13 ms·

Namecheap now officially accepts Bitcoin

329 points by redegg 14y ago

kalleboo 14y ago
Looks like they're using BitPay https://bitpay.com https://bitpay.com edit: I just tried it. The workflow works well, but this brings me back to my biggest reservation about the usability of BitCoin for regular transactions: The long period (hours) to confirm a transaction.
- mwsherman 14y ago
  Hours to settle into $? Or hours to confirm the Bitcoin transaction at all?
  - kalleboo 14y ago
    To confirm the Bitcoin transaction at all. That's just how Bitcoin works - you have to wait for X new blocks to get confirmations from other peers. How long you wait determines your risk level.
    - dubcanada 14y ago
      I suppose that's kinda bad for drop catching, but regular domains take 24 hours to be useful anyways. So its not that bad :)
      - dangrossman 14y ago
        > regular domains take 24 hours to be useful anyways It only takes about 10 minutes for a new registration to go live with most registrars. If you set your DNS servers during the purchase and have the zones ready from the get-go, your domain is resolving on the web immediately.
        rwg 14y ago
        s/on the web/on the Internet/ twitch :-)
        drusenko 14y ago
        that's accurate. we pride ourselves in getting most of our domains online and functional in about 30 seconds -- as long as you don't visit the domain within those first 30 seconds and get your ISP to cache the "does not exist" record.
    - KingMob 14y ago
      It doesn't require hours at the protocol level, it's just a social standard. Typically, the first confirmation would occur in ~10 minutes. At the moment, the convention is 6 blocks / 1 hour is sufficient to prevent double-spending, but any merchant could have its own standard. Also, for something revocable like a domain name, there's nothing preventing Namecheap from giving you the domain name immediately, and then revoking your access to it later if the transaction ultimately fails.
      - kalleboo 14y ago
        Thanks for clarifying it.
      - runeks 14y ago
        > Also, for something revocable like a domain name, there's nothing preventing Namecheap from giving you the domain name immediately, and then revoking your access to it later if the transaction ultimately fails. Not according to shiftpgdn: > NameCheap actually doesn't have the capacity to revoke domains as they're an eNom reseller. Enom's policy is that once you buy a domain, it's yours. With domains sales being such a low margin business I can understand their level of caution. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5323964 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5323964
    - disintermediate 14y ago
      Also, as Bitcoin matures, you'll see businesses pop up that will insure against the risk for a small portion of the transaction allowing near instant confirmation for merchants.
      - Nursie 14y ago
        BUT BUT BUT BUT .... no transaction fees! I love that over time people start coming up with solutions to the same damn problems that other payment schemes have already come up with, and that last week they were saying were evil because someone else was doing it. It's not unique to bitcoin, you see it in all sorts of places, it is funny though.
        runeks 14y ago
        The difference is competition. Nothing fancy, nothing new and shiny. Just something that has been proven to work time and time again in lowering prices. The barrier to entry in the payment card industry is simply too high to allow much competition. Entering the business of bitcoin payment processing has an extremely low barrier to entry; all the hard stuff has been done already!
        tlrobinson 14y ago
        Bitcoin is first and foremost a currency, not a payment scheme. You can use it like cash with no (or minimal) fees, or you can layer schemes with various properties on top of it.
        Nursie 14y ago
        Right, cool, awesome. But when people then layer payment schemes and payment-scheme type-assurances, services and (of course) fees on top of it, is it wrong to make this comparison? Because at the moment you see a lot of people touting the 'no fees' part as the reason it wins over credit/debit cards, but when the weaknesses of that are pointed out someone like yourself inevitably pops up to tell us that of course it's not meant for that, but payment systems can be layered over the top, with a fee structure. Or it's silly to expect that because it's just like cash, when the expectation is in response to a BTC advocates claim that it's the best thing evar for the problem domain. Basically it can't be both ways and I am kinda tired of the constant claims that it is.
ashamedlion 14y ago
I'm loving this Bitcoin ramp up over the past few weeks. Namecheap should be applauded for their general endorsement of "what's good for the internet". Of course it's in their best interest, but you don't see GoDaddy doing the same. I think back to the "So, that's the end of Bitcoin"[1] article by Forbes and chuckle to myself. Hopefully one day we can look back at that article in the same way we look back at Ballmer laughing at the iPhone [2] [1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2011/06/20/so-thats-the-end-of-bitcoin-then/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2011/06/20/so-thats-... [2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eywi0h_Y5_U http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eywi0h_Y5_U
- deleted 14y ago
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- invalidOrTaken 14y ago
  Second that on Namecheap apparently being on the side of the internet. Weren't they a vocal opponent of SOPA?
  - ashamedlion 14y ago
    Yep http://community.namecheap.com/blog/2011/12/22/we-say-no-to-sopa/ http://community.namecheap.com/blog/2011/12/22/we-say-no-to-... http://www.namecheap.com/moveyourdomainday.aspx http://www.namecheap.com/moveyourdomainday.aspx http://community.namecheap.com/blog/2012/01/18/blackout/ http://community.namecheap.com/blog/2012/01/18/blackout/
  - geekam 14y ago
    Yes they were. Made me move all my domains to namecheap.
  - michaelkscott 14y ago
    Chiming in here to say that I moved all my domains from GoDaddy to Namecheap, too. Fantastic service so far.
  - Achshar 14y ago
    As far as I remember, they gave a discount to people moving from godaddy and even provided a tool to assist them move. Of course it was in their best interest.
foxylad 14y ago
A domain registrar is going to have a fairly technically literate customer base, but bitcoin is edging towards the mainstream faster than I'd expected.
davidroberts 14y ago
I think in five years, the idea of using credit or debit cards for electronic transactions will seem slightly ridiculous, sort of the way using snail mail to pay bills by check seems now.
- taligent 14y ago
  Your logic is completely faulty. Paying bills over the internet was easier and simpler than paying by check. Paying by credit and debit cards are easier, safer and simpler than using say Bitcoin. There is zero chance that those cards are going anywhere. If anything the popularity of PayWave and other NFC technologies should see their use increase.
  - toomuchtodo 14y ago
    Except its now legal for merchants to tack on a surcharge for you paying with credit (as it should be). Online merchants will absorb the cost of processing credit cards, as they aren't going to wait for a check in the mail. But physical merchants that can accept cash and are now allowed to recoup that 3%? I can see certain groups of people migrating away from plastic if it increases the cost of their goods/services in a meaningful way.
    - BoyWizard 14y ago
      If I have a problem with an online purchase that I can't sort out with the merchant, my bank is more than happy to compensate me for it. Not possible with Bitcoin.
      - krasin 14y ago
        Escrow services do exist for Bitcoin.
        untog 14y ago
        I assume they are not operating out of the goodness of their own hearts? (they'd be pretty useless if they did, anyway- where would my refund money come from?)
lowglow 14y ago
Hey all! I'm trying to build a domain registrar we'd actually love to use. Does bitcoin really appeal to you as a user? I'm trying to find a list of must-haves and want-to-have features to bake into my project.
- geuis 14y ago
  Honestly, a good reputation is the primary feature I care about. Don't be super expensive, on par with Namecheap and godaddy. And don't make the interface bloody complicated. GD is the worst, Namecheap is better but needs work. And make it incredibly easy to move my domains in and out.
  - lowglow 14y ago
    What's the most difficult part about moving your domains in and out and why would you switch registrars?
    - geuis 14y ago
      I have a lot of domains. Its expensive to maintain them. Godaddy will sometimes throw up brick walls and prevent domains from being transferred. Right now I've got something like 30 domains spread across 2-3 registrars. Its been such a hassle with godaddy that I kind of got stuck there, as much as I'd like to move.
- doctoboggan 14y ago
  Let me programmatically set the ip you point to and I will give you money
  - shiftpgdn 14y ago
    Can you expand on this? You could run your own DNS server and setup the appropriate DNS records at any registrar.
    - doctoboggan 14y ago
bmiranda 14y ago
The price of Bitcoin is currently hovering around 37 USD. I remember when Bitcoin was $2.00 after the first crash, I never expected it to rebound so quickly. Announcements such as Namecheap's lend credence to the current price, but I would not be surprised if a correction brought Bitcoin below $30. Regardless, I am excited that there are more places to spend Bitcoin each and every day.
- dmix 14y ago
  Well I don't think any average person is really keeping large amounts of money in bitcoin. It has mostly a transactional since the use cases are so niche.
  - snitko 14y ago
    That's actually not true. One of the reasons price is high is because people right now are hoarding.
    - n3rdy 14y ago
      The reward for block discovery also halved quite recently from 50 bitcoins to 25 bitcoins.
  - disintermediate 14y ago
    >use cases are so niche This is a first-world misperception. There is half a world excluded from traditional payment methods.
    - wmf 14y ago
      Is Bitcoin a realistic option for those people?
      - disintermediate 14y ago
        Not yet. Five years I'd guess.
eduardordm 14y ago
Because bitcoins are illegal in my country, I'll keep my personal domains on namecheap but will certainly move my company domains out of there until I figure out if there's a chance I have problems with this. I like bitcoins just like everyone, but there are laws you need to abide by and bitcoins are illegal in many countries.
- nathan_f77 14y ago
  Where is bitcoin illegal? I don't think Bitcoin is illegal in any country.
- Frozenlock 14y ago
  Do tell more! I was unaware of any country having officially stated Bitcoin as illegal.
  - paulnechifor 14y ago
    I too don't know of any such country, but he might be living in a country that bans all foreign currency. (That's how it was in communist Romania.)
    - ankeshk 14y ago
      You can make an argument that Bitcoins is not a foreign currency as it can be mined domestically in your own country.
      - jiggy2011 14y ago
        In fact, is it even known which country bitcoin originated in?
      - eduardordm 14y ago
        The law I pasted to some other replies just states that the only currency that can be used for commerce within the country is the national one. Also defines that national currency is the one created and regulated by the central bank.
Skoofoo 14y ago
Neat, but will they turn a blind eye to domains registered with false information? After all, the biggest advantage of Bitcoin over traditional digital payment methods is its capability to be used anonymously.
- redegg 14y ago
  Providing falsified WHOIS information will only harm the registrant.
  - rwg 14y ago
    How? I keep valid contact information in the WHOIS records for my domains, and all I get out of it is e-mail spam from my registrar, e-mail spam from everyone else, snail mail spam from my registrar, snail mail spam from competing registrars (Domain Registry of America, anyone?), "SELL YOUR DOMAIN TO US!" robocall spam, and yearly ICANN WDRP e-mails from my registrar.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
    - damian2000 14y ago
      You need an anonymized WHOIS service. Namecheap offers free anonymized WHOIS by default on their domains ... its called "WhoisGuard Protection". Its a must have these days.
      - clicks 14y ago
        > Namecheap offers free anonymized WHOIS by default on their domains ... its called "WhoisGuard Protection". Free for just the first year after transferring/registering a domain, after that it costs you.
      - garethadams 14y ago
        Yes, I want to be anonymous so I'll sign legal control of my domain over to a third party service (per their terms and conditions - http://www.whoisguard.com/registrant-agreement.asp http://www.whoisguard.com/registrant-agreement.asp): • who you have to "provide […] truthful, complete, current, accurate and reliable contact details" to, • who "has the right to disclose your identity and your other Personal Information" and • who "may resolve any and all third party claims, whether threatened or made, arising out of your registration or use of the Domain" Now for a lot of people who just don't want their name easily visible, that's fine because it's unlikely these terms will be acted on. But for anyone who actually needs anonymity, to protect their right to free speech (for example), that's not good enough.
score 14y ago
I seems the overall useage and popularity of bitcoins has gone down though. I haven't had a single purchase with bitcoins in about a year at Flow and Zone Games ( http://flowandzonegames.com http://flowandzonegames.com ) and that's quite a change from the one-a-week clip before. I don't understand the currency so maybe I'm overpricing.
- deleted 14y ago
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- deleted 14y ago
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- 3am 14y ago
  Welcome to deflation.
tedsanders 14y ago
Accepting a volatile currency seems risky. What if bitcoin drops and I fill register domains on the cheap? Is there a way to prevent this? Are the prices somehow pegged to the dollar?
- hmsimha 14y ago
  Well every currency is volatile isn't it? I guess (if namecheap is a us-based company) they're bitcoin price would fluctuate just as the bitcoin does in relation to the usd.
- Maxious 14y ago
  The payment gateway BitPay calculates how many bitcoins equal a USD price and then give that amount (minus their fee) in USD to Namecheap within 2 days. "It does not matter how many bitcoins we collect, how long it takes to collect them, what we can sell them for, or how long it takes to sell them." https://bitpay.com/bitcoin-payment-gateway-api https://bitpay.com/bitcoin-payment-gateway-api
- csense 14y ago
  Holding a volatile currency is what's risky. If the seller and the payment provider quickly convert their bitcoins into USD -- as seems likely to be the case based on the link in Maxious's reply -- then they're minimizing the time interval during which their wealth is exposed to exchange rate fluctuations.
qdot76367 14y ago
Ok. So accepting bitcoin, but they still won't have things like two-factor auth available for "several months" (reference: https://community.namecheap.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4766 https://community.namecheap.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=10&#3...). I realize PR departments are probably flailing wildly over $33 bitcoins, but which feature do you think your users are more likely to use?
- doublextremevil 14y ago
  minor correction to a valid post: as of 06:33 UTC, bitcoin goes for 37.9 USD
  - sachingulaya 14y ago
    And now its $39. Its volatility makes it impractical to use as a currency. A bitcoin yesterday is worth 10% less than a bitcoin today.
    - jimworm 14y ago
      Today's bitcoin is a little more liquid than yesterday's, and the trend will continue as long as more and more people start accepting bitcoin as payment. This liquidity has a positive effect on value.
      - robryan 14y ago
        I would assume that one of the major reasons in holding bit coin is still to sell it at some point (until a large amount of people accept it) Meaning that once it hits a certain level people will start cashing in and crash the price again?
        toomim 14y ago
        No, cause it's best to just hold onto it until a large amount accept it. That's when you'll get the most value for it.
ihsw 14y ago
Now Amazon needs to start accepting Bitcoins for EC2 instances and the world will be on its way past the Visa/Mastercard duopoly.
- taligent 14y ago
  Well since we are living in a fantasy land why not McDondalds, Ferrari, Apple and Starbucks as well.
  - StavrosK 14y ago
    I much prefer it if they all just gave stuff away for free.
- tracker1 14y ago
  Yeah.. and looking at what happened with Wikileaks... I'm sure Amazon's got your back, and won't just cut your service off.
adrianwaj 14y ago
I'd like bitcoin to succeed even to a small extent if only as a counterweight to keep central banks in check but it would be better if it weren't so cumbersome to use, ie slow.
- jacoblyles 14y ago
  It usually takes several days for funds to transfer between banks. Payment processors are a layer built on top of USD. The same infrastructure can be built on top of bitcoin.
  - Nursie 14y ago
    "It usually takes several days for funds to transfer between banks" Maybe in the US. In the civilised world it can be pretty much instantaneous.
vishaltelangre 14y ago
Well, just reading about bitcoin and saw this here. I am pretty fascinated by the fact that it take not much time for currency conversion across the world. Awesome. Hope, this will dominate the current methods, and frauds.
daniel-cussen 14y ago
The Coupa Café of Palo Alto is going to support paying with bitcoin soon. Yesterday I bought coffee for $2.00, with the option of paying .17 bitcoin.
- tlrobinson 14y ago
  Do you know what technology they're using? How long do they make you wait for confirmation, etc.
  - daniel-cussen 14y ago
    I asked, but the people there didn't know much at all about it yet.
gibybo 14y ago
Well, I just tried to transfer one of my domains to Namecheap using Bitcoin, but their implementation leaves a lot to be desired. I filled in my domain, got to the checkout page, and it gave me three options: Pay from 'Funds', 'Credit Card', or 'Paypal'. Turns out in order to pay with Bitcoin, you have to first add 'Funds' to your account. So I click the link to do that, it asks me how much I want to add (I don't know, aren't you supposed to tell me how much I owe?). Anyway, I follow a few pages and finally end up on BitPay's page where it asks me to send a specific number of Bitcoins to their address, so I do. The page recognizes immediately when I have sent the funds, and redirects me back to Namecheap. Great, now I can find my way back to the checkout page and finally finish the transfer! Except I can't. Despite having sent the funds, they won't show up in my account for another hour (or possibly up to 24 hours). I understand they want to prevent double spend attacks, but this is absurd. We're talking about a $10 domain that they can just revoke if the payment doesn't clear. They have to wait 45+ days for paypal/credit cards to clear, but they give the product to me immediately, and I don't have to go through their ridiculous fund adding process to do so. I applaud the effort Namecheap and I'm happy to see Bitcoin becoming more useful, but this needs work.
- MertsA 14y ago
  It sounds like that was something with the API for BitPay, perhaps NameCheap will skip the wait in the future and revoke if necessary but the thing that worries me is that maybe the BitPay API doesn't support notifying on pending funds instead of secured funds.
  - gibybo 14y ago
    I looked at the BitPay API page (https://bitpay.com/bitcoin-payment-gateway-api https://bitpay.com/bitcoin-payment-gateway-api) and couldn't tell for sure one way or the other. If it really doesn't, they may want to switch to Coinbase (a YC company that offers a similar service) which I know sends notifications immediately (and status updates as confirmations come in). However, even with that fixed, it's still an issue that Bitcoin was not an option on the checkout page. I had to navigate somewhere else, then go through the checkout process again just to get back to where I was. I shouldn't have to stop what I'm doing and go through a completely different flow to pay for something.
WhoIsSatoshi 14y ago
This is beautiful to watch unfold: The universe is taking flight! Do help it, not for the sake of a cryptocurrency, but for the ethical implications. For you and for me.
- jacoblyles 14y ago
  Why ask useless questions? How deep is the ocean? How high is the sky? Who is Satoshi Nakamoto?
  - WhoIsSatoshi 14y ago
    Galt he isn't - "The universe believes in Encryption" (J.Assange) and this fact is at the same time the redeeming and redemption of the system we're watching suffer. Key point though - we're not relying on Nietzchieans supermen championing themselves or their genius. We're championing the universe, and empowering everyone. Freedom.
    - agorabinary 14y ago
      Atlas? :)
  - geuis 14y ago
    Deepest part of the ocean. 10924 meters http://geology.com/records/deepest-part-of-the-ocean.shtml http://geology.com/records/deepest-part-of-the-ocean.shtml Radius from earth to the edge of the visible universe: 46.5 billion light years, http://geology.com/records/deepest-part-of-the-ocean.shtml http://geology.com/records/deepest-part-of-the-ocean.shtml Satoshi Nakamoto: a human being or beings I know what you are trying to say, "why ask unanswerable questions", but all questions have answers.
  - qompiler 14y ago
    > Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? Amir Taaki
andreyf 14y ago
This is crazy: MtGox is 37 USD/BTC today, up from 20 USD/BTC a month ago.
- Nursie 14y ago
  Bubble 2.0?
largesse 14y ago
It's odd about technology. The more pervasive it becomes before it legislators are aware of it, the harder it is to crack down upon. I don't know what the legal challenges will be to the widespread use of BitCoin in commerce, but I'm sure there will be some.
mariuolo 14y ago
The same namecheap that blocked *.imgur.com ?
nuII 14y ago
Fuck yeah Namecheap!
rrrrtttt 14y ago
Let's say I think that in one year's time Bitcoin will be gone. And let's say I want to put my money where my mouth is and want to short Bitcoin. Presumably there's a lot of people who think that Bitcoin is going to appreciate and thus should be happy to give me a low-interest loan. And yet there is no way to get a Bitcoin-denominated loan. Does this mean that people don't really believe Bitcoin will be with us in one year's time?
- jboggan 14y ago
  If I were to give someone a Bitcoin loan, what interest rate should I charge? The massive uncertainty of that question is enough to discourage any such activity. I wouldn't make a Bitcoin loan with a one-week period.
  - rrrrtttt 14y ago
    That's exactly what I'm saying. If it's deflationary then it should be worth your while to give me a loan at 0% (assuming I am low default risk). The fact that we don't know where Bitcoin is going to be in one week means that we don't really believe it's deflationary.
    - Nursie 14y ago
      "If it's deflationary then it should be worth your while to give me a loan at 0%" Why? I can just hang on to it for the same return and no risk at all. This is why BTC loans really don't make sense, to me. Positive interest rates are punitive if the value keeps rising, negative ones pointless.
- geoffschmidt 14y ago
  Bitcoin is not exactly a mature currency. When a new merchant starts accepting Bitcoin payments it's still front page news. So I wouldn't read too much into the lack of lending infrastructure. Evaluating creditworthiness, and going after defaulters, is a lot more work than holding cash deposits or accepting cash in return for products, and those things are still big logistical challenges in Bitcoin land.
lucb1e 14y ago
Looking pretty good, privacy and IPv6 support like you might expect nowadays, only no DNSSEC. Not buying.
juskrey 14y ago
Interesting if anyone had conducted an experiment, whether new Bitcoin button, near old good CC payment, actually worsens whole conversion rate, due to interesting Bitcoin reputation in masses.
stevewilhelm 14y ago
To put in perspective: _____~10000000 (10 million) dollars in bitcoin transactions a day [1] verses ~5000000000000 (5 trillion) dollars in daily foreign currency trades worldwide. [2] [1] http://s831.us/XIQoZ7 http://s831.us/XIQoZ7 [2] http://s831.us/XISAQb http://s831.us/XISAQb
- zanny 14y ago
  My take away is "holy crap, 10 million bitcoin a day is trading hands. That's a lot!" Especially for a fledgling currency with staunch opposition by traditional bankers and financial markets because it solves a lot of problems that make them a lot of money.
teoruiz 14y ago
It's a great step towards domain anonymity, but at the end of the day Namecheap is a company in the USA that needs to comply with USA law and its enforcers. And we know it's not the most privacy-friendly country in the world. To be fair, registering a .com domain is a bad idea if you want to stay anonymous. Go for a .is, a .ch or even a .eu.
- Muromec 14y ago
  >It's a great step towards domain anonymity It`s not about anonymity. All other payment systems just suck.
johnx123-up 14y ago
OT: Can anyone suggest a good Bitcoin processor? What about Mt.Gox? Is it sensible to create our own processor and escrow for Bitcoin?

329 points by redegg 14y ago

Looks like they're using BitPay https://bitpay.com https://bitpay.com edit: I just tried it. The workflow works well, but this brings me back to my biggest reservation about the usability of BitCoin for regular transactions: The long period (hours) to confirm a transaction.

mwsherman 14y ago
Hours to settle into $? Or hours to confirm the Bitcoin transaction at all?
- kalleboo 14y ago
  To confirm the Bitcoin transaction at all. That's just how Bitcoin works - you have to wait for X new blocks to get confirmations from other peers. How long you wait determines your risk level.
  - dubcanada 14y ago
    I suppose that's kinda bad for drop catching, but regular domains take 24 hours to be useful anyways. So its not that bad :)
    - dangrossman 14y ago
      > regular domains take 24 hours to be useful anyways It only takes about 10 minutes for a new registration to go live with most registrars. If you set your DNS servers during the purchase and have the zones ready from the get-go, your domain is resolving on the web immediately.
      - rwg 14y ago
        s/on the web/on the Internet/ twitch :-)
      - drusenko 14y ago
        that's accurate. we pride ourselves in getting most of our domains online and functional in about 30 seconds -- as long as you don't visit the domain within those first 30 seconds and get your ISP to cache the "does not exist" record.
  - KingMob 14y ago
    It doesn't require hours at the protocol level, it's just a social standard. Typically, the first confirmation would occur in ~10 minutes. At the moment, the convention is 6 blocks / 1 hour is sufficient to prevent double-spending, but any merchant could have its own standard. Also, for something revocable like a domain name, there's nothing preventing Namecheap from giving you the domain name immediately, and then revoking your access to it later if the transaction ultimately fails.
    - kalleboo 14y ago
      Thanks for clarifying it.
    - runeks 14y ago
      > Also, for something revocable like a domain name, there's nothing preventing Namecheap from giving you the domain name immediately, and then revoking your access to it later if the transaction ultimately fails. Not according to shiftpgdn: > NameCheap actually doesn't have the capacity to revoke domains as they're an eNom reseller. Enom's policy is that once you buy a domain, it's yours. With domains sales being such a low margin business I can understand their level of caution. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5323964 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5323964
  - disintermediate 14y ago
    Also, as Bitcoin matures, you'll see businesses pop up that will insure against the risk for a small portion of the transaction allowing near instant confirmation for merchants.
    - Nursie 14y ago
      BUT BUT BUT BUT .... no transaction fees! I love that over time people start coming up with solutions to the same damn problems that other payment schemes have already come up with, and that last week they were saying were evil because someone else was doing it. It's not unique to bitcoin, you see it in all sorts of places, it is funny though.
      - runeks 14y ago
        The difference is competition. Nothing fancy, nothing new and shiny. Just something that has been proven to work time and time again in lowering prices. The barrier to entry in the payment card industry is simply too high to allow much competition. Entering the business of bitcoin payment processing has an extremely low barrier to entry; all the hard stuff has been done already!
      - tlrobinson 14y ago
        Bitcoin is first and foremost a currency, not a payment scheme. You can use it like cash with no (or minimal) fees, or you can layer schemes with various properties on top of it.
        Nursie 14y ago
        Right, cool, awesome. But when people then layer payment schemes and payment-scheme type-assurances, services and (of course) fees on top of it, is it wrong to make this comparison? Because at the moment you see a lot of people touting the 'no fees' part as the reason it wins over credit/debit cards, but when the weaknesses of that are pointed out someone like yourself inevitably pops up to tell us that of course it's not meant for that, but payment systems can be layered over the top, with a fee structure. Or it's silly to expect that because it's just like cash, when the expectation is in response to a BTC advocates claim that it's the best thing evar for the problem domain. Basically it can't be both ways and I am kinda tired of the constant claims that it is.

ashamedlion 14y ago

I'm loving this Bitcoin ramp up over the past few weeks. Namecheap should be applauded for their general endorsement of "what's good for the internet". Of course it's in their best interest, but you don't see GoDaddy doing the same. I think back to the "So, that's the end of Bitcoin"[1] article by Forbes and chuckle to myself. Hopefully one day we can look back at that article in the same way we look back at Ballmer laughing at the iPhone [2] [1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2011/06/20/so-thats-the-end-of-bitcoin-then/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2011/06/20/so-thats-... [2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eywi0h_Y5_U http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eywi0h_Y5_U

deleted 14y ago
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invalidOrTaken 14y ago
Second that on Namecheap apparently being on the side of the internet. Weren't they a vocal opponent of SOPA?
- ashamedlion 14y ago
  Yep http://community.namecheap.com/blog/2011/12/22/we-say-no-to-sopa/ http://community.namecheap.com/blog/2011/12/22/we-say-no-to-... http://www.namecheap.com/moveyourdomainday.aspx http://www.namecheap.com/moveyourdomainday.aspx http://community.namecheap.com/blog/2012/01/18/blackout/ http://community.namecheap.com/blog/2012/01/18/blackout/
- geekam 14y ago
  Yes they were. Made me move all my domains to namecheap.
- michaelkscott 14y ago
  Chiming in here to say that I moved all my domains from GoDaddy to Namecheap, too. Fantastic service so far.
- Achshar 14y ago
  As far as I remember, they gave a discount to people moving from godaddy and even provided a tool to assist them move. Of course it was in their best interest.

foxylad 14y ago

A domain registrar is going to have a fairly technically literate customer base, but bitcoin is edging towards the mainstream faster than I'd expected.

davidroberts 14y ago

I think in five years, the idea of using credit or debit cards for electronic transactions will seem slightly ridiculous, sort of the way using snail mail to pay bills by check seems now.

taligent 14y ago
Your logic is completely faulty. Paying bills over the internet was easier and simpler than paying by check. Paying by credit and debit cards are easier, safer and simpler than using say Bitcoin. There is zero chance that those cards are going anywhere. If anything the popularity of PayWave and other NFC technologies should see their use increase.
- toomuchtodo 14y ago
  Except its now legal for merchants to tack on a surcharge for you paying with credit (as it should be). Online merchants will absorb the cost of processing credit cards, as they aren't going to wait for a check in the mail. But physical merchants that can accept cash and are now allowed to recoup that 3%? I can see certain groups of people migrating away from plastic if it increases the cost of their goods/services in a meaningful way.
  - BoyWizard 14y ago
    If I have a problem with an online purchase that I can't sort out with the merchant, my bank is more than happy to compensate me for it. Not possible with Bitcoin.
    - krasin 14y ago
      Escrow services do exist for Bitcoin.
      - untog 14y ago
        I assume they are not operating out of the goodness of their own hearts? (they'd be pretty useless if they did, anyway- where would my refund money come from?)

lowglow 14y ago

Hey all! I'm trying to build a domain registrar we'd actually love to use. Does bitcoin really appeal to you as a user? I'm trying to find a list of must-haves and want-to-have features to bake into my project.

geuis 14y ago
Honestly, a good reputation is the primary feature I care about. Don't be super expensive, on par with Namecheap and godaddy. And don't make the interface bloody complicated. GD is the worst, Namecheap is better but needs work. And make it incredibly easy to move my domains in and out.
- lowglow 14y ago
  What's the most difficult part about moving your domains in and out and why would you switch registrars?
  - geuis 14y ago
    I have a lot of domains. Its expensive to maintain them. Godaddy will sometimes throw up brick walls and prevent domains from being transferred. Right now I've got something like 30 domains spread across 2-3 registrars. Its been such a hassle with godaddy that I kind of got stuck there, as much as I'd like to move.
doctoboggan 14y ago
Let me programmatically set the ip you point to and I will give you money
- shiftpgdn 14y ago
  Can you expand on this? You could run your own DNS server and setup the appropriate DNS records at any registrar.
  - doctoboggan 14y ago

bmiranda 14y ago

The price of Bitcoin is currently hovering around 37 USD. I remember when Bitcoin was $2.00 after the first crash, I never expected it to rebound so quickly. Announcements such as Namecheap's lend credence to the current price, but I would not be surprised if a correction brought Bitcoin below $30. Regardless, I am excited that there are more places to spend Bitcoin each and every day.

dmix 14y ago
Well I don't think any average person is really keeping large amounts of money in bitcoin. It has mostly a transactional since the use cases are so niche.
- snitko 14y ago
  That's actually not true. One of the reasons price is high is because people right now are hoarding.
  - n3rdy 14y ago
    The reward for block discovery also halved quite recently from 50 bitcoins to 25 bitcoins.
- disintermediate 14y ago
  >use cases are so niche This is a first-world misperception. There is half a world excluded from traditional payment methods.
  - wmf 14y ago
    Is Bitcoin a realistic option for those people?
    - disintermediate 14y ago
      Not yet. Five years I'd guess.

eduardordm 14y ago

Because bitcoins are illegal in my country, I'll keep my personal domains on namecheap but will certainly move my company domains out of there until I figure out if there's a chance I have problems with this. I like bitcoins just like everyone, but there are laws you need to abide by and bitcoins are illegal in many countries.

nathan_f77 14y ago
Where is bitcoin illegal? I don't think Bitcoin is illegal in any country.
Frozenlock 14y ago
Do tell more! I was unaware of any country having officially stated Bitcoin as illegal.
- paulnechifor 14y ago
  I too don't know of any such country, but he might be living in a country that bans all foreign currency. (That's how it was in communist Romania.)
  - ankeshk 14y ago
    You can make an argument that Bitcoins is not a foreign currency as it can be mined domestically in your own country.
    - jiggy2011 14y ago
      In fact, is it even known which country bitcoin originated in?
    - eduardordm 14y ago
      The law I pasted to some other replies just states that the only currency that can be used for commerce within the country is the national one. Also defines that national currency is the one created and regulated by the central bank.

Skoofoo 14y ago

Neat, but will they turn a blind eye to domains registered with false information? After all, the biggest advantage of Bitcoin over traditional digital payment methods is its capability to be used anonymously.

redegg 14y ago
Providing falsified WHOIS information will only harm the registrant.
- rwg 14y ago
  How? I keep valid contact information in the WHOIS records for my domains, and all I get out of it is e-mail spam from my registrar, e-mail spam from everyone else, snail mail spam from my registrar, snail mail spam from competing registrars (Domain Registry of America, anyone?), "SELL YOUR DOMAIN TO US!" robocall spam, and yearly ICANN WDRP e-mails from my registrar.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - damian2000 14y ago
    You need an anonymized WHOIS service. Namecheap offers free anonymized WHOIS by default on their domains ... its called "WhoisGuard Protection". Its a must have these days.
    - clicks 14y ago
      > Namecheap offers free anonymized WHOIS by default on their domains ... its called "WhoisGuard Protection". Free for just the first year after transferring/registering a domain, after that it costs you.
    - garethadams 14y ago
      Yes, I want to be anonymous so I'll sign legal control of my domain over to a third party service (per their terms and conditions - http://www.whoisguard.com/registrant-agreement.asp http://www.whoisguard.com/registrant-agreement.asp): • who you have to "provide […] truthful, complete, current, accurate and reliable contact details" to, • who "has the right to disclose your identity and your other Personal Information" and • who "may resolve any and all third party claims, whether threatened or made, arising out of your registration or use of the Domain" Now for a lot of people who just don't want their name easily visible, that's fine because it's unlikely these terms will be acted on. But for anyone who actually needs anonymity, to protect their right to free speech (for example), that's not good enough.

score 14y ago

I seems the overall useage and popularity of bitcoins has gone down though. I haven't had a single purchase with bitcoins in about a year at Flow and Zone Games ( http://flowandzonegames.com http://flowandzonegames.com ) and that's quite a change from the one-a-week clip before. I don't understand the currency so maybe I'm overpricing.

deleted 14y ago
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3am 14y ago
Welcome to deflation.

tedsanders 14y ago

Accepting a volatile currency seems risky. What if bitcoin drops and I fill register domains on the cheap? Is there a way to prevent this? Are the prices somehow pegged to the dollar?

hmsimha 14y ago
Well every currency is volatile isn't it? I guess (if namecheap is a us-based company) they're bitcoin price would fluctuate just as the bitcoin does in relation to the usd.
Maxious 14y ago
The payment gateway BitPay calculates how many bitcoins equal a USD price and then give that amount (minus their fee) in USD to Namecheap within 2 days. "It does not matter how many bitcoins we collect, how long it takes to collect them, what we can sell them for, or how long it takes to sell them." https://bitpay.com/bitcoin-payment-gateway-api https://bitpay.com/bitcoin-payment-gateway-api
csense 14y ago
Holding a volatile currency is what's risky. If the seller and the payment provider quickly convert their bitcoins into USD -- as seems likely to be the case based on the link in Maxious's reply -- then they're minimizing the time interval during which their wealth is exposed to exchange rate fluctuations.

qdot76367 14y ago

Ok. So accepting bitcoin, but they still won't have things like two-factor auth available for "several months" (reference: https://community.namecheap.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4766 https://community.namecheap.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=10&#3...). I realize PR departments are probably flailing wildly over $33 bitcoins, but which feature do you think your users are more likely to use?

doublextremevil 14y ago
minor correction to a valid post: as of 06:33 UTC, bitcoin goes for 37.9 USD
- sachingulaya 14y ago
  And now its $39. Its volatility makes it impractical to use as a currency. A bitcoin yesterday is worth 10% less than a bitcoin today.
  - jimworm 14y ago
    Today's bitcoin is a little more liquid than yesterday's, and the trend will continue as long as more and more people start accepting bitcoin as payment. This liquidity has a positive effect on value.
    - robryan 14y ago
      I would assume that one of the major reasons in holding bit coin is still to sell it at some point (until a large amount of people accept it) Meaning that once it hits a certain level people will start cashing in and crash the price again?
      - toomim 14y ago
        No, cause it's best to just hold onto it until a large amount accept it. That's when you'll get the most value for it.

ihsw 14y ago

Now Amazon needs to start accepting Bitcoins for EC2 instances and the world will be on its way past the Visa/Mastercard duopoly.

taligent 14y ago
Well since we are living in a fantasy land why not McDondalds, Ferrari, Apple and Starbucks as well.
- StavrosK 14y ago
  I much prefer it if they all just gave stuff away for free.
tracker1 14y ago
Yeah.. and looking at what happened with Wikileaks... I'm sure Amazon's got your back, and won't just cut your service off.

adrianwaj 14y ago

I'd like bitcoin to succeed even to a small extent if only as a counterweight to keep central banks in check but it would be better if it weren't so cumbersome to use, ie slow.

jacoblyles 14y ago
It usually takes several days for funds to transfer between banks. Payment processors are a layer built on top of USD. The same infrastructure can be built on top of bitcoin.
- Nursie 14y ago
  "It usually takes several days for funds to transfer between banks" Maybe in the US. In the civilised world it can be pretty much instantaneous.

vishaltelangre 14y ago

Well, just reading about bitcoin and saw this here. I am pretty fascinated by the fact that it take not much time for currency conversion across the world. Awesome. Hope, this will dominate the current methods, and frauds.

daniel-cussen 14y ago

The Coupa Café of Palo Alto is going to support paying with bitcoin soon. Yesterday I bought coffee for $2.00, with the option of paying .17 bitcoin.

tlrobinson 14y ago
Do you know what technology they're using? How long do they make you wait for confirmation, etc.
- daniel-cussen 14y ago
  I asked, but the people there didn't know much at all about it yet.

gibybo 14y ago

Well, I just tried to transfer one of my domains to Namecheap using Bitcoin, but their implementation leaves a lot to be desired. I filled in my domain, got to the checkout page, and it gave me three options: Pay from 'Funds', 'Credit Card', or 'Paypal'. Turns out in order to pay with Bitcoin, you have to first add 'Funds' to your account. So I click the link to do that, it asks me how much I want to add (I don't know, aren't you supposed to tell me how much I owe?). Anyway, I follow a few pages and finally end up on BitPay's page where it asks me to send a specific number of Bitcoins to their address, so I do. The page recognizes immediately when I have sent the funds, and redirects me back to Namecheap. Great, now I can find my way back to the checkout page and finally finish the transfer! Except I can't. Despite having sent the funds, they won't show up in my account for another hour (or possibly up to 24 hours). I understand they want to prevent double spend attacks, but this is absurd. We're talking about a $10 domain that they can just revoke if the payment doesn't clear. They have to wait 45+ days for paypal/credit cards to clear, but they give the product to me immediately, and I don't have to go through their ridiculous fund adding process to do so. I applaud the effort Namecheap and I'm happy to see Bitcoin becoming more useful, but this needs work.

MertsA 14y ago
It sounds like that was something with the API for BitPay, perhaps NameCheap will skip the wait in the future and revoke if necessary but the thing that worries me is that maybe the BitPay API doesn't support notifying on pending funds instead of secured funds.
- gibybo 14y ago
  I looked at the BitPay API page (https://bitpay.com/bitcoin-payment-gateway-api https://bitpay.com/bitcoin-payment-gateway-api) and couldn't tell for sure one way or the other. If it really doesn't, they may want to switch to Coinbase (a YC company that offers a similar service) which I know sends notifications immediately (and status updates as confirmations come in). However, even with that fixed, it's still an issue that Bitcoin was not an option on the checkout page. I had to navigate somewhere else, then go through the checkout process again just to get back to where I was. I shouldn't have to stop what I'm doing and go through a completely different flow to pay for something.

WhoIsSatoshi 14y ago

This is beautiful to watch unfold: The universe is taking flight! Do help it, not for the sake of a cryptocurrency, but for the ethical implications. For you and for me.

jacoblyles 14y ago
Why ask useless questions? How deep is the ocean? How high is the sky? Who is Satoshi Nakamoto?
- WhoIsSatoshi 14y ago
  Galt he isn't - "The universe believes in Encryption" (J.Assange) and this fact is at the same time the redeeming and redemption of the system we're watching suffer. Key point though - we're not relying on Nietzchieans supermen championing themselves or their genius. We're championing the universe, and empowering everyone. Freedom.
  - agorabinary 14y ago
    Atlas? :)
- geuis 14y ago
  Deepest part of the ocean. 10924 meters http://geology.com/records/deepest-part-of-the-ocean.shtml http://geology.com/records/deepest-part-of-the-ocean.shtml Radius from earth to the edge of the visible universe: 46.5 billion light years, http://geology.com/records/deepest-part-of-the-ocean.shtml http://geology.com/records/deepest-part-of-the-ocean.shtml Satoshi Nakamoto: a human being or beings I know what you are trying to say, "why ask unanswerable questions", but all questions have answers.
- qompiler 14y ago
  > Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? Amir Taaki

andreyf 14y ago

This is crazy: MtGox is 37 USD/BTC today, up from 20 USD/BTC a month ago.

Nursie 14y ago
Bubble 2.0?

largesse 14y ago

It's odd about technology. The more pervasive it becomes before it legislators are aware of it, the harder it is to crack down upon. I don't know what the legal challenges will be to the widespread use of BitCoin in commerce, but I'm sure there will be some.

mariuolo 14y ago

The same namecheap that blocked *.imgur.com ?

nuII 14y ago

Fuck yeah Namecheap!

rrrrtttt 14y ago

Let's say I think that in one year's time Bitcoin will be gone. And let's say I want to put my money where my mouth is and want to short Bitcoin. Presumably there's a lot of people who think that Bitcoin is going to appreciate and thus should be happy to give me a low-interest loan. And yet there is no way to get a Bitcoin-denominated loan. Does this mean that people don't really believe Bitcoin will be with us in one year's time?

jboggan 14y ago
If I were to give someone a Bitcoin loan, what interest rate should I charge? The massive uncertainty of that question is enough to discourage any such activity. I wouldn't make a Bitcoin loan with a one-week period.
- rrrrtttt 14y ago
  That's exactly what I'm saying. If it's deflationary then it should be worth your while to give me a loan at 0% (assuming I am low default risk). The fact that we don't know where Bitcoin is going to be in one week means that we don't really believe it's deflationary.
  - Nursie 14y ago
    "If it's deflationary then it should be worth your while to give me a loan at 0%" Why? I can just hang on to it for the same return and no risk at all. This is why BTC loans really don't make sense, to me. Positive interest rates are punitive if the value keeps rising, negative ones pointless.
geoffschmidt 14y ago
Bitcoin is not exactly a mature currency. When a new merchant starts accepting Bitcoin payments it's still front page news. So I wouldn't read too much into the lack of lending infrastructure. Evaluating creditworthiness, and going after defaulters, is a lot more work than holding cash deposits or accepting cash in return for products, and those things are still big logistical challenges in Bitcoin land.

lucb1e 14y ago

Looking pretty good, privacy and IPv6 support like you might expect nowadays, only no DNSSEC. Not buying.

juskrey 14y ago

Interesting if anyone had conducted an experiment, whether new Bitcoin button, near old good CC payment, actually worsens whole conversion rate, due to interesting Bitcoin reputation in masses.

stevewilhelm 14y ago

To put in perspective: _____~10000000 (10 million) dollars in bitcoin transactions a day [1] verses ~5000000000000 (5 trillion) dollars in daily foreign currency trades worldwide. [2] [1] http://s831.us/XIQoZ7 http://s831.us/XIQoZ7 [2] http://s831.us/XISAQb http://s831.us/XISAQb

zanny 14y ago
My take away is "holy crap, 10 million bitcoin a day is trading hands. That's a lot!" Especially for a fledgling currency with staunch opposition by traditional bankers and financial markets because it solves a lot of problems that make them a lot of money.

teoruiz 14y ago

It's a great step towards domain anonymity, but at the end of the day Namecheap is a company in the USA that needs to comply with USA law and its enforcers. And we know it's not the most privacy-friendly country in the world. To be fair, registering a .com domain is a bad idea if you want to stay anonymous. Go for a .is, a .ch or even a .eu.

Muromec 14y ago
>It's a great step towards domain anonymity It`s not about anonymity. All other payment systems just suck.

johnx123-up 14y ago

OT: Can anyone suggest a good Bitcoin processor? What about Mt.Gox? Is it sensible to create our own processor and escrow for Bitcoin?