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Belgian Telecom Becomes First To Accept Bitcoin
An anonymous reader writes "Belgian telecom Mobile Vikings announced this week that it will begin accepting payment in BitCoin. Combined with mobile wallet apps, the service promises to revolutionize point of sale technologies. Could this be the tipping point for both BitCoin and payment by mobile phone?"
No. Hopefully this particular hopeful news article questioning doesn't last as long as the "Is this the year of Linux on the desktop?" one.
You can't generally set a value for something of worth in bitcoin, because its value changes too much... sometimes even from one day to the next. The only way to manage it at all is to always deal in x dollars worth of bitcoin, in which case the dollar is still the currency being used.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
They probably thought it was real money!
as bitcoins become more widely accepted (further and further up the supply chain) it could very well replace the need to be locked into the value of x dollars worth of BTC. It's nowhere near there yet, but it's working it's way there, how many people even thought they would be able to pay for anything with it 4 years ago. Change is hard and slow, specially when it comes to money, the digital world is unused to such things.
I suspect any time a company/Richard Branson makes a press release validating Bitcoin, they are actually invested in Bitcoin at that moment and hoping to ride the bump of their own news before dumping the stuff. This might also apply to the press.
Slashdot continuing its trend of giving away free front-page adverts for trendy companies that are starting some random scheme that is vaguely tech-related, but wildly impractical (like most advertising-centric schemes are.)
I'm a happy Mobile Vikings customer for almost two years now, and I applaud their move to accept Bitcoin. I will be using this option from now on.
Mobile Vikings are a small, tech oriented operator. Like several small operators in Belgium they use the cell tower network of one of the 3 big operators. MV were the first in Belgium to offer a decent plan for mobile data usage, a 15 € per month prepaid formula with 2 GB data included, while other operators where still billing (a lot) per MB used. When a lot of customers switched, this forced the big operators to offer similar plans (although they still cost more).
Posting this as AC because slashdot seems to be Bitcoin friendly. But essentially it looks like a weapon to weaken governments and social services:
So I hope this is not a turning point for the virtual currency.
The way Bitcoin has gone recently, it's an even bet on whether your payments will double or halve in value over the next few weeks.
Could this be the tipping point for both BitCoin and payment by mobile phone?"
Sure if done by a mobile company with more than 180,000 customers. Get back to me when someone on the scale of British Telecom, Verizon, Softbank, etc. jump on BTC.
Stupid belgians! Bitcoin is a ponzi scheme! A pyramid!
Perhaps not mobile, but namecheap accepts BTC.
Silence is a state of mime.
I.E. They're accepting BitCoins as a commodity, not a currency via real time exchange rate, and I wonder who pays the transaction costs for the currency exchange.
BitCoin's wild fluctuations - a result of little to no liquidity, and half of all BitCoins in circulation being owned by less than a 1,000 people - make it impractical or downright foolish to post fixed prices.
/* Dang, I can't type that well. */
This is nothing more than a publicity stunt. There's no non-cumbersome way to set prices in bitcoin, as its price flunctuates wildly.
Improve at backgammon rapidly through addictive quickfire position quizzes: www.bgtrain.com
Belgian Telecom is one company.
Mobile Vikings is another company.
Title is confusing, editors did not do a proper job there.
All you had to do is simply read the first 4 words of the summary and 3rd grade level reading comprehension.
the fall of bitcoin has already started, it will be regulated, taxed in some places and banned into oblivion in others. the big sell-off is coming soon.
The complete pipeline is:
You get bitcoin with the method of your choosing for your payment, send the bitcoins to Viking telecom, who'll then convert them back into local currency (apparently using bitpay to turn them into euros)
Given the current volatility of bitcoin, nobody is holding a big amount of bitcoins, but mostly buying/selling them on a "need" basis.
Don't see them as a currency, see them as a method for money exchange.
Now for the particular advantage of bitcoins:
If you live in a foreign country (but travel from/to belgium a lot and thus need a local number too, to avoid extravagant roaming costs) AND you don't have the luck of living in a SEPA country (thus don't have relatively fast bank-to-bank money transfers with relatively low fees. so you can't easily pay the bill each month by simply sending the euros from your own account), you'll have to use some payment processing.
The non bitcoin way: that would probably be using a credit card. which currently is in a quasi monopoly situation, meaning that your choice is limited to Master Card or VISA (which come with their share of problems for the merchant: like fees, and charge backs). And if you're not lucky, there might be some incompatibilities between the bank which issued your card and their payment processor (I've regularly had problems with my CC when in Italy or France).
Worse, they could do the same as every other on-line shop, and have you use PayPal (which requires you to also have an account at paypal). Which comes with even more problems (account freezing by PayPal).
Both you and the merchant have very little choice. Even if the merchant choose to support another newer less known payment processor, you would still be forced to register an account with that newer processor too (by that point, chance are the potential customer is moving to another different seller whose payment the client has an account for).
In short: both end-points of the transaction are forced to use a specific solution. And only popular solutions might be used. Freedom of choice in the method is low.
The bictoin way: the transaction it self is done with the bitcoin protocol. As long as both end point follow the bitcoin protocol, the transaction will succeed.
Your choices as a client are decoupled from the choices of the merchant.
You freely choose your way to get the bitcoins: exchanging them on an online exchange like MtGox or BTC-e, buying them online from a payment processor, directly buying them from other bitcoin users (for example, using localbitcoins to coordinate the exchange), using those you store into your own wallet (official bitcoin-qt wallet, etc.), mining them. As long it's bitcoins, and that you send them to a valid public address, (and you pay the ridiculously small fee), your transaction will succeed.
Same for the other side, the merchant choose the payment processor of its own preferences. TFA's example is bitpay, but it could have been coinbase. Or it could be any small newcomer. That doesn't change anything on the customer's hand (the customer isn't forced to use the same if he/she finds the payment processor too un-popular). As long as this payment processor provides a valid public adress, the transaction is bound to succeed.
So un-like credit cards, but like SEPA, bitcoins gives you a framework in which you have total liberty of choice at both ends (the choice of bank of the merchant doesn't influence the choice of bank of the customer, as long as both are SEPA compliant). Except that bitcoins is even faster (couple of dozens of minute, up to hours at worse-case scenario vs. a day or two, up to a couple of weeks in worse-case), and cheaper (miner fee and/or online wallet fee are in the cent range, where as SEPA payment can cost a few euros).
and bitcoin have less disadvantages (no charge backs, for example).
The same liberty of choice also will apply one day for more advanced functionnality: Even if today bitcoin is only used for direct transfers like SEPA, consider custommer protec
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
the current canonical way use only bitcoins for the transaction it self.
the merchant still list prices in local currency, and only computes btc prices according to payment processors' exchange rates.
you buy the necessary bitcoin and avoid keeping too much change on your account if you're afraid of exchange rate instability.
some bitcoins are thus exchanged in the middle, but their value doesn't mean much as both ends still use fiat.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Lol, I'm waiting for the price to go down as well but only so I can buy more. I wish you were more notable so I could trot out this quote in several decades like the many other classic examples of incorrect pessimism.
Can't blame the editors for not being fully up-to-date with Belgium's telecom landscape. Especially not when some company decides to call themselves "Belgian Telecom", simply inviting confusion. It's quite normal to say "that company is a Belgian telecom company" as it is normal to call a company an "American telecom company" or so.
That said I was not for any second confused. Most of the world will not know about that company named "Belgian Telecom", and not be confused. Possibly a large part of Belgians is not even confused. With your confusion, you're almost certainly a tiny, tiny minority here - reflecting at least as much on you, as on the editors you so despise.
I have lived and worked abroad based in London and/or Singapore for most of the last decade and travel extensively.
I have never had a problem with the banking system or payments anywhere I have been or need to transact. If you're in a country long enough to transact frequently (to have a need of recurring payments), you can easily establish a bank account there. If you just buy top-up sims for various countries, cash is fine (and COMPLETELY anonymous unless I'm on video, unlike obviously traceable bitcoin transactions)
Credit cards work everywhere and getting cash is easy, worldwide, for any frequent traveler. Anyone who's not a frequent traveler doesn't need bitcoin anyway, as in country transactions work even better everywhere.
My bank account won't disappear because it's hacked or my drive fails and I've lost my backups.
Currency conversions do shift slowly over time but not very quickly and in general isn't much to worry about unless you're dealing with very large purchases (houses, normally). No way I'd put any sizable amount in bitcoin.
Therefore, all it is is a kind of new paypal system with which to transact. Big deal. International banking is getting more seamless every day. Rather pay a few % for all the convenience it provides.
Does it matter? Telecoms, like public transit and other activities, is an area where Belgians are, beyond question, incompetent to a degree that you'd be inclined to argue must be due to malice....
_Can_ blame editors for not being up to date with English though. Editors are people supposed to make sure the summary is not confusing, and paid for that.
It was enough to title story "A Belgian Telecom..." (which implies one of many Belgian telecom companies) instead of "Belgian Telecom" (which is a specific company, Belgian Telecom).
Telecom name is also not confusing by far. In European countries telecom providers held monopoly for a long time, and such companies were simply called "Belgian Telecom", "Deutsche Telecom", "France Telecom", "Polish Telecom", "Makedonski Telecom", "British Telecom", "Magyar Telecom", "OtherCountry Telecom". Basic fact, google or wikipedia it.
Today many of them still hold these names, and for people in Europe "Country Telecom" means a very specific company.
I also welcome your personal comment about "reflecting on you". Nothing like turning proffessional matter (ability of paid editors to provide proper information) into a personal matter. I am glad to have been instructed and enlightened on why your point of view should prevail.
It does matter.
Last time I was in Belgium Telecom, public transport and other activities (brewing real beer) were handled competently. I am inclined to argue that your comment must be due to malice...
Headlines do normally not use articles. And that's not just in English.
I'll agree the idea is great but the banking cartels and governments under their control (all western first world countries) are scumbags. they won't let it endure.
Public Transport:
* Weekly delays on trains (I took a train to work daily for some years)
* City-busses not showing up when going to/from schools (supposedly runs every 6-8 minutes - 40 minutes without any busses)
* Ticketing system that several times has required using 2 tickets to open the new gates
* Gates at metro-station refusing to let people out, or slammed shut on an old woman (employees ignored the incident)
* Semi-regular cancellations or closed stations on metro
Phones:
* Belgacom spending 1.5 month repeatedly failing to correctly reroute a phone-number
* Phone/internet/IPTV failing at least once monthly for hours, for no apparent reason
* Having to plead with telecoms to get a technician to come correct their installations
* Cellphones (plural) not able to receive calls due to yet-another-outage
* Home-phone randomly switching number whenever someone on the local road moves in/out
Over the last 7 years, the number of issues in especially these areas have been staggering, and year-on-year I have more issues with phones/cellphones/internet than i ever had in total in my home-country. No malice, they are really either incompetent or sabotaging themselves.
There is no company called "Belgian Telecom", nor is there a "Belgium Telecom".
A company exists that is named "Belgacom", and the federal state of Belgium has the majority stake in it.
Things seem to have really gone down since my experiences then.
As I look at your list though, it looks familiar though. Almost as if modern systems get too complicated to operate nominally.
I have lived and worked abroad based in London and/or Singapore for most of the last decade and travel extensively.
I have never had a problem with the banking system or payments anywhere I have been or need to transact.
I'm based in an european country that would hardly be considered under-developed or problematic.
Still, whenever I'm in Italy, I'm unable to tank gaz into my car using any card at all (I suspect that the self-sevice vending machine at the gaz station insist on using the magnetic stripe, whereas my bank enforces chip+PIN only on security grounds). Same, whenever I'm in france at a ski resort, the ski-pass vending machine seem to randomly refuse some of the card.
I used to live in Germany for some time, and until I set-up a local bank account, my debit cards where randomly refused by some shop (germany still accepts signatures for debit cards, which is an absolute no-no for my local banks on obvious security grounds). That was a few year back, and my landlord's bank still wasn't SEPA-ready and transfers from my bank account had massive delays and big fees (before I left his bank deployed better SEPA compliance with lower fees and faster transaction).
Even online shopping can be problematic because lots of shops have websites in a broken way that doesn't play well with the advanced security features and protection of the credit card my bank is issuing.
cash is fine
one of the points of bitcoin and similar cryptography-based coins is to become the equivalent of cash for online transaction.
(and COMPLETELY anonymous unless I'm on video, unlike obviously traceable bitcoin transactions)
Anonymity has never been the point of bitcoin. I mean every single transaction is broadcasted to the whole network. How would you even dream of it being anonymous?! At best its pseudonymous (no clear identity for a random casual exchange, but someone with the necessary ressource, time and patience might be able to trace the transaction and eventually reveal the actual identity behind the "pseudonyme" of public hash).
Credit cards work everywhere
NOT im my experience. At least luckily, getting cash from an ATM is still a possible options as you mention (but often with fees. My cards tend to have bigger fees on withdrawal than on payment abroad).
But "cash" is only IRL. The problem is that there is currently no such things as "cash" on-line. The closest thing to it in the recent past has been PayPal, but it locks you into a single solution that everyone has to use. And comes with its own problems (account freezes is one of them).
My bank account won't disappear because it's hacked or my drive fails and I've lost my backups. {...} Currency conversions do shift slowly over time but not very quickly {...} No way I'd put any sizable amount in bitcoin.
Just the same way you wouldn't keep a massive amount of cash in a single wallet that you can lost, you should also store a big amount of bitcoins just right now.
Now with bitcoins, you still have lots of different method to store them. Lots of different models of trust, of security, etc. Lots of wallet back-up solution.
You have a relative choice of freedom (online wallet. With eventually advanced things like 2 factor indentification, 2-out-3 signatures for added security, etc. Or the official client. Or a smartphone app. Or a air gapped computer. Or paper wallet. Or physical coin. Or brain wallet. Or what ever. Etc. / Backup it your self. Use encrypted cloud storage. Use time capsule. Use a distributed RAID system such as DRDB, whatever.)
If you don't like the security offered by setup A, you're free to use a different setup B.
Also over time, as it gains more traction (either bitcoin itself or one of the numerous altcoins), it will get more used for exchange (as intended) and less for speculation. Meaning that its prices will be more dictated by overall us
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]