Bitcoin Forum

Our experiment with BTC is over. We accepted BTC in 2 of our on-line stores and after losing hundreds and possibly thousands of dollars we are removing BTC acceptance. Stores were selling card access products and chip cards.
Simply by the time somebody buys something and gets confirmed and we manage to exchange BTC at Canadian Kraken we are at loss. So goodbye Bitcoin, going back to PayPal and credit cards only.

usually the auto conversion is fast enough to avoid losing  money and with the current Bitcoin swings you should not lose much

also you must consider the time where you sell when the value go high I'm sure you would be + ev there

anyway if we're a business i would hold to squeeze as much as possible from my revenue,  selling now in a uptrend market is stupid

I have heard that BitPay could convert between BTC and local money on the spot. Have you tried it yet before completely abandoning Bitcoin?

How BitPay is better of other exchangers?
What is the actual Exchange rate there?

I don't understand how you could lose money doing this?

EDIT: Oh, you instantly transfer and sell on an exchange. There are services that will cash your coin out for you and take the hit so you don't have to.

BitPay is not an exchange, it is a payment processor for businesses, even big ones like Valve is using it on their gaming platform called Steam to accept bitcoin payments.
they have this option that the merchant can receive the fiat equivalent of what the users pay through BitPay. and the rates are according to average market price.

Try to integrate some smart contracts reguarding BTC volatility to You local currency, if the volume of sales in BTC is rilevant.

Sorry about hearing that. But if you hold at least some btc instead of just selling them off on the spot you should have some profit.

Probably that is what your costumers are doing: buying things when bitcoin is at its highest.

BitPay is a exchanger, that send to You (Business Owner) $ if You like not BTC volatility.
They have internal exchange rate, and showing it not on the main page.

https://bitpay.com/tour

Your customers pay you in Bitcoin then BitPay converts the payment to your local currency for 1% flat fee. You get cash immediately (direct bank deposit) and you don't mess around with actual Bitcoins.

no they are not an exchanger you are confused about the meaning of the word. and their rates are clear and transparent for those who are using them.
read this to understand what it means: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/exchange.asp

You obviously haven't explored all the possibilities and ways of functioning before introducing the Bitcoin acceptance at first place, not to eksperiment. You had to be aware of all risks and how to cope with them and then decide what to do. Now if you abandon Bitcoin payments you will only disapoint your customers whose motive to visit your store was that you accept Bitcoins. No one has said that running a business is easy.

How they "convert" BTC compared to advcash or epayments?

Why don't you just contact them and ask them directly how they do that?

What they will send in this moment to Business owner, in at Bitfinex we have about $2405 for BTC1?


They have even a card, but showing the exchange rate not
.com/card

We have used Bitcoin as a payment gateway in our company for all the services we provide. We have used Bitpay for some months and later we have hired a professional trader and his job is to make us profit in the BTC we have acquired through the selling of our services. We will set targets and make the most of it. Its definitely better than Paypal.

Hi!
That's why you should bitpay or such a business when u want to receive $$$ and not Bitcoins
the exchange rate is instant, the customer pays with bitcoin and you get the $$ directly to your bank account, so you don't need to worry about exchange fees and such, and u dont need to worry about the price going down after u received the bitcoins.

What rate for BTC is in this moment, when at Bitfinex is 2,414.00?

What? That's how it ends when somebody treats Bitcoin like PayPal, thinking it's a payments system that will attract new customers and that's it. You were a fiat store and ultimately wanted only fiat. You weren't interested in Bitcoin and didn't do any research, you just wanted more clients and a quick buck and got an unpleasant surprise. Next time don't be so greedy ;)

I agree. If you wanted to get FIAT fast you should have come up with better system. I believe there are applications which transfer BTC-dollars fast enough, so you don't lose FIAT. And you should probably raise price for users paying with BTC by 3-5%, and explain this is due to volatility of price.

Hm... it would be fun if in a few years you would write that you lost hundreds or possibly thousands of dollars because you removed BTC acceptance. You know that Bitcoin could be worth a lot more in future?

Volatility is indeed a problem for many merchants yet there are now ways to immediately convert your Bitcoin into fiat or cash not unless you also want to speculate that the value would go up later but turned out to be the other way around. Other shops who are accepting Bitcoin have the problem of low volume because for now not many are so willing to shop using Bitcoin yet...we are still being driven by speculation.

Anyway, this is one area which the Bitcoin community has to seriously look to if we want to make Bitcoin to function just like the other type of currencies already available. Unlike Paypal or even Payza which are based on more stable currencies, Bitcoin is functioning a little bit different.

At some point, the price of Bitcoin will stabilize and this problem could go away. Remember that credit card companies charge merchants a fee for use, so they cost money as well. Another alternative is instead of exchanging all of the bitcoins for fiat, why not hold some and wait for it to gain value before exchanging? You maybe able to make profit on it if you can do that.

It is obvious that you were going about it in the wrong way. Most merchants make use of Payment processors and these payment processors eliminate

the impact that a volatile Bitcoin price might have. I wonder what you would have said, if the price suddenly skyrocketed and you sold something for say,

$1000 and tomorrow that same amount of bitcoins was valued at $1500. Your profit just increased with $500 without you having to lift a finger.  ::)

These Payment processors are quick and eliminate most of the problems you might have... so use them.  ;)

Yeah exactly, instead of selling instantly at a low rate why not wait a few days and sell and some higher price, that would surely make you extra profit. But if this is way merchants keep thinking about bitcoin, we won't see much merchants adopting BTC as a payment method.

In The Phase of Blow Off it happen not, and here is a proof.

Well, at least someone experiences used bitcoin as a medium of exchange proven works even though bitcoin price so volatile.
There are some strategies to avoid loss in bitcoin transaction obviously, such as holding bitcoin for a while if you could manage it, sell bitcoin at higher price will give your stores more cash, but it depends on your management.

You are in hurry to abandon bitcoin so quickly. You should try real time conversion and get this clear that bitcoin is same everywhere in the time line. You can a,ways save up your bitcoin generated with product sell and let it grow as the bitcoin value goes up in the market. You should be profitable at this point. Also, I don't understand one point, before selling the product you can put dollar tag on them and tell your customer to pay equivalent dollars in the terms of bitcoin. This will get you max bitcoin and you will not loose money at all.

Totally agree with you. BTC volatility is the biggest challenge when trying to sell low volume. Also you are right BTC ecosystem very different from fiat currency.

I Really think this is their own fault by not having a great system to back up with storing bitcoin, and maybe instead of putting the amount of dollar to it they are using BTC amount instead, and their store doesn't have a real time converter if the amount of bitcoin would move the amount on the store would also move, I think they would not see that the price of their product would just disintegrate because it is not the equivalent price vice versa to bitcoin, Well it is just my conclusion they are at fault while managing their store and accepting bitcoin as a transaction.

LOL, with -15% loss at few hours for confermations

Why do you all just completely plan to use bitcoin on your site. No one has asked you to remove other payment methods instead what you should have done is introduce bitcoin as any additional way to make payments with the current methods not been removed. But it's fine a business surely makes a mistake once and you should be more careful next time and not everyone in world currently hold bitcoins or are willing to use it to purchase items with high fees.

First of all bitcoin doesn't suck. 2nd of all bitcoin's volatility is certainly annoying for merchants. I don't think bitcoin is ready yet for retail (no instant transactions) so hopefully you guys can implement it in the future. Anyhow I love bitcoin :D

I think you are getting the wrong idea about accepting Bitcoin as payment, from your post, I assume you exchanged the Bitcoin into fiat money paid to your company immediately after you received the coins. That is a wrong approach, in my opinion, the true values of bitcoin is not in its currency, but in the technology itself.

Have you heard of the story about a guy paying 10,000 bitcoin for 2 pizzas in the year around 2010 when bitcoin values is just cents at that time. The pizza store owner is rich now because of his trust in bitcoins to accept the payment at that time, no one knows what would be the price of bitcoin in another few years time, maybe you should kept some bitcoins paid to your company for a period of time rather than exchanging it into fiat money immediately.

if this would be resolved as soon as possible for sure people that invest in bitcoin will enjoy not only seeing the value to rise even more
but more people will acknowledge the existence and the usage of bitcoin this concerned will be resolved accordingly and you will see
that you only got wrong impression just needed to learn deeper.

Haven't you heard about bitpay? You can use them to simply convert whatever you accept in bitcoin into fiat at spot price. They also don't have huge merchant fees and offers easy to use merchant tools.

The Ways to Cash Out are many.
And troubles are exposed of why no one accept BTC at Food Shop.

How they "convert" BTC compared to advcash or epayments?
What is the exchange rate NOW, when it is $2,316.30 at Bitfinex?

I'm sorry you had this experience, but like Kprawn said you could also profit big time from accepting bitcoin.

Also announcing that you accept bitcoin you expect to have more customers because of that and most likely you are right, but you also can expect some risks.

It's probably not the best time to accept bitcoin in stores unless you're ready to take the risk...wait for volatility to end. I think lot of buyers wait till price is up before they make a purchase so they don't have to pay as much in bitcoin.

You maybe suggesting this just because of the increased transaction fee. But in several localities even now very few are aware about bitcoin. For this reason even now making an acceptance will not harm, but the growth will start now itself. Because to reach common people it takes time. Even.if the transaction fee is low you're not gonna get profited right now.

Only SmartContract is a solution.

To answer to everyone:

We pay equipment with hard dollars so yes we need to exchange BTC into USD, often. Many suggested to speculate and wait until BTC goes up and exchange with great profit. One person even broke it down into "idiotproof" transaction, get at $1000 value, and next day it is $1500 and voila, 500 dollars profit without moving a finger. Amazing, how we never came up with such idea?! Or even guy who paid 10000 BTC for pizza as someone suggested.

How about selling something at $2750 value (like just 2 days go) and getting $2320 value (as of right now)?? How that sounds for great opportunity to get what's money worth?

We post to exchange BTC about 1/2 - 1 hour after confirming transaction and in dropping market whatever value one puts to trade out gets unfulfilled. So for all practical reasons there is no stability in BTC transactions at all. Everybody here assumes that BTC is going up all the time and that is simply not true. Just week or 10 days ago it was almost 3000 dollars. Now it's 25% less.

By the way all prices in the stores are USD, people send 100 USD in BTC as their wallet is telling them at that moment. Sometimes buyers speculate and pay tomorrow or in 2 days. After we noticed that trend we warned everyone that quote is good for 1 hour, but even that is not good enough. Anyway, we'll take it out. Yeah it's great but really not worth it.

Actually instead of using bitcoin as a payment processor, OP used it as a short-term investment. Short-term investment is always risky, you can either get a good profit or good loss.

Suggestion for OP, try instant conversion to your local currency after each usage of bitcoin, that should help you out.

I wouldn't come to saying something like this, I would be one to come out and say that Bitcoin could use a lot of work and could look to alt-coins for these ideas to be able to innovate and help themselves prosper and grow. When it comes to Bitcoin, we're going to have to fix the issue that we have with fees at the moment, I'm not going to be one and come out that having fees is ridiculous, cause it isn't the miners simply just aren't going to be doing something for nothing. But the current fees, they're a bit insane when it comes to how high the prices are.

Once we fix the network congestion issue, I think we should be fine on fixing the fees and then moving forward to being able to get more and more adopters of Bitcoin to build a solid size community here.

A Newbie account that was made to post and claim that Bitcoin sucks, well done.

This type of problem that you are stressing is not that difficult to handle. Some company or something that provide instant BTC-fiat services to businesses will come handy to your concern. Japan formally accepted Bitcoin as a mode of payment right? So they handled this type of issue.

Yes, Bitcoin is very volatile and with just a blink of an eye you can gain or loss. And if you are accepting it as a payment, you have to deal with it rather than telling that it sucks.

1. You have a wrong point of view about Bitcoin. Bitcoin does not work that way. Bitcoin is volatile and it changes its value up or down within minutes. No one guarantees that a $1000 value will become $1500 overnight. That "one person" just gave you a honey about Bitcoin and it seems no hatchet was given. It seems that you did not look into Bitcoin and just believed on that "one person" for his/her "idiotproof"

2. Again, volatility. There is no certainties in Bitcoin. Do some research.

3. It's your call. You engaged in Bitcoin the wrong way I guess.

I suggest you stick around in this forum for a while. Maybe knowing Bitcoin deeper will help you with your experiment. This forum will educate you about Bitcoin. But be careful, some are trolls around here that spreads wrong information about Bitcoin.

That's really shocking to hear such kind of experience. Bitcoin transactions are not so long to loose money on the price difference and bitcoin doesn't jump from 100$ to 2500$.
I thought a business which based on bitcoin is developing very profitable from a day to day. I remember a story when some guys were selling pizza per 20 BTC each! I doubt that their business ended the same like yours.

What tell that story? Nothing.
Check here Buterin to send BTC8 for some book.

But You have not seen to buy ETH for $1, Right?

A very brave experiment!! But I think it's too early for such experiments.

The challenge might be enormous now but it won't be long which your business should be one of the trailblazers when the challenges have gone but outrightly stopping it might not be the best option. You should have just reduce the acceptance of the coin in other to reduce the stress of conversion and if possible look for a supplier who accepts bitcoin so you will avoid the stress of converting before using to buy your supplies.

Some users themselves began to fan the topic, which gave Bitcoin the opportunity to substitute real money. Everyone talked about the fact that this is impossible, but some people generally insist that no one will be used as a means of payment for any goods in any stores. I do not think that Bitcoin has any negative actions in this regard. So here you are wrong. It is necessary to use Bitcoin only for its purpose. Bitcoin is a commodity through which one earns money and not a means of payment.

Don't let Two bad experiences spoil all of Bitcoin for you. Instead you should rethink the services you are using to host the exchanges or wallets.   It really makes a difference. The fee problem will shift back into a reasonable gear in August.

As far as I know Bitpay was one of the potential coin in cryptocurrency, and it is one of the altcoin that being used for payment or accepted bitcoin not an exchange one.moreover bitcoin is not suck only to those people who don't have enough knowledge about in bitcoin.

https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/views/all/

Please, find it.

Welp, I don't blame you, do to the high transaction fees and time of bitcoin as of now; but didn't you do your own research first before going on bitcoin?  ;D A quick visit to any bitcoin or crypto forum would let you know almost immediately the scaling problems of bitcoin today. Maybe you should've done your homework before adding a crypto payment method huh?

I am sorry to hear about your losses but that's actually a challenge for stores to accept bitcoin. The dynamic pricing has made it really tough for bitcoin to be accepted as a payment system anywhere. You may incur huge profits and also may incur huge losses which is what happened in your case.

Bitcoin is not meant to become a payment processor for internet. It is mainly an investor's instrument. If you hold it for long term, then it makes sense. Otherwise bitcoin won't give you profits, you will only end up paying more in transaction fees which will eat in to your profit.

LOL. Do You mean, that he need to sold all his deposit of items, fire personel, close or sell Office and Deposit and going to wait some 25 Years to find the exchange rate above $1?
What a perfect Strategy.

Not all business are profiting from bitcoin, I believe business setups in bitcoin are the same as business setup in a normal currency except that they are using a cryptocurrency.  This business still needs to promote and advertise.  Their success depends on the success of their marketing strategy.  Anyway,  a person should be well aware of the right transaction fee to be able to send Bitcoin in the most fastest way in order to minimize the changes of rate between transfers.

You cant see the brighter side of bitcoin. Are you converting it directly to dollar? If that is your process and method you will be losing a lot of bucks. But if you are going to wait for the right time of selling it, you can even make double or triple the normal price of your product.

Well I think bitcoin is not good for online payments. Maybe because of its unstable value, but it's not clear on how could you loss hundreds? I think you must know first how to manage bitcoin and we always need to check the value of bitcoin

Maybe you can fool someone but not us i guess? If you want to quit then go. However we keep in believing that btc would succeed in many diffrent ways

If You have such belief, try to offer some items in change for BTC.

There's a section here in forum called the goods section (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=51.0) and it has child boards the computer hardware (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=75.0) , digital goods (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=93.0) and collectibles (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=217.0) so what do you think about items that are posted there and payment should be in btc?

Well first of all for me bitcoin is good opportunity for those who are patient enough to read and follow the price in the market. Bitcoin and even other altcoins can be off great help to everyon if they could manage it the right way. There are coins who are innovative and is really greatful for the community. Not everyone shares the same belief so you might have to change your minds in some ways.

It is no longer denied, bitcoin is a great opportunity for us to reap the benefits, we are here in mandatory to teteap be patient in reaching bitcoin.For those who are impatient is indeed annoying.But on the other hand this is an opportunity to become rich

Don't blame bitcoin for whatever stupidity or risk have you done in your life, that is life, and that is how things work, you will never know what will happen unless you are going to try it and take some risk, and that is what you did, sadly you have failed on what you wanted to do, but just take it as a lesson and move on, just keep on trying things out until you've made it.

There is no point on saying that Bitcoin Sucks and whatever bad comments you are going to say on bitcoin, it can't return what already happened, you are just stressing yourself out more, that is why just think of other way again on how you are going to get back what you have lost, bitcoin is just there, you just have to think another way on how you are going to earn it.

it is so dumb that you represent a website that is supposed to be accepting bitcoin as payment and yet you continuesly attack bitcoin as a currency! maybe your whole information about bitcoin comes from the fact that nobody ever uses your website so you concluded that bitcoin payments never happen anywhere else either :D

i guess you have lack information how to run business using btc payment processing
many shop have been using BitPay to handle their btc payment processing

What did you lose exactly and in what way? a hack? a loss of value? losing other customers?

Honestly, although bitcoin isn't the best interface for regular businesses, but I can't understand the way it costed your company hundreds of thousands of dollars.

It accept Cash via Exchange Machines, QIWI, Webmoney, Yandex Money, Mail.ru Money, PayPal, Bank Transfer, SOFORT Banking, Paysafecard, Neosurf, Postepay, Paysafecard, Visa, MasterCard, Delta, Discover, JCB.
And there is too a BitPay exchanger/Payment processor.

All payouts there are in $.


BitPay is not BTC, and here are two sides of convienience for BTC paying customer.
Instead of be attracted of BTC label, he need check
 if the card issuer with electronic money inside have better exchande rate if product/service is payd via Mastercard/Visa.

If we sold something for 1 BTC yesterday and managed to exchange BTC into USD today we would lose at least 100 dollars. From about $2345 value it dropped in 8 - 10 hours to $2231. There is your answer. No business should be based on hopes and speculations that currency will jump up in day or two. Nobody can predict such movements with certainty.

Even more than few posters here said that BTC is not suitable to be form of payment but rather investment. That maybe correct so we are guilty of being enthusiastic enough not to believe that and think that BTC is perfect currency.

I think you are not a wise investors. why would you sell your bitcoin at such a low price? why didn't you wait till its price pumped again before you sell it? if you should have waited more maybe you will be happy with the results.

I am sorry for your loss and failed experiment with Bitcoin. I hope you find a better system of integrating Bitcoin in the future, but I do agree that Bitcoin is messy at the moment due to the scaling problem, which I hope improves after August the 1st.

That depends on what they were doing with their BTC. If they were exchanging it for a fiat currency right away, they probably were losing money too. But if they were holding at least until bitcoin was $50 of course they were in profit.

You see here is the problem you are blaming Bitcoin with your own mistake, it is not Bitcoin's problem why its price or value change very often and you as an owner of a Business and Bitcoin must know when is the right time to sell your position in order to maximize your Bitcoin earnings. Also we all know by accepting Bitcoin you are also accepting its volatility is is not Bitcoin's fault like what I said earlier to your own mistakes.

To be honest, I would say it was actually your fault(unintentional though) that you made loss. Bad management system due lack of knowledge on how to handle payments when done through using bitcoins. But shit happens. You can try again, try taking help from the community on how to handle the payments properly.

You were smart enough to actually accept Bitcoin but not smart enough to use a payment processor mate, this is how a payment processor works.

You open an account with them and when someone buys from you they send Bitcoin to the processor and you just receive the dollars regardless

Of Bitcoin price. stop blaming Bitcoin because you couldn't use a payment processor. you are not actually accepting BTC you just say that you are.

Bitpay can automatically convert bitcoins to dollars then deposit into your bank account. This is very useful for businesses purposes or Trading purposes. those who want to accept bitcoins,its further easy so no need to take tension about this. Just try to learn about this, It’s easy after getting know about it and then there is no risk to merchants.

The fault is not of bitcoin but it's yours. Before starting to accept bitcoin you should have assessed the pros and cons of accepting bitcoin as one of payment methods. There are still big businesses not in terms of fame but in terms of volume of the business they do with bitcoin, they are still accepting bitcoin and even altcoins and make good profit. The wisest thing they do is not sell bitcoin immediately but only when they think it would bring them more profits.

Using bitcoin as payment method isn't good decision to make. The price is very volatile. It is always good to use a stable currency for buying or selling stuffs. And sometimes, bitcoin transaction will get a single confirmation after days, that will give another headache!

Bitcoin is an asset, not a currency!

Maybe you're too stupid or something. It's okay when people don't use bitcoin because they don't understand, instead of using it because someone just told them. And how come others don't have problems accepting it as payment.

why is this even in this forum, if you think that bitcoin sucks. if you do not know how cryptocurrencies work,you need to study it further, you need experts in the field, just be sure that they are trustworthy. In the event of transactions that are making you loose money, you need first to have a very secured wallet, that you and only you knows the key. And when converting it to your fiat, make sure that they really do pay. I think we just need to make sure that our businesses are earning, but we must really be very in particular with the payment, if the the payment goes through to wallet, there is no problem with your wallet and the person that you made, but when you are going to convert your bitcoin to your fiat, make sure the company is trustworthy or try check out banks near your area if they exchange fiats to bitcoin, however if you already did a research, a littler more doesn't hurt. There are a lot of scam sites in the web,  we just really need to be more cautious when we exchange bitcoins to fiat, since there are people who are taking advantage of getting bitcoins from people who are just trying to earn. We can all learn a lesson from this, to always check our transactions and make sure that we only do it with trustworthy people. And also you must also understand the volatility of bitcoins, if you have a bitcoin now, and the value if 4000 USD, and after the transaction the value became 3000 USD, definitely you will be furious, but if the value goes up to 5000 USD after your transaction, i doubt you will say bitcoin suck, since the value of your bitcoin just went up and had given you more than what asked for.

That's right, Bitpay was a good one for this situation. Besides, bitcoin is not suck sucks dude, your just saying due to you had a bad experienced when you transact unto it.

This fellow is just out of his mind. Blaming BTCs for your own mistakes and carelessness is such a cowardly act. Bitcoin has helped every single person who has ever invested in it. It is good to consider all the actions before babbling senseless crap about bitcoins, especially on this forum.

Your mistake was trying to accept Bitcoin yourself instead of using a merchant to process your Bitcoin payments. BitPay strictly uses BitStamp and they get their cash immediately, how? They keep a stockpile of Bitcoin and they are always selling old cheap Bitcoin at the higher price. The only way you can do it yourself is if you are a engineer with years of blockchain experience.

The words "Bitcoin" and "sucks" should never, ever be used in the same sentence - let alone side by side. Oh, the agony! :o