Bitcoin Forum

It's harming the price. A new merchant comes in then old time bitcoiners start buying stuff.

Joking aside, we need to promote not just merchant adoption but also ways for companies to pay by btc.

Are you talking about bitwage.co ?

That is true and it is happening for a while but it is good thing in long run cause it will initiate wide addoption. For now, we need merchants to give usage value to Bitcoin.

Of course we need more merchant adoption, bitcoin is as good as what you can do with it...

We need merchant adoption to promote bitcoin. What we also need is merchant not selling all their bitcoin the day they received them. We need more bitcoin adoption so those merchants can pay for their costs in bitcoin, like internet service, mobile phone, advertising.

Rakuten thing, right? Wait till Amazon gets here :-)

Seriously, it's a good thing - do not worry about the short term price effect... Unless you are active trader, then yes, complaining is justified. 

i read the OP .. yawn

OP is a FIAT lover and only cares about exiting bitcoin to return to FIAT.

he has no long term desires of bitcoins 'economic' / 'social' growth, just the 'value' growth, nor does he understand the whole economy.

and lastly he is narrow sighted about the value of bitcoin based solely on the crappy exchanges that are basement dwellers PHP projects.

what people need to realize is that once bitcoin is on the nasdaq the price is going to sky rocket. with the block reward halving and ever increasing hashing costs.. yes you guessed it the price is going to sky rocket..
so the vibrations of the ups and downs of current exchanges are meaningless to the future of bitcoin.

what bitcoin needs is more merchant adoption AND training in how to get the merchants staff to highlight and accept it themselves. then the wallstreet traders will see that bitcoin is a growing economy and not just a pump and dump like the OP wants.

http://contravex.com/2014/02/25/matters-of-bitcoin-merchant-adoption/

What is wrong with you? I believe in bitcoin. I cant see myself converting my coins to fiat ever. I want it to dominate the world.

Just because I have doubts over the exchange price doesn't mean I am pro-fiat! Also I do believe that merchant adoption needs to be balanced with other things i.e incentives to buy BTC.

I think you may be displeased with how I reacted to some of your so-called incentives for adoption. I think there are much better ways than what you have suggested.

Merchant adoption is the key, it can increase the bitcoin price a lot due to more coins in circulation will reduce the coins on exchanges

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=987110.0

OP ... thats an extremely shortsighted statement!
What are you gonna say when ur talkin to someone and they ask "well where can I use it, spend it?"
... "oh theres a few places".....

Think long term dude, u want to be able to say "EVERYWHERE!"

Being able to state the latter encourages consumer adoption and thats what Bitcoin needs is consumer demand. Among other things... lol

I know the more well known places that take bitcoin as a payment further legitimized it when joe q public asks what's the point of having it and where can one spend it. However, unless a retailer is offering a decent sized discount for using it they aren't passing on the advantages that bitcoin offers for utilizing it above and beyond paying in fiat or on traditional plastic. Basically, we're stooges for paying with it until they offer discounts or we're just letting them get over on us and in reality, the average person using old payment systems is getting better deals as the company isn't making extra profit. This ecosystem needs and wants greater adoption rather than companies just taking our coins and dropping them at bitpay but adoption will happen faster when the family shopper is getting discounts for paying in bitcoin or paying it in a form they may not totally realize they in fact are paying with it.

I've been including the attached fliers in my bill payments the last couple weeks; note that one of the line items urges merchants to use bitcoin with their own supply base so they extend the benefits of using bitcoin on both the customer and supplier/vendor sides. That would be a major step forward, if we start seeing companies transact in BTC between themselves.

http://imgur.com/a/PwgdJ
 (http://imgur.com/a/PwgdJ)

https://i.imgur.com/HAS9Vpj.png

https://i.imgur.com/KeNSP4O.png

i believe merchant adoption is the most important part of the success of bitcoin.
if we can't spend our coins on stuff we can buy it basically is useless.

It's important, but that overstates the case because the utility of bitcoin is much larger than merchant-consumer transactions. Consumer transactions could actually be considered fairly low on the list of priorities for bitcoin to be a roaring success over the long run. You can't do very much financially with lumps of gold any more, but that doesn't mean it has lost utility as a store of value. (Can you imagine a campaign of people calling for Amazon and Walmart and so forth to accept gold and fretting about the future of gold if they can't get it accepted? ;-)

No, I can't. Alas, Bitcoin is not gold, and is meant to be a payment system, which fits with Amazon and Walmart's interests.

It doesn't really matter if every business in the world accepts Bitcoin if no one is buying things with Bitcoin. Merchant adoption beyond a point is meaningless without consumer acceptance. The whole Xapo Debit Card idea will eliminate any need for further merchant adoption. When these cards hit the market all businesses will have been assimilated. What we need is more people adoption.

such short sightedness. I really don't understand why so many people think this.

You're sacrificing just a little bit of the current price, but you're building a solid foundation for bitcoin to go mainstream, and to the moon, so to speak. How can bitcoin go mainstream if no one accepts it? Getting rid of merchants might temporarily increase bitcoin's price, but it'll harm bitcoin's price in the long run.

Yeah, lets just stop right here with less than 0.1% of businesses around the world accepting bitcoin! That'll surely take the prices up!

http://www.coindesk.com/overstocks-2014-bitcoin-sales-miss-projections-3-million/

Overstock projected $12 million in sales but only had around $3 million in 2014.  Overstock is also regarded as the largest merchant, both by size and volume of sales, accepting BTC.  In comparison, industrial miners are said to be dumping $2 million a day to pay for their electrical and overhead expenses.

So think about it hard.  Overstock only averaged like $9000 a day in BTC sales while miners are dumping $2 million a day.   Yeah OP - I am sure it is those merchants killing BTC and not the high cash mining whores who are milking the blockchain dry..   :D 

So we should be able to pay the electric bill with bitcoin and that will solve the problem. We should focus out attention to the energy market and enforce bitcoin. It would not only keep the $2 mill worth of bitcoin going round in the chain in stead of being dumped for fiat.

I've always though this excuse of merchants being bad is absolute bullshit and based on flawed logic. Regardless, for bitcoin to be a success we need constant fiat money flowing in and out and more merchant adoption means more money coming in and out and also meaning more people will get involved once they can spend coins at more places. After all, what good is a currency that you can't spend?

for day traders, yes it is a bad thing. But Bitcoin was never formed for greedy short-term investments at first place. It is supposed to behave like a cheaper transactional medium so let it be..

The issue with merchant adoption is that fact they dont offer benefits to use bitcoin, so only the people who own bitcoin but,

Say if mcDonalds sells cheese burger for 99 cents each, but if you use bitcoin is 50 cents each.  People that dont know what bitcoin will get curious not only to learn what it is but also to save money.  Another factor is that most of you are greedy bitcoin people looking to make money off of bitcoin instead of making it exchange free without any fees, Why should people adopt to bitcoin if there is no added incentive.  These are the two issues besideds the merchant adoption.

I'm the opposite view...we need more merchant adoption!!!   ;D

People on the street don't know what the F#ck Bitcoin is man...forget the wild price swings for a moment, and let's focus on getting Bitcoin's "brand" actually recognized.

Basically we need more marketing and advertising, and to do that with need to fill a niche audience first before the mainstream.  And we can't even fill that niche, so let's keep adopting more merchants please!!!!

Why should McDonalds sell a cheeseburger at half price just because you're using bitcoin? I don't even think their profit margin is 50%, so they'll be selling at a loss. Why should they do that? They're there to earn money, not to be altruistic for bitcoin.

Besides, to a person who sees "0.004BTC/cheeseburger" vs "0.008BTC/cheeseburger", do you think there's a difference? When they see the first, they'll go like "hey, that's pretty cheap, let me look up what this bitcoin thing is!" and when they see the second, they'll be like "meh, it's the same price as a normal burger, why bother"?

That's obviously not going to happen, because to the average person, even to people who casually know about bitcoin, they'll have no idea how much 0.004BTC is worth.

50% is excessive, but since bitcoin does offer some significant benefits to merchants (immediate payment with no chargebacks, counterfeit bills, bounced checks, risk of loss from damaged bills or robbers, armored car deliveries to the bank, etc.), it is reasonable that they could offer something like a 2-5% discount with bitcoin and still come out ahead. This is what is needed to make people want to start accumulating bitcoin for payment purposes.

As it stands I get a 2% rebate on everything I use my main credit card with, 3% for restaurants/gas/hotels with a 2nd card, and 5% for select purchases (changes each quarter) with a 3rd. So it makes no sense for me to use bitcoin, even though the merchants are indirectly paying for those rebates through the fees they pay the credit card companies.

Im giving a huge example!!!  Im saying if they could.  Im saying it as a point.
I been into selling and giving things out.  Well another thing you can also do is give out free stuff when making a purchase with bitcon.  incentives could help if its good enough.  Im came with an idea for a project Ill be working on and its all about giving incentives if your using bitcoin then rather using fiat.

Even with a 2-3% rebate, it makes no sense to use bitcoin. You have to go on an exchange, give out so much personal info AND a picture of yourself on many places, wait, probably pay another 1-2% at least for depositing, trading, then withdrawing. So much work, and you don't much, if at all.

I think we need a fundamentally different system, and have an ecosystem where everyone in the supply/distribution chain accepts bitcoin so that transactions can be made purely in bitcoin, thus avoiding exchanges/exchange fees.


EDIT: @ducky:

My point still stands. Even if you give a discount to bitcoin users, most people wouldn't know about it. You'd have to really advertise it, and even then most people would probably ignore it. It's just not worth the effort for the store, since they're not really invested in bitcoin succeeding.

Thats what I also said, the middle men is not good for bitcoin.  Im trying to buy bitcoin but I have to pay this merchant 12 percent, then I have to pay the service, is clearly not viable that I have to pay fees just to get bitcoins.  Right thats where comparison prices come into play, but the issue is getting bitcoin without the middleman

Uhhh, you guys do know that Coinbase is waiving all fees right now to buy and transfer bitcoin, right? It's not hard to sign up either.

If you are paying more than 1-2% in fees, max, for your bitcoin you are doing it wrong.

Again "Money is a means of payment, not speculation". If you are thinking bitcoin only as "speculation" then I think you are wrong, because we need a lot of more merchants (online and physic) that should accept bitcoin (also) as method of payment (due the lowest fee, respect a bank account or credit card).

yup, you're 100% right. merchant adoption kills the price because they dump it on the open market ..

No we need more merchant adoption. It can only be a good thing that more people can use it and have access to it, not bad. People spending btc is good, it changes hands and that is what it was made for.

Online payment processor Stripe.com has recently started accepting Bitcoin. You may want to include stripe.com/bitcoin (https://stripe.com/bitcoin) in your list of processors.

I thought it was a bit odd a ranked member rubbishing bitcoin :)

Hmm, they charge 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction? Sounds like a credit card.

i havnt even bothered to check my post history to see that topic. i left it there for people to think and discuss..

but why care at all about the bitcoin price. i have a large hoard of coins, yet i dont check the bitcoin price and i dont get scared if it drops or rises. so lets put a different spin on it.


you live in the fiat world, im presuming american dollars.
lets imagine you never intend to go to europe so the dollar->euro exchange rate is meaningless in your practical life.
now, would you keep checking the dollar-euro price daily, in worry that the dollar will collapse some day. or do you worry more that not enough shops will take bank notes and prefer other payment methods.

i presume that some time in your life you may get rejected for a credit card and soon find out that you can no longer buy things online without one, limiting your spending habits.

now do you care more about the euro exchange rate or the lack of possibilities you will have to use your dollars.
truly imagine it, you cant pay your bills or TV/internet services due to lack of a card, and every transaction involves cash in hand.

so whats important to you, ease of use and mass ability to spend. or a conversion rate to a currency that you wont touch.

it really doesnt matter if bitcoin is $2 or $20,000. whats more important is the ease of use and availability of use.

You are joking, right? You think that more merchant using bitcoin = bitcoin price decrease? Well think again. It is the other way around. We need to build
bitcoin infrastructure, invest in bitcoin projects, shops look new opportunities. That is why accepting bitcoin by more and more merchants is - yes, it is called development. And it is good for everyone.

Yeah I'm getting tired of reading this ignorant crap. If you seriously believe this then bitcoin is doomed because the more people that use it to buy things the more the price is going to drop so you may as well get out why you can. Bitcoin absolutely needs more adoption for it to grow not the other way around.

It's a complex subject but there is truth to the idea of merchant adoption causing a downward price trend. (Evidence: 2014. If adoption was strongly correlated with price increases, how would you explain 2014?)

The problem with merchant acceptance is that it tends to move bitcoin from being a store of value (like a gold ingot sitting in a vault somewhere) to a transactional currency that rapidly changes hands. This increases the velocity of bitcoin, which anyone with an Econ 101 class should be able to recognize as a downward force on the price.

So is merchant adoption good or bad for the price? For the price to rise bitcoin has to be valued by more and more people, and that kinda requires more and more people knowing about bitcoin and holding it. So I think the short-medium term impact is negative, but in the long run it forms a positive base for growth.

Here's one simple test I'd propose - do measurements of the velocity of bitcoin shown a significant increase in 2014 compared to prior years? Someone probably has that data. If they did, and if it could be established that it was due to increased merchant use at a significant level, it would provide an explanation for the price downtrend.

I think you're making some big assumptions there. I don't think we did get much merchant adoption in 2014, especially not enough for a significant price rise, but adoption goes both ways. It's good merchants getting on board but if people aren't actually spending their coins there then it's not going to do much in the short term.

Well if it's a merchant who doesn't dump their bitcoins every time the price drops a fraction of a percent, i say why not?

Then in that case, the merchant understood the real concept of bitcoin. If him keep the bitcoin he will can spend them on another online merchant or maybe (why not?) a physical store. It's called "a peer-to-peer electronic cash system" the merchant is a normal thing.

It obviously needs merchant adoption because that is what bitcoin is all about. The higher the adoption rate the more exposure bitcoin gets and that is how we will grow the demand. You can't expect everyone to hoard and do nothing with their coin because eventually that will lead to nothing.

Regardless of merchant adoption, spenders will always spend. Even if there is zero merchant adoption, they will always sell the coins in exchange for fiat money and spend

However, with merchant adoption, many bitcoiners and even whales can buy bitcoins and spend (before, they can only spend fiat money), this will create a upward pressure on bitcoin's exchange rate

It would be great if supply chain adoption happens also, but merchant adoption is the measure of success. If it's accepted broadly then we have money, literally.

They are a credit card processor. They charge 2.9% + $0.30 per credit card transaction, but 0.5% per Bitcoin transaction.

The big deal is that they are already an established online credit card processor. ("We process billions of dollars a year for thousands of companies of all sizes.") According to their documentation, an existing customer using their "Checkout" interface only needs to add a couple of lines to enable Bitcoin acceptance. This makes it extremely easy for the merchant.

If you run across a merchant who uses Stripe, you might want to contact them and tell them you want to pay with Bitcoin, and that this will cost them less in merchant fees. It would help get the word out because all customers who check out would see a Bitcoin option.

Well selling and converting to fiat does hurt the price.
I agree that finding ways for companies to use BTC directly such as adding a button for people to buy from other Bitcoin suppliers and distributors on coinbase to keep the welath inside the coin would be good.

I have seen some companies using bitcoin to send funds directly to Chinese bitcoin exchanges and get RMB out to their chinese partners in china. Or some mother sending bitcoins to his children in Australia. There are many usages that have not been fully discovered