Cryptocurrency payment option and Pine hardware wallet, any thoughts?

[ohuw67]

The title says it all. I'm curious to what's the community's take on adding cryptocurrency as an option to pay for Pine products, and also about having hardware wallets manufactured and shipped to you by the Pine project.

[CharlieGordon]

The title says it all. I'm curious to what's the community's take on adding cryptocurrency as an option to pay for Pine products,

That was discussed when people were unhappy about paypal being the only payment option. Pine64 implemented all requested payment methods, except crypto. So I guess there is something preventing this from happening.

and also about having hardware wallets manufactured and shipped to you by the Pine project.

I like the idea of crypto currencies, but never really got into it. If there were a really cheap hardware wallet, I might be tempted.

[lot378]

I think until there is greater regulation worldwide of cryptocurrencies there is too great a risk for Pine64.

And there is the stability problem: "investors" involved with cryptocurrency can/will rip the value out when it suits them, collapsing value which potentially means Pine64 could either gain/lose a lot (read: lose). I know some people think it is the future and it probably will be but that moment never seems to arrive.

[ryo]

I actually went offtopic about it not so long ago where I made the case that at the very least Pine64 should accept Monero and Bitcoin.
Monero because I believe this is going to be the main currency after the US dollar collapse, and Bitcoin because of the amount of people still using it.

Meanwhile I figured that the digital yuan and Ripple would be the other 2 mainstream crypto in the post-dollar era.
However, I don't expect anyone to actually use these 2, because they're fully controlled and surveilled by governments, banks, and the rest of the criminal entities, so perhaps they'll be the only ones actually using it.
As soon as people and businesses find out that governments, banks, big tech, big pharma, and 3 letter agencies (among others) can just steal all your funds at any random moment because some lunatic on social media discovered that your grandpa who's probably long dead maybe once said the N-word when he was a little child, everyone will run to Monero instead.

And now that atomic swaps are a thing, I expect the Bitcoin whales would wait for the the value of Bitcoin to reach new heights, and then swap it all to Monero (which would effectively make Bitcoin go from 100k all the way to maybe just 300 overnight).

[fire219]

We have investigated accepting crypto payment before, but kinda came to the conclusion that it's more trouble than its worth. Two reasons:

1. Pine64 runs very lean on cash reserves, yet still needs to be able to pay suppliers and factories. When a user buys a product, the currency from that sale needs to be usable ASAP. The suppliers/factories do not accept crypto (likely never will), and a reliable way to immediately transfer crypto to fiat currency doesn't seem to be a thing.

2. Volatility. I'm not talking about the currencies themselves (though that is a concern). I'm talking about the communities surrounding them. When we put out our polls for if people would use a crypto payment option, what we saw was a large amount of people arguing over which coins we should accept (primarily BTC, Monero, and Eth), and good and which are bad. Let's just say those conversations weren't exactly civil. We're not interested in getting mixed up in that mess.

This isn't to say that we never will accept crypto, but to make it practical Pine would have to change its operating methods, or the crypto markets will have to be more mature and practical.

[ohuw67]

Indeed. From my personal experience the crypto community can be very passionate, and also tribal and territorial.

I know a few services that might be worth trying to convert crypto payments directly to fiat money, but I'm not sure whether they are also available in Hong Kong where Pine is based, and also don't want to spam the forum.

Hopefully there will be something in the future that the Pine team can use to convert all crypto payments instantly to fiduciary money deposited directly to the Pine's cash reserves, and with very low fees.

[KC9UDX]

Also there is the cost. Converting crypto to usable currency can be very expensive, especially when time is a factor. Not to mention the risk in using certain services to do this.

[zetabeta]

i don't want to go too much other kind of politics here, but there is some degree.

i don't think u.s. dollar, euros, uk pounds, yens and others will collapse. mostly because they have functional economy (more or less) and central bank behind them. central bank can support currencies to a certain degree.

crypto currencies have neither, their user base is small and economy they represent is small. there isn't central power to support the currency when needed.

crypto currencies are at mercy of investors and speculators. basically i think crypto currencies will fall seriously some point and government like power is needed to support currency.

most people tend to think money can hold value by itself. money hold value because others collectively think it has value or government or similar is supporting it.

it was said here before. pine org needs u.s. dollars or yuans sooner or later, therefore cryptocurrencies are serious risk. and value varies too much anyway. my guess is, crypto prices would 50% higher than dollar prices if pine would accept crypto currencies.

[ryo]

Volatility. I'm not talking about the currencies themselves (though that is a concern). I'm talking about the communities surrounding them. When we put out our polls for if people would use a crypto payment option, what we saw was a large amount of people arguing over which coins we should accept (primarily BTC, Monero, and Eth), and good and which are bad. Let's just say those conversations weren't exactly civil. We're not interested in getting mixed up in that mess.

There are services that let you accept multiple currencies.
However, these are always intermediaries, so they will charge you a fee which adds to the issues when it comes to converting to fiat.
Though the "it needs to be usable in fiat ASAP" part is indeed quite a concern, though I do expect suppliers, manufacturers and such to accept crypto once the fiat currencies collapse, since those would the only alternatives with value.
With the exception of North Korean, Cuban, and Iranian currencies, every currency is linked to the US dollar, so once that one goes to 0, they all will go to 0.

i don't think u.s. dollar, euros, uk pounds, yens and others will collapse. mostly because they have functional economy (more or less) and central bank behind them. central bank can support currencies to a certain degree.

On average, fiat currencies that are inflationary only last 100 years each.
Once debt gets so high that governments can't pay it off anymore, it's basically game over.

100 years ago the Weimar German mark collapsed, recent well known examples of currencies that collapsed were those of Zimbabwe and Venezuela.
The US dollar is already collapsing, and since the others are linked to it, so are the euros, the pounds, the yens, the yuans, the rubbles, the ruppees, the other dollars etc.
It doesn't happen instantly, it often takes up to a decade before they go to 0, and the current scamdemic is basically the cover story to that (lots of agenda's attached to it, and the US dollar collapse just conveniently appears to be among them).

crypto currencies ... there isn't central power to support the currency when needed.

Which is actually a good thing.
Central powers are exactly what makes currencies lose value, especially if they're inflationary and just printed out of nothing.
Fiat currencies used to be linked to gold until 1971, then they removed the link, and the value started to torpedo down ever since.

crypto currencies are at mercy of investors and speculators. basically i think crypto currencies will fall seriously some point and government like power is needed to support currency.

That's a very communist type of thinking.
In a healthy economy, money is controlled by markets trading.
The only time governments control currencies is under communism, and therefore should always be avoided.
Such currency is very prone to corruption, massive inflation, raising debt, high taxes, enabling poverty, financial censorship (ask Pornhub and OnlyFans how this works, they got censored by payment processors), and so on.

most people tend to think money can hold value by itself. money hold value because others collectively think it has value or government or similar is supporting it.

In a basic sense, you can have inflationary currencies and deflationary currencies.
Inflationary ones lose value the more of it exists.
There's no ceiling for it, only a bottom.
So the more money gets printed into existence, the quicker it loses value, the less likely it becomes to fix it.

Deflationary currencies (like Bitcoin) on the other hand have a bottom and a ceiling.
There's never going to be more than 21 million Bitcoin, the more of it exists, the harder it gets to hold Bitcoin, the bigger the value becomes.
There's probably going to be a problem with that as well because nothing is perfect, but since deflationary currencies are still a very new concept, I'm not sure at this time what the consequences would be.

[KC9UDX]

Sooner or later, like it or not, governments will take over crypto currency, in one way or another. The people using it today will all clamour to tangible currency when they do.