Bitcoin Forum

The CEO of Overstock looks back at their decision to add bitcoin as a payment method in their online store in 2014:

http://www.coindesk.com/into-the-war-room-overstock-looks-back-on-bitcoin-embrace/

But despite all the excitement that move generated he had this to say:


Obviously he is really excited by blockchain tech etc etc etc - but the standout for me was that despite all the publicity and the hype, less than 1% of their revenue is paid for using bitcoin.

At this rate this coin is never going to be used as a currency - the community is too small, and only a fraction of that community is willing to spend bitcoin as opposed to hoarding/saving it.

I would guess most bitcoin users select the retailer offering the best free shipping plans.

That could mean amazon, walmart and other free shipping retailers would be the ones used the most.

For btc users outside the united states, I'm not sure which retailers they would opt for.

Just wait till hyperinflation of USD sets in ..... people will be flocking to alternative value transfer vehicles to exchange goods and services. In this digital age .... bitcoin has high potential to scale against such an inflation and be a "convenient safe haven" which can still facilitate trade easily.

That's the sort of figure I was expecting. I would definitely make use of it if they had a viable European branch but shipping and tax from the US is bonkers.

Widespread use as a currency would be one of the last things to fall into place, if it ever did happen. Before that we need get through speculation into store of value. If that ever settles down then the currency aspect kicks in. However by then the deflation would start to be felt and even fewer people would want to part with it.

Retail is a huge boon for people who already have BTC but it's not much more than a sideshow right now.

Bah.  People have been predicting the end of the USD ever since it came into existence.  And the precious metal permabulls--and bitcoin permabulls--love to predict the imminent end of the dollar, and we'll all be living in our bunkers, etc., etc.

It may happen, but more likely it won't within our lifetimes.  And there's no guarantee that bitcoin is going to be the go-to currency in such an event.  We could very well end up using the Mexican Peso or the Canadian dollar.

Of course no one wants to use Bitcoin to make transactions. Even now it's easier to use cash.
The community is ever-growing, but maybe we should focus on widespread adoption once Bitcoin can technically be widely adopted.

I think they did an interview with Vinny Lingham I think about overstock?

I mean sure they are only getting 1% of oerstock's revenue but I think considering that overstock is still such a big company it is a good step in the right direction for the bitcoin community in general.

Personally instead of focusing on web stores accepting BTC we should work on something like getting more merchants locally to accept it. Because you can buy anything online with bitcoin, everyone already knows that. But you can't live on bitcoin in real life.

If you compared bitcoin to US dollars and paypal it is very young at age and has a long way to go until it can fully realized its potential. If we thinkg that bitcoins potential could be realized instantly then we are having a huge mistake since in order for this currency to be accepted by the masses we will need more time and wait for the natural flow of time until such day that bitcoin will finally be a full pledged currency.

What sort of idiot would spend their coins on the sort of stuff you can buy at overstock? Anyone who'd use an asset that has increased for than 5x in 2.5 years and has a questionable transaction time for day to day purchases is out of their mind. 

Get in your head guys- Bitcoin is now a commodity.

There's far better options out there in the altcoin or traditional payments space for these sort of purchases.  I for one think that is a very, very good thing overall. 

Word up, glad there are people out there in the world who are realizing this.  I keep saying that bitcoin is dead as a currency, but there are those who keep clinging to the belief that we're all going to be lining up at Starbucks to pay for coffee with bitcoin and everywhere else.  Ain't gonna happen, and the fees and confirmation times are, in addition to what you said about the price volatility, killing its utility for that.  I agree 110%.  There's no way in fuck I want to spend money (which I've done) only to have that money gain in value by 10% then next day.  I don't want to feel like a goddamn sucker every time I spend bitcoin, but that's exactly what ends up happening.

This.

The dollar has been rising since 2014, and the Federal Reserve is the only central bank in the world that is raising interest rates. It remains the strongest currency out there. They're not going to allow inflation to rage, not after the pain they went through in the early 1980's to curb it.

Yes. It's likely to be inflationary alts like Doge or Steem that make the breakthrough for spending simply because a) people don't mind spending them and b) they have low/zero fees and confirm quickly, no need to wait an hour or longer for six confirmations before you buy your blender or whatever.

Once all the network and infrastructure are set in place + hyperinflation strikes, you will see countless getting into bitcoin.

The adoption will skyrocket in a very short period of time. The price will skyrocket upward and catch everyone off guard.

The only thing that catches the attention of most people is NOT the utility of bitcoin but is the price of bitcoin traded.

As long as you do not see hyperinflation + global economic collapse, you will continue to see tepid adoption rate in bitcoin.

I don't see it as surprising at all. Even 1% over overstocks revenue is a huge amount and the number of active bitcoin users is still quite small.

In addition, most people that enter bitcoin first start to save bitcoin as they heard about the huge gains you can get. This does not help with spending.

The community is much bigger than it should be.  Bitcoin was supposed to gradually scale, and ideally I would say the price should double every time there's a halving after a sharp increase at the start.  That would result in stability for mining revenues.  It's very young (not even 10 years), and no technology that people need to put loads of money into is going to grow without building up legitimacy first.

As for spending it, I know it sounds weird but that actually doesn't matter - people hold it and that contributes to price rises which in turn brings new people which may spend it.

Regardless, people do spend it.  Bitcoin's user base couldn't be any more than a few million, and there are billions of people in the world.  Bitcoin's percentage of users to people in the world, even as a percentage of people who have access to the Internet and do online shopping, will be much, much less than 1%.  When I think about it, I actually think it's good that they're not just removing it altogether considering it irrelevant.  Bitcoin usage accounting for less than 1% for that service doesn't mean that it's not spent by the people who use it, and the number of people who use it will increase.  People are conservative with their money and you need to account for that.

There's no point in using bitcoin for everyday shopping unless the shop was offering some great deals that really justify spending bitcoin on it, otherwise you just hold it as it is expected to go up in value.

The numbers are pretty much what you could have expected.

When 40% of the bitcoiners HODL
When 10 don't have enough money to afford to buy something ,and just poking around for a few dollars a month
and when 49% think that overstock sucks

You are left with 1% :)))))))



Any FINAL solution for this?

Why? To obtain them you need Bitcoin, so you're effectively spending Bitcoin by proxy. They're also in pump/dump territory so you'd be pissing away vast amounts of value or making so much that you wouldn't want to spend them.

Well if you want to get people to start spending it instead of just hoarding it then I recommend freezing the market, giving Bitcoin the value it has now and start to get companies to incentivize Bitcoin transactions in the form of minor discounts. Of course people are going to be hoarding Bitcoin when there's the potential to make a lot of money off of market swings. I know I sure as hell would be doing something like that, and I should be but I don't do it enough to care.

All this talk about Bitcoin to the moon or whatever will prevent people from buying anything a majority of the time, because they all want that additional money that comes with having more BTC to sell.

There are not enough bitcoin users till now and only few tech lovers know about bitcoin and its potential. Many people stil lack easy access to internet and for them bitcoin is still some hifi tech which they afraid to try.

Smart people are not idiots. You are an idiot that's for sure.

If i want to spend $500 cash, then i would look at BTC price. If i feel it will go down a bit, then i would use BTC to buy goods and wait till BTC go down a bit and use the $500 cash to buy back, plus a bit extra, of BTC. Now whom an idiot.

I like to look at the products on Overstock, I haven't shopped there recently because I would rather shop at Amazon and other cheaper places. I am pretty happy that Overstock has Bitcoin Payment methods available so the people that were into Bitcoin from when it was just starting out could purchase pretty much anything that they want because the price went super high (that is if they held their coins during the price increase).

The recent cointelegraph article at https://cointelegraph.com/news/crypto-capital-markets-to-save-mankind-from-new-global-financial-storm (https://cointelegraph.com/news/crypto-capital-markets-to-save-mankind-from-new-global-financial-storm) said...


This tallies with what I wrote here...



I don't believe we need to wait until 2030 to see a $500,000 in price.
We may see such level much sooner.

That 1% is not shocking at all. There is not much people using bitcoin today to contribute more in any company's revenue. The number of bitcoin users worldwide does not even have 1% of the total population in the world so this rate is more than normal to me. Just wait a little more, when bitcoin becomes more popular, when bitcoin's value become at least 10,000 USD per BTC. Then you will see that 1% revenue will soar high exponentially.

See the thing that they'd have to think about at this point in time is that without Bitcoin they wouldn't or may not have that revenue at all, so in a business mind I'd rather get my name out there through the bitcoin hype get some business from normal users and bitcoin users and then I'd be fine.

I think they got a lot of free advertising through the time when they were first accepting Bitcoin and that really did help them as a whole. So, I think they did a good job with using Bitcoin to their advantage and really helping them out as a whole.

So Bitcoin did help them I think it built them up completely and put them as a direct competitor to Amazon, if they're on a different scale.

Good point. I wonder how many bitcoiners gave Overstock a look for the first time because of that campaign, and maybe did a token bitcoin purchase, and then continued to use them but with credit card purchases.

I guess I'd need to know how many customers 1% is and how much revenue they generated before judging if that's bad. Overstock might have had a large boost in revenue but only a few customers. Companies commonly have board meetings and discuss ways to increase their market share by only 1-2%. A 1% increase could be considered a success for some companies.

Visa, MasterCard, bank accounts and PayPal have 99% of the current market share for online purchases, Bitcoin has less than 1%. Why would an experienced businessman like Patrick Byrne expect that would change just because he starts accepting Bitcoin?