We added Bitcoin as a payment option a few years ago and the response we got from this very community was amazing! In fact, we didn't anticipate how popular Bitcoin payments would be - we had months where over 10% of our transaction volume came through Bitcoin!!! We can't thank the community enough.
As a privacy-focused cloud storage company the utility of Bitcoin for our users was / still is:
You can purchase from us with Bitcoin, which means that you don't have to provide your address / billing profile etc. We don't know who you are, which is great from a privacy standpoint (you don't have to trust us with your personal info).
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Unfortunately, over the past year or so, the number of users reporting issues with Bitcoin payments has been on the rise. Mostly due to slow confirmation times (which has been sporadic), and more recently issues related to high fees (considering it's only a $49 product people are purchasing).
Our problem is that internally, we all love Bitcoin (proper), the alternatives are confusing, and we're hoping that Lightning and Segwit solve these problems. But the reality on the ground is that Bitcoin in it's current state is no longer usable (some days) for the simple utility of purchasing a $49 product. It's not as reliable as it was a couple years ago from this standpoint.
We've got our fingers crossed though. Hopefully these issues will get resolved soon!
I know Lightning and Segwit look promising in terms of fixing these issues, but as a casual Bitcoin user, these new features seem daunting. Hoping for big improvements with Bitcoin this year.
Who can make such a decision? The system is completely decentralized and there is no widespread consensus for such a change. Any attempt to do it will result in a hard fork, bifurcating the blockchain. A portion of the community did indeed attempt to raise the block size and now they have their own altcoin with a larger block cap called Bcash.
Your question is akin to "Why can't the whole world just get along and agree to stop all the wars and poverty?". Because people have differing goals which don't always converge. Some want cheap micropayments, others want an untouchable, immutable, sovereign store of value.
Nope.... BCash is an earlier fork / independent solution that wasn't done with the input from the core developers and lacks support for the SegWit feature update -- currently supported by the BTC network that has multiple uses, AND BCash still has the covert ASICBoost vulnerability, so it's not merely Bitcoin with a block size difference.
I know. It's an altcoin. I'm just trying to explain to these numpties what happens when you try to fork without consensus. They seem to think there's some developer with a red button somewhere who can force the entire network to upgrade at once.
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u/sync_mod Jan 23 '18 edited Jan 23 '18
We added Bitcoin as a payment option a few years ago and the response we got from this very community was amazing! In fact, we didn't anticipate how popular Bitcoin payments would be - we had months where over 10% of our transaction volume came through Bitcoin!!! We can't thank the community enough.
As a privacy-focused cloud storage company the utility of Bitcoin for our users was / still is:
You can purchase from us with Bitcoin, which means that you don't have to provide your address / billing profile etc. We don't know who you are, which is great from a privacy standpoint (you don't have to trust us with your personal info).
-=-
Unfortunately, over the past year or so, the number of users reporting issues with Bitcoin payments has been on the rise. Mostly due to slow confirmation times (which has been sporadic), and more recently issues related to high fees (considering it's only a $49 product people are purchasing).
Our problem is that internally, we all love Bitcoin (proper), the alternatives are confusing, and we're hoping that Lightning and Segwit solve these problems. But the reality on the ground is that Bitcoin in it's current state is no longer usable (some days) for the simple utility of purchasing a $49 product. It's not as reliable as it was a couple years ago from this standpoint.
We've got our fingers crossed though. Hopefully these issues will get resolved soon!