Bitcoin Forum

Hypothetically, if Amazon announced that they were accepting bitcoin today, how high would the price go?

It might not affect the price at all as the price is mostly controlled by an accumulation/distribution cycle of whales.

::)

Would you be willing to place a 0.5 BTC bet?

If the price goes up during the 24 hour period after Amazon announces they are accepting bitcoin, you give me 0.5 BTC.

If the price goes down or remains exactly unchanged during the 24 hour period after Amazon announces they are accepting bitcoin, I give you 0.5 BTC.

If Amazon never accepts bitcoin, the bet is void.

No. My post starts off with "it might", meaning it's not something I'm betting on as a certainty. In addition, the terms of your bet are ridiculous in betting that the price wouldn't increase at all during the day - bitcoin price is very volatile and could rise a little due toe the volatility or due to the rally that is currently going on without neccessarily being the effect of Amazon news.

This bet is no less ridiculous than your bearish stance on Amazon accepting bitcoin

How is it a bearish stance? I did not say that prices would decline. My stance is simply that news does not always have an immediate cause and effect relationship with price.

I wouldn't expect the price to rise by much if amazon were to start accepting bitcoin, to be honest.
basically, bitcoin is a cryptocurrency and price fluctuations already take into consideration, the fact that this is the purpose of bitcoin in the first place.
amazon is just another retailer at the end of the day and bitcoin is just another method of payment.

currently, TERA is correct, the bitcoin market is controlled by the trading which takes place on bitcoin as a commodity.

This is a terrible bet because btc price most likely has zero correlation to whether Amazon accepts btc payments or not. During this 24hour period, what if Satoshi decides to dump his btc's? Or what if Warren Buffett decides to buy up the whole market? Examples are a bit extreme, but you get the point. Or, when Amazon announces btc payment option, it could just simply be normal market fluctuations, nothing to do with the announcement.

To be fair you didnt state any time period in your OP, if they started accepting it today Im sure at some point in the infinate period of time specified the price would rise ;)

to all OPs:
it would be at least a psychological issue and the Price will rise

this ^

people will be like OMG EVERYONE IS ADOPTING BITCOIN TO THE MOON!! BETTER BUY UP BEFORE I MISS OUT!

price will rally up and hodl'ers will reap the rewards

this is a possibility, but then again 'everyone' may actually equate to a small number in comparison to the number who are already day-trading and as a result 'everyone' would, in essence, be a small number of buyers.

You know about as much about economics as John Snow. :)

which John Snow do you mean?

http://www.thefrisky.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/03/you-know-nothing-06-0313-400x300.jpg (http://www.thefrisky.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/03/you-know-nothing-06-0313-400x300.jpg)

On-topic:

I guess if amazon accepts bitcoin it will have a positive effect on price and as well on the amount of sales on amazon. It'd be good for both parties.

But i think amazon will wait a while before it will accept bitcoin. The larger the company the longer they wait with new technology.

When (not if  :)  ) amazon will accept bitcoins the price will grow up a bit but as always the skyrocket train isn't caused by the good news.

I agree to an extent. Whales are human though, they'd see that as an opportunity to make money, lots of buying/dumping happening, but if Amazon accept, so will a huge amount of others and ultimately the price would rise in my opinion

The skyrockets generally happen when new exchanges open and volume picks up there. Infrastructure improvements allow the price to go up.

 Right now the price is already increasing as fast as the present infrastructure will allow. Everyone who is willing to buy bitcoins on bitstamp,coinbase,etc is already as bullish as possible and buying as fast as possible, so making them even more bullish via amazon news will not affect anything.

The big money will come in when they have a way to purchase coins that is regulated, completely secure, and based in their own country.

The laws of economics that apply to stocks and traditional financial assets don't apply as well to bitcoin because bitcoin has infrastructure limitations/growth and is not part of the same global system where you can buy traditional financial assets.

Not everyone is buying, I have six figures I could spend on BTC in fiat, but I already have a huge amount invested in BTC.


If Amazon accept, mastercard, visa, paypal; they all start taking it more series. Higher adoption, means more avaliable people to buy, more buyers, more $ in the market - then I'd start buying again. Although if we ever hit £3000 a coin, I'm all out and retiring before 21 hopefully.

The core group of bitcoin users is savvy enough to figure out that they can already shop at Amazon using bitcoin purchased gift cards from gyft or egifter.  So the assumption must be that Amazon accepting bitcoin payments directly will encourage the creation of new bitcoin users who are just barely able to figure out how to use bitcoin.  There is going to be a limit to how many of those kind of users you can attract with that particular carrot stick, because of the technological hurdle, and their lack of confidence or understanding of that new payment option.

Let's just say that it is better than nothing.

Gotta disagree on that, I have other liquidity that I would happily put into Bitcoin if I thought the risk was worth it. Definitely not buying as much or as fast as I can yet. Why would you conclude that everyone is all in and leveraged to the eye balls at this point?

i'd move my short term target from 800 to 3000


Amazon Accepting Bitcoin would be a Huge deal.

I don't think Amazon will affect it necessarily fast. More people would probably give Bitcoin a try, yes, but that doesn't mean all of them might buy into it. Or maybe a small group will. But it'll certainly fix Bitcoin in the eyes of the media, since we've had some pretty rocky situations. If the public follow the media, then yes, that could possibly raise the price. Not immediately, though, but the media is played into it with Amazon.

Merchant adoption =/= increase in demand

The people already using Bitcoin will buy with Bitcoin.

The news and media attention might bring more interested parties, yes.

If amazon ann to accept bitcoins, the price will go up very fast to 1000.

TERA, could you give me one example where a market is not driven by accumulation/distribution of whales?

Now to answer OP, It would be a great news and could be a trigger to the next pike.
The more transaction, the more maket cap is growing. It s the structural bitcoin price. add that to gigantesc bubbles and you have the BTC price.

So my view is that it would affect the structural market cap but only be a trigger to the next bubble.

Finally some non-bears arrived to back me up  8)

Completely agree - it would be of huge symbolic significance. A firm as big as Amazon giving legitimacy to BTC would be massive.

   

Trial by combat

If this happens then Ebay/Paypal will jump on board so fast. The are semi bullish on btc already. Target would be 5000+ before a hard correction of 2500

I don't understand those who say it wouldn't affect the price much, if at all. I think it would be one of the biggest triggers for a price spike that BTC has seen to date & as someone else said, it would almost certainly prompt others such as eBay to follow suit.

Yes an action like that can trigger a chain action that could pump bitcoin price very high, i mean, the first one overstock did well and dish too, but if a third one do that.. then it will be tens of them doing the same.

If btc price shoots up within 24 hours of Amazon announcing they would accept bitcoin, how do you know for certain it was amazon that caused the price hike? If you do win the bet, how will you prove Amazon was the sole cause of price increase? Sure in the very long run, it could promote btc and make the general public more aware, hence increase the money supply in btc, but within 24 hours is too short, and this time frame is meaningless.

Absolutely. Bitcoin is functioning wonderfully as a (volatile) store of value in exactly the way you would expect from a scarce commodity money.

What happens next is the increasing utility of bitcoin as a spendable currency with progressive integration into the internet as a form of payment. Amazon or paypal integrating bitcoin would be a massive confirmation move for the fledgeling currency, leading other firms to do likewise or get left behind by the savings bitcoin offers over conventional credit card payments. Discounts may be offered for using bitcoin as an incentive to online customer. Its sudden ubiquitous appearance all over the internet as a form of payment will also alter the public perception of bitcoin (largely driven by a negative mainstream media).

Companies like circle and coinbase, facebook integrating wallets etc, Winklevoss ETF's will all hopefully be coming online later this year. Just in time for the next (perhaps too) predictable upswing in bitcoin prices.

How anyone could think that the largest internet companies in the world taking bitcoin would not be massively bullish for both bitcoin and bitcoin prices is beyond me. It will legitimise bitcoin in the eyes of the masses and bring huge numbers of new potential users to the currency. What happens when people expect a huge number of new people trying to buy into a scarce commodity? The market front runs it. The price will probably go insane.

edit: this is when i expect wall street to get involved

This.

We will return to this thread when it happens and laugh at the bears

I agree with everything you have written here, but for me the key sentence is 'It will legitimise bitcoin in the eyes of the masses'.

Here's the thing, in the bitcoin world it doesn't matter how great some piece of news is.  If it comes out during a down trend, it can be the greatest news in the world, but will still have little to no effect on the price.  For example, if the news "Amazon now accepting bitcoin" came out in March, it would have had little effect to reverse the downtrend.

Now if that same news comes out in the next 3-4 weeks (and just so happened to be timed perfectly with the pre-bubble top) it would have a MAJOR upward effect on the price.  This happened in November with the Senate hearings giving bitcoin thumbs up.  I wouldn't be surprised if some more good news just so happens to come along in the next 3-4 weeks.

And of course, the next bubble pop will be timed with some really bad news out of left field (which someone is saving to deliver at just the right time), I can pretty much guarantee it.

This market is still just so sentiment driven because it's small, and the powers that be KNOW that.

In the short-term, the prices can jump by as much as 100%. But it will be followed by a significant correction. So I am expecting the pre-correction price of around $1,300 in the short-term. In the long term, the price will be $3,000 to $5,000, as more and more companies might follow suit.

Yes. I really don't understand others that say that it isn't a big deal.
It sure is, and one should expect at least +200% in value if it was to happen.

The short term price will likely be unaffected when new companies start to accept bitcoin.

Over the longer term as more people start to use bitcoin the price will be positively impacted.