BitCoin Card To Launch In 2 Months, Says BitInstant

hypnosec writes "Charlie Shrem, co-founder of BitInstant LLC, has confirmed that a BitCoin-funded international debit/credit card should be available very soon. Giving a time frame of 6-8 weeks, Shrem said over an IRC chat session that the card will function like any other credit or debit card, and that it can be used at places where MasterCard is being accepted. Shrem has also said that the initial 1000-odd cards will be given for free and subsequent cards will carry a charge of around $10. Any transaction that is carried out through the card [will incur a] 1% BitCoin transfer fee on top of the $1.50 ATM withdrawal fee."

Comments

My last virus clenaup involved BitCoin processing

[PoliTech]

So pardon me if I don't trust BitCoin cash, credit or debit cards.

Doesn't this go against the spirit of BitCoin?

[tlhIngan]

BitCoin's supposed to be this anonymous fiat currency system. Yet they're going through a decidedly non-anonymous regular payment card network (MasterCard).

I understand it makes the handling much easier for regular transactions, but doesn't this really sorta make it non-anonymous?

Though, I suppose since it's really just a currency enchange between bitcoin and whatever you use, though given it's volatility (and speculators don't help), it seems dangerous - one wrong swipe of the card and what was supposed to be a 1BTC/$15 USD exchange turns into a 1BTC/$4USD exchange because some hacker decided to cash out 40,000 BTC or something at that time. Remember the currency exchange on a credit card happens at the time of the transaction...

(And whoever is cheering the day BTC becomes the popular currency - remember there is no protection against the ills of the financial industry. Speculation, HFT (including arbitrarge amongst exchanges), etc.).

Re:Doesn't this go against the spirit of BitCoin?

[IamTheRealMike]

BitCoin's supposed to be this anonymous fiat currency system.

This is a really common misconception. The point of Bitcoin is not to be an anonymous currency. The point of Bitcoin is to be a peer to peer decentralized currency that has limited and slowly decreasing inflation. Let me quote the original description Satoshi had on the website (nowadays it's on the front page of the wiki):

Bitcoins are sent easily through the Internet, without needing to trust any third party. Transactions:

• Are irreversible by design
• Are fast. Funds received are available for spending within minutes.
• Cost very little, especially compared to other payment networks.

The supply of bitcoins is regulated by software and the agreement of users of the system and cannot be manipulated by any government, bank, organization or individual. The limited inflation of the Bitcoin system's money supply is distributed evenly (by CPU power) to miners who help secure the network.

You'll note there's nothing in there about being anonymous. Bitcoin is designed to provide privacy (or call it anonymity if you want), because it's a financial system and people demand financial privacy. Would you use a payment system that published a public record of everything you purchased? In the current banking system, privacy is provided by your bank and credit card company (ignoring the fact that they often waive that privacy for governments both domestic and foreign, with or without legal due process). But in a financial system that doesn't have banks, that approach obviously doesn't work.

As a result, nothing requires you to be anonymous if you use Bitcoin. Most people would like to keep their transaction history private but are happy to identify themselves to merchants and financial service providers (for instance, I do that, as does any user of Mt Gox).

Re:My last virus clenaup involved BitCoin processi

[IamTheRealMike]

It probably involved email and HTTP too. Do you trust them?

I think in the next 6-12 months we'll see botnets largely stop mining on Bitcoin because the rollout of ASIC mining hardware will make virus-infected PCs hopelessly un-competitive, even though the electricity is free. They're already worthless for doing CPU mining even if you have thousands of them and soon even if you have a lot of infected gaming machines the return will probably not be worth the time.

Re:Legendary security

[MightyYar]

I've seen where some of the sites that accept and trade bitcoins were hacked, but AFAIK the bitcoin system itself has never been hacked. Many, many more dollar and euro based websites are hacked, and dollars are printed freely even in countries that aren't supposed to print them (the dollar "system" has been hacked).

Yet we use dollars and euros.

Re:Why?

[MightyYar]

Here's one scenario:

You sell things on eBay. You have a Paypal account that can accept credit cards. When you sell you item, you pay Paypal 2.9% + $0.30 for merchant fees.

Or, you sell things on eBay. You accept BitCoin. When you pull the money out of the ATM, you pay 1% + $1.50.

For a $100 item, BitCoin costs you $2.50 and Paypal costs you $3.20.