Bitcoin Forum

Every time I see news like "Merchant X now accepts bitcoins" I dive into the article and the disappointment is always the same. They are accepting FIAT, not bitcoins. Users can spend their bitcoins to pay for the goods, but merchants do not take bitcoins.
In fact, the bitcoins are being bought by BitPay and Coinbase and sold to other users via exchanges.

If things keep going like this, bitcoin will become a behind the scenes engine for big FIAT transmitters, who will use it as a cross currency for FIAT transfers.

Journalists and even some bitcoiners are delusional about this and keep thinking that overstock accepts bitcoins, but what they accept is FIAT money from Coinbase.

There should be a clearer division between accepting bitcoins or using bitcoin protocol as a payment protocol for FIAT money.

relax. thats only stage one of adoption. stage two is for merchants to hoard the coins. this is why bitpay / coinbase allow merchants to either cash out 100% or adjust the % to still buy stock but hoard.

the next few stages is to get their suppliers to take bitcoin and the merchants staff to accept bitcoin as wages, so that merchants lower their reliance on FIAT until their fiat coversion is under 20%.

its impossible to throw a new currency in someones face and force them to use it. you have to introduce it to them and give them time to transition across to being fully emersed in the new currency.

alot of noobs think bitcoin is at midlife crisis age and only has 5 years left. in my eyes bitcoin is at the tantrum toddler age, learning something new every day, trying to find their own feet and their own independence with decades of life ahead of them.
some toddlers (merchants) like their security blanket(fiat) as its the only thing that has been there for them all their life so far, but eventually they learn there are better things in life to be reliant on.

Overstock CEO already made a public announcement saying he's holding bitcoins sometimes ago

Even using bitcoin as an intermediary creates marketing and therefore knowledge. As described by franky1 above this is just minimal adoption however you cannot argue that these are not steps in the right direction. Any form of adoption intermediary or otherwise is a good-look for bitcoin.

Two words: distributed exchange. 

http://aworldofcurrency.com/?p=1639

I read that too.
Overstock doesn't seem like the best example for the OP.

It's a perfect example, as overstock.com does not accept BTC, they accept fiat.  What any employee does in their personal life, doesn't change that.