Bitcoin Forum

When you need clothes, food, rent, a car. Your go to currency is not Bitcoin...

Just saying

Bitcoin needs its own form of escape velocity, into the 10k-100k price to make it useful for voting and for other smaller nations to use it in place of their national currency.

Gotta disagree with you there this summer i paid my Internet, cell phone and bought food through mining. Sadly i had to trade for Us currency to do this but i did it  ;D

Unfortunately, I think this is kind of his point, though yours is well taken.  His is that merchants don't take bitcoin directly.  However, as long as there are well functioning exchanges that have very low fees then your approach of converting what you need is fine and will work.  If those fees are lower than credit card fees then merchants will have an incentive to take bitcoin directly and convert it themselves, which is basically what the ones that accept bitcoin now, do.

The most people don't know cryptocurrency and get used to paying with fiat. Bitcoiners will try to pay with bitcoin. Due to lacking merchant accepting bitcoin in many industry, the bitcoiners have to convert bitcoin to fiat to pay for them.

at these prices I wouldnt want to spend any btc anyway. Way to cheap considering the difficulty and how hard it is to obtain btc.

That's why I'm worried if there's another financial decline, people will sell their bitcoins for fiat to buy food and other essentials.

Maybe it isn't for you, but not everyone else is similarly limited.

If you want to increase demand for Bitcoin, start another useful darknet marketplace.

This is a bad idea IMO. Increased bitcoin use in darknet markets will increase the incentive for governments to try to limit the use of bitcoin which will make it harder for it to become widely adopted. I think we need to less a less of a share of illegal market place transactions as a percentage of all bitcoin transactions

you have your point
you can use your currency to buy clothes, food, rent, a car, with offline shop
but as we know, most of all people use bitcoin to online shop
and i believe that someday bitcoin can replace local currency

Really? And when is that? Take a guess...

not quiet sure about that
but may be 5-10 years

Overstock will actually solve a lot of these issues as they sell cloths (and I believe food). Cars have been sold with bitcoin (via bitpay) in the past. The only remaining issue is rent and I don't think it would be completely unreasonable to ask your landlord to accept bitcoin (they could use coinbase/bitpay)

i have been paid in bitcoins for 2 and a half years. i do not care about dollar prices or UK prices. i live happily on bitcoin for food, rent and bills..

although only a few special people have actually done some work to establish merchant adoption to secure our living costs which can be managed in bitcoin (getting our local grocer and landlord to accept bitcoin), the OP and others just sitting on their hands moaning about bitcoin adoption, need to shut up and do some work helping get THEIR local stores to accept it. or realise that bitcoin is still in innovation stage and if they cant be bothered to help themselves then continue to shut up and wait for someone else in their town to 'man up' and get their stores to accept bitcoin.

personal note to anyone living in an area where little to no one knows about bitcoin or lives nearby
YOU really need to do it for your area, or YOUR whinging and crying wont do anything, 'man up' boys and help yourselves out

How did you get your local grocery store to accept bitcoins? Did you hook them up with bitpay or coinbase? How did you approach the subject in the first place with them?

If you have gotten multiple stores in your area to accept bitcoin, you could really help the community by posting a small guide on your approach. I know I would donate a few btc to you for doing so and it could help others with getting local merchant adoption.

You can buy anything today with btc

Cars
Real Estate
Clothes
Food

Without even trading into fiat

at the present, you can buy anything with bitcoin "online" ... with a threety party (BTC to FIAT).

take each merchant on its own bases. do not have 1 'sales pitch', always tailor how you talk to merchants based on what they know.

for instance a fruit stall on a sunday market that only accepts cash... dont talk to him about credit cards.. talk in relation to the headaches of putting the bank notes into a bank account. i have even had a QR code printed out on a business card. and handed it to the stall owner and asked him to check out blockchain.info on his device for that address (took 10 seconds) . and said "ok imagine i want 10 oranges, show me that QR code"  - i scanned it from my phone and send the QR code funds. he seen it appear instantly. i told him if he wanted any more info that my email address was on the back of the business card to describe to him how to then link a QR code to his bank account for instant converting he can contact me about it or go to coinbase/bitpay to work it out himself. i of course paid him fiat for the oranges before leaving him to serve other customers, but for demo reasons i showed him how easy it was to accept bitcoin and check for payments received with just a 2 minute conversation.

for instance a local cow farm shop that deals in cash, use terms that relate to meat and when you talk about wallets and cold storage.. joking relate it to 'a hot wallet is the cash register which is an arms length from customers, which needs to be monitored and secured all the time, but the cold store is locked away, no where near customer access in a safe in their meat freezer. where no one can get to or guess where it is, but staff.

be funny, relaxed, joking around and making sure its in a language THEY understand.
under no terms should the words
"its a  decentralized peer-to peer financial ledger network and cryptographically protected protocol" .. a sentance like that is like speaking japanese to an englishman

there is no single magic speech that works for all merchants. so research what that merchant does an do not use technical jargon. translate every word to be an analogy which they would understand.

in some cases merchants dont want to sign up to coinbase/bitpay because they are the old breed that still do not like giving online strangers bank details. even if they are corporations. with those you can set up a form of 'bar tab' (cash in hand) which just gets topped up as it gets used.

the most easiest thing is on first contact
work out how many people locally will use that business and an average weekly spend (speak to friends and others at bitcoin local meetups to get estimates)

for instance if everyone at a local meetup agree that a certain grocery store would benefit them all, and they all spend $80 a week normally then you can use that number to say to the merchant that: by accepting bitcoin they will get atleast $80x Y people per week. that YOU will contact local media about that local grocer being the first in that town/city to accept bitcoin which will be free press for the business and also a 'go-to' destination for bitcoin tourists.

then explain the benefits in terms they will understand.

lastly. do not be pushy or sales pitchy. do not expect instant approval from just one conversation. do not expect instant understanding on first conversation.

keep it simple and sweet and leave them idea's to think about and research, then return at a short time later ( couple days) and either give him the answers to the idea's you spoon fed to them or answer any new questions they come up with.

and always have a spare phone on you so you can atleast be demonstrated how it works and/or easily set them up with a way to receive bitcoin themselves on their own device.

even if it means that your using your own accounts where YOU end up receiving your own bitcoin and only pretending they received it.. and still handing them fiat at the end of the demo., atleast letting them see the process helps alot more than the words you say.

i have seen a few others in the community waffle on to merchants for an hour using all the computer jargon(trying to sound smart), acting professional. and at the end of it the merchant is still none the wiser and thinks the person is pushing some scam on them..

i have even sent simple emails to online merchants such as
"hi merchantX
i really love your store, but its a pitty that you do not accept bitcoin as i was wishing to buy product Y, Z, A and B from you this week. i also have friends that told me thy had to go elsewhere due to lack of bitcoin acceptance. is their any chance you would accept bitcoin soon as i would love to be a regular customer of yours."

there are many approaches to take. but the main point is not to push them into accepting it that day, and mentioning benefits to them financially for doing it.

there is no single sales pitch to use. but if you know of a certain merchant that has the power of CEO (able to make decisions about payment methods) then tell me and mention what approach you would take, and i can reply with a direction to take and if your on the right path or not

I personally think getting your grocery store to accept bitcoin is a bit of a stretch, however I do know that you can buy gift cards to grocery stores via gyft with bitcoin so you can buy groceries this way.

I would think that grocery stores would be the least willing to accept bitcoin because they have such thin margins and they will not be able to afford to lose any money from payments not going through. They probably will not understand bitcoin enough to know the risks and advantages of accepting bitcoin

Imagine BitBay...a perfect complementary to eBay...ten we can order and buy or sell anything. Wouldn't that be a dream land. 8) 8)

It's amazing how many people don't get this.  This is a community, not some company just waiting to release the next starcraft to take the nerd community by storm.  I'm hopeful the price decline remains low toget people in the game for more than just money.  The more those type of people get into bitcoin, the more it gets in  the way of the technology and the more it makes me want to scream

atleast one person made me laugh.. a guy named 'funtotry' .. he 'thinks' its a bit of a stretch to get someone local to adopt bitcoin.

... i guess he didnt try,

guys if you want your local store to accept bitcoin, have fun and try to talk to them about bitcoin

That will be helpful for bitcoin adoption.

People have bought houses with bitcoins... food and cars shouldn't be a stretch.  :)

At the current moment, there's little incentive for the average joe to go buy BTC and spend it instead of using traditional payment method (cash / CC, etc.).  Maybe when merchant pass some of the savings in processing fees, will BTC thrive.

Living in a remote location (an island), I order a lot of things by mail.   Bitcoin is definitely my go to currency for online shopping.   I wish more places accepted bitcoin, but those who do benefit from my choosing them instead of their competition because they accept bitcoin.  Some things I have bought because the seller accepts bitcoin (like my X-arcade cabinet).  Then there are many things I haven't purchased because the seller DOESN'T accept bitcoin... like the most expensive juicer on the planet - Norwalk.   They don't care about my $2500 obviously, because I'm not buying one until they accept bitcoin. 

I can't be the only one making decisions this way.   

What ever you can do with fiat you can do with btc, just takes a bit more time for the conversation. Also you can do it quicker, safer, private and feels better :)

I agree, and I also think we will see more merchants offering some level of discount for paying in bitcoin. Newegg offered a (I think it was 20%) discount for orders paid for in bitcoin and they saw a massive response. I don't think that the cost savings is that large, but the principle does stand that people will be willing to pay in bitcoin when offered a discount