Bitcoin Forum

Hey guys, if we were to come up with a huge petition and invite everyone you know to sign it, we could potentially get thousands of signatures. If we could get this, we could show it to any major company and hopefully sway them towards accepting bitcoin.

Any ideas? Will it work? Will it not? Improvements?

i'd guess the companies would think you were a bunch of cranks. you could set up an escrowed order group buy type of thing but even then that's a weird type of blackmail.

It would work if we honestly had a leg to stand on,in causing these sites to lose business if they did not play ball.
Sadly bitcoiners are gamblers,traders and darknet users to most of these sites and they do not see much upside in adding a feature that could just create more work for them in the end.
Was thinking about this after I think you read the same thread about the medical website and chewing over the same thought.
We are as a community a little narrow focused by nature due to people wanting to cash in on bitcoin and due to the history of early adopters.
It almost was a good thing at first but now its showing its true teeth and we need to some how expand the field in a more diligent manner.

Dating sites seem like a good spot to hit up but they are really about mining personal data and bitcoin would detract a bit of info collection on that side. Really not sure the best tact but its going to take a huge shift to grow the biosphere of bitcoin to get different people involved.

That is a nice idea with that companies will at last start to accept bitcoin for their business and if they will not then we all will use only those companies which will provide us the service with bitcoin payment method.

this was tried a while ago.
the issues:
90% of signers didnt even live in an area the retailer served and a few retailers felt it was an empty gesture.
people crowded together and then spammed the emails of the company because the petitions were not working.
the retailers released standardised "we do not have plans to add bitcoin as a payment method in the near future"

if your going to make a petition site. atleast try to get people to suggest the retailers they will actually use themselves, rather then retailers they hope will create some free PR by mentioning bitcoin.

the best advice i can think of is not think internationally. think local.
find other bitcoiners in your area and host a meetup. find out where most people in your area shop the most and will actually USE bitcoin there regularly.
then find the most confident person or savvy person in your area who knows how to get someone to be bitcoin ready in 5 minutes, to go speak to that store.

usually the best place to start is a local bar/pub by making that the local venue for the bitcoin meetups/social events. start with a fiat bartab and gently introduce the staff to bitcoin. suggest asking the staff if they are asked to pay with bitcoin they show a QR code on paper they have in their pocket or stuck to the backing card of the orderpad. treat it like a game, relaxed test, trial. dont go to a-hole bossy about getting staff to do it. and then the staff can deem it as "paid" when they see a payment appear on a bookmarked link on their phone.
happily able to then take the fiat out of the bartab instantly. then let all the local bitcoiners start getting excited when you walk back to the table(s) and tell them they can now buy their drinks and meals with bitcoin.

works even better if the confident savvy one of the group is a bitcoin buyer. he puts fiat in a bartab, and by the end of the night he has bitcoin via the others in the group buying drinks, essentially making him the exchange while everyone else feels they are paying for their meal in bitcoin.

after a few regular social meetups the savvy guy can either carry on indirectly buying bitcoin this way. or help the bar setup an account with a payment service to get paid direct without any of the bartab funds going back and forth

then when you want to expand to other local retailers think smart. independent gas stations, independent grocery stores would be used more regular than a once a decade furniture /decorating store. also i mentioned independent stores because national chains dont give local managers much athority/ability to make new options available.

but in short. if you are not willing to do your part to make bitcoin useful where you live. dont expect bitcoin to grow legs and come running to your town.

It is a good idea however, all of us come from different area different country and nobody know the true identity, how can the company sure that all the person who sign is legit, and because it's come from different country i think the company will have a doubt because the company can't measure the marketing target

i think it is better to ask all of the bitcoin user to join and open a business and it used bitcoin payment

You would be better to target vending machine manufacturers who supply to major soft drink and confectionery products that are placed in very visible areas such as rail and bus interchanges as well as airports and stadiums.

Other types of vending machines include power recharge and even water (cold and frozen) vending machines.  The number of these types of vending machines is increasing all the time, schools, colleges and universities have them also.

Ride sharing companies such as Uber or their competitors that are springing up should also be approached - the advantage is a cashless ride which gives the driver greater safety as they are less likely to be robbed.

It sure as hell couldn't hurt! How should we electronicly sign though? I doubt it would work for all businesses but the more the merrier!

Just have a Tap and Go system with pre-loaded BitCoins and use it like any other tap and go device such as for transport trains and buses.

That is the worst things in my mind and not showing the credibility of bitcoins and I can say you will like a moron just caused by the companies aren't making a bitcoin payment method and making a petition. please avoid this way dude that is will preventing the companies from accepting bitcoin caused by the arrogant pf bitcoiners.

The problem isn't stores not accepting Bitcoin as payment option. Let's pretend we manage to get a few merchants on board via this way. They will start with a very interested and open mind set, but as soon as they see that no one is using Bitcoin to pay for things, then they don't see the added value, and thus end up rewinding everything to the point that they stop accepting Bitcoin as payment option. The real problem is that people aren't spending their coins, beside via internet on digital goods. Physical stores that sell physical goods via the internet will be left with zero Bitcoin paying customers.

I often see sites requesting donations/tips through paypal,and I often feel like contacting them to suggest adding a Bitcoin tips address to their site. Sadly I never found the motivation to make that suggestion yet. However, I might contact a few sites after reading this thread. Some popular open source software developers have paypal donation buttons, but no Bitcoin addresses. Adding addresses could make the developers money and spread awareness of Bitcoin to the software users.

Don't try to write a petition about Bitcoin and direct it to your local Pub or hardware shop, it most likely won't happen.
But we can influence big international sites, services and shops. We seriously start with spamming Humble Bundle - they at some point introduced bitcoin payments.
And then - I don't know why discontinued bitcoin support. I was so disappointed.

I thnk the best way is for the bitcoiners to actually use bitcoin for their purchases and not just hodling them. Many merchants gave up accepting bitcoin just because there was actually no one using them to make purchases.

I don't know if it would make them accept Bitcoins. Surely this was already made before.

The smartest online businesses are looking for Bitcoin and Crypto-Currencies informations to learn more about it and if it worth for them. If we proove to those shops that their profit would increase if they started accepting Bitcoins, they surely would accept it instantly, because they want more profit as possible. If more people start using BTCs, joining Bitcointalk Forum and spread the word over the internet, more sites would accept Bitcoin as payment method.

Just Give it try. I think it could be work. If the site find way to get benefit of bitcoin, I think  they will accept bitcoin. I am very sure that all of virtual activity would be popular in the future becouse the technologi is allways moving forward. How to participate this event.

I think online petitions are useless in general, and though a large corporation might acknowledge such a thing, it won't sway anyone.  But who knows, it could work and if you're set on having bitcoin accepted it's worth a shot.  Then again I'm not sure what the big deal with that is.  Cash money is still the best payment method, and bitcoin has too many problems in my mind.  Better to just keep it and speculate with it. 

I think that huge petition will not affect as we expect. probably will just see what written on the petition, but don't really care.

so it's just like informing the sites that there is a cryptocurrency called bitcoin. imo

I don't think we would be able to convince companies, especially major ones, with just a few thousand signatures though. And I'm not sure we can realistically expect to get even close to 100,000 people participate in the petition. And then there is the fact that the 100,000 signatures would be for Bitcoin as a general payment method and not for it to be used with a specific service or website. Among those 100,000 only a few would actually be interested to use Bitcoin on any one site we contact. We would need millions of signatures for companies to take notice IMO.

this is a great idea but why a petition with signing anything,...?

instead I think it is a lot better that we start submitting request tickets with the sites we want to see bitcoin payment on. for example on steam there was a lot of tickets and a lot of forum posts asking them to accept bitcoin and they finally gave in and did it.

the same thing can be done with any other site.

The problem i see with this is that nowadays people seem to be using bitcoin less and  just holding more as a future investment. The problem comes when a site adds bitcoin to there accepted payments and nobody actually uses it because its cheaper to use paypal or something similar. I have to buy bitcoin over spot price as it is so buying something for $10 of bitcoin actually costs more than $10.

Depends on the site and if how their brainstorming will goes.

But you know even with thousands of signatures as a petition, a major company will look into brighter side and not just only with a massive request. Take a look at some of the big merchants today, Im pretty sure somehow they have received some lots of request about accepting bitcoin but still in doubt if they will accept it. Their strategic team are somehow cares for the price fluctuations of bitcoin since most of them are dealing with fiat most of the time.

As long as bitcoin is majorily used for investment purposes, we can't see some good merchants that will accept bitcoin as one of their payment method option.

Most people sign any petition without knowing what it's about. Check the "ban water petition" videos on Youtube (they are fun to watch) to see how easily people sign petitions.
And for that reason, I think petitions do not prove people actually care about it.
If I get 100 people to sign an "accept Bitcoin"-petition, that doesn't mean they'll actually want to use it to buy stuff.

In my opinion the best way for sites to accept Bitcoin is if their payment processor accepts it. This way, the webshop doesn't even have to know what payment method the buyer uses.
www.multisafepay.com for example offers 19 (https://www.multisafepay.com/solutions/payment-methods/) different payment methods, but Bitcoin is not one of them.

In the Netherlands the biggest site I know that accepts it, is thuisbezorgd.nl. They offer 8 (https://www.thuisbezorgd.nl/klantenservice-consument-onderwerp-betalen) different payment methods, including Bitcoin. This is however processed by bitpay.com, not by a payment processor that handles all different payments.

Then suddenly the vending machines needs an internet connection.

I think you're right here. But this doesn't mean it can't change. The internet started out mainly because of porn. VHS had the same start. Both have outgrown that industry. Bitcoin can do the same.

I think there's one thing that can help: use Bitcoin at any chance you get! If it's an option between 8 other options, choose Bitcoin.

I just wanted to propose this, but you already did.
In Romania there's also a payment processor (netopia mobilpay) that accepts Bitcoin. And the only way to encourage this trend to rise is to use this payment method whenever possible.
I just made my first purchase directly with Bitcoin last week. It didn't went as smoothly as with card, but I think that both parts will learn and improve the system. It's a good start however and it's the way to go.

For me, at thuisbezorgd.nl, using bitcoin was much smoother than using a creditcard. The only thing that slowed it down was entering my PIN-code on my phone app.
The website showed the amount, and a QR-code. A quick scan with my phone, and it instantly said "paid" on the PC-screen.

PIN-code: 6 digits.
Creditcard: Name + 16 + 3 + mm/yy = 30-40 digits.

i don't think gathering thousands of signature is going to change the minds of some of these sites in order for them to start accepting bitcoin in their site.
but i am always in for anything that can help bitcoin in any way and help the adoption.

The problem was that the payment processor only gave a 10 minutes time frame for the Bitcoin transfer.
Silly me, I did the transfer from Poloniex (I wanted to withdraw anyway some from there). Just Polo was this time slower than usual, the coins were transferred after the time frame expired and then I had open a ticket, ask the payment processor check the payment, .. yeah.
Next time I'll use my own wallet and maybe they'll use wider time frame.

IMO petitions don't work for companies. All they care about is the profit so only when they were covinced that using Bitcoin is profitable they will start using it.

Another issue with petitions is that you can fake most of the signatures and it would take lots of time and resources to check whether they are genuine or not.

The problem with that kind of petitions is that the effects in regard to Bitcoin acceptance might be short-lived or even negative. I don't think it's wise trying to convince businesses to accept BTC that did not show any interest before. Even if you are successful in the first place, business owners will carefully monitor sales generated from this payment method and are easily disappointed if it fails to generate more sales. So in addition to persuading the business owners to accept BTC, you must also ensure that there is constant demand by customers to use this particular payment method for the products/services in question.

In my view it's better to be more careful with recommending Bitcoin to everyone. Disappointed business users are hard to win back. If you're talking about Bitcoin to business owners you should cover potential risks and problems as well and not give rise unrealistic expectations.

ya.ya.yo!

Bitcoin is actually a revolutionary product in financial sector and big bank giants/goverment think bitcoin as threat to their traditional banking and tax system and hate the anonymity bitcoin have in transactions. And whatever we do to force them to start accepting bitcoin as cash they will ignore it and this idea of collecting sign from supporters may help to spread use about bitcoin but it may require a lot more such events as well as time for every company started to realize the power of bitcoin.

i like anything that is remotely related to increasing the public awareness of bitcoin and helps shops to add bitcoin payment.

but i think this is not the best way of doing it as others have said, there are better ways like directly contacting these sites and maybe introducing bitcoin and its benefits to them so they accept it.

I agree with this proposal for sending tickets and requests for Bitcoin payments.
I don't think that any business would care about some petition signed by anonimous forum members but if they are starting to receive multiple requests by their customers that could have some impact and make them to change their mind if they want to keep their customers and improve profit.

Its a great idea but i think its not this year ,cause in the first place we cant go on with that location and we are on different countries so we (bitcoiners) cant sign a petition .especially bitcoiners or we are on different countries so how can we do that to sign every person.
In accepting bitcoins in major companies i think they will ignore it even we have that signs petition .

I have a suggestion that one big company or a rich bitcoiners in one company then we are the supporters and the first on it .maybe it may take some time to "BOOM" that company but surely in the future it is the star company of digital currency.

yes it's a good decision for conducting petitions in bitcoin. if majority website accept bitcoin then it's price will rise up because many new people will start using bitcoin and they will buy bitcoin because of its simplicity, fastness and less transaction fees.

i would definitely support such an initiative. i'm all in to get more online stores to accept bitcoin as payment tool. we can either wait for it to happen, which can take years and years, or we can come into action and do it ourself. i go for the latter option.

i couldn't agree more.
a petition that is signed with even a lot of people may very well be a list of fake signatures. besides when you submit such query to these sites it would be only one request even if it contains a thousands signatures. but if we each send a separate request it would be a thousands different requests in their inbox over the times they will add bitcoin eventually.