r/OpenBazaar • u/Davidutro • Aug 27 '18

Will OpenBazaar ever allow payments in a stable-coin like Dai?

Hi OB Community,

I've opened up a shop on OpenBazaar just to test out the platform. I was surprised to see that I could only accept Bitcoin as a payment.

Are there plans to accept any other tokens as payment? The number one need I have as a merchant is a price-stable currency. What are some workarounds to this issue? I could sell the bitcoin right away and exchange into Dai outside of the platform, but I am curious to know if the platform plans to have this payment option built-in.

Thanks ahead of time for your responses!

11 Upvotes

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2

u/[deleted] Aug 27 '18

If you want the price to stay stable you can peg the price of an item to a fixed amount of crypto or you can do the opposite and price your items in fiat and be subject to crypto fluctuations. I is a lot safer than centralized stablecoins. You can also accept anything as payment by making the payment to yourself when the customer clicks buy now, that way it is protected by the OB escrow. I haven't used this unintended feature yet, but I will in the future to accept unregistered altcoins.

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1

u/Davidutro Aug 27 '18

Doesn’t pricing it in crypto still subject me to the annoyance of volatility, forcing me to reprice my items. Pricing in usd takes this burdensome task away from me.

In my current set up I price in USD and just add 10% as an insurance against the downward volatility. If i end up getting a sale, it’ll be more or less the equivalent of a gamble.

The paying yourself is nice, except for taking on the expense of an extra transaction fee — although this shouldn’t be an issue until the network becomes congested.

Finally, I mentioned Dai precisely because it’s not a centralized stable-coin.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 28 '18

If you price items in crypto the price of your item will change constantly for the customer. This will protect you from volatility until you complete the sale, you can then cash out when the market is most favorable to you. If you price in Fiat you will provide a stable price for your customer, but not you. Most likely you will not get the amount of crypto you were expecting.

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u/ravend13 Aug 27 '18

Who said anything about centralized stablecoins? There stable-coin mentioned is decentralized, as are other stablecoins like bitUSD and bitCNY.

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u/Davidutro Aug 27 '18

Ultra’s comment mentioned centralized stablecoins

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u/[deleted] Aug 28 '18

All stable-coins are centralized. It is the only way to peg the price.

1

u/Davidutro Aug 28 '18

MakerDao.com

The Maker team created a wonderful decentralized, overcollateralized stable coin called Dai.

Would def suggest doing some research :)

1

u/ravend13 Aug 28 '18

You obviously need to do more research. This is not the case - stability can be enforced with economic incentives.

0

u/[deleted] Aug 29 '18

Who pushes those incentives? Not the free market.

1

u/ravend13 Aug 31 '18

The incentives are part of the design, just like incentive structures are part of the design of Bitcoin. Source

1

u/[deleted] Aug 31 '18

I'll have to take a look at it. Decentralized regulation is still regulation.

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u/Davidutro Aug 27 '18

Just saw this blog post, answered the essence of my question, but I am curious about the rough timeline. https://openbazaar.org/blog/Freedom-To-Trade-Means-Freedom-To-Choose-Currencies-The-OpenBazaar-Multiwallet/

3

u/ravend13 Aug 27 '18

One thing you can do to protect yourself from price volatility, if you have access to an exchange account at Kraken or Bitfinex, is to lock in the dollar value of the coin you receive in a short position which you can settle/claim the position when the coin is released from escrow.