Bitcoin Forum

Hi all! I am new to this forum and wanted to introduce myself. I am an entrepreneur and my start up is looking at ways for companies to share information with one another through an application.

Thus far, what I've seen (research on BitCoin) and done (trades of BitCoin), I have not come across very much evidence of companies transacting with one another using BitCoin. A few questions:

1) Why should companies adopt bitcoin in buying from their suppliers? Or selling to distributors? etc

2) Why should companies NOT adopt bitcoin in buying from their suppliers? Or selling to distributors? etc

3) What are some examples of companies doing this today? And what have they found doing so?

I am doing some research on this so any light you could shed on this would be appreciated  :)!

Welcome to the forum :)

1) Why should companies adopt bitcoin in buying from their suppliers? Or selling to distributors? etc

Extremely low % fees, especially when dealing with large amounts of money.
Transactions that clear much faster than bank wires or checks.
After the first big sale, now they hold BTC which they can spent at a rapidly growing number of places.

2) Why should companies NOT adopt bitcoin in buying from their suppliers? Or selling to distributors? etc

Market risk when holding/selling BTC could be an issue.
In the future more companies will probably hold their Bitcoin as a valuable asset, but today there is still risk.

Thanks Bit_Happy, for the super quick reply :) Mmmm - yea that totally makes sense. For now, that downside will cost companies more than they will gain from the upside. Which means, for now, they'll wanna not get in.

Makes me wonder how companies that do accept bitcoin from people - like retail, restaurants, websites etc - manage market risk. After all, coin flow is one way. The ones that do (http://mashable.com/2014/03/04/overstock-bitcoin-sales/) accept BitCoin do it given it brings them new customers, which is the upside, but how do they manage the downside?

Hi jrajagopal,

Here's a link to Coindesk's Articles regarding bitcoin enterprises, might be a great place to investigate further:

http://www.coindesk.com/companies/page/102/

Might take some time, but as a suggestion you could work your way through noting their respective business models, service solutions, financial/regulatory challenges, etc.

Why not shoot the CEO an email with any Q's too? I think you'll find them most helpful and willing to offer you advice, as they may have been where you are at, not too long ago.

Best of luck with implementing your data networking project mate, sounds intriguing  :)

Imagine bitcoin being less volatile, so no conversion to fiat is needed. Enterprises could use Bitcoin as their (international) payment system, Business2Business is by far the biggest piece of the pie in the Enterprise world. Imagine the savings in exchange rates and fees, it would be a highly attractive payment method for large enterprises.

A lot businesses make contracts really far in advanced.  For example in my industry the contract could be 6 mos to a year in advanced.  The current volatility makes BTC not useful.

In my company for example we don't care about fees because were dealing w 100s of thousands of dollars per contract.  If you think businesses care about bank fees you are crazy.  You should look at our yearly FedEx bill.  Its like hundreds of times bigger than our bank fees

Thanks for all the responses all - much appreciated :)

The upsides (in my first post) are really strong, IMO.

Also, merchants have the option of selling the BTC right away.
Companies with a high profit margin do not need to worry about the "market risk" of holding some BTC.