Bitcoin Forum

Hey everyone, I'm Jeremy from HUSTLR (https://www.hustlr.com). I run multiple eCommerce stores like Vape Club (https://vapeclubmy.com). I've been accepting cryptocurrencies since 2014. Currently using Coinbase Commerce to receive coin payments.

I am a big believer of cryptocurrencies and BTC but the results are quite... underwhelming. Less than 0.5% of total transactions processed is on BTC/ETH/BCH. I just did a trend analysis over the past 4 years and there is no signs of increasing.

Can crypto ultimately replace fiat money? I don't see this trend happening even though more vendors are accepting crypto.

Any eCommerce vendors here? I want to hear from you. Hoping your result is different from mine.

If that's not a business secret can you quantify what 0.5% means? 10 sales, 100? Ten thousand?
I see that your business is operating from Malaysia, do you also have a stat about the percentage of bitcoins sales by countries you've shipped to?  Would be nice to hear why is buying with bitcoins.

As for the percentages, they are quite what one would expect.
Amazon sold 180 million products during one Cyber Monday, there are 450 million tx in the entire history of the blockchain and while Visa is doing 150 million tx a day Bitcoin is averaging 300k +/- 10% on LN.
That would be actually 0.2% if we compare them.

No one wants to spend something that either - they believe will be worth more tomorrow, or they paid vastly more than they're spending it for. That's nothing to do with crypto. That's human nature.

Hi Jeremy, welcome to this forum! I understand and agree to your statement! People don't want to spend their cryptos because cryptos are not yet considered as a form of payment by majority of the users. Cryptos are mainly being considered as a method of investment by majority of the users! Because these people have seen cryptos giving unnatural type of returns which no other investment methods are offering, so they just don't want to miss the boat. They just want to ride the tide and fill their pockets. But there's nothing wrong with this type of behavior because everyone wants to become rich at some point of time in their life!

This particular behavior is popularly known as "FOMO" or "Fear Of Missing Out"! In psychological definition it says,


Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_of_missing_out

This particular behavior is playing in the background of every crypto user's mind! It will be minimized if bitcoin's price is stable! Try to use stable coins like USDT in your stores and I am sure you will have completely different experience!

Do you have any data on this? My experience is the opposite, especially given the recent year(ish) long bear market. There seem to be very few vendors starting to accept bitcoin or other crypto for the first time, and indeed a few who used to accept it now no longer doing so. I would love to be able to spend my bitcoin directly in more places, and I am always on the look out for new places to spend, but I have found very few of late, and the ones who I have asked to consider accepting bitcoin haven't shown much interest.

I do think there is a problem with how the majority of the community view bitcoin, however. Too many only care for it as a way to make more fiat, and not as a currency in its own right.

Merchant adoption peaked in 2014, at least in terms of announcements.. It's been downhill ever since with more and more quietly chucking it in. I'd definitely make use of more options but I think it's going to be the last thing to fall into place if it ever happens properly at all, not one of the first.

All this speculation stuff needs to play out before it can think of moving on to the currency bit.

Merchant adoption of cryptocurrencies have increased higher than the past years. By the year 2017 there large scale growth took place based on the adoption that take place with time. As an user stated some vendors stopped accepting bitcoin in between as they didn't get return that were expected. In the falling years can expect good level of adoption that makes the market stronger as 2017.

Common, there are exceptions:
This (https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/568fd91fc819f7f7e27a0ca148bfa40826b97911113d0c118f7aa1ce5af6a9ee) is me grabbing a smartphone phone for my parents while on offer. I actually got it 33% cheaper due to the store offer and about 20% because of the increase in bitcoin price :PPPP. And now I can use my unspent fiat to buy cheap coins...

Probably the 1% of the times I actually managed to get close to the peak, usually, I decide to buy stuff right after the dumps. :P
But I quite agree with your other posts, we might experience less RL usage, for sure if we speaking about percentages.

Hey thanks for getting back to me. We process about 12,000 sales a year. So roughly about 240 transactions processed with Coinbase.
We ship worldwide, with our key markets being South Korea, US, a few countries in Europe and the Middle East.

It's just strange that BTC is not being used for value transfer at all.

Testing out stablecoins now! Thanks for this. Coinbase just announced support for a stablecoin and I actually haven't implemented it haha.

Yes. I believe most of us here thinks so; just not right now. Bitcoin is still very volatile in terms of price, and scaling solutions for Bitcoin to be better for merchant payment isn't ready yet. But as time goes, as money comes in and liquidity gets better, and as 2nd layer solutions like the Lightning Network gets ready, we'll get there. It's just a matter of when.

For what it’s worth, Coinmap keeps track of the number of venues that accept BTC (see https://coinmap.org/#/world/72.24891677/2.54882813/2). If we hover on the barchart at the bottom of screen, we can retrieve the following figures worldwide:

1st January 2013: 0
7th January 2014: 1952
6th January 2015: 5366
5th January 2016: 6938
3rd January 2017: 8006
2nd January 2018: 11201
Today: 15053

The information is probably incomplete, and also does not differentiate the size of the venues, but it’s a small indication of where we are, being sceptical as I am to the accuracy of the information (as I don’t know exactly how they build their database, how updated it is, and specially how close it is to reality – i.e % of Venures in the Database vs real world). The data is not specifically e-commerce centric, but may serve as a draft overview, which seems pretty small in the big picture.

They do a great job of keeping the site updated ....

https://i.imgur.com/GqU5nNj.png

Almost too good  ;D

But I seriously doubt the accuracy, in my case, one coffee shop near me is long gone, it's a beauty salon now (not accepting bitcoins) and two ventures are mislabelled, they are placed on a shopping mall but they advertise some web hosting service. Not really keen on clicking the link they provide.
I also checked Colombia as they seem to have tons of shops but once you start exploring plenty of them were most likely spam that had nothing to with bitcoin.

On the other side probably there are hundreds of shops not listed because the owner or the clients don't have a clue about the website or they don't care.


You have 200 customers paying with bitcoin, that number is pretty good
To be honest, I'm actually amazed you passed the 100 mark, as the other said before, people are not really keen on spending and 99% probably are simply hoarding coins.

I spend it as I've wound up with far more value in it than I do in fiat. Also earning in it inspires you to spend. This is why it's an end game, not a start to it. I'm not like the majority of people when it comes to BTC. Maybe one day I will be.

Replace? never! But yes, it would exist side by side. Has bank paper currency replaced minted coins? I think you will find the answer there.

In my utmost opinion, I really think that the E-commerce transaction was really a big hit in my experience but not with using cryptocurrency, Well I guess maybe because of the increasing value right now and people would not want to sell their hold coins knowing that the price is going skyrocket at the moment, And speaking with the adoption that crypto will take fiat by storm I really think it is too early for that, I can not see something like that would happen right now, I guess we are in the stage where there is just a quite impression for the use of cryptocurrency,

Or maybe Vape or E-Cigar is not a click anymore or not all are surely using it just like myself but that is my own opinion and may include to the things that you may think why you think E-commerce is not a click in your experience, Maybe it is not the way you transact but the products that you are selling, Well I am looking at the other perspective why you had less transaction or profit.

Bitcoin is an investing coin and people love to hold it, not to use it as a transaction coin, but to increase you cryptos flow you should promote your store on this forum, if you invest in some campaigns i'm sure you will start receiving more crypto users, but at the end will be hard to see more than 51% of your income from cryptos.

in my opinion, maybe this time is still not yet, but one day crypto can be used more than fiat money. dab, of course, all will use digital and practical. Of course, fiat money will also be digital like bitcoin. and I hope fiat and bitcoin can collaborate .

       In short , bitcoin is more valuable than fiat money so most of people in crypto industry was decided to hold rather than to use as payments  on e-commerce however some altcoin can be use as payments and maybe people can afford to pay using altcoin

No, I do not think crypto will ultimately replace fiat money. Cryptocurrency will be a good alternative though.


Bitcoin being valuable is subjective IMO.  Many people don't give a thought about it nor wanting to acquire it, on the other note, people do everything they can to get fiat money.  And this is the reason why many investors are flocking in this crypto world because they wanted to double or triple the amount of fiat money they have.

The greed of men would just not allow crypto enthusiasts spend their cryptocurrencies. Honestly speaking sometimes when i look at some transactions i did way back i feel like kicking myself in the face. Anybody who believe in bitcoins and cryptocurrencies would definitely not spend all of them just like that.

The adoption and use of bitcoin will happen but it's really far from now i guess.

I'm not into ecommerce maybe your target customers aren't really into crypto. But it's good to see someone like you in the business who's been doing this for 4 years. I hope that you will never remove the option of paying your products with crypto.

Don't surprised with that, the revolution is just starting to spread all over the world. Give more years about it and you'll see the increase of your sales through crypto transactions.

It is brewing slowly, it simply has not reached critical mass yet. Also some people are awaiting regulation in different countries, with Japan being in the lead.

You have done the right thing, and shouldn't need to worry. That 0.5% is a 0.5% of satisfied customers, that would probably choose you again over others without the crypto payment option. I haven't seen your site but you could try positioning well the BTC logo, perhaps with a link explaining what it is or one of the many youtube videos that explain crypto currencies.

I can't promise it will replace fiat any time soon, but there will be a long period of coexistence. There is also the generational divide, those who were born in a world with crypto and those who didn't and still refuse their existence, who happen to be occupying lawmaking seats. As these dinosaurs leave, acceptance can only increase and adoption with it.

It might take another 100 years for crypto to be the only means of conducting transactions, with fiat itself becoming more and more virtual and less physical, the next logical step is crypto which is safer than a debit card and faster than a wire transfer. When internet came, credit cards started losing their purpose and were being used more as a means of electronic payment, something for which they were not designed. A customer who just wants to transfer money to a site online doesn't need or care for credit, and you can actually use a credit card like a debit card (pay in advance) to override its limit anyway.

A debit card works, but you need a bank with an account, etc. All of that goes poof with crypto, where you can choose to be your own bank and not beg others to do your accounting in exchange of even more fees (and play roulette with your money but lets not get into that).

It's only a matter of time, take it easy.

That is the sad truth. Currently, most users of bitcoin view it as an investment vehicle rather than a payment method. There could be a variety of reason to this but the most prominent is that bitcoin can be very valuable in a very short time. And, if you are a trader, bitcoin is more profitable to you by taking advantage of the huge fluctuation in price. Though the e-commerce use of bitcoin is important for its adoption, I think it will take a back seat until for at least a couple of years.

I do not know how Coinbase Commerce works but I hope the expense to keep accepting bitcoin as payment is not too big. I hope you can continue to accept bitcoin as payment.

In these early adopter days, most users are investors holding for higher prices. Everyone is speculating about usage and network utility years and decades down the road. It doesn't make sense to buy bitcoins -- incurring bank transfer fees, trading commissions, and Bitcoin network fees -- then use them for day-to-day spending shortly after. Holders tend to wait for significant price gains before spending.

This dynamic may change when Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies' speculative gains are mostly priced in and mass adoption has already taken place. At that point, people will still hoard bitcoins because of their scarcity and opt for cryptocurrencies with higher inflation or lower fees. But banking fees and trading commissions will be less of an issue since most people will own cryptocurrency at that point.

I dont foresee a possibility of crypto currency taking over fiat completely. But what i can categorically tell you is that crypto will be here for a long time, to compete side by side with fiat, Thats the beauty.

Crypto will one day replace fiat. But then we have to admit that people will most likely save them for better days than spend them. After all, crypto, especially Bitcoin, has become more of an investment than a digital money. If it rises triple in value in the next few months, why would you just spend it, right? As soon as we reach a certain level of stability though, we will be seeing more on crypto spending. Well, I hope so.

How is the greed of holder preventing you to spend your bitcoins?


And look who is the greedy one:P
Seriously, think at least once if not twice before posting.


Let's actually get into a bit of the roulette playing because some sort of gambling is the main reason why people don't use crypto besides the speculation that it will go to a million.

I gave above an example of how I've paid with crypto to buy a smartphone just a week ago.
Would I buy something from this users website with crypto? NO. Sorry OP, but that's the reality.
And not because the op is a newbie, or cause I've never heard of the website before, it's because is a foreign business and I have zero ways to ask for a chargeback if s*** happens.

This is why I bought that smartphone, the shop is 2km away from me in the capital, the payment processor has a license to conduct business in my country for financial purposes, there are places where I can ask for either a refund or to return the product or anything else.

And this is where the international fee advantage of BTC (which I know from the previous discussions you're a real fan you can't stop comparing it to banks  :D :D :D ) is obliterated because you have to place your trust in the vendor.

it will happen ofc and I think libra will push this ahead. Banks are also offering new services - centralized - to pay with qr codes. it's not crypto yet, but people are getting used to the interface.

It's a tricky situation at the moment, because the price has dropped with more than 80% since 2017 and a lot of people are hoarding coins in the hope to get more "bang for the buck", when the price goes to a new ATH again.

Have you advertised properly that your sites are accepting Bitcoin, because most sites do not market that very well and then they blame the community for not supporting it. I would create a thread announcing that you are offering Bitcoin payment on your site and ask for inputs on how to increase traffic to your site.  ;)

crypto is currently only decorating and complementing fiat money for transactions. now fiat money is still the main one and there is no crypto sign that it can shift fiat money