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.
Their interface really needs a make over though. It's like they are trying to win a "Show As Much Information As Possible in A Single Screen contest".
This is not a thing. There's no concept of 'clearing' when it comes to credit cards; they are authorized for a specific dollar amount or they aren't. If a merchant authorizes $10 for a domain name, it's guaranteed that those funds are theirs (and they're given an authorization code confirming it). They more than likely get the funds in their bank account the very next business day.
The only way the money can be taken back from the merchant is if the consumer does a chargeback with their bank, so the only concern there is fraud.
Also, I happen to be a previous Namecheap customer with a credit card attached to my account. If the Bitcoin payment had failed, they could have just charged my account/credit card to avoid their loss (possibly with some extra legal annoyances, but I don't think there is anything fundamentally wrong with that).
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.
... and after one hour transactions are marked as "invalid" and you are forced to fill ticket to tech support (which is nonworking either)
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-...
I realize PR departments are probably flailing wildly over $33 bitcoins, but which feature do you think your users are more likely to use?
I imagine in the future internet, domain registrations will be just as anonymous (like .onion on tor) as bitcoin, no reason domain names can't be decentralized (different tld's of course).
Really, a debit card card purchased with cash would probably work just as well, but there are imaginable situations where the risk of losing the domain is less of a problem than being identified as the registrant.
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.
I really don't see how they can do that anonymously and still function. They will be constantly fighting scammers and spammers.
Regardless, I am excited that there are more places to spend Bitcoin each and every day.
It has mostly a transactional since the use cases are so niche.
This is a first-world misperception. There is half a world excluded from traditional payment methods.
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.
I don't understand the currency so maybe I'm overpricing.
No chargeback possibility? No sale from me.
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.
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.
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.
It`s not about anonymity. All other payment systems just suck.
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
Satoshi Nakamoto: a human being or beings
I know what you are trying to say, "why ask unanswerable questions", but all questions have answers.
Amir Taaki
Maybe in the US. In the civilised world it can be pretty much instantaneous.
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?
"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."
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.
_____~10000000 (10 million) dollars in bitcoin transactions a day [1] verses
~5000000000000 (5 trillion) dollars in daily foreign currency trades worldwide. [2]
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.
You can short BTC on Bitcoinica... oh wait.
And also bitfinex.com but generally they are not perceived well.
(haven't used them myself)
I like bitcoins just like everyone, but there are laws you need to abide by and bitcoins are illegal in many countries.
I pasted the law and even a case to some other replies, I wouldn't just throw that if it wasn't true.
Bitcoin itself may not be illegal, but the encryption schemes may be illegal for private citizens to use in some countries, especially ones that don't want their citizens communicating in secret.
There are many laws here that forbids using any currency that's not the national one, from consumer's laws to financial laws.
As far as I am concerned, until you tell us where your country is, it seems your trying to damage namecheap's and /or Bitcoin's reputation for no reason.
Please provide the country and law cited. Cheers.
This is the law that complete forbids using any currency other than the national for internal commerce and disposes about how forex must work, which bitcoins do not comply.
http://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/LEIS/L4595.htm
This is a case where people were using dollars to pay for national contracts:
http://jus.com.br/revista/texto/8566/da-impossibilidade-de-p...
Perhaps he was referring to this?
http://silvervigilante.com/bitcoin-attacked-by-brazils-secur...
Contains links to laws in the US that can be used against bitcoins:
http://www.usmint.gov/consumer/?action=archives#NORFED
Thesis showing that most parallel currencies are illegal (including in the US):
http://repositorio.bce.unb.br/bitstream/10482/9485/1/2011_Ma...
Bank Palmas created a 'social currency', it is a crime here, they escaped jail in 2003, but then in 2011 things got ugly:
http://empreendedorsocial.blogfolha.uol.com.br/2012/07/11/um...
Yes, they are. Any currency other than the national currency cannot be used for commerce.
This is a case where people were using dollars to pay for national contracts:
http://jus.com.br/revista/texto/8566/da-impossibilidade-de-p...
The only kind of parallel currency that is acceptable under the law are called 'social currencies' which are just food stamps.
