Bitcoin Forum

Why people will do business in BTC when they will not be so sure how it is going behave ? Since its creation, BTC has never been able to keep its value stable for long period of time. From "long period of time" i mean period of time which is necessary to win people's trust.

Most of the biggest merchants who do business accepting bitcoins don't really store the bitcoins they receive , they usually convert it to Dollars instantly through services like bitpay so ultimately they don't care about the volatility .

However there are smaller merhchants who can be affected by volatility , but so far it seems anyone who started accepting bitcoins this year has had a positive return on holding those coins.

Basically, this ^^ .

That's a very old argument, still bitcoin is gaining users year after year. VC investment is at an all time high, more and more companies are accepting it, and people just keep building on it, it's like no one cares about volatility. :)

volatility is only half bad, so big merchants are also speculating with bitcoin i think this is the main reason why they want to accept bitcoin, besides that they want to offer another payments ooption for those bitcoin nerds, that might not be a insignificant amount anymore...

Volatility can be tackled quite well nowadays. Many merchants use services like BitPay. Merchants set a price in fiat currency and it is converted in real time to BTC... (So they even have the chance to receive more coins for a product if the price goes down :D)

They can also sell it immediately to fiat... Although merchants should only sell what they need to pay bills in fiat, of course!

It's only negative if you are a moron and dispose of your BTC at a loss. One would presume a company wouldn't be running in the red or such razor thin margins that it would go bankrupt by not dumping (holding) BTC, with BTC conversions only a single digit or decimal percentage of their gross income, and they especially wouldn't if most other companies did the same.

Other fiat currencies also fluctuate significantly. Even worse, all of them devalue over time measured against real assets.

The reason why Bitcoin currently has a higher volatility than most other currencies is that it is still in its infancy and has a comparatively low market capitalization. That isn't necessarily a problem for businesses though, because they can convert Bitcoin into whatever they want instantly. Also, in many developing countries with high inflation, businesses can still operate.

Doing business in BTC is in fact in many cases a lot easier, faster, and cheaper compared to fiat, especially when you have an international business. You might also gain new international customers because of the simplicity to send and receive funds.

ya.ya.yo!

Most currencies is not stable either. +/- 10% per year is not unusual. But it is true that bitcoin flux a more than that on a year basis. Bussiness that is fiat bases need to convert the bitcoin (or at least part of it) into fiat instantly anyway, since their expenses are in fiat.

Bitcoin ("regardless of being a govt. project or not" :P) is still a new and fragile currency trying to make it's mark on the world economy. So volatility will be there.

Being a such a small market for investors of course price wont be stable this is so young it cant be compare to any other investment that has a 20 to 50 years in the investment markets only time will tell taken for a fact and there is quite a few companies with a bigger marketcap then bitcoin so in till bitcoin gets to a solid market cap we cant compare it to anything else.

most investors that invest on new stocks or new investments mostly know there is a high % of volatility in the price, with at lease a ton of other factors to play, i guess if you cant take the fire get out of the kitchen.

Volatility will be there until the velocity of money is so high that people are not able to influence its values. Right now, there are few transactions taking place with Bitcoin and its velocity (rate at which it changes hands) is pretty low.

you can use a service like coinapult. with that you dont have volatility.

So you are worried that bitcoin can't be a currency. And your main reason is bitcoin's fluctuating value. It is not too surprising that in age of fiat currency that the volatile (but increasing in value) value and lack of government sanction is troubling for people. Moving price of Bitcoin provides opportunities for investors and traders. As investors and traders come to bitcoin, they bring volume and money to bitcoin.
Volatility is not bad as it seems.

I like this argument. This is the best way to deal with instability, but it will be good only for the merchants. I mean, at end where do these bitcoins go. Merchants got Dollars for it what does bitpay do with it. At the end someone will suffers loss (or gain profit if there is a rise in BTC value).

That's a good question. Maybe they could use a pegged currency based on bitcoin. I actually had an idea for a consensus pegged currency called Dollarcoin:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=702098.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=702098.0)

Unfortunately the world just wasn't ready.

Nevertheless, to your question, I think of Bitcoin as an experiment. It could be that the very nature of a decentralized currency is to be volatile. In some sense, if Bitcoin is widely adopted, it will necessarily have a volatile price rise. But, if it stays a sort of niche currency, it might not be so volatile. In fact, Bitcoin was actually very stable for a good part of this year before the recent rise. In the meantime though it looks like bitcoin will continue to be like having a casino in your wallet  :).

When BTC is adopted as used like other major curries, it will be stable. It is still early days.

Right now, yes, I believe so.
Bitcoin does not yet have a lot of users, and it seems that for the most of its users bitcoin is still only investment, not something what they can use to buy or sell product or services online.
For merchants, specially smaller merchants, bitcoin is risk because of its unstable value and they usually prefer other, safer and simpler online payment options, such as. paypal.
Bitcoin will not become mainstream until these weaknesses and negative points are resolved.

You are comparing Bitcoin to traditional currencies that are being manipulated by governments to look stable.

These currencies has also been around for a much longer period, and the markets has been adapted to it's use. Bitcoin is a relatively new currency and the smallest change in

the buying and selling will influence the price. {Let's also take in consideration how many of these coins are actually in circulation}

There are also many 3rd party services that provide stability with timed conversion to fiat, if you need less volatility.

IMO this is exactly why it is not mass adopted yet. this is why big companies and online services like amazon still don't accept bitcoin.
also the few of them that actually do accept bitcoin as payment , they are not really working with bitcoin because they exchange it to fiat as soon as they receive the payment.

i don't see it as negative. volatility makes bitcoin a very interesting investment and will attract traders. if there is no money to be made people won't bother to look at bitcoin for investment purposes.