Bitcoin Forum

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On Tuesday, Time Inc. announced that it would begin accepting Bitcoin payments for certain magazine subscriptions. This means the massive stream of merchant selling pressure, recently intensified by the Microsoft announcement, has just grown by another order of magnitude.

Lynne Biggar, the executive vice president for consumer marketing and revenue at Time Inc., said in the statement:

"This pilot program will give Bitcoin users a seamless and simple way to purchase subscriptions. We hope to expand our partnership with Coinbase in the coming months to create more opportunities to provide greater value to our customers."

Consumers can purchase subscriptions for Fortune, Health, This Old House and Travel and Leisure. Other Time Inc. publications, including People, Sports Illustrated and Food and Wine, have been excluded for now.

But how many people go out and purchase US dollars so they can then turn around and spend those dollars on products and services? How many people are going to run out and buy more bitcoins to replace those spent at merchants? If Bitcoin ever hopes to mature past the Frankie’s Fun Park token stage, the community had better wake up – and fast.

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The Bitcoin community is shooting itself in the foot by squarely focusing on merchant integration on the payment side only. This is resulting in ever-growing selling pressure as the majority of merchants simply elect to dump their bitcoins for cash. Since mining is now almost entirely done by large-scale operations, the only solution for relieving this selling pressure is by shifting the focus to wage integration and balancing the scales of the bitcoin economy.

Elephant in the Room

Companies like Microsoft and Time Inc. need to offer bitcoin deposits as a form of compensation to their contractors and employees. Bitpay and Coinbase should be expanding their services to include wage and salary integration. This would allow the bitcoin ecosystem to become less dependent on fiat exchanges, lessen the selling pressure, and promote a more stable and sustainable commerce transaction system.

Full Story: http://altcoinpress.com/2014/12/time-inc-deal-promises-to-ratchet-up-firehose-of-selling-pain-for-bitcoin/

For thirty years, the US dollar was almost solely propped up by Arab oil states "going out and purchasing US dollars so that they could spend them."  It's arguably the only reason there even still *is* a US dollar, and *not* a Soviet ruble.

Bitcoin has 10% inflation right now.  If people in hyper-inflating third world economies are going to see Bitcoin as an alternative to their local currencies, they have to be able to spend them somewhere.

I'm shocked that there are still retards who sing the same song " Merchants accepting bitcoins will drive its value down"

When will these retards learn that more merchants = buying power = increase btc value. Ppl spend their btc is the same as they're selling btc to fiat to spend on goods or services. but yet i dont see these retards blame btc exchanges for that.

Fcking mind blowing material there OP.


PS. these retards usually also wish salaries should be paid in btc so thats would "push" btc value without knowing that ppl who wish to have btc can always buy them with their fiat. Its an open market. Do these retards ever think the employees will just "dump" those btc to receive fiat if they dont want bitcoin in the first place?

Again, someppl are just too fcking dumb to even see shit on their plates.

Last thing we should want/need is Bitcoin being used by large corps to pay wages.  The whole point of Bitcoin is to liberate money from the control of governments and central banks.  Inviting large companies to use it as part of our slave-wage system invites the regulation that is anti-thetical to Bitcoin's very raison d'etre.  If Bitcoin is to both survive and thrive, it'll be because it offers the freedom that the USD can't to those who yearn for that freedom.

As the yearners grow in number - and they most certainly will in these waning days of the empire - Bitcoin and/or its progeny will grow just fine.

Have patience, the end (this time around) of this unsustainable foolishness with fiat money is nigh.  No need to try and speed things up artificially.

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Well this is technically true over the short term, however over longer periods, more merchant adoption will lead to higher consumer adoption, which will lead to higher prices for bitcoin.

It also makes bitcoin more attractive to own and use because there are more things that users can now spend their bitcoin on

If merchant adoption is so high that it drives the price down below $1, then it should be considered a huge success for Bitcoin. The problem you describe only applies to speculators, and while their actions are important to Bitcoin, their success is not.

Microguy, good post. Sorry to see the negative response though. Months ago I brought up the topic of the Velocity of bitcoin in this context, warning that increased velocity caused by merchant use would tend to drive the price of BTC down. Looks like that is exactly what is happening, the detractors notwithstanding. (What is their explanation for the price deflation, I wonder?)

I think you are dead right in saying that wage integration should now be a key area of focus for growing the bitcoin economy and the value of BTC. Paying people in BTC means any savings from their earnings by default are in BTC, slowing the velocity of BTC and reducing the amount of BTC circulating at the higher rate of day-to-day transactions.

A month or so ago there was an article about a company offering to arrange BTC payments to employees and employers. Here, I saved a link: https://www.bitwage.co/product#pricing

I'm thinking of giving it a try in 2015, and encourage others to check it out.

What we need to do is prevent Microsoft and Time from using bitcoin.  We need to prevent anyone from using it.  We must hurry and stop this madness!  We must change the protocol so that Microsoft, Time and all evildoers can't spend their bitcoin.   Spending bitcoin is ruining everything.  The big problem with bitcoin is that it is spendable.  We've got to put our heads together and plug up this 'leak'.  Somehow, we need to cause big mean people to stop ruining bitcoin by using it in the way it was designed. 

Why do you want the price of bitcoin to go up?  The price of bitcoin is the least interesting aspect of the whole thing.  No matter what price it is, it still functions the same.  If bitcoin is $300, $300,000, or $.00003 - it operates to deliver the same function.  

The only idiots who are cheering for the price to go up are the buy and hold speculators.  Go invest in a bitcoin company to earn a return.  Price speculation is the height of dumb.  I wish Bitcoin price would go back down to $1.  Scheming to cause the price to go up is the dumbest activity possible.  Too bad about 65% of people here are all engaged in that activity.  Full dumbasses.  Go make something useful rather than wishing for a price increase.  


Dumbest post ever.

It's not only a matter of the price going up. It's a matter of correct balance, steady focus, and fundamental understanding.

Integration on the payroll side is probably more important than the POS side; yet all the focus is on the POS side. This means we're increasingly loading up the sell side with merchants who auto sell their BTC. Instead, we must encourage merchants to also offer BTC options to employees. Then businesses could funnel their bitcoin revenue back over into payroll, rather than dumping it on the market.

Basically, we must encourage balance - instead of promoting a system of merchants who become bitcoin dumping gremlins.

Wow.

Well, some of us look forward to the day BTC or other crypto takes over as the default currency in our society rather than government-issued fiat. Living in America, I can tell you that will not happen here with a $5 Billion market cap. So we do need BTC to grow for that purpose. A lot.

Call me crazy, but if someone here were to post a poll here on whether it would be better for BTC price to go up, hold steady or decline, I happen to think the "go up" option would win rather decisively, and not entirely from personal greed. Why so much hostility to wanting BTC price to increase? Are you against BTC in principle, or do you somehow think a price decline is helpful in some fashion? (Besides wanting to buy in cheaper?)

I agree that balance will stabilize the price, but there is nothing wrong with merchants converting immediately to dollars because people still need to obtain those bitcoins in order to spend them. The problem now could also be characterized as speculators and savers having driven up the price by hoarding bitcoins and the price now finding a new equilibrium as they spend from their hoard.

In order for this to happen we need to see more b2b transactions so businesses have more of a reason to hold more of their bitcoin. Businesses tend to keep very little fiat on hand and when they do they tend to keep it in the form they generally need to spend, so if they cannot spend their bitcoin then they have no reason to hold it

Ripple?

Don't confuse price with value. Value goes up as more merchants adopt it, price may or may not going down due to selling pressure. I for one encourage merchant adoption as phase 2 (phase 1 is innovators), phase 3 is consumer adoption (now that they have places to spend it).

Expect price to decrease before it skyrockets. At 2-3% consumer adoption we will be headed to the moon.

In essence, what is happening now is that every time someone purchases a product or service from a bitcoin accepting merchant (aka bitcoin dumper), the buyer is causing that BTC to be immediately sold on the market. There are simply not enough speculators available to offset the combined force of this massive network of merchant sellers.

For every 100 stories about how another company is now accepting (aka selling) bitcoin, we might get 1 about payroll integration. This imbalance is not sustainable over the long term. People need to earn bitcoin, spend bitcoin, and avoid fiat exchanging. I think its just a matter of bringing this awareness to the surface and shifting focus.

It'll happen with time. Give consumers a reason to use bitcoin (IE merchant adoption) and they will come. especially with services like purse.io (15% off amazon), gyft (3% off), other discounts etc. At the very least we will eventually see a 3% discount for using bitcoin, then add on a little more for essentially 100% non-chargeback fraud protection.

You've been around long enough to remember that in 2012 there wasn't much to spend your bitcoin on, times are changing my friend.

Edit: NVM 2013, but the point still stands :P

everyone here sounds so funny lol... so if they keep "spending" it then who keeps buying it?? or where do you think it goes?!

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Many people buy bitcoin initially as a novelty, to see how it works. Others have mined small amounts over time. Satoshi mined nearly 1 million bitcoins before he vanished and left Gavin holding the bag.

Now the network difficulty is too high and the ship requires a new captain to help guide bitcoin around the newly emerging icebergs. Wherever Satoshi is right now he's probably high-fiving this thread and praying that the community listens.

Why do you think paying wages in Bitcoin would be anything better than merchants selling? It would be worse 10 times. Merchants don't really trade billions in Bitcoins, thousands and thousands of people receiving part of their wages in BTC would make much bigger pressure on exchanges.

It's amusing to see speculators complaining about merchant adoption. If Bitcoin isn't used for transactions, it's not good for anything.

It's true. The merchant adoption is a good thing. The price will rise on the back of true usefulness rather than speculation (unfortunately for us!)

What ever happened to all the people who used to say "when the time comes to sell my bitcoins, I won't need to?" Broad merchant adoption is a necessary piece of that. I'll admit I want to see this market bottom so that we can be on the euphoria inducing wall of worry that a bull market brings. But you've got to be patient. Bitcoin has a course to run that is plotted out for the next 126 years in the code.

I agree this is a chicken and egg problem. No one will integrate payroll solutions if payees don't have a place to spend their bitcoin. Merchant adoption is the path of least resistance to mainstream adoption. Create the avenues for commerce and people will take those avenues. You'll have a much harder time convincing Joe Sixpack he should be paid in bitcoin and "wait" to have a chance to actually use them in day to day living.

I agree, we will probably see normalized discounts in the 3-5% range as companies start to pass along their savings (or at least a portion of it) from credit card processing fees and chargebacks

Excellent points.

I think as long as every bitcoin enthusiast seeks partial compensation in BTC from their employers, and we keep this issue in the public awareness, bitcoin will thrive. Remember, only a tiny percentage of Overstock or Microsoft sales will be in bitcoin. On the payroll side it only needs to be an option, or at the very least discussed. When Bitpay works with a merchant, they should encourage integration on both sides, POS and Payroll.

The problem is that currently we have everyone focused on the POS side of the equation which is causing heavy selling pressure on the market.