Would you accept Bitcoin for a TS rental?

[Ken555]

I think I just understood the question as the latter instead of the former. And provided why I think for consumers who don't happen to have a lot of crypto sitting around it's not likely to be enticing to sign up IMHO.

If someone other than Paypal offers this, and I'm betting they will if Paypal is doing it, then yes, I also agree. I want to take as many payment forms as I can possibly manage. I like you don't trust Paypal for historical reasons that have nothing to do with crypto, but I can hope Square and other payment processors are watching and will compete if this has any reasonable consumer uptake.

Block to roll out bitcoin payments on Square

squareup.com

Global payment solutions for Web3

Stripe for the crypto economy | A complete solution for crypto platforms

stripe.com

 

[emeryjre]

I took the original question being from someone unfamiliar with the mechanisms and methods of using cryptocurrency
Many people think bitcoin is the generic term for cryptocurrency
A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing
Ken555 and others have attempted to answer the question by doing some explanations in a rapidly evolving payment processing system

 

[WaikikiFirst]

Would you take shares in NVDA for a TS rental?????????????????????????????????????????
I've got my own bitcoin. I'd rather take a buncha BOGO pizza coupons. It ain't a currency.

 

[WaikikiFirst]

I would accept a PayPal payment converted to USD. We already accept PayPal

does the buyer (tenant in this case) have any rights to get their money back with PP? If not, don't expect any sophisticated buyer to be happy with that.

 

[jp10558]

does the buyer (tenant in this case) have any rights to get their money back with PP? If not, don't expect any sophisticated buyer to be happy with that.

The buyer / tenant would presumably be the one paying in crypto, and so one hopes they understand it's "cash like" i.e. the only way to get money back is if the seller / renter decided to refund it. And TBH, if you refund via Paypal, does it then re-convert to the buyer /tenant in crypto? Or does the tenant have to take USD? If you wanted to for whatever reason refund in crypto does Paypal etc handle the reverse for you?

 

[WaikikiFirst]

the only way to get money back is if the seller / renter decided to refund it

So, the answer is "No. They have no right.. They'd have to go to court." Is that it? That is what I thought.
THis is why Redwk has the verify/protect strategy.
Every minute someone is born ready to pay cash for a TS rental from a stranger.

 

[jp10558]

So, the answer is "No. They have no right.. They'd have to go to court." Is that it? THis is why Redwk has the verify/protect strategy.
Every minute someone is born ready to pay cash for a TS rental from a stranger.

Correct, there is no way to get crypto back once you send it, just like once you hand someone a $20 bill. You'd have to go to court. Like I said above, you lose all the credit card benefits when you pay crypto.

 

[WaikikiFirst]

TBH, if you refund via Paypal, does it then re-convert to the buyer /tenant in crypto? Or does the tenant have to take USD? If you wanted to for whatever reason refund in crypto does Paypal etc handle the reverse for you?

Way off in the weeds, but now the other elephant in the room becomes more clear. TAXES. How much of a profit does that person have on the bitcoin? Pay taxes on it?
A refunded transaction would still be a taxable event, I am sure. I very much doubt PP wants to be involved in any way in taxes, refund or not

"Like I said above, you lose all the credit card benefits when you pay crypto."
Right. I'm no expert, but my reaction from the headline of this is "Anyone who wants to pay you BITC for renting a TS is trying to avoid paying taxes on their BITC gains. Every bit of the discussion has to understand that underlying motivation."

 

[jp10558]

Way off in the weeds, but now the other elephant in the room becomes more clear. TAXES. How much of a profit does that person have on the bitcoin? Pay taxes on it?
A refunded transaction would still be a taxable event, I am sure. I very much doubt PP wants to be involved in any way in taxes one way or antoher

Following along in the weeds ... why would a refund be taxable? Do you mean as a tenant? I've gotten refunds before on my CC and never had a tax implication. Maybe you're implying if the crypto appreciates in transit or something? IDK, that would still not be counted till you sell it just like a stock, but I guess your cost basis on that refund would be reset. IDK I can't imagine enforcing this, nor would anyone want to deal with it if it was enforced.

Part of the problem you're pointing out is crypto so far is treated like gold or a stock for taxes, not like cash. But we're all talking about it like it's cash, because again, almost no one is paying for a hotel stay with some stocks, or with a gold coin either.

I know way back in 2006 era people selling silver based alternative currencies like the Liberty Dollar claimed WalMart would take silver for a bit, but I have no idea how that all worked or if it was all made up to get you to buy their certificates or coins.

 

[WaikikiFirst]

why would a refund be taxable?

The refund isn't the taxable event. The original conversion out of BITC is the taxable event. The refund doesn't "undo" that event tax-wise, even though it reverses the "ownership".

 

[WaikikiFirst]

Part of the problem you're pointing out is crypto so far is treated like gold or a stock for taxes, not like cash. But we're all talking about it like it's cash

Yes. THAT, right there, is how 1/3 of the threads here go. Off in a direction. Further. Weeds. Further. Ignoring a clear underlying issue, or the other side's point of view.

 

[easyrider]

does the buyer (tenant in this case) have any rights to get their money back with PP? If not, don't expect any sophisticated buyer to be happy with that.

That's a good question. PayPal payments protect the buyer more than the seller, so I think yes.

Bill

 

[emeryjre]

Here is a story from a credible source about the PayPal process of accepting Cryptocurrency

The original story is from Fortune Magazine

Using MSN eliminates the paywall for the story

MSN

 

[WaikikiFirst]

"PayPal will charge merchants a promotional fee of 0.99% on transactions for the first year and then up the charge to 1.5%, Frank Keller, an executive vice president, told Fortune. Those fees are less than the 1.57% average rate that U.S. businesses paid to credit card companies in 2024,"

Where is the discussion of the Buyer's Rights using PP/BITC vs using CCs?
quick AI peruse tells me PP won't report the BITC seller to the IRS unless they have > $20K worth of transactions in a yr

 

[WaikikiFirst]

story from a credible source about the PayPal process of accepting Cryptocurrency

"Process" exactly as expected. PP sells your BITC = Taxable Event. How difficult can the process be?
Where is the discussion of the Buyer's Rights using PP/BITC vs using CCs?
Big difference between using BITC/PP to buy food at Kroger or any other instnatly-delivered physical item (or even service) vs renting a TS from a stranger at some future date

 

[emeryjre]

I would bet the "agreement" from PayPal is a real page turner for people providing any Cryptocurrency for payment via PayPal
Please let us know what you find in the "fine print"

 

[jp10558]

The refund isn't the taxable event. The original conversion out of BITC is the taxable event. The refund doesn't "undo" that event tax-wise, even though it reverses the "ownership".

Whoof, you're probably right, but that happens at Paypal, not the sender of the crypto or the renter.

 

[jp10558]

That's a good question. PayPal payments protect the buyer more than the seller, so I think yes.

Bill

Right, paypal may have protections, I guess like they do if you went from your checking account to a PayPal account and then paid. It's quite unclear to me when paypal is just a payment processor vs a money in one pay pal account to another paypal account what comes into play. I don't expect stripe to get involved when I have a CC dispute, I talk to the merchant and I talk to my card company. Is PayPal like stripe here or like original paypal? Remember, people can pay you with PayPal as a processor with no PayPal account at all last I checked.

Brave new world I guess and I bet there's some litigation coming to figure all this out, or at least some unhappy posts and news stories as people figure it out.

But the important part is crypto itself doesn't protect you at all, it's the $20 bill. So if you feel safe cause "paypal", that's great, but doesn't apply if you're paying via crypto to another processor. I also don't entirely know who will own the wallet - i.e. if you're paying crypto you have to give a wallet ID, and if that wallet ID is owned by PayPal you'll know you're paying PayPal, but if it's owned by the vendor you don't know HOW you're paying beyond sending cash, so again, really just have the vendor's word about refund policies.

 

[dioxide45]

Right, paypal may have protections, I guess like they do if you went from your checking account to a PayPal account and then paid. It's quite unclear to me when paypal is just a payment processor vs a money in one pay pal account to another paypal account what comes into play. I don't expect stripe to get involved when I have a CC dispute, I talk to the merchant and I talk to my card company. Is PayPal like stripe here or like original paypal? Remember, people can pay you with PayPal as a processor with no PayPal account at all last I checked.

Paypal offers buyer protections on business transactions. Kind of similar to protections a credit card offers. You just work through Paypal for resolution instead of the credit card company. Certainly you should work with the merchant first, but if that doesn't work Paypal has buyer protections as well. It isn't like Stripe. It isn't a pure payment processor in that sense.

 

[jp10558]

Paypal offers buyer protections on business transactions. Kind of similar to protections a credit card offers. You just work through Paypal for resolution instead of the credit card company. Certainly you should work with the merchant first, but if that doesn't work Paypal has buyer protections as well. It isn't like Stripe. It isn't a pure payment processor in that sense.

Yes, if I log in to Paypal and use the send to a business it does, but how does that work with a crypto payment? When you send a crypto payment you go into your wallet or your management company like coinbase and send a payment to another wallet. It's kind of like bill pay in your bank. Your wallet knows nothing about PayPal. You don't log in to PayPal. It's not like using PayPal that you log in to that is tied to your bank account or credit card, at least unless PayPal is also acting as your wallet holder in this case, but then it makes basically 0 sense as Paypal holding funds can already transfer those via Paypal to another person using PayPal. They don't need the added complexity of crypto to do this. I guess crypto is more like western unioning cash.

Now, I suppose Paypal could create a new wallet for each transaction (IDK if there's actually any limit to the number of wallets TBH) but I don't really get how Paypal is necessarily having any relationship to the buyer. Maybe you log into Paypal, send your crypto to your own Paypal account and then pay or something, but then I'm back to wondering who exactly is going to do that, and why.

I'm not arguing that no one will - it's the Internet - probably a thousand people who would do any strange thing. I'm arguing me as Joe Blow consumer - if I was going to use Paypal, and I was going to use my PayPal account, and I was going to send cash, why wouldn't I just ACH to Paypal and pay normally?

And for buyer protections I keep coming back to how we treat cash, and again, the bank that gets the overnight deposit has nothing to do with the merchant you bought something from. I guess I would expect this to not work like a normal Paypal payment.

 

[dioxide45]

And for buyer protections I keep coming back to how we treat cash, and again, the bank that gets the overnight deposit has nothing to do with the merchant you bought something from. I guess I would expect this to not work like a normal Paypal payment.

Paypal can and will put an account into the negative. For some people that have certain transaction patterns, they do also put a hold on the Paypal funds in the event there is a dispute. Paypal can also take money back out of the linked bank account to settle a dispute.

 

[Ken555]

Yes, if I log in to Paypal and use the send to a business it does, but how does that work with a crypto payment? When you send a crypto payment you go into your wallet or your management company like coinbase and send a payment to another wallet. It's kind of like bill pay in your bank. Your wallet knows nothing about PayPal. You don't log in to PayPal. It's not like using PayPal that you log in to that is tied to your bank account or credit card, at least unless PayPal is also acting as your wallet holder in this case, but then it makes basically 0 sense as Paypal holding funds can already transfer those via Paypal to another person using PayPal. They don't need the added complexity of crypto to do this. I guess crypto is more like western unioning cash.

Now, I suppose Paypal could create a new wallet for each transaction (IDK if there's actually any limit to the number of wallets TBH) but I don't really get how Paypal is necessarily having any relationship to the buyer. Maybe you log into Paypal, send your crypto to your own Paypal account and then pay or something, but then I'm back to wondering who exactly is going to do that, and why.

I'm not arguing that no one will - it's the Internet - probably a thousand people who would do any strange thing. I'm arguing me as Joe Blow consumer - if I was going to use Paypal, and I was going to use my PayPal account, and I was going to send cash, why wouldn't I just ACH to Paypal and pay normally?

And for buyer protections I keep coming back to how we treat cash, and again, the bank that gets the overnight deposit has nothing to do with the merchant you bought something from. I guess I would expect this to not work like a normal Paypal payment.

A little research will bring enlightenment. My two second Claude search resulted in:

Based on PayPal’s new “Pay with Crypto” system, here’s how the payment process and refunds work:

## Payment Process

PayPal will let users connect existing crypto wallets they own to a checkout page. Depending on a buyer’s crypto wallet, PayPal will sell the cryptocurrency on a centralized exchange like Coinbase or a decentralized exchange like Uniswap. The proceeds of that sale will be converted into PayPal’s own stablecoin, which will then be converted into U.S. dollars sent back to the merchant.

The process works in several steps:

1. **Wallet Connection**: Customers can connect wallets including Coinbase, OKX, Binance, Kraken, Phantom, MetaMask, and Exodus
1. **Conversion Chain**: Your crypto → Sold on exchange → Converted to PYUSD stablecoin → Converted to USD for merchant
1. **Settlement**: The system powers near-instant settlement

## Wallet Transfer Details

PayPal **does not** transfer funds from your wallet to theirs in the traditional sense. Instead, when you pay with crypto from an external wallet, PayPal facilitates the sale of your cryptocurrency on exchanges and handles the conversion process. Your crypto remains in your external wallet until the moment of sale/conversion.

For PayPal’s internal crypto system, you can use your crypto balance to make purchases at millions of merchants that accept PayPal by selecting the crypto you want to use to pay , and PayPal handles the conversion automatically.

## Refunds

Refunds for any transactions processed to Checkout with Crypto generally will be provided in U.S. dollars to your Balance Account, and in all cases will be provided in cash, not cryptocurrency. Cash refunds will be added to your Balance Account balance.

Key refund details:

- **No crypto refunds**: You’ll always receive refunds in cash (USD), never in the original cryptocurrency
- **Destination**: Refunds go to your PayPal Balance Account
- **Irreversible nature**: Because of the irreversible nature of cryptocurrency protocols, transactions can’t be canceled or reversed once initiated

This means if you paid with Bitcoin worth $100, but Bitcoin’s value changed by the time you get a refund, you’ll still receive $100 in cash, not the equivalent amount of Bitcoin. The crypto-to-cash conversion happens at the time of purchase, not refund.

 

[jp10558]

A little research will bring enlightenment. My two second Claude search resulted in:

Based on PayPal’s new “Pay with Crypto” system, here’s how the payment process and refunds work:

## Payment Process

PayPal will let users connect existing crypto wallets they own to a checkout page. Depending on a buyer’s crypto wallet, PayPal will sell the cryptocurrency on a centralized exchange like Coinbase or a decentralized exchange like Uniswap. The proceeds of that sale will be converted into PayPal’s own stablecoin, which will then be converted into U.S. dollars sent back to the merchant.

The process works in several steps:

1. **Wallet Connection**: Customers can connect wallets including Coinbase, OKX, Binance, Kraken, Phantom, MetaMask, and Exodus
1. **Conversion Chain**: Your crypto → Sold on exchange → Converted to PYUSD stablecoin → Converted to USD for merchant
1. **Settlement**: The system powers near-instant settlement

## Wallet Transfer Details

PayPal **does not** transfer funds from your wallet to theirs in the traditional sense. Instead, when you pay with crypto from an external wallet, PayPal facilitates the sale of your cryptocurrency on exchanges and handles the conversion process. Your crypto remains in your external wallet until the moment of sale/conversion.

For PayPal’s internal crypto system, you can use your crypto balance to make purchases at millions of merchants that accept PayPal by selecting the crypto you want to use to pay , and PayPal handles the conversion automatically.

## Refunds

Refunds for any transactions processed to Checkout with Crypto generally will be provided in U.S. dollars to your Balance Account, and in all cases will be provided in cash, not cryptocurrency. Cash refunds will be added to your Balance Account balance.

Key refund details:

- **No crypto refunds**: You’ll always receive refunds in cash (USD), never in the original cryptocurrency
- **Destination**: Refunds go to your PayPal Balance Account
- **Irreversible nature**: Because of the irreversible nature of cryptocurrency protocols, transactions can’t be canceled or reversed once initiated

This means if you paid with Bitcoin worth $100, but Bitcoin’s value changed by the time you get a refund, you’ll still receive $100 in cash, not the equivalent amount of Bitcoin. The crypto-to-cash conversion happens at the time of purchase, not refund.

Ahh, ok you link your crypto wallet. This seems maybe riskier than linking a bank account. At the very least, you'd want it to be an isolated account / wallet. Maybe Paypal is getting better crypto exchange rates than coinbase or whoever does? But this still is a misleading marketing to me - it's not "Pay with Crypto", it's you can link a wallet to Paypal. I.e. it requires the buyer to have and use paypal, whereas you can use a debit card with whoever processor the vendor has, and you don't have to do anything.

This is a bigger lift if I as a business want to say I accept crypto - I'm not doing so in the traditional sense for the buyer, I'm saying if you sign up to Paypal, link your wallet bla bla, I'm just saying I accept Paypal in reality.

 

[WaikikiFirst]

Ahh, ok you link your crypto wallet

Well, I thought SOME VERSION of this was pretty obvious almost from the beginning. Of course, there are details in that supposed "detail" that matter A LOT.
I'd guess > 90% of the people (99.9%?) who would want to do this fall into 3 categories:
1) people who want to avoid paying taxes on their crypto capital gains
2) scammers
3) crypto evangelistas who want to convert everyone to their crypto religion, "like yesterday"
Tiny tiny market. Lots of PR.
Back to the orig question, I would have zero inetrest in dealing with any of those categories, were I trying to rent out a TS.
Otoh, this all really has nothing to do with the orig question. 2 different things:
A) would-you-accept-bitcoin-for-a-ts-rental?
B) would-you-accept-PayPal-for-a-ts-rental?
The thread took a hard left turn to (B)

 

[WaikikiFirst]

A little research will bring enlightenmen

I'll have to read that a few more times to find anything that I didn't already assume was true, other than the idea that you can have an ongiong BALANCE in your PP acct that came from crypto.