BitPay Continues To Falter

An interview (archive) conducted by UK Business Insider's Oscar Williams-Grut with BitPay's co-founder and CTO Stephen Pair reveals the company continues to struggle in its attempt to entice new customers to spend their bitcoins at one of the 60,000 merchants the payment processor claims to have signed up over a four year period since it launched back in May, 2011. Perhaps ignorant to the fact bitcoin holders might be inclined to spend their coins if accepted at actual value and not the price set by the likes of BitPay, Bitstamp, Bitfinex and so forth, Pair told Business Insider:

We keep adding merchants – we're up to over 60,000 now — but they're selling to the same pool of Bitcoin early adopters. At Bitpay we've never thought there'd be this overnight adoption where you get people using it this year or even next year. It's going to take some time. In the industry there's a realisation that yes it's an incredible technology but it's going to take a while for it to mature.

After a disappointing showing at the 2014 Bitcoin Black Friday sales and the lay offs of nine employees earlier this year, Pair signalled BitPay might be about to pivot away from being a payment processor:

We're talking to quite a few banks, they're very serious, they want to do pilot projects and they can't start working on them fast enough. There are so many use cases in a bank that this technology can address and make better. There are some use cases that almost all of them want to do, like how do you do clearing and selling between banks more efficiently. Just being able to transfer a balance between banks, to have that happen instantaneously and settle immediately.

22 thoughts on “BitPay Continues To Falter

  1. Look, I appreciate Qntra speaking truth to power and all, but are you sure you want to cheer at Bitpay's problems? They've been a reasonably upstanding member of the community, technically very solid, and most importantly haven't abused a fairly dominant market position when they had it.

    That said, they've got the same blind spot as the rest of the current "crop" of bitcoin companies. They don't understand that AML/KYC is the real enemy since it robs BTC of basically all the benefits that can easily be explained to the average citizen on the street (and no, inflation/central-banking-related issues are not among these).

    • Almost forgot,

      GBANGA!

    • It's not so much cheering on its continued failure but more the absurdity of Hearn and Andresen pointing to payment processors such as BitPay and claiming they have its support in raising the block size limit on the basis it is needed in order to cater to increasing transactions. Meanwhile, Pair's quotes prove the transactions are not even there to begin with.

      • Oh I completely agree that's absurd, but it's hardly Bitpay's fault that these bozos are cooking up examples that involve them…

        GBANGA!

        • Well, they didn't exactly disclaim them, either.

          They're technically solid and politically inept. It would be a lot more excusable if they didn't have where to take notes.

  2. The block size increase is a foregone conclusion- All of you truth and power people need to make way for (even more) progress on the network.

    Block size isn't some sword in stone miracle that can never be moved or put asunder. It needs to be dealt with now. Have you seen block capacity recently?

  3. The network cannot follow your precious supply and demand curve at current capacities.

  4. correction: The network cannot follow a nominal supply and demand curve at current capacities. Instead, each block will be maxed out (blocks are full now), network queues will become unusable and the protocol will go straight to the banks- and we are stress testing their new clearinghouse free of charge. Don't be foolish.

    • Supply is fixed.
      Demand is dynamic.
      Price will be determined.

      Seriously though, I don't understand how you "block size to infinity" people think that miners will be incentivized to secure the chain if there is no scarcity? If the Blockchain is limitless, then securing it becomes pointless. If there is no cost for putting crap into the blockchain, then what do you think it will end up filled with?

  5. Miners do not make the network decentralized. The nodes are the network. The nodes need better access. The miners will follow.

    • Bullshit. Nodes don't *need* better access, they *need* security. Without security, you've got nothing. Miners ain't gonna work for free. If nodes want better access they can pay for it.

  6. Do you really want bitcoin to see widespread adoption or do you like having a techno-bullshit currency all to yourself? The network must scale- and lots of people must start using it. Don't be so upset. You can still claim early adoption status to your friends.

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