Bitcoin Forum

"Amazon’s profits for its entire existence are still less than what ExxonMobil takes home every 2.5 weeks"
from http://www.investopedia.com/stock-analysis/031414/amazon-never-makes-money-no-one-cares-amzn-aapl-wag-azo.aspx
Even paypal and ebay look tiny compared to ExxonMobil or Nestle or BP. Instead of focusing on Amazon, the community should ask Exxon or Nestle or even Chevron. Thoughts?

Bitcoin payments at the pump?  You'd need a bitcoin card that was widely adopted and could be easily retro-fitted into existing gas pumps.  The first thing we need to do is get BTC off of POW before it dies over that.

Amazon accepting BTC would be huge though! I firmly believe they will accept it before the end of the year. Ebay and Paypal I'm not so sure about.

Newegg is nice, but Amazon would be killer as I'm sure I am not the only one who makes most of their Internet purchases there.

I also tend to believe it would be nice to have Amazon on board but not worried about it at the same time.  Also not underestimating the positive effect such a move could potentially have.

It will be a long time b4 you can pay at the pump with btc... there is a very small % of convenience stores that have internet access at the pump (I did research on news, weather etc at the pump based on user preferences)... they could do something with a server inside the store but the equipment at the pump has to be military grade & weather tight.
Then there's the need for transaction speed in a high traffic environment.

An interesting question that for me highlights how there's too much emphasis on retail acceptance of Bitcoin.  Which doesn't matter much.  Taking bitcoin payments isn't any different to any other currency, the retailer is just offering payment through a third party provider.  When i go to a US or European site they offer the same for my £.  They dont want my £, they will have the payment processed and given in their local currency.

Really, there's not much advancement of Bitcoin until it is wanted as the currency, until it is used for direct payment of goods and services.  Until Nestle takes payment of Bitcoin for a delivery of a shipment of chocolate or baby milk; until BP takes payment of Bitcoin for a shipment of lubricants.  And then holding them and using them to pay their payments to their supply chain that use Bitcoins.

Online retailers accepting bitcoins are just exploiting a self-publicising niche market.  It generates some headline and gets a few $'00,000 through the tills that might have gone elsewhere or more likely not spent.  Theres not real economic growth as those BTC just go straight back into the currency exchange market.

Just buy an amazon gift card with Bitcoin for now :P .

Asking for Amazon to accept bitcoin is a big case of be careful what you wish for, at least any time soon, that is.  I'd wager the price needs to be 10x to 100x larger than it is now for Amazon to be able to start accepting bitcoin without having the price plummet.  At least, this assumes that Amazon does what most companies do, which is convert to fiat immediately. 

If, on the other hand, they keep their (hypothetical) bitcoin holdings in bitcoin, well then, that'd be good for us, the price would go up.  But I'd be surprised if they did this for any sizable portion of any sales they make in bitcoin.  Then again, who knows?  Amazon doesn't act like most companies.  Most companies try and develop profits off their revenue.  Amazon, on the other hand, plows the money back into their business.  So it's entirely possible that they would surprise me and hold on to a significant amount of their bitcoin holdings, far more than most retailers do.  It's impossible to know for sure what they'd do, unless of course, they start actually accepting bitcoin.  Then it'll likely be pretty clear fairly quickly which approach they decide to take.

Because we believe that one day it will be accepted finally

Hmm. I like Amazon though, even though they didn't even accept Paypal.. Hope MAYBE that could change with Chevron and Exxon taking BTC.

related: http://andyschroder.com/BitcoinFluidDispenser/ ;)

https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/08/16/secret-sharing-erasure-coding-guide-aspiring-dropbox-decentralizer/

I think the better question is not when Amazon will start accepting btc, but when we should start shorting the stock.  Amazon and the kindle will be in competition with block chain technology and decentralized data storage.

The thing is bitcoin would be an optional payment method for sellers, and I would guess most don't know about it or even know how to accept payments.

don't worry about this soon they will accept it 8)...

Amazon has huge volume and income, their profit is irrelevant.  They are the world's largest internet retailer, if BTC really is The Currency of the Internet it should clearly be accepted at the largest retailer.

Any market use for bitcoins is positive. And when the retailer finds that its supplier also accepts bitcoin, it can cut one more step out of the picture.

Big retailer like Amazon can set their own rules and invent their own coin.

Hmm - but they did (http://www.amazon.com/Amazon-500-Coins/dp/B0096E8CQA)!  Not a crypto coin though.

Really? I think in the UK at least any credit card accepting device has to be connected to the internet to get authorization, and logically this would be the same anywhere. Else you could keep visiting a pump with an empty card, filling up and driving off.

I'm pretty sure I heard Paypal already planning on implementing btc as a payment option.

Why would anyone be worried? Bitcoin has survived, in fact THRIVED without them - if anything Amazon should be worried that the BTC community won't accept them.

How about we buy amazon gift card with BTC
It's simpler & faster ???

And some service automatic sell the BTC they got  :(
That might cause dump price

I don't think we should worry about getting specifically Amazon or the oil industry involved but rather just any and all merchants and industries we can. The key to bitcoin's success is going to be in it's use as a money transmitter and a currency so we need people to use it for these things which I'm sure it will if we just have a bit of patience.

Many of us think of Amazon as the tipping point.

Later bigger industry like oil and gas will come.

+1

This post totally nailed it. Sometimes I think is funny how people overreact when a new company accept BTC payments, then as we see parallely the price of BTC goes down. All those companies do is dump the BTCs as they get them.

The situation will only change its tide when they start paying suppliers, doing payrolls and giving bonuses to their employees also in BTC.

As I stated a week ago, I totally agree.

https://twitter.com/EtherCoins/statuses/499623131183841280

Eth.

I far i know ebay start accepting Bitcoin. So i think Amazon will also start accepting Bitcoin. I think if they won't we should worry about it. Because Amazon is the biggest online shop.

It's not the only 'tipping point' but I think everyone knows getting companies like Amazon and eBay involved would be huge news and great for bitcoin, but once we do get companies like them involved who knows what industries could be next. Hopefully oil and gas ones will come at a later date, but I think those guys like their good old corrupt yankee dollars too much.

If eBay does bitcoin payments trust me, amazon will or be forced to accept it.  They will feel like they are losing out in a race, if there sales get a boost from it.  Im just shock that this didnt happen sooner especially when Overstock, got a boost in sales when they accepted it.

In my opinion it's enough serious that the large ocompanies online (ex: Amazon) don't accept the Bitcoin,
because Bitcoin is a money online and it should be used online.

The downtrend says otherwise :-\

they didn't even accept Paypal

wtf!

Well it should and if they would then sellers can withdraw payments much faster and not to wait 2 to 3 days to receive any funds owed in the merchant seller program

I think your both missing the point.  People say the issue with Bitcoin is they don't have much use for it other then speculating on the future price.  That issue is being addressed when they have the option to use Bitcoin for their everyday purchases.  Now if someone needs something and can use a Bitcoin that is one less reason to deny Bitcoin's value.  The fact that companies don't use Bitcoin to pay their employees and suppliers is not something people should be worried about now.

Businesses accepting Bitcoin means people have a reason to use Bitcoin.  The larger the amount of users of Bitcoin will lead to more holders and that means less supply= more demand and a higher price.  We should be celebrating the victory and not fixating on problems that may be out of our immediate control, it only adds to more fud and being spread.  This could very well be the first step to something like that taking place, who knows.

What keeps me up at night is wondering what will happen if Hello Kitty doesn't accept bitcoin!

amazon's core business model is based on business to customer. it's more synonymous to amazon, and using bitcoin to buy a laptop or whatever you need is a lot more fun than using it to buy gas.

also, most people don't like exxon mobil, shell or BP.

I agree that it isn't a big deal yet if Amazon doesn't accept bitcoin, but for different reasons than the OP  ;D

For companies like amazon the speed at which they have access to revenue from sales is really not all that important. This is for a number of reasons - primarily because of the fact that they have easy access to credit so they can easily borrow against their accounts receivable giving them instant access to their revenues. Another reason is because of their size they can demand flexible payment terms on their suppliers and vendors so they would not have a bill due until their revenue comes in.

BitCoin has a tendency to fluctuate a lot; I think Amazon want to stick to stable currencies.

have you heard of 3rd party processors? if so, why does it matter whether bitcoin is stable or not?

Many companies will buy some of their products/merchandize from/through amazon so they could be the 2nd piece of this "puzzle" as a store could accept bitcoin for payment and then use amazon to purchase their inventory to sell at a later time.

Another thing that big companies accepting bitcoin will accomplish is the fact that it will build the groundwork for eventual b2b commerce via bitcoin. We obviously need to start somewhere.

Yes Amazon has very low margins, in fact I think usually it isn't even in the black, which is ridiculous for a company its size.  Frankly I don't know why they do it, you'd think they should exploit their dominant position a little more and make more profit. 

how would they go about exploiting? the reason why they have grown to the size that they are is that they've kept prices competitive/low.

I never worry about the merchants accepting bitcoin as that will come eventually.   Now what worries me is the conglomeration of BTC into the hands of 2 large payment processors (BP/CB) as most mainstream merchants I would suspect do not keep bitcoin on hand.  What do these companies do with all of the accumulated BTC?  Who do they sell to and how?  A bit of transparency would be nice.

There will be more local payment processors as the bitcoin market grows. Can't expect BP and CB have the ability to comply with regulations for every country.

All these market-giants have protested against bitcoin once. Knowing the amount of BTC in market and its demand, they are one siding with it.

It wouldn't be surprize if e-bay makes user friendly policies for BTC too.

If ebay accepts it, then amazon will surely too, to avoid losses on not accepting it!

I'm not worried. I either buy a gift card, or use my regular credit card, and then pay the bill with bitcoins. Or run the coins through an exchange to pay the bill.

One of the main features Amazon features is volume, they have TONS of different things you would then be able to buy with bitcoin.

Yes, it does give Bitcoin more purpose and credibility, its one less reason to deny Bitcoin's use.  Not necessarily its value.  Here's the deeper economic point: its depleting its value, as you valued the purchased item more than you did the Bitcoin.  With normal currency this isn't an issue as the vendor values the currency.  However here they don't, and promptly offload immediately.  This is not a good thing long term, its a constant selling pressure on the currency.

I still want Amazon to accept it as a payment option  :'(

If amazon does not accept BTC then its their bad move, they are loosing a lot of potential business.

Sounds good to be, but the bigger they are, the harder they fall. If the company doesn't trust Bitcoin just yet, they'll be more reluctant to try things out than smaller companies will. If smaller companies do well, bigger companies will jump on board. Dell is the largest company to date to accept Bitcoin payments, but they exchange it for fiat right away. That creates a "downward pressure" on the bitcoin value.

This would assume that anyone who would buy something with bitcoin already had bitcoin and would not have otherwise spent/sold it. I would argue that most of the time this is not the case, I think that most people that spend bitcoin have semi recently purchased bitcoin with the intention of spending it.   

Amazon's been struggling the more they introduce new schemes, products, and services, increasingly becoming a conglomerate and trying to "force the market," pushing funds to stuff like Lab126. They posted a tiny loss in '12, but made ~$274M in '13. They're estimating effectively breaking even this year, and are expected to post weak profits next year. They used to post many hundreds of $millions and even $billions per year. Amazon grows rapidly, but the stock's basically ev- or neutral at best mid-term and long-term almost any way you look at it. I'd argue they have been exploiting their dominant position (or at least trying to), and failing largely because of it.

Basically, I think they've grown too large for their pool and don't have anywhere to go, but they don't really know what to do with their money because they're expected to be multiplying revenue figures like madmen, so they throw it into bad projects. From an investment perspective, it'd probably be good to "go back to their roots," look at their "real" business (distribution/sales platform), and look at ways of squeezing more profits out of their revenue, which'd obviously include accepting BTC (and dumping Prime :-X).

If Amazon were able to convert just 5% of their fiat sales to BTC, assuming an effective 3% overhead/fees on CC & .5% on BTC, they'd be posting ~$100M less in expenses this year without revenue loss while also ignoring any customer acquisition from the move. -But Amazon acts like a consumer-oriented charity while Bezos sells out of it instead of getting rid of the things generating both revenues and net losses, so with its Profit Retardation philosophy, other companies like Exxon and Shell may actually adopt BTC before Amazon, while also being more important steps for Bitcoin.

ETA: Sometimes I think Amazon's trying the Walmart strategy of inhuman growth and pushing through that strain & pain just to push out other B&M businesses in an area, then raising prices once a monopoly's established - which makes no fucking sense since the barrier to entry in a virtual supermarket is pennies on the dollar of producing a B&M supermarket. You can't keep competition out when barrier to entry is roughly equivalent to opening a freakin' lemonade stand.

If amazon does not accept btc then its their own problem, their own loss. It won't  affect BTC>.

I find this notion that people are aquiring Bitcoins in the market to then spend at a normal retail establishment to be quite odd.  Its daft to purchase something only to use it to purchase something else, where that interim step is unnecessary.  I'm sure there some cases, some for the novelty or to see how it works, or edge case financial situations.  But it doesn't make much sense to risk the loses in exchange or the transaction costs to do so regularly.  I expect the vast majority of Bitcoin sales through regular retailers are from self-mined stockpiles.

Seeing Amazon accept bitcoin would be big however they seem to be quite reluctant on accepting many payment methods so I wouldn't hold our hopes up too much for them accepting this. As of yet I don't think they have accepted one of the bigger payment merchants which is PayPal so would they consider this with it still being so small and not too well known with a lot of people?

I never had trouble buying things off amazon, btc is only a side option for me.

Thanks for the share though.

Because PayPal is an eBay company. Do you think before you post or do you just put a bunch of words together, hope they make sense and get paid from Stunna? 

Five percent of their sales?  That'd be huge and rather surprising, given the massive volume that Amazon has.  Overstock is a reasonably large business, but it pales in comparison to Amazon...

In any case, I really think this is one of those be careful what you wish for situations.  As amazing as Amazon adopting bitcoin would be, I really hope it doesn't happen for several years.  There just isn't enough people using bitcoin yet for a company the size of Amazon to be able to accept bitcoin and not have the price plunge in value from them cashing out. 

Also, right now, while I'm sure the management is thinking about it, it's probably a long term plan.  The accounting headaches of doing this (assuming they didn't cash out everything immediately) would probably be greater than their dollar savings, unless they truly do make 5% of their sales in bitcoin, which as I said, would surprise me very much.  Regardless, for a company the size of Amazon, I really think we'll need a good and proper price hedging system for them to be able to accept it, and ideally, a large amount of their suppliers who accept bitcoin directly.

I'm not sure your looking at this with an open mind.  People are likely going to want to try and use their Bitcoins and I think you're underestimating the amount of reasons they would have to do so.   The intuition of the merchants that accept Bitcoins shows the aren't dumb.  Once they use it and have a better understanding they'd likely realize the real value of Bitcoin goes far beyond the need to exchange it for fiat.  This is not going to happen exactly the same for everyone but that is to be expected with many new people adopting Bitcoin that they won't be the strongest of hands.

I take your point but a number of us want Bitcoin to succeed for reasons other than speculative gain.

On principle alone I'll shop at a business that accepts Bitcoin, even if it costs me a little more.  Amazon has lost a sale or two here of there because of my policy.  And I tend to buy back a little more than I spend each time.  I'm with counter on this one.

That's take a point. Sounds that buy back system worth something lol

There are many people who do not have access to traditional banking services who would not otherwise be able to buy things online.

What I think will become more common in the future, is the fact that people will buy bitcoin and spend it in order to take advantage of discounts for paying in bitcoin as merchants will have much lower costs with accepting bitcon payments verses accepting a credit card payment.