Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by blhack 4590 days ago
Bitpay immediately converts your Bitcoin payments to USD. Customers pay with BTC, but you receive USD.
2 comments

Well, assuming Bitpay can afford to meet the USD payments. Behind the scenes they can't actually convert Bitcoin to USD instantly, so they're basically eating any change in the Bitcoin-USD rate between the transaction happening and them cashing out. If there's a big enough crash or they receive so many payments that the market cannot absorb the Bitcoin sales, they could easily find themselves unable to meet their obligations. (Things actually looked a bit hairy when BFL used them for payments just because of the sheer amount of Bitcoin they had to convert in a short period.)
> Behind the scenes they can't actually convert Bitcoin to USD instantly

What if they have an agreement with one or more exchanges, and complete the transaction by satisfying the current highest bids?

I hope this will not always be the case with merchants, otherwise Bitcoin will never sever its ties with the dollar.