Former Coinbase Business Dev: 'There Wasn’t a Long-Term Case for BTC Payments

[sirty143]

Former Coinbase Business Developer: 'There Wasn’t a Long-Term Case for Bitcoin Payments'

Nick Tomaino, a former business developer and marketing lead at Coinbase, explained how the idea of bitcoin for payments gradually lost its relevance in the market. Tomaino detailed that Coinbase rode this premise back in 2014 to raise $125 million in two funding rounds... See more for yourself here.

Your opinion is greatly appreciated.

[Crwth]

Thanks for sharing the information I guess that's why Brian Armstrong wrote the secret masterplan of coinbase.

https://www.coinbase.com/blog/the-coinbase-secret-master-plan

The article is since 2016. Maybe that's why it's really the plan to get everyone now BASED with their smart wallet. It's a good wallet IMO and I have been using it for a while.

[TomPluz]

For sure, people involved in Bitcoin and its development especially those focusing on its retail payment potential are now slowly accepting the reality...it is just not there for now. Let's all be practical, people are greedy so why would I be using my hard-earned Bitcoin to buy some grocery or a cup of coffee when I am thinking of the price it would be a month or a year from now? So Bitcoin has become like a savings account for many of us who are hoping that it give us the biggest return possible and financial freedom into the future. Still, Bitcoin can be good for macro-payments I think especially inter-border commerce but for micro-payments this is where Bitcoin is suffering a big problem for now. In fact, I would say that it has become like the physical gold; you won't see anyone bringing his gold to buy some ice cream, right? Still, we are hoping that the time will come when Bitcoin can be utilized for paying all things whether they can be valued a million dollar or just $1. In summary, this lack of working and viable infrastructure on micro-payments fortunately do not make BTC less valuable.

[Baofeng]

For sure, people involved in Bitcoin and its development especially those focusing on its retail payment potential are now slowly accepting the reality...it is just not there for now. Let's all be practical, people are greedy so why would I be using my hard-earned Bitcoin to buy some grocery or a cup of coffee when I am thinking of the price it would be a month or a year from now? So Bitcoin has become like a savings account for many of us who are hoping that it give us the biggest return possible and financial freedom into the future. Still, Bitcoin can be good for macro-payments I think especially inter-border commerce but for micro-payments this is where Bitcoin is suffering a big problem for now. In fact, I would say that it has become like the physical gold; you won't see anyone bringing his gold to buy some ice cream, right? Still, we are hoping that the time will come when Bitcoin can be utilized for paying all things whether they can be valued a million dollar or just $1. In summary, this lack of working and viable infrastructure on micro-payments fortunately do not make BTC less valuable.

Volatility is the number factor that really put Bitcoin in somewhat in a drawback as far as it being a mode of payment, yes, we should admit to that. But with the implementation of LN, maybe stores are going to adjust and it used as we have seen that the numbers are going up ever since it was released to the public.

But as far as let's say online store, big online stores like Amazon, I doubt that they are going to accept Bitcoin as payment system as P2P, there should be somewhat in the middle to process everything like BTCPay Server.

[NotATether]

L. M. A. O!

"There is no use case for BTC payments"? And yet somehow, there is a long-term use case for Ethereum payments with its infamous gas fees that completely dog smaller bills?

Someone try to convince me that Coinbase Commerce is not ran by people who drink Kool-Aid every morning instead of coffee.

When the only coins you support are ETH, MATIC, and that made-in-Coinbase coin, you know that your payment processor has screwed up.

And by the way, whatever happened to LTC payments?

[yhiaali3]

In fact, whether we agree with Coinbase or not, and regardless of whether I don't like them, what they say is unfortunately true. We are missing the goal for which Bitcoin was created, which is to be a peer-to-peer means of payment.

Many factors contribute to this, such as high fees, delays in transactions, as well as third-party services that forcefully impose KYC, in addition to the value of Bitcoin, which increases over time, and no one wants to part with his expensive Bitcoin in order to make some small payments.

A pizza lesson no one will ever forget.

[Stompix]

A pizza lesson no one will ever forget.

If guys like Laszlo wouldn't have paid 10k BTC for a pizza or Lamma socks, then right now you would still need 10 BTC to buy a pizza, users should start to understand that just holding coins and letting others do the transactions, the adoption and the money inflow is not going to go that smoothly.
Ok, Bitcoin is no longer only a p2p currency is more of an investment, but what happens when three will be a currency that acts better in both cases?

Let's all be practical, people are greedy so why would I be using my hard-earned Bitcoin to buy some grocery or a cup of coffee when I am thinking of the price it would be a month or a year from now? So Bitcoin has become like a savings account for many of us who are hoping that it give us the biggest return possible and financial freedom into the future.

If fees wouldn't be a problem the solution would be simple.
I don't want to spend 100$ worth of BTC on groceries this month, I will spend $100 in fiat!
Just exchange those $100 in fiat meant for groceries for bitcoin and spend it.
But unfortunately, fees kill this whole thing.

[ABCbits]

It's true not many people use Bitcoin to make payment and it's annoying to use Bitcoin for small settlement/microtransaction. But he clearly forget that Bitcoin payment activity helps Bitcoin growth (both price and community), especially in the early days. But at least they recently begin to support LN which is more suitable for small settlement/microtransaction.

[NotATether]

It's true not many people use Bitcoin to make payment and it's annoying to use Bitcoin for small settlement/microtransaction. But he clearly forget that Bitcoin payment activity helps Bitcoin growth (both price and community), especially in the early days. But at least they recently begin to support LN which is more suitable for small settlement/microtransaction.

wtf are people using Bitcoin for if they're not buying stuff with it? (let's pretend that traders did not exist for a second.)

Coinbase's decision makes no sense, unless they are talking about the infrastructure required to convert RPC calls output to addresses with balance and transaction history. But even that is quite minimal so there was no good reason to drop it.

[yhiaali3]

A pizza lesson no one will ever forget.

If guys like Laszlo wouldn't have paid 10k BTC for a pizza or Lamma socks, then right now you would still need 10 BTC to buy a pizza, users should start to understand that just holding coins and letting others do the transactions, the adoption and the money inflow is not going to go that smoothly.
Ok, Bitcoin is no longer only a p2p currency is more of an investment, but what happens when three will be a currency that acts better in both cases?

Of course, we are all grateful to Bitcoin pizza and Laszlo's courage to venture into something new and unknown. No one denies his great favor with the Bitcoin community. Quite the contrary, had it not been for the audacity of these first young people to accept payment in Bitcoin, we would not have reached where we are today.

But as you know, in one way or another, everyone has become afraid to spend his Bitcoin because of the pizza story. Everyone has come to believe that if he keeps Bitcoin for as long as possible, he might become rich one day. This is one of the reasons why people do not want to make their small transactions with Bitcoin.

[ABCbits]

It's true not many people use Bitcoin to make payment and it's annoying to use Bitcoin for small settlement/microtransaction. But he clearly forget that Bitcoin payment activity helps Bitcoin growth (both price and community), especially in the early days. But at least they recently begin to support LN which is more suitable for small settlement/microtransaction.

wtf are people using Bitcoin for if they're not buying stuff with it? (let's pretend that traders did not exist for a second.)

Coinbase's decision makes no sense, unless they are talking about the infrastructure required to convert RPC calls output to addresses with balance and transaction history. But even that is quite minimal so there was no good reason to drop it.

Looking at older news on different website[1], it seems they actually don't want spend manual effort to support Bitcoin and other UTXO-based coin. It's still not good reason though.

[1] https://unchainedcrypto.com/coinbase-commerce-ends-support-for-bitcoin-and-similar-utxo-coins/