, the most important part of her article, "We are never the best interrogators of our ideas. It requires motivated critics to lay bare our hidden assumptions, our misreading of the data, our factual inaccuracies" will go unoticed by the people who need to hear this information the most. It is ironic that the very essence of universities: scholarship and research, are the things most damaged by conservative discrimination. The ideals that should be held highest are the ones most damaged, and also the things LEAST cared about, behind money and power.

People will be people won't they?

</comment><comment><USER7> _Those people offered their own alternate theories [snip]_

Another theory not in his list: Reality itself has a well-known liberal bias.

<comment><USER8> yeah, i hear that one all the time. based on some arguments i've gotten into with liberals recently (i'm a centrist), i can state somewhat definitively that it's not true.

<comment><USER9> You're using anecdotal evidence to refute anecdotal evidence. A bit surreal, at least to my mind.

<comment><USER3> To be fair, he's using anecdotal evidence to refute an overly broad, unsupported generalization. Some evidence is better than none at all, but only barely.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Algorithms, Etc - <AUTHOR> http://web.engr.illinois.edu/~jeffe/teaching/algorithms/ <comment><USER2> I was a TA for classes using this material. We(the TAs) sometimes come up with problems to be incorporated in it. The lecture notes are superb, I often refer people to them because it's freely available.

The hw is basically"given you've learned this, can you apply them?" I found many students like this style of problems.

I personally prefer the homework problems of Sariel har-Peled(who teaches in the same university, and I'm TAing for) [http://sarielhp.org/teach/](http://sarielhp.org/teach/) His hw problems guides one to figure out important materials that's _not_ covered in class by breaking it down to small steps. (Say, a hw problem that introduces parametric search) I definitely recommend solve some sariel style problems once one mastered the basic material.

</comment><comment><USER3> I liked this disclaimer

> Despite several rounds of revision, these notes still contain mnay mistakes, > errors, bugs, gaffes, omissions, snafus, kludges, typos, mathos, grammaros, > thinkos, brain farts, nonsense, garbage, cruft, junk, and outright lies, all > of which are entirely Steve Skiena's fault

(Skiena is the author of The Algorithm Design Manual which is a very popular algorithm book. Seems like he reviewed these notes :)

I like computer science books with a sense of humor in any case...

<comment><USER2> It's actually a reference to a disclaimer in Algorithm Design Manual. I don't think he actually reviewed the lecture notes.

The Algorithm Design Manual had the following(page ix in second edition) "Any errors, deficiencies, or problems in this book are somebody else's fault, but I would appreciate knowing about them so as to determine who is to blame."

Hence the joke.

Source: Steve told me.

<comment><USER3> Lol :)

Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "<!-- I have taught incarnations of this course fourteen times: Spring 1999, Fall 2000, Spring 2001, Fall 2002, Spring 2004, Fall 2005, Fall 2006, Spring 2007, Fall 2008, Spring 2009, Spring 2010, Fall 2010, Fall 2012, Fall 2013, (Spring 2014), and Fall 2014.-->" found in source</comment>


Show HN: Get Review – A Community to Get Feedback on Your Startup Idea - <AUTHOR> https://getreview.co/ <comment><AUTHOR> Have an idea and want to get feedback from other creators and startup founders? Get Review can you help you with that. In order to get the most value, you will also need to give feedback to others and earn Karma points.

</comment><comment><USER2> Interesting idea. There is also Indie Hackers where people can post in the forums and receive advice. How does your service differentiate from them?

<comment><AUTHOR> The key is the community is karma based, the more members you help, the more feedback you can get on your product.There is also a questionnaire which has turned out to be super relevant for idea evaluation, the feedback you receive also remains private and anonymous.

Also checked out Indie Hackers, the product looks great will definitely look into it more.

Thanks</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is there an open-sourced Medium-themed blog? - node-bayarea I really like Medium, its font, typography, and simplicity, all really appeals to me. I'm trying to start a blog for myself and am wondering if there are any ready-to-use "Production quality" (and already used by. lot of people) blog software (react, gatsby, hexo) etc that would give me something out-of-the-box? any help appreciated. I know how to run it on firebase or netlify, <comment><AUTHOR> This comes pretty close: [https://wowthemesnet.github.io/mediumish-theme- jekyll/](https://wowthemesnet.github.io/mediumish-theme-jekyll/)

I'm not sure how up to date the design is compared to the current styling of Medium, but it's a good start.

</comment><comment><USER2> Check out [https://ghost.org/](https://ghost.org/)</comment>


San Francisco's public defecation map – highlights a shitty situation - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2014/11/21/san-francisco-human-wasteland-project/ <comment><AUTHOR> It's an unfortunate situation and city must do something about it. I think of small businesses that may be losing a lot of customers because of this. This is also related to SF's homeless problem. On three separate occasions, I saw homeless people holding smooth running of restaurants hostage to get food or money from the them. In one case, the person walked in and started eating from a customer's plate. The cashier had to intervene and handle the situation (those customers end up leaving and the restaurant didn't charge them).

<comment><USER2> "the person walked in and started eating from a customer's plate"

Wow. I assume that there was a physical confrontation, and that's why all parties had to leave? How does SFPD react when a diner BTHO of a homeless guy who starts stealing food from him while he's...seated in a restaurant??

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Forget exhaust, _this_ is the real air quality problem.

<comment><USER4> With the rain, the shit piles are now leaking around into pools.

Walking my dog anywhere near these things now requires me to exercise 3-foot radius avoidance practices.</comment></comment>


Show HN: A Browser-based Blockchain - <AUTHOR> https://nimiq.com/betanet <comment><USER2> This is a neat. However, there is nothing explaining fundamental operation I can find except the source code itself, and it seems to me that it suffers from pretty serious scale limitations. I.e its ability to deliver on the value proposition in its current form is low.

Also, your proof of work is Sha256 which means that the moment this thing goes live and there is any value attached it won't work. You have to switch to a memory hard proof of work to even begin doing this.

Finally, most of what you are trying to accomplish can already be done using SPV onto existing digital currency networks. Pushing the entire network into the browser doesn't really help. The cynic in me wants to say this is an ICO pump for people who don't know any better.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree that our technical documentation is not strong and well presented yet. Have you read this? [https://medium.com/nimiq-network/introducing-the-browser- bas...](https://medium.com/nimiq-network/introducing-the-browser-based- blockchain-63d408add368)

<comment><USER3> > Partner with VISA payment services to create a VISA-to-Nimiq exchange > (centralized in the first place).

By Q4 2017? This sounds outrageous, if not impossible. This also seems to contradict your comment that "'demystify blockchain technology'" is a perfect description for our intention!" Your intention seems to be to build a mainstream, browser-based cryptocurrency. Good luck.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> So far looks sweet, I have a small bit of advice.

I'd double down on the simplicity aspect - for a lot of people cryptocurrency is a weird thing to get into and hard to understand. You guys have taken something as ultra-complex as mining and blockchain and stuck it in the browser, no small task. Make your focus a cryptocurrency for everyone - include demos of how cryptocurrency itself works.

<comment><USER5> Well, it is not good to do Proof-of-Work in the browser. It's inefficient and people will not keep mining if they have very small chances of getting a block.

I don't know how this could be solved, maybe you should experiment with other forms of ledger consensus that would fit better in a browser environment and at the same would not exclude normal people from participating in benefit of specialized miners.

The network part of this thing is amazing by itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have a soft spot for removing barriers and making things accessible so this really resonates with me. With a single click of a button I'm connected to the network and have started mining. Pretty awesome!

I also love how the P2P is visualized in a straight-forward way. I definitely think this will help demystify blockchain technology. You immediately realize that you're part of a decentralized network and that blockchain nodes are nothing else than other nodes like you.

<comment><AUTHOR> "demystify blockchain technology" is a perfect description for our intention! thanks!

<comment><USER3> If this is an educational product then it would be even better to expose more details to the user. For example, the fundamental steps illustrated in the Blockchain Demo ([https://anders.com/blockchain/](https://anders.com/blockchain/)). A nimiq blockchain explorer would also be a nice feature.

<comment><USER7> A blockchain viewer (showing most recent blocks) is in the works for the Betanet and should go live soon. Full chain explorer will follow for the feature-complete Testnet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Left this running all day at about 30kh/s and got 200 coins

Couple of hints:

* Have a way of backing up your private keys! Many people delete browser local storage and this is not a safe or long term place for them to live! NAG THE USER TO DO THIS. 99% of the people here betanet will lose their keys, fo sure

* Consider hierarchical deterministic (HD) generated keys, so a single seed can generate all future keys

* Consider brainwallet seed (must be long, suggest at least 256 bits entropy), custom dictionary words

Most cryptocurrencies use secp256k1 or ed25519 for ecdsa/xeddsa as their curve, this is using P-256. Satoshi was suspicious of the NIST curves, thats why he didn't use P-256 for bitcoin.

You will need something better than SHA256 for PoW function too, others have identified memory hard hash as idea. Look at Momentum (ProtoShares), EtHash (Ethereum) and CryptoNight (Bytecoin/Monero) as approaches to this. All have rolled their own in this space, keep you tx hashes standard but use something creative for PoW function.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot for your feedback!

The protocol we've deployed in our Betanet is not final. The Betanet is just about getting early community feedback and testing in the wild. There will be lots of breaking changes.

We will not use NIST curves in our mainnet for the reasons you mentioned. We are working on an implementation of ed25519 in WebAssembly.

We will not use sha256 as in our mainnet. We are already working on a WebAssembly implementation of a memory hard POW.

We want to bring blockchain technology to the masses. So in the long run we are explicitly targeting users who are not yet familiar with cryptocurrencies. Following from that we will put a lot of effort in creating user interfaces that take users by the hand and explain important aspects like "How to keep your private key secure".

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Interestingly, I'm getting a _significantly_ higher hash rate in Chrome than in Firefox (12,000 vs. 600). This is despite the fact that Firefox has a higher priority on my OS (High vs. Normal) and they're both using the same amount of CPU.

What hash rates are you seeing on your machine/browser?

<comment><USER10> I was getting ~4KH/sec then I've done some tuning and got to 20KH/sec with Chrome. I plugged in the power cord, changed from Balanced performance to High performance option. Also enabled GPU for use with Chrome instead of integrated graphics.

<comment><USER10> "At your current hashrate you can expect to mine 50 Nimiqs every 2.3 hours"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Before anyone gets too excited because the page doenst make this clear, you are all mining on the Test block chain, not the release block chain, the coins are worthless, they are fine for playing around with though.

<comment><AUTHOR> There is a disclaimer under the "Connect to Network" button stating "Testnet Mining does not create permanent Nimiqs." Do you think this we should make that more prominent?

<comment><USER11> I dont think it matters, just saying its easy to click through without seeing it, some people might leave it open thinking they are mining for real.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Ok, you have a roadmap, but I'm left with more questions than answers, e.g.: if a blockchain relies on every node having a ledger of the whole transactions, and bitcoin's ledger now occupies more than 100GB, then how is this supposed to work when the ledger becomes big?

Also, how do the 'instant' transactions work?

<comment><USER13> it uses the Mini Blockchain scheme [https://cryptonite.info/files/mbc-scheme- rev3.pdf](https://cryptonite.info/files/mbc-scheme-rev3.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I like how it starts you up instantly and how simple mining, helping the network and transactions seem to be. Really well done. I found a quick block too and sending/receiving transactions and getting the confirmations seems nice and fast. As a user it makes me pretty happy.

However, turning your coins 'permanent' somehow doesn't seem nearly as intuitive. I have no real idea how these coins are now tied to me. I found my block on chrome, and launching the site in incognito mode / firefox doesn't show the funds in my wallet. This would make me worry about deleting my browser history/cookies/etc and I'd have no idea how to access these coins on another computer. How do I go about making these coins tied to me beyond some form of browser storage, and why isn't that process explained somewhere? Right now it feels like a mild breeze might erase my wallet and the coins in it. Is this something that'll be dealt with in the future?

</comment><comment><USER15> I like the idea of reducing the barrier to entry in the multitude of markets, but I'm also a bit cynical in that any web-based wallet seems extremely risky to me in terms of the potential for attacks and stolen coins.

</comment><comment><USER16> This seems really interesting! For someone without too much knowledge about blockchain and digital currencies: How does this compare to Bitcoin and Ethereum?

<comment><AUTHOR> It is written in Javascript, communicates over WebRTC + WebSockets and therefore you can connect to the network from your browser without an intermediary. Additionally it is designed for light-clients (such as low-end devices) and transaction speed.

<comment><USER17> How does this compare to BTC with regards to privacy?

My thoughts: most regular users don't really care about privacy at the level that BTC promises. If people really cared that much about privacy, then social media platforms like FB wouldn't be where most people are today.

Combine what I've said above with the easy on-boarding facility that Nimiq provides and I think this solution carries the day. This might be the 'style' with which most first time cryptocurrency users (emphasis on miners) get started with cryptocurrency. With mass adoption, computing and securing the network might be easier (read cheaper) than is the case with BTC as it stands.

I really like what you've done.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Just ask here if you need some test coins. I already mined a first block.

<comment><USER19> Mined 50 as well, reply with addresses :)

<comment><USER20> 08CB2993E1B8234AAC23C25B5EEF666EABCE712A thanks :)

<comment><USER19> On its way!

[edit] Sent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is it possible/easy to compile stellar-core to the browser? If we could do it and use the networking module/part of this Nimiq it would be awesome.

</comment><comment><USER21> Where is their office? Looks like they're all working out of some beach house somewhere in the South Pacific.

<comment><USER13> in Santa Teresa Costa Rica

<comment><USER21> Okay, looks like this place: [http://www.skyloftcostarica.com/](http://www.skyloftcostarica.com/). Wonder if that's full time or just a field trip.

<comment><USER22> There you get an insight how hard they work on this project [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOgOWWVinfY&list=PLuhSf5DE3F...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOgOWWVinfY&list=PLuhSf5DE3FFQSP4NtO- rVJqd34WRVMv5O)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Lets get this out of the way now: what are the block size rules as transaction numbers increase?

<comment><USER7> The Mini Blockchain Scheme is being implemented and should be coming into effect later this week: [https://cryptonite.info/files/mbc-scheme- rev3.pdf](https://cryptonite.info/files/mbc-scheme-rev3.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> So is this a mining program _inside_ the browser? Can someone please explain?

<comment><USER7> Yes. You connect and sync to the Nimiq Network through your browser and run Block mining inside your browser. No installation necessary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Network bandwidth just doubled. Don't think my thinkpad is going to mine any.

</comment><comment><USER26> This is interesting - but how can a browser serve incoming connection requests?

<comment><USER7> WebRTC is a web protocol designed for peer to peer connections.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> That's pretty cool. Will you also make a native miner?

</comment><comment><USER24> Why another cryptocurrency? I can't keep track!!

<comment><USER7> Because this one is built with one thing in mind: making it so simple that your mom can use it. Even the combined market cap of all Cryptocurrencies to date still only represents a small fraction of our financial transactions and monetary system ([http://virtualrealitytimes.com/2017/05/30/chart-bitcoin- vers...](http://virtualrealitytimes.com/2017/05/30/chart-bitcoin-versus-other- wealth)). This is far from mainstream by any means. Nimiqs browser-based approach and clear focus on ease of use brings blockchain technology to everyone, everyday.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Is the betanet app code available somewhere?

<comment><USER11> Top right of the page is a github link

<comment><USER19> The miner repo was empty and now has been removed, the core repo doesn't contain this app.

<comment><USER11> [https://github.com/nimiq- network/core/blob/master/clients/br...](https://github.com/nimiq- network/core/blob/master/clients/browser/index.html)

Is this not it, I havent tried it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> What does "nimiq" means?

<comment><USER18> On the bottom of the website it says: "Nimiq is an Inuit word used for an object or a force which binds things together."

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I thought general opinion from security experts was browser based crypto is DOA...

<comment><USER30> There's nothing inherently wrong with browser-based crypto. Most issues arise when you try to e.g. replace like TLS with JavaScript to encrypt passwords before sending them to a server. SHA256 doesn't become broken simply because it's run in a browser.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> This is good until the ASICS come in force and make mining in the browser useless.

<comment><USER7> This is the Betanet. We will not use sha256 as in our Mainnet. We are already working on a WebAssembly implementation of a memory hard ASIC resistant POW.

<comment><USER31> Thanks, but while ASICs may not be a threat, in general finely tuned beefy machines might be? So that running this in a browser would be as efficient as mining litecoin in a browser?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> 17% CPU utilization when mining. You need to multithread that.

Or better yet, implement it in a WebGL shader.

<comment><USER33> Looks like they've already added GPU mining as a MainNet milestone. ([https://github.com/nimiq-network/core/issues/39](https://github.com/nimiq- network/core/issues/39))</comment></comment>


Chinese medical staff request international medical assistance to fight COVID-19 - <AUTHOR> https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(20)30065-6/fulltext#%20 <comment><USER2> I can't express how concerning this letter is to me. Some of the steps they're taking to prevent further spread of the disease are so unorthodox that I'm not sure what to make of them. On the one hand, it suggests that the Chinese government was not prepared to handle a pandemic (of any kind). On the other hand, it could mean that despite their best efforts and preparation, CoViD-19 is overwhelming their response. Any way you look at it, this is not good, and it seems increasingly likely that we're on the verge of a global pandemic with serious economic consequences.

</comment><comment><USER3> What does the retraction mean exactly?</comment>