Bitcoin Forum

I know...there are smaller marketplaces that people can buy/sell goods via bitcoin, but why a major marketplace is not emerging??

I know for a fact, there is a huge demand for purchasing of goods with BTC...even users from this forum is enough to give the marketplace a supply chain issue ;D ;D

1. is the problem in supply side? are sellers worried taking payments via BTC bcas of volatility
2. is there a logistically inefficiency, that smaller sellers can never compete with the likes of amazon
3. is the transaction speed an issue for retail transactions?? major cards payments are done instantly (maybe this speed is needed for impulse purchases :D)

Comment below...thanks i'm a newbie here ::)

I don't think there's too much of an issue, I think it's just that sites want to be abl eto trust their payment source and cryptocurrency is pretty new - they like what ha salways worked for them...

I've bought things with bitcoin from places like scan.co.uk and they've been pretty good with everything. There's the additional problem with bitcoin in that returns aren't as easy to handle (imo) and transaction fees might have to be returned too a sther'es no RTS (return to sender) script in eveyr transaction that can be signed and returned to the previous owner for free too...

As i know there were special addon for amazon to pay there with LN. Any you can find guys who are selling gift cards for crypto

Gift cards are ok...but think about pure p2p markets where there is no centralised company...and therefore reduction in goods cost as no one is adding commission to the seller's price...

Yes...returns are a big issue.
as "un returnable" & secure is the whole point of crypto!!! -- for this scenario this backfires :(

A lot of banks act as a mediator for disputes, if you take them out companies lose a bit of power they once had to not be immediately taken to court for failure to comply... Court action is a headache for everyone involved and leaves at least one party out of pocket... Not to mention, as a company, if you're taken to court you get a permenant charge against your name...

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Steam also claim to have removed an option to pay with cryptocurrency due to its volatility.

There are three major marketplaces: Ebay, Amazon and Aliexpress. They have their own payment system that's their priority: Paypal for Ebay, Amazon pay for Amazon and Alipay for Aliexpress. Logically bitcoin doesn't seem to look like their friend but what if demand is huge? Real answer is that demand isn't that good to implement bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency and at the same time it's not easy decision and when you are a huge company and want big to implement something big (yeah, bitcoin is payment way and amazon has a lot of transactions daily), you have to keep things legal and fair. Government's answer on facebook's libra is something that major marketplaces have to consider if they think about cryptocurrencies. There should be other plans too, for example how to do refunds, how should it be done? How will we verify users' bitcoin adresses? How will we get rid of money laundering? And many other questions that they have to answer. In overall pros have to outweigh the cons.

mainly because nobody has done it yet. what do you think Amazon is? it didn't start from out of space, some day some visionary saw the opportunity to create a service that a lot of people needed and also saw the personal profit in it so they took that opportunity by the balls and have been making billions ever since!

but also it is partly because bitcoin users nowadays are mostly too busy speculating about its price that they forget it is a currency that they can spend too so the market places are not that crowded in times.

with all that said it doesn't mean there isn't any marketplace though. for example there is a good marketplace in this forum under Goods board. there is also decentralized options such as OpenBazaar.

Frankly speaking bitcoin isn't ready for it. These Marketplaces already have their partners for payment methods like visa and paypal, if these payment partners will let bitcoin to enter the payment scene then their services will come off quite short that might affect their business profits. Although it is hard to believe that there will be people who will be making payments done through bitcoin, coz we all know that bitcoin is volatile and people who will be spending it might just regret it after a minute. We are all looking forward to see bitcoin in the mainstream, yet we don't think much of how things are too complicated for it.

I can think about two major factors which leads to not have a great marketplaces like amazon & aliecxpress using crypto: One, bitcoin price volatility, if we consider paiements to be made in btc for example, so it's not that easy to determine the exact price of a product at time of purchase. Two, it's about paying the entity responsible about shippement which most of them wouldn't accept crypto paiements for several reasons.
There a lot of other reasons like technical developpement issues of paiement gate. Community still waiting for major marketplace to integrate crypto paiements .

Yes! It is one of the major issues. Due to the high competition in the e-com market, all stores are forced to keep their profit margin lower. So it is very difficult to sustain a business with such a small profit market and huge price volatility. 


No! We have big players available in the logistics industry to help new businesses. They are even ready to provide discounted rate if you are just starting out. So logistics is not an issue whatsoever.


Somewhat true! However, we have services like Bitpay, Polispay to overcome such issues. Even LN has already started functioning. So speed issues can be taken care. There is another one issue you have missed out - Crypto regulations. If we leave some countries like Japan or Germany or even US, majority of the countries don't have any regulations around crypto currencies. For majority of the countries, crypto is not even a legal form of money. That's what needs to be sorted out first if we really want to see a big marketplace in crypto market.

It's because these big companies are afraid to handle Bitcoin's volatility, for any company who will be receiving Bitcoin as a payment they are also risking themselves of losing the value of the payment seconds after they receive it and for any big company they aren't willing to risk their revenues because of it. This is also why Steam , the gaming platform, suspended Bitcoin as their payment option just when Bitcoin suddenly fell during the 2017 bull run their earnings wear hit because of it. I know the solution for this companies is to have some kind of third party where they'll be the ones receiving Bitcoin and in turn this party will be paying them fiat currency which is what they mainly want, this might be their best option right now if they want to open a big door of opportunity for them.

As Op has mentioned these days we can see more small business and small stores around accepting bitcoin as payment, but there isn't much of acceptance from the large network firms. This in my understanding is due to the volatility of the bitcoin market. When it comes to small level stores the volatility won't affect even if there is large fluctuation in the price.

The same when happens with a large network business it'll cause a big loss, because the business volume is quite high. This can collapse the entire worth of the firm if miscalculated on its market changes.

There's no need for a marketplace because there's no demand for it. And why there's no demand? Because to the majority of BTC users in the cryptosphere the thought of hodling their coins for bigger gains in the long-term outweighs the need of wanting to spend their coins. It wasn't the case back in the day when coins were dirt cheap, just look at those guys spending btc to buy pizzas and whatnot. Nowadays only a small fraction of btc users spend their coins.

Soon my friend soon.
People just getting used to Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. Soon we will be able to pay much more platforms with BTC.

There is no issue with your said. And yes transaction speed is important and we have to see some progress about block speed.

Marketplace like Amazon has several brands / sellers that place order through them
And for bitcoin to be accepted as a mode of payment on the platform, then most people on the platform must accept the use of bitcoin

But with time, as tbe adoption spreads throughout, it could happen.
I also believe the speed of the transaction and the bitcoin supply is not a problem at all

Re- point 1 : In that case for maintaining margins without volatility, stable coins are a better choice don't you think...or they are still at their earlier stage?

Amazon currently do not accept bitcoins but one day when bitcoin will be used everywhere, Amazon will also accept it as a payment method. Also note that here are many small market places where only bitcoin is used, and no fiat option is there. The only issue is that there are still many people who do not know about bitcoins and sellers are bound to sell in fiat currencies.

I also accept a point about legal issues...
Legalising crypto's in many countries...will bring big players to participate and when such exposure happens...i think lot's of the technological issues can be sorted out... :) :)

I think putting aside the legal issues with most countries,  there is also the problem of transaction confirmation,  price fluctuations and trust in transaction, though this can be minor reasons compare to the legal issues, many countries still have restrictions to use or accept btc, this can be challenging to most small and medium sellers,
Again, like you said, I think people still rely heavily on the use of fiat card payment than using btc, it is more in theory than in practice, I think haven't gotten use to using it yet, and there are not much places to use it.

How about we shift from the thinking of existing marketplaces coming into terms of accepting bitcoin as payments and rather support smaller online stores that accepts several cryptocurrencies as a method of payment for their goods. you can check these guys out, I just placed an order to receive an Ethereum Shirt and hoping to receive it in about 14 days time.
http://cryptoclothing.co

Even the volatility of bitcoin alone is enough why these marketplaces is not yet accepting cryptocurrency payments. These companies won't let the decentralized network decide when they can get their revenue not on a coin whose price is dependent of demand and supply laws. Well aside from legal issues, coz there are many imposed against bitcoin, there have been a long talk on bitcoin whether if it should be on the methods or not, so far I've seen some adoption and it's great.

Look, bitcoin will only take a second to transfer but fiat will take you less time than that, imagine you are just buying a clothe, it's easier to pull out your wallet and get a couple of bucks than opening your phone, go to e-wallet, scan the merchant's address type the amount etc.

Well, there have been quite big black markets that used Bitcoin as the main payment option, but that is surely a thing for a narrow group of people, not to mention the illegal nature of it. Why isn't there something size of Amazon with BTC payment? Well, perhaps the ways of people who believe in Bitcoin and those who make such marketplaces are just too different. Volatility is kind of a problem, but a simple and obvious solution is automatic price updated based on the price of Bitcoin in USD. Perhaps there simply isn't enough demand for such a place, and this is why it's not here. Or, and this is probably true, there are difficult legal matters to solve to make it work worldwide.

When is this "soon"?
I've been hearing this soon from 2013, there is not a single month when we don't have a topic about amazon finally planing on thinking of devising a plan to analyze the possibility of accepting bitcoin payments and yet, we're still on soon!
At this rate, most of the people on this board won't be alive when this "soon" happens.


This is the real answer unfortunately, there is simply not enough demand for people to spend their coins.
The price has just jumped 10% in a day, almost everyone is like, "don't sell them hodl, hodl.."
How can a marketplace survive with this happening? Nope, it can't.
As much as I dislike saying it, we need a miracle to see something, and not on the size of Amazon but at least one that would match Overstock.

Lots of the problems can be addressed with well built decentralized marketplaces that respect national laws, operate in efficient, safe and decentralized-crypto friendly manner. If for example a government requires that a decentralized marketplace kyc its customers according to the country's law, you could do it without exposing the customers to dangers, esp risk associated with centralized collection & holding of IDs ... the marketplace should also be transparent enough for authorities to monitor the market for unsafe/bad things that are prohibited in their countries. < These and others can be done without compromising on decentralization principles.

Perhaps the reason that no large market has chosen bitcoin as a payment method is because the demand for bitcoin in payment is still very small. Besides, the price of bitcoin is constantly changing, making it difficult to list the prices of products.
If in the future the demand for bitcoin increases and bitcoin has a high transaction speed, perhaps we will have a large market that selects bitcoin as a payment method.

Few problems I would like to mention here :-

1. Government is not really comfortable in letting cryptocurrencies go that deep in the market .

2. People are worried about buying and selling their stuff with Bitcoins because of its volatility , the transaction fee , inability of Bitcoins to actually go good with small Valued goods.

3. Not many people are willing to buy and sell using Bitcoins , it is used as a investment rather than a currency.

4. We already have a lot of competitive market out there with places like Amazon giving people huge discounts on major products I do not think Bitcoin market will be able to complete with it .

Please point us towards this fact.

If there was huge demand there would be someone ready to meet it. There isn't so there isn't.

All the facts I have to hand point towards merchant adoption shrinking for several years and continuing to shrink. The peak of acceptance was probably in 2014 when huge name after huge name announced it and since then they've been quietly shutting down.

Most people who own Bitcoin don't want to spend it. People who don't own Bitcoin will never buy something to buy something.

Unlike others have stated here, there is a need or a want for a marketplace like this.  One that I know of OpenBazaar being one of them.  It at least used to be a marketplace you had to download instead of just a normal website you click and open. 

The problem arises in there being too wide a range of items that people would want to purchase and it's hard to get vendors themselves in on place.  I think a lot of vendors have either already set up their own marketplaces that accept cryptocurrency or they are a bit hesitant to join a larger marketplace not knowing if it's worth their time in a crowded place.  Plus we simply need more vendors to accept crypto.

To put it simply the demand is not there, look at what the price is doing right now, we are seeing an important growth and most of those that are buying bitcoin right now are not thinking about using it to buy stuff in the future, they are only speculating with the price and as long as that is the main use of bitcoin then there are not going to be a lot of marketplaces that are going to accept bitcoin as a form of payment, obviously this will change in the future but it will get some time for us to get there.

Obviously the lack of demand from the people is caused by the very volatile nature of Bitcoin. Nobody wants to sell an item which cost more than the price yesterday, or less than the price tomorrow. That's like bargaining everyday.
@OP take number 2 off your list, because number 1 and 3 is two of the few concerns in regard of having a community market for the Bitcoin users.

It seems to me that the only answer to this question is that today Bitcoin is used very little as a means of payment.  Today, the goal of cryptocurrency users and Bitcoin owners is to make good profits due to the volatility of the coin, and few are willing to give bitcoin for goods, when bitcoin can make several times more profit.  even if such trading platforms as Amazon or even AliExpress make it possible to buy goods using cryptocurrency, in my opinion very few people will take advantage of such opportunities.  Although in any case, the infrastructure for using Bitcoin needs to be developed, It’s only a pity that the stability of the bitcoin price in the market will primarily depend on large whales.

I can agree with that because up until now a lot of crypto users are treating bitcoin as an investment (wherein, they can get good profit someday). And very few will be willing to buy items online paying their crypto, unless they have no other choice at that moment or it is convenient for them to use crypto on that online store. It will be easier for amazon or ali express to just integrate bitcoin once a lot of other merchants are already accepting it or they can see that a lot of users are requesting for it. But I think they will add bitcoin very soon now that they see that there's advantage of using bitcoin during pandemic situation.

It would be problematic for everyone if they would do it right now like what you have said the transaction fee and of course the irreversible transaction both party would lose some money if a transaction has been cancelled out or faced any trouble.
But I would also like to see some big Marketplace like Amazon to accept or use crypto as one of their payment option.
And it could be troublesome for some buyers if they would face some scam items I used to shop online but I always choose cash on delivery so if something is wrong on my item I wouldn't pay the item and the guy who deliver it to me would ship it back to the owner.
If it was made in crypto then every time that there would be a damage to my item then I couldn't get it back since I already paid for it.

There are already lots of big marketplaces where people can buy things and make payment with Bitcoin, but the thing is that most of the people here are not interested in making use of those sites, they are only interested in Amazon accepting Bitcoin and that's why they have neglected those other platforms.

Purse.io allows people to make a purchase from Amazon and make payments with Bitcoin, but people don't talk about this site, they act like it doesn't exist. There is also Overstock.com which is a very big platform similar to Amazon and they are accepting Bitcoin as a payment option.

If I'm not mistaking, I think numerous projects has bought into that idea of creating a marketplace that uses just cryptocurrencies (mostly bitcoin as payment option) but the lack of patronage is what's killing this dreams and not making the project as big as that of other fiat marketplaces like Amazon and the rest. Also the lack of planning, marketing etc by the project developers also contribute to their downfall since, irrespective of how productive/good your product is, if people don't know about it, it won't get the patronage it deserve.

Responding to your questions, the volatile nature of bitcoin has little effect since the likes of stablecoin can easily solve that problem. Also I think we have to give this cryptocurrency related marketplaces sometime to gain the trust other fiat competitors have. You don't expect Amazon to just get dethroned after sacrificing years to build the trust it currently have from shoppers.

Think of this from Amazon's perspective.Almost all their buyers use debit/credit cards.Implementing cryptocurrency payments won't boost their overall sales and probably 3-5% of all their customers will use crypto coins to buy stuff.Is it worth it to implement cryptocurrency payment gateways?I don't think so.
Plus,cryptocurrency prices are very volatile,thus Amazon will have to convert all crypto to fiat as fast as possible.Therefore adopting crypto payments is kinda pointless,from Amazon's point of view.

Some marketplaces aren't supported by cryptocurrency depending on their locations because there are some governments that prohibits the use of cryptocurrency in many transactions. Most of the major marketplaces uses fiat currency as payment and I don't know any market that allows bitcoin to regulate in their business. There is a possibility that volume of people that uses bitcoin is also a factor on why markets are not allowing people to pay with bitcoin because not all customers have it. Hoping that governments should consider people who are using btc in their country, they should study and understand how btc works on the economy so that they know the benefits of it and start promoting mass adoption in its community.

Wrong. This forum has 2.7 million registered accounts, and the number of active users is counted only in thousands. Amazon has 300 million users. The demand for buying goods with BTC is tiny, even if you assume that every visitor of this forum wants to buy things with Bitcoin, which is not the case, since many people want to hodl or wouldn't trust sellers with Bitcoin transactions.

There's not enough interest neither from sellers, nor from buyers. I've seen this happening with Bitcoin freelance sites - extremely low volumes when compared to mainstream sites with no signs of growth at all.

If you are talking about large corporations like Amazon and such, they will surely have a problem with this cryptocurrency transaction integration in their current model which is functioning properly, plus if you are to compare the current transactions that happens everyday in this companies, the amount will surely be insurmountable and if you try to compare these to the amount of people who knows a thing or two about bitcoin or cryptocurrency in general, it will still not match with the numbers, even if it is millions but you compare it to hundreds of millions, it is not yet enough. The time will come when these titan corporations take notice of these growing demand for cryptocurrency transaction integration, we do not know when will it happen but when it does, it will coincide with the fact that cryptocurrency is a staple of financial markets.

I am sure you are not alone wondering why there seems to be no big marketplace (similar maybe to Amazon and similar platforms) that can be considered to be associated with Bitcoin. There are some smaller platforms accepting Bitcoin, but they are just an addition to what they are already offering. In my own humble view, it has something to do with the demand because if there is really a big demand then the business community can easily recognize and exploit it. Of course, there can be other factors also involved.

I agree with you but they will not adopt a cryptocurrency so volatile in their payment method. Like many other companies, and with Jeff B's history, he will surely try to enter the crypto market with possibly a new crypto. Moreover, currently, this is not a feasible method to accept or make payments for their company. And with retail business, the volatility won't let them add BTC or any other high volatility crypto.
For other services, they might give it a go, for example, AWS.

And if anybody believes that crypto will completely diminish the usage of country-wise fiat currencies within Amazon or any other companies, then it is useless thinking that. Believe me, it won't happen or if it happens, then you will not live to see that, because it will be an incident happening way far in the future.

Make sure that there is a lot of demand. However, I think some legal situations do not allow. Currently, there is no country where Bitcoin has attained a full legal status. In this case, the demand does not make much sense.

Actually, there is a point I am curious about. Recently, Reddit was accepting payments with Bitcoin. Maybe there is someone who knows how they handle the process.

Sadly, that's the majority of Bitcoin users and almost the entire population of altcoin-only users. I see all kinds of discussions on LinkedIn from altcoin projects saying Bitcoin's shit and can't be used daily and nobody uses it but they're completely ignoring the fact that there are people using it every single day.

But that not more people know this is simply a sign that yeah, Bitcoin users are forgetting to spend, forgetting to use. And yes, I do get it's not easy to spend it on everything but at the very least use it to send money (we all send money right?).

Purse.io did this for years and just closed

https://www.reddit.com/r/PurseIO/

Read about it, it wasn't even the dumbest idea in crypto by any means, the service worked and people didn't get scammed.

You went to purse and selected what you wanted on amazon.com/uk/jp and users that wanted your bitcoin bought the items on amazon and took your bitcoin. There were moderators to make sure you confirmed your items were shipped, it was decent but a little more difficult to use Amazon than just buying something yourself.

The PROBLEM is when you realize buying more bitcoin is harder to do than buy an item yourself on Amazon. To replace bitcoin is MUCH harder than buying something yourself on amazon, so it would only appeal to someone that wanted to spend bitcoin rather than use it as a "store of value." Which bitcoin it is proving to be (oddly) during a pandemic  ;)

The other issue was Bcashers wanted the site to use Bcash and call it bitcoin, so it fragmented the users on the platform during that bitcoin fork. Some would rather jump ship than be told that Bcash is better and they'll "accept" your bitcoin while trashing it as inferior... not a smart idea with a business but that's the cost some businesses pay to learn simple things many of us learned for free long ago.

They won't do it unless somebody else does and starts taking a bit of their customers.

Someone with capital should start a company in a Bitcoin friendly country (Bahamas?) and build that marketplace. They could do their own payment processing with btcpay or such, i don't think this would be impossible to do.

In Latin America we also have Mercadolibre (https://www.mercadolibre.com/)...

I think that it is because Amazon has sellers around the world and therefore there are countries that do not accept Bitcoin, volatility could also be an obstacle and the speed of transactions.
Although we have made significant progress with Bitcoin for Amazon, Bitcoin is still not a convenient means of payment. Because otherwise it could be conquering that niche as one of the main winners of the 2008 recession.

Amazon takes the lead over the other market players. They are doing this because they know how potentially it attracts customers globally and that the BTC payment option will serve great. Maybe we are grateful enough to see how these big-time market players giving their support to promote crypto. Their market perceptions lead yo something great that might be happening in the future and to the fact that e-commerce adoption is getting faster, they could easily make a good market and it turns back with them...absolutely BIG returns.

It is kind of ironic don't you think? Bitcoin is such a great currency that in fact people do not want to use it for its original purpose and they keep storing it and prefer to keep using their fiat instead, which is why I think that in order for bitcoin to break up that cycle we will need an enormous economic crisis that puts in doubt the long term viability of fiat currencies around the world and that people begin to look for alternatives and decide that bitcoin is the best choice they can make, unfortunately we do not know when that will happen so our only option is to keep storing our bitcoin and to use it only when we need it.

it is not ironic, it actually makes a lot of sense. when you have something that has increased in value by A LOT over its entire existence and is also showing all signs of continuing to rise for another decade at least, then naturally you would want to hold on to that thing instead of spending it. that's a simple logic to me and that is why majority of people prefer to accumulate bitcoin instead of selling or spending it.
and i don't think we need a crisis for bitcoin to grow, it is growing on its own based on its merits. everything else is only catalysts.

You must be new. Bitcoin is no longer being used for its original purpose because Blockstream ripped its balls out.

Feel free to ask any follow up questions.

That's right, sudden changes in a some payment method can make people confused or bothered as they are normally using fiat currency. It is not that easy to adjust especially when people are not that knowledgeable about using BTC, not all countries around the world are already engaging in legalizing cryptocurrency in their economy. The problem here is the mass adoption that we need to improve because the business volume is already high and we need that to correlate in mass adoption of using BTC. I don't think the bigger companies will allow people to use a volatile asset in the market as this will give them sudden changes in values. Market changes should be studied and plan before make it into reality to prevent long term adjustments and issues.

Using bitcoins as their main mode of payment will exclude many people from buying from their website. Think about it, if you are not capable or you do not have the means to buy using bitcoins, what would you do next? You will then look for an online store which will cater to fiat as your mode of payment. Why does there have to be exclusivity? Different payment methods are introduced so that people will have the ability and means to choose, depending on what fits their capabilities and the availability. A store who is this exclusive will lose both sales and their clients. Second, many people have trust issues regarding this, people are afraid they might get scammed or their items will not arrive on time. Third, being solely dependent on technology for payments is really dangerous, what if when you really need the item, the current system you would be using is down, what if there’s a technical glitch, etc. etc.

I think that such projects can still be implemented in the future, we can only wait.

Bitcoin is still young for that but that will still be the end result. There are a lot of regulatory concerns to combat with and the freshness of libra failure is still fresh

It really is, bitcoin has been with us for 10 years now it is still young but became a huge thing that impacted the mainstream. As I've heard, Visa is planning to add bitcoin as a mean of payment but they clearly stated that they are doing it coz it is a good choice right now, so we can tell that they are ready to jump out any time soon. Facebook's Libra? uhmm not interested anymore after some hurdles that they didn't overcome.

First, Amazon is an American company, Do you think at this moment that Bitcoin is fully accepted and legalized in the US? not right? That is the main reason why big companies are not embracing bitcoin at the moment, because of the government and its rules and regulations. Have you heard about libra it is a cryptocurrency, it's on trial because of government intervention and they are halting the adoption I don't know why maybe they are afraid that they cannot control bitcoin or for some reasons.

Earlier there was Bitmit, but it was forced to close down due to regulatory hurdles. Now we have another site called Bitify, but the number of listings are very small and the trust factor is low. And then obviously we have sites such as Newegg and Overstock, which accept direct payments in BTC. And even in Amazon, you can indirectly make payments with BTC. First you need to convert BTC to Amazon gift card using sites such as Gyftr, and then you can use the gift card to purchase whatever you want from Amazon.