Bitcoin Forum

Greetings Bitcoiners,

I am currently attempting to convince Blizzard Entertainment to start accepting bitcoins as a payment method for their online services. I have talked to a couple people @Billing and so far it seems that they think it would be a great idea with the basic facts I've given them. I have yet to talk to someone higher up than their CSR's but I was told that the message would be passed along. My next move is going to be writing them an e-mail stating why they should accept bitcoins and am going to try my best to have all of my information as accurate as possible so that this may become a serious consideration on their part. I will keep the community informed, but in this topic I would just like to have a discussion on the impact this may have on bitcoins.

I realize that this could turn out to be a waste of time as bitcoins in it's current stage is "small fish" while blizzard entertainment is draws the line for gaming, but it is worth my best shot at the very least.

Discuss.

Nothing to discuss, apart from better strategies on persuading the Blizzard higher-ups.

Proselytizing minimum-wage-paid customer service people isn't going to get you anywhere.

I'm working on it. Blizzard is like a mountain, you can't just teleport to the top.

The billing discussions were more of a "Have you guys heard?" scenario, rather than trying to get them to write the code same-day.

Why should they accept bitcoins?  Aside from you just wanting them to, that is.  Who is unable to pay them in a currency they accept but who would pay them in pretend internet coins?  Do even five of those people exist?

You're right in your first post, this is a complete waste of your time.  But that's not an uncommon theme with bitcoiners.

Yeah you can....if you play Blizzard games :O

Oh, look it's a troll!

@ OP: Sending them an e-mail would be a good idea. Try to see if you can find someone somewhere, who knows someone who works slightly higher-up in Blizzard, etc etc.

I think that Blizzard accepting Bitcoin may be a very nice boost for Bitcoin.

They wont. First, btc is not stable enough price wise. Second, it would take them ages to cashout at $1k per day limits. Third, it would increase their costs to handle btc.

It would be much wiser to get people in the SL community to accept btc. If you have the skills to write code in SL scripting language you should start there.

Why do people not think things through? Youth?

I don't believe a market is stable enough for this, however things like this would help stabilize a market in a way, so this is good, nice job.

I don't understand why everyone is bashing him. By some miracle, if he can get Blizzard to accept BitCoins, it will bring in literally THOUSANDS of more users, daily. Also, other sites may start supporting it too -- mainly rival game companies. After that, other sites (even SHOPS), may start accepting them.

~bluefirecorp

Because not everyone takes 'the easy way out' if something seems unlikely to succeed, and some people actually show some persistance.

In that case, why would anyone in the world accept bitcoins as a payment method ::)?

Time-cards are a hassle. If you don't have a credit card, it's pretty much your only option.

Stability means nothing when you're basing the price off of gametime cost/btc. Value of btc goes does -> price (in terms of BTC) goes up.

Did you seriously ask about withdrawal limits, MeSarah? We're talking about Blizzard, not some third-rate nobody. I'm sure if blizzard decided to accept bitcoins, any exchange that was dealing with them would not be stupid enough to tell them they can only cash out $1000 per day because blizzard would be bringing them a massive amount of revenue.

People used to laugh at the thought of human flight, look how that turned out.

EDIT: Even if they do not decide to go through with it, at least bitcoins will be on their radar in the future.

Please pretend you're the Blizzard CFO and you're about to pitch to the board of directors and shareholders on how the company should accept this new internet currency.  What would the Blizzard explanation be for people who want to use bitcoins?

1.  Make an account at Dwolla.
2.  Transfer money into that account using a bank account.
3.  Wait 5-7 days.
4.  Once money is in Dwolla, create account at magic the gathering online exchange.
5.  Deposit money into mtgox.  Oh, is it a weekend?  Wait until Monday.
6.  Run bitcoin client, get 48 character long wallet address.  Whatever you do, do not lose this text file.
7.  Bid on $15 worth of bitcoins on mtgox, the price of which fluctuates every moment.  So you might need half a bitcoin or 3 bitcoins.
8.  Once your bid is accepted, you now own (0.5-3.0) bitcoin.  Transfer those to your wallet (we recommend using CTRL+C then CTRL+V unless you're very good at typing long strings of characters).
9.  Ok, now time to send us the bitcoin(s).  If it's the weekend, please wait until Monday.
10.  Launch the bitcoin client and make sure your text file wallet contains the bitcoin(s) you purchased from mtgox.
11.  Check the mtgox exchange and determine exactly how many bitcoins are required to cover your $15 monthly.  Remember that bitcoins are divisible to eight points beyond the decimal, so the correct amount to equal $15 might be 0.98776531 bitcoins.  
12.  Send it to this address xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.  Again be very very careful to type this in correctly.  
13.  Once you have confirmed that you sent it, log into your Battle.net account and navigate to the bitcoin payment option.  
14.  Enter in all your information, along with the blockchain reference link from Bitcoin Explorer that shows you sent the correct amount from your bitcoin wallet to ours.
15.  Click redeem and your account will be queued for verification.
16.  Bitcoin transaction verification can take minutes to days, depending on the processing power currently allocated to the bitcoin P2P network.
17.  Once verified, you will receive an email confirming that the transaction has been verified.
18.  You can now log in.  Have fun in Azeroth!

I then imagine the board of directors all rise from their seats and a slow clap spread around the room, but it then quickly gains in intensity and speed.  Men and women in business suits lift their arms and scream at the ceiling in exultation.

You are a titan of industry.

That's the one thing you got right. I'll say again, this is blizzard. You should probably give them some credit for the things they are able to do.

Transaction fees.

They accept prepaid cards, where the merchants have a share of (i don't actually know, so i'm just making a number up) maybe 10%.
They accept credit cards, where the CC company gets a share of 2-4%.
They accept bank transfers, where the bank receives a fixed fee of probably around 10 EUR-cents (for a 10 EUR payment that would be a 1% fee).

If they accepted bitcoins, the fee would be like, uhm, what's the default transaction fee in the client at the moment?

For a company that receives millions of very small payments, transaction fees easily sum up to millions, they have a strong motivation to lower those fees.

Maybe they will accept Lindens too or even facebook credits. If they did............. And If...  If they....

Best bet would probably be to attend blizconn with lots of propaganda and get some buzz going about bitcoin while there.  It would also give you a chance to mingle with some people that probably could get things done.  In the meanwhile,   best route seem to be to convert bc to amazon gc then buy a timecard, if your short term goal is to be able to pay for wow time with bc.

@Jalum

why would they have to explain to people how to get and use bitcoins? do they do they same for credit cards or other payment methods?

they can just offer it as another payment method? people who already have bitcoins could pay in bitcoins. people who see bitcoin as a payment option and are interested could find out for themselves how to get them.

some big companies already accept payment in bitcoin. e.g. Wuala (part of LaCie)
http://www.wuala.com/en/bitcoin (http://www.wuala.com/en/bitcoin)

from the merchant side, there are solutions already that automatically price the product/service in bitcoins at the going rate of USD and convert the bitcoins to USD so the seller has no fx risk of holding bitcoins if they don't want to. Essentially from the sellers point of view they price in USD and receive USD but the customer can pay in bitcoin. Why wouldn't a company want to allow their customers to pay in bitcoin if they want to?

Actually given how kids are shut out of a lot of net commerce due to not being able to get a credit card and such,  but may just have a decent graphics card for games and time and knowledge to figure things out, I bet the number that would do this is far more then you would suspect.   It also is smart marketing to get kids used to bitcoins and the idea they have value.

Blizzard is a publicly traded company, you're better off soliciting a smaller, private company.  The volatility in BTC is just too great right now.  Blizzard =/= World of Warcraft.  And even if it did, such a minor fraction of that playerbase would know about Bitcoin at this point making it completely pointless.  I won't even go into the shareholders....

OP, I'm not trying to discourage you, just being real.  Try and start with a little smaller fish.

I agree with this post. I don't have any thought in my mind that says they will accept bitcoins anytime soon. More or less just make sure they know that it's here.

Most likely doesn't mean anything, but I was emailing one of the customer service reps back and forth. Last message I received after a bit less than an hour was CSR overseer/manager letting me know that "Rest assured, these emails will be read."

Hopefully that's not an automated message. I'm assuming since he's already read them, he means read by someone else/higher?

Jesus, so much hate for a simple idea that still makes sense.

The whole issue is going to be the crazy market prices and the next is of course security.

Two things have to be in place, a system where it goes based off of whatever market price they would be using on their end to exchange Bitcoin to cash or vice versa, maybe a deal worked out with Gox, Tradehill, who knows.   This also would benefit whatever exchange they work with, as with a name like Activision Blizzard, the security thing, as far as at least transactions just with them, will be secure.

Activision folks, if you let them know you have money for them, they are the bitches in the video game industry that will suck a mean dick to get it.  They pump survey's out just to see if people will do Call of Duty on a World of Warcraft like payment system.  They will charge big time for such a premium service as offering Bitcoin as payment, but rest assured if enough people want it, they will do it.

Now let's compare that to buying a prepaid timecard in a physical supermarket. Pretend you're the CFO going to pitch the adoption of a timecard system.

1. Turn off the monitor.
2. Grab your coat and put it on.
3. Walk out of the front door.
4. Walk to the supermarket, be very careful that you don't get hit by a car.
5. Arrive at the supermarket.
6. Supermarket is closed because in your area everything closes on sundays? Bummer, have to wait until monday.
7. Otherwise, walk into the store and walk to the counter.
8. Ask for a WoW timecard - be careful that you don't buy the wrong amount of timecards.
9. Take out your card out of your wallet.
10. Pay for the timecard(s).
11. Get handed over the timecard(s).
12. Walk out of the store.
13. Walk home carefully, again being careful to not get hit by a car - you could get hospitalized.
14. Search for your keys and open the door.
15. Hang up your coat.
16. Sit behind the computer and turn on your monitor.
17. Enter your timecard code to activate it.
18. You can now log in.  Have fun in Azeroth!

I then imagine the board of directors all rise from their seats and a slow clap spread around the room, but it then quickly gains in intensity and speed.  Men and women in business suits lift their arms and scream at the ceiling in exultation.

You are a titan of industry.

I noticed that both Wuala and SmartFTP have pretty much an identical text on their Bitcoin page... are they part of the same company?
http://www.wuala.com/en/bitcoin vs. http://smartftp.com/bitcoin/

see:
https://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=25665.msg319196#msg319196 (https://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=25665.msg319196#msg319196)
https://bit-pay.com/ (https://bit-pay.com/)


granted it's still at an early stage and needs a lot of work but it shows the technical problems can be solved. I'm sure there will be many other such solutions

Everyone knows what a timecard is.  No one knows what a bitcoin is.  See the difference?

doesn't look like it. smartftp site http://smartftp.com/about/ (http://smartftp.com/about/) makes no mention of any connection to Wuala or LaCie.

How would I pitch it? As a marketing instrument.

"There's a marketing opportunity that will reliably reach 100.000 geeks who are committed to using this new internet currency. They basically buy anything that can be bought with it. It will cost us a meager $10.000 to setup bitcoin payment and take us a week or two to do it. So this is low-cost, high potential reward. I think we should do it."

I would _not_ explain to the board how bitcoins work or how they could be acquired.

In order to successfully convince a merchant to accept bitcoin, it is not necessary to assume customers would go through the hassle of acquiring bitcoins specifically to buy something from that merchant (this excludes silkroad obviously). That is - quite frankly - highly unlikely as long as other payment options that are already used by the customer are offered.

I actually had to guess from the name (and then Google to verify) to find out what a timecard is. That you (and a bunch of friends) know what something is, does not mean the entire world knows.

Timecard? Never heard of that.

Fine.  Spend your time calling their CS reps in Indonesia, hoping that someone will pass on your brilliant idea.  Attend Blizzcon wearing your "Who is John Galt?" shirt and fedora.  Just please update us on your progress as you do these things.

not being funny but I honestly don't know what a timecard is. Never heard of it. But I do know what a bitcoin is ;)

As I and other posters have mentioned it doesn't matter that most of Blizzard customers don't know what a bitcoin is as long as bitcoins are not the only payment option. I often go to sites that have multiple payment options. Do I know what they all are? No. Do I care? No. I just use the one that suits me. If I go to a site and it accepts bitcoin as a payment method I'm actually more likely to buy something from that site.

The questions for the merchant should be:
If we add bitcoin as a payment method in addition to our current methods is it going to turn away our current customer base?
Is the cost of implementing a bitcoin payment solution more than additional profit/cost savings we'd generate from bitcoin paying customers?

I will. Spend your time complaining about people's attempts to broaden Bitcoins and look like a jackass on *the* bitcoin forum. Just keep that to yourself.

I only have to save one bitcoiner for it all to be worthwhile.  Are you brave enough to back away from this terrible idea?

the price just isnt stable enough for them to accept it.

Anyone think of the policy effect this would have on World of Warcraft?

In the Terms of Service for WoW, it states selling/buying Gold (currency used in the game, for those who are not familiar) is not allowed. Basically, trading their virtual currency for government-backed money is not allowed.

What effect would accepting a virtual currency, bitcoin, to buy game time and other services have? It'd be such a double standard. They ban people for trading Gold, but on the other hand, accept Bitcoin to pay for services. It's not like WoW players are a small and quite community either, you'd never hear the end of it.

Oh, so much misinformation in this thread.

First, any $1k withdrawal limit applies only to parties who haven't identified themselves to comply with government anti-money-laundering regulations. Presumably Blizzard Entertainment would do this and thus not be subject to such limits.

Second, even with volatility, Bitcoin offers a company like Blizzard some significant advantages. Not having to pay credit card transaction fees is just the start. Not having to pay to manufacture, distribute and validate all those top-up cards is another. The expense of those alone is likely far more than the volatility of Bitcoin.

Finally, Blizzard could safely allow players into the game even after a 0 confirmation payment, since in the rare case of a double spend they can simply kick the player back out.

Blizzard in Indonesia ? really ? I didn't know that  ;D


Just do it Smokes, ignore the naysayers  ;)

heh, now this I hadn't realized before.

Image following scene: insanely smart geek wanders into starbucks, buys a coffe for 0.1 mBTC (starbucks accepts 0 confirmation payments), sits down and fiddles with his handheld. He manages to facilitate a double-spend of the 0.1 mBTC. Something beeps. Clerk from behind counter wanders to geek's table, takes geek's coffe and gives it to next customer, points to following sign: "How would you like us double-selling your coffee?"

This would be a frustrating scenario. The way I see it, if people do start accepting bitcoins as mentioned in this quote, 1 confirmation (in my experience) usually takes no longer than a fast-food order or similar. Regardless, I wouldn't mind waiting if I was able to pay in Bitcoins and save myself a whopping $1.50 transaction fee everytime I use my debit card.

The smarter approach here would be to get Blizzard to accept bitcoins in exchange for in-game items or gold rather than their service charge, perhaps by making a small section on their store webpage that lists in-game items and mounts available for purchase with bitcoins. If you could buy a unique mount, weapons, armor or gold with bitcoins it would certainly get a lot of people using them without being a losing proposition for Blizzard business-wise.

I was not aiming for World of Warcraft specifically when I talked to them. I was talking more about any payment options they have because generally they use the same payment methods throughout.

Also, blizzard would most likely completely disregard the conversation if I was talking about bitcoins for gold/items.

Well it is my understanding that arrangements can be made with the exchange operator to have a higher withdrawal limit.

Stability in the market, yeah I agree with you there.

No, the cost increase to handle BTC would be offset by eliminating CC fees (Of course there will be exchange fees, but that is no where near what they pay in CC fees).

He might not have thought every thing through, but we need more people/company's accepting BTC or we will never have a higher demand which will stabilize the price a bit. IMO his mindset is right on.

I've been considering asking them to add a "donation" address that is publicly viewed in order for them to gauge the accumulation so that they may have a better idea of the number of users that may be interested in this. Obviously, the number of users supporting this payment option would grow as time goes on, saving them money in the end. I think this may be a good idea if they open an address that we are able to donate even the slightest amount (0.00001 for example) to push them to get on-board.

What helps them, helps bitcoin and vica-verca.

I will add this to my discussions with the link that I've reached so far if it sounds like a good idea to the general bitcoin community. I don't want to speak for the entire bitcoin community, which is why I have created this topic in the first place.

Heh, thanks, now I don't have to make a similar list :) I was going to include writing a CV, getting a job, going through the hassle of getting IDd/rejected/reapplying for a bank account, waiting for your first paycheck etc. - since Jalum conveniently ignores the fact that US Dollars do not magically fall out of the air either.

You only need many of the steps once, and some of them are nonsense to begin with (9. waiting for confirmation over the weekend, huh? It's seconds for reception, minutes for confirmation - half an hour if you're extremely unlucky). Also, similar to USD, once you have Bitcoins you can use them for other things as well, which inevitably will follow if/when Blizzard starts supporting them.

Cool about Wuala, LaCie is a big brand.

BTW, I don't personally think Blizzard will jump into this soon, they will probably want to wait it out regarding legal status and the biggest issue is that their competing payment providers will undoubtedly have something to say about this.

A timecard is something that some hourly workers  had to stick in a calibrated clock at the start of end of their shifts to get paid.

lol, now I see why you think it is a stupid idea, because in your head it certainly is.  No one said anything about John Galt shirts or fedora.   You are right, given your thought process and view of it, for you it would be a waste of time.  Don't worry we aren't asking you to be the one to do it,  as we already know you would fail at it.

I think it is a marvelous idea and Blizzard probably will also. Credit card fees suck and add up to incredible amounts of money. The cards that are sold in stores one month cards two month cards or whatever, blizzard is lucky to see half of their value. Especially if they are being sold at walmart. Kudos to OP and be persistent. To the naysayers I say open your minds just little bit put down your hotpockets and red bull long enough to think about things. By your way of thinking i could say the following: why would anyone make friends online and talk to them everyday when they could go out into the real world and talk to real people. I guess there are 750 million retards on facebook then. Perhaps i could have been a bit more articulate but hopefully you get the point.

Agreed.  And bitcoins are a boon to anyone wanting to hide financial transactions - and for those reasons cannot use conventional payments online.

As someone more familiar with Blizzard, let me tell you that your message about Bitcoins would NOT have been passed up. Communication between Austin, Texas and Irvine, California is pretty bad. If you want to see this go anywhere, post it on their forums and hope that some CMs see it.

That being said, I bet if I asked, many of my contacts there will have at least heard of Bitcoin.

I wish you luck in braving the blizzard, OP. You may reach times of struggle, with cold snow blasting in your face, but remember: You have bitcoins on you`re side. When your cold and freezing, just think of the bitcoins. Think of the boiling hot mining rigs. Think of the flames that burn down houses. If you do, you won't feel the cold anymore! You'll be reinvigorated!

The should accept ingame Money that would be cool that way I would fireup my Farmbots again!

^This!

A lot of kids that doesn't have their credit card and whatelse are able to use their GPU to mine without problems and will then buy games and other things with bitcoins

Sure they won't make thousands of $ per month via mining, but even 15$ is enough to pay a MMO, so they can and will

The thing is... with little to no effort... Blizzard can sell sparkly ponies for $25 a pop... and does daily... and they are not very keen on people buying and selling their own virtual currency.

Now they might sign you up as a retailer of game time cards (and WOW trading cards while your at it!)... then YOU could sell them for bitcoins :D

When they need money they just create another virtual pet or mount and cash the checks, bitcoin would be way to much work for them right now.

Yeah, the same payment method that most companies use - credit card.

Don't you think it's a little early to write-off any possibilities for this approach? Blizzard's official position about people who buy gold or items is that they don't support it and would "ban" anyone who was discovered, but the fact is that they acknowledge that "secondary market" is one of the big reasons their game thrives so they continue to turn a blind eye.

Basically, they could test bitcoin's viability by selling virtual items - which costs them nothing...and if they sell their ponies and horsies for BTC it would certainly drive up demand for bitcoins, and in turn their value.

The items I was thinking about was more so equipment for your character, not their in-game mounts/pets or whatever else they've got now. I agree that testing BTC via ponies would be a good idea.

People exchange WOW gold for Bitcoins
People pay Blizzard in Bitcoins to continue playing WOW
Blizzard doesn't have to pay CC transaction fees

I don't have any idea how much credit card fees are, but I have a feeling it is no where near the volatility of Bitcoin. I'm used to waking up every morning and having the price gone up/down 10%. And that's on a quiet day. A company like Blizzard doesn't need to expose itself to that kind of risk.

What you can and should do is post on the WoW forums and tell people they can pay for their WoW subscription by letting guiminer run overnight. Do so in three sentences or less and don't use words like "inflation", "government", or "Ben Bernanke".

After they realize it's not a scam and trust you, you can explain the ideology and the world of Bitcoin. Who knows, maybe they'll find something on SR to give them an extra "boost" in late night raids  ;D

As an average adult in Western society, if someone tells me that something costs a dollar, I have the background knowledge about how I can attain a dollar, and the various means with which I can transmit that dollar to the other party.

The average adult does not know what a bitcoin is.  Once you explain to them about anonymous cryptocurrencies, if they're still interested they will need to know how to obtain one.  Please come up with a more concise list of steps that you would tell someone to ensure that they were able to turn their dollars into bitcoins into a WoW subscription.  This is what Blizzard would have to do: if they advertise a payment method, they sure as hell make sure you know how to utilize it.


Step number 9 is because there is a prevention on moving money into/out of Dwolla or Mtgox on weekends, isn't there?  Isn't that the justification for the price falling every weekend?  As a result, no serious merchant would agree to a price in bitcoins if they couldn't immediately convert those to dollars, which cannot be done on the weekend.


Yes, the products you can buy with bitcoins are "similar" to those you can buy with USD.  They just cost 400% more.

i'm trying to build a service that would make accepting bitcoins from customers (and getting paid in USD if they want to)

see out http://openbitcoin.biz

Serious question... Why did you even bother to create an account on this forum?

Schadenfreude.  This place is an echo chamber, and I know despite all the good advice you get to get out of it, you won't. :)

What do you think of the concept "Bitcoin"?

All i can say is wow. NO PUN INTENDED. Why would they accept bitcoins as you cannot convert them on the weekends and etc. Here is a bit of a newsflash for you: credit cards/debit cards arent instant either. The reason why they are accepted is they are trusted. Bitcoins could have the same outcome but instead of coming up with innovative ideas and working tirelessly to mainstream this thing I see a forum littered with naysayers and people who just say no to everything. I am glad i do not live in such a disappointing world as what exists inside your mind.

To say bitcoins are not able to be used because you cannot trade them on the weekend as readily as you would like (yet) and thus no large company like blizzard could ever embrace them is absolutely retarded. Most things are not traded on weekends. Anything in the stock market. Markets are closed altogether. Yet we can still buy bacon (pork bellies) we can still buy gas (crude oil per barrel) and the list goes on an on.

Perhaps you misunderstand what an option is. People could have the option to pay with bitcoins. It does not mean that they have to or if they choose to do so it may not be because that is the only way they could pay.


from a business owners standpoint accepting credit cards absolutely sucks. The only thing you gain from it is convenience for your customers. A business loses money by accepting cards. Merchant accounts are expensive. If i were to say get 1,000,000 in sales per day with credit cards the fees would be 30,000 on average. So by your logic it would not behoove me to try to recoup some of that 30k im losing in fees everyday?  Seriously?

perhaps they are talking about you towards the end of this clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtnzEhHBIq8 ?

Which has nothing much to do with how many steps you have to take to get that Dollar. Even though Bitcoin is pretty new, any teenager will know long before you ever heard of it if it's interesting to them in some way (because the other kids show up in school with it, they need it for some online thing or whatever). The same thing is true of many other new technologies that the current generation takes for granted. Their thumbs are apparently now the most developed because of SMS, while for older generations it was the index finger. How long does Facebook exist and how many people do you know who hasn't heard of it? You underestimate how fast something new can spread.


The average adult does not know a whole lot of things. Most won't ever care, as long as they aren't hungry or homeless. Or their children tell them.


Not gonna waste time on that since you have made up your mind anyway. You should just know that probably half your items are or will be superfluous soon. There are already sites taking out the steps for conversion and allowing you to pay directly in Bitcoin. If Blizzard ever supported Bitcoin I'm pretty sure some would specialize on making this a one-click process. I expect online wallets and Bitcoin clients with built in CC to BTC via exchange plugins or similar will be commonplace in the not too distant future.

Once you have Bitcoins, for every renewal you just grab your mobile and punch in the amount, select WoW from your bookmarks and you're done. Seconds later you are online. Android wallets already exist, FYI.


You're confusing the items on your own list, the above would be step 5. Step 9 takes seconds. As for step 5, last I heard people were using Dwolla because it's much faster than CC/banks. Maybe you should try another exchange? There are at least 2 professional alternatives now (Tradehill, Camp BX), more soon enough.

The steps involving Dwolla can be eliminated too BTW, you can wire to an exchange directly. AFAIK people use Dwolla because it's faster and/or they already have money in there, and possibly if wire transfers are more expensive from say Europe to a non-EU exchange.


I don't think so, if you read other threads the whole weekend dip has been debunked to begin with. Proof: exchange rate didn't dip this weekend, it increased slightly (14.40 to 15.00 right now).


But they can. I don't know where you are getting your information, exchanges are 24/7, transfering Bitcoins in or out is a matter of seconds. Deposit/withdrawal of Dollars takes longer, but that is the exact same thing as any other USD only merchant, CC etc., the delay is on the bank end, nothing to do with the Bitcoin economy. Except the fees are lower for BTC. Also, there are already plugins for ecommerce suites (magento for example, 2 others I forget the name of) and merchants who have dynamic pricing and immediate conversion on an exchange, e.g. bitcoinworldmarket.com


Sorry but that's just bullshit. Look up the merchant list on the wiki (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade) and see how many are charging the exact same or possibly less because of the lower fees.

BTW, I could guess the function of timecard from the context but wasn't familiar with the term (I would have called it prepaid card).

Exactly.  People need to stop using the transaction fee angle because it's nonsensical.  The amount they pay in fees is a small fraction compared to the volatility exposure they would face with Bitcoins in its current state. 

Last year, someone paid 10,000 bitcoins for 2 large pizzas. Today, 2 bitcoins can get you 2 large pizzas. I'm sure you can figure out how that works.

The volatility angle is much less of a solid argument than transaction fees.

A couple issues. First daily volatility would only be an issue if blizzard were to try to sell their btc at the very moment they received them, every time they received them,   and second the only reason the market is so volatile is because it is loaded with speculators. When more companies embrace BTC volatility will lessen thus speculators will not be able to profit as readily on short term margin trading. Most every market has some amount of volatility but that has never stopped anyone from embracing it eventually.

The coolest thing about BTC is the potential for lucrative opportunities for anyone with a little bit of vision and the ability to think about not what is but what could be.

In a year, 2 bitcoins will get you 10,000 large pizzas?

That's not exactly what I was going for  >:(, but now you've made me hungry.

The problem is a company like Blizzard is not going to be an early adopter.  It's easier to explain transaction fees to a shareholder than speculating in a new currency.  

I am guessing most of the people who keep harping on the volatility issue have never done any cross boarder trading.  It is a long solved problem.

I'm assuming you mean border.  And Blizzard is not in the business of trading.  If you meant hedging foreign currency exposure then yes that problem has been solved in a derivatives market for which one does not exist (on the proper scale) for Bitcoins. 

Psst...it's because you can't.


Ahh excellent...and how do I get those bitcoins exactly?  And how does the merchant turn those bitcoins into real money?

By selling them to idiots like me.

Oh, I just took a look at this and I knew enough... Waste of time...

http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?action=profile;u=21610;sa=showPosts

The target for this is not yet the average adult anyway.   Target would be precocious kids.


You sure like to take your staw men and run with them don't you.   No, they have no reason to make sure as hell you know how to utilize every option they make available.  They would only need to do this if it became the only payment options.  Most would continue to do what they do now, and not even really notice if at a conscious level.   Some would notice and shrug it off as probably some regional debit card network or a new value card from the local stores.  Some especially those damn precocious kids would become curious and go learn about it.  


So are the rent to own places and they are popular to a similar demographic of those cut out of the current banking credit system.

Right,  but creating it would not take long if a large enough company provided a demand for it. 

Another issue besides volatility is the fact that only a very small fraction of the populace has even heard of Bitcoin at this point.  Forget about the kids playing the games because they're not the ones that matter.  They don't own the stock and they're already paying to play right now so the current options have to be working to some degree.

So now Activision-Blizzard comes out and announces Bitcoin adoption.  Lets be REALLY generous and say 10% of outstanding shareholders have heard of Bitcoin.  The rest are finding out through disclosures in Blizzard's 10-K, press release, or other medium.  Okay so now Blizzard has introduced a new exposure risk that 90% of their shareholders have never heard of.  Obviously, they're going to do some research.  We already know how the media has painted Bitcoin.  You think these shareholders are going to be thrilled reading these articles with keywords like "drugs" "guns" and "child pornography?"

And Blizzard is going to take all of this risk because of credit card transaction fees?  Beyond delusional.

Look, I'm not saying what the OP is doing is bad.  It's just wasted effort.  Blizzard is the wrong type of company to be aiming for right now.  Bitcoin is in its infancy and people have to come to grips that a company like Blizzard is not going to be an early adopter.  You need to focus your efforts on a company that has a minority amount of shareholders that is willing to take some risks.  Not a company worried about their stock plummeting on the NASDAQ.  

I do agree with this, Blizzard is very unlikely to be an early adapter, only way it would happen is if it happened to tickle the fancy of someone very high up somehow.

The average adult is absolutely your target.  Your average adult is the one with a brokerage account, 401(k), IRA, etc. etc.

You seem to be forgetting who the owners of the Company are.  Senior management is not answering to "precocious kids" they're answering to shareholders.  You know, the average adult?

The stock holders are not the target.    They would not be involved in this or the board any more then they would be been when the phone bill option was added.   I think you are overstating what it takes to add a new payment option.   The shareholders are not going to notice or care any more then then did when the phone pay was added or the zeevox points got added to RoM etc. (different company but same point).


However I do agree completely with your last paragraph.  I think targeting Blizzard right now is tilting at windmills.  Though the cost is low enough that it does not hurt anything really either for them to be trying.

No,  that is not the target.... at all....    since when is adding a payment method a board/shareholder level decision?

Well at least you are open about being close minded.



How you get them is irrelevant if I am only adding to the options and not taking ones away.  Those like you who can't figure it out just keep using the old methods to pay.   

Now the merchant does need to know how to convert the payment into forms that let them pay their bills.  Since it is being used as a medium of exchange you probably already know you use of the term 'real' is misleading.   However anyone that is going to take bitcoin on anyscale needs to have that answered for themselves before doing so.

So adding a payment method is not a decision made by the owners of a Company?  It affects revenues.  Maybe if Bitcoins only added users but you have to take into account existing users switching from their current form of payment to Bitcoin.  Now you're talking about switching relatively stable revenues to relatively volatile revenues.  Management's main concern with a public company is the preservation of their stock so it is indirectly a shareholder decision.  Everything is.

We can go back and forth on this but I don't think it's worth the effort.  The ironic thing is I'm an owner of both Bitcoin and ATVI, believe it or not.  I'm just trying to look at this objectively.  

Depends on the size of the company.  

Since you own stock in them, tell me when is the last time they asked you to vote for much of anything more then the board members?
Do you remember seeing the vote to add the phone bill payment method for example?  How much of a say did you have with the negotiations  with thenine and/or netease, which have a far bigger impact on the company and revenues then adding a payment method.

If Bitcoin was just a payment method (which it's not, but I'll get on to that in a second) it would probably go to multiple department heads (finance, legal, customer services) I suspect.

We're talking however of Blizzard taking payments in an unproven, highly volatile currency with limited ability to guarantee they can get their money back out again, or use the currency in any straight forward manner (e.g. to pay staff). Yes, that would probably go to the board if a case could be made for it, and it's difficult to see the advantage to them at this point.

Here's one.

They would have to address the conversions issues.  They would put contract in place to handle that, and it would behave just like another payment method to them.   If they can't get those in place,  they would not accept it.  It would never rise to a board level decision, unless some board member became obsessed with it to push it top down instead.   It would be dropped if they could not get the contracts for the volumes they want not made a board level issue for a gaming company, too far afield for that to be allowed to become such.

Well that's why I said indirectly.  A shareholder speaks with their wallet.  If I disagree with ATVI's vision, I sell.  Same as any other shareholder, institutional or otherwise.  

Yep, and thats why I said it would not be a stockholders level decision and no need to sell them on it.  We both agree blizzard is not going to do this at this time.  Let's say they do though,   and lets say it does not work out well for them.  It would have been started out and used on such a small scale, they they would end if before most stockholders even knew it started.

Wait, are you saying Blizzard should stop accepting cash?


You got it the wrong way around. The most likely reason they aren't going to support Bitcoin is because credit card companies will threaten to make life difficult for them if they do.

I imagine that a lot of Blizzard's customers are kids who have decent graphics cards, and there's lots of them. Rather than get into all the trouble of dealing with washed/stolen funds in a currency that doesn't allow chargebacks, they could easily set up their own pool, sell BTC at the market rate to cover the cost of their games and stash a significant amount more as a future investment.

They wouldn't even have to publicly deal in BTC or even admit that they were doing it, just offer game credits for GPU time.

I never played WOW. Does it have ingame carrots?

Yes. (http://us.battle.net/wow/en/item/37707)

Wow, they're even stackable.

Yes, does there exist another thread about Blizzard's current state of mind on Bitcoin(yes, not 3 year old "news")?

I can buy candy, computers and hardware from a reputable store here in Sweden and I can buy indie games from Humble Bundle inc.

I think it's high time Blizzard starts accepting Bitcoin.

Definitely a good effort, it will be interesting to see if anyone higher up responds to you.

 A lot of my clients are current employees of Blizzard, as well as the previous owner of Blizzard.  I can reach out to a few of them and see if I can get the question in front of the right people :)

Can you tell us who are you? What kind of job do you have?

Too bad all of Blizzard's games have gone downhill..

Totally ruined the storylines of starcraft and diablo..

I hope it works i wanna buy cards on hearthstone

I can't post their names, but I am in real estate finance, so some of them were referred to me, and  then I just started working  one after another.   I helped a lot of them finance their first homes.  Their positions ranged from programmers, to managers, to HR.

I've got an underlying question - does your company accept bitcoin payments?  If that has happened, great, I've got nothing more to add, but if they don't, and you can get them to, then those contacts at blizzard would have a real world example of 'how implementing bitcoin' could have benefitted them (they could of used it to finance their real estate investing through you)

WoW gold was my first experience with digital currency. All the gold scammers i.e IGN have since moved on to bigger and better things i.e. Bitcoin.

Blizzard is going need a lot of convincing to take BTC knowing that all the scammers that leeched off them are now into BTC.

If I were a betting man, I'd imagine blizzard will take nxt before btc.

Just look at these two projects from the nxt world.

A horizontal processor development and mmog company
http://www.jinnlabs.com/

and
Decentralized Online Roleplaying Currency Studio
http://www.dorcsgames.com/

these could be future competitors using nxt blockchain technology and if they do well then more will follow

My company unfortunately does not accept BTC.   BTC hasn't really made its way to the home lending world yet.  Most home purchases that have been done with BTC have been purchased in 100% BTC.   Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, nor other major investors, have not yet allowed BTC to be used as liquid assets.

I am trying to get it so that BTC can be used to purchase home appraisals (which range from $395-$650), depending on the value of your home, and how many units it is...

Just tell them to get a Bitpay account so you pay in Bitcoin and they receive USD. Any business can understand USD Money even if they have never heard of Bitcoin. Or email Gyft to ask for them to offer Blizzard gift cards and pay with Bitcoin that way. Also if they could sell through gamestop you can use Bitcoin through the Gyft app for gamestop.

Need more people to buy bitcoin as a investment. Merchant normally sell them immediately.

I think one of the problem is fluctuation in currency exchange rate. Btc price is so unpredictable. They are in gaming business so definitely direct payment in fiat take off the fx risk

So does Blizzard accept BTC now?

I wish they are...