Closed Loops

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

Where will we see the first closed loops in the Bitcoin economy, where businesses take payment in bitcoins and then use those same coins to pay for business expenses?

[Technomage]

I believe there already are closed loops. Perhaps not 100% closed but almost. Many Bitcoin Internet startups have the ability to pay pretty much all of their expenses in bitcoins. Our company pays a portion of our expenses in bitcoins, and we also accept bitcoins in our online store.

I know many other companies in Finland alone that pay a significant amount of their expenses in bitcoins, and accept bitcoins for something.

SatoshiDice is, as far as I know, an example of a completely closed loop. Everything, in and out, is done with bitcoins. If there are other examples of completely closed loops, I'd like to hear about them.

[herzmeister]

guess we need to work up along Maslow's pyramid. 

[Luno]

Maslow's pyramid is often mentioned in textbooks in marketing. However he was a psycologist and the pyramid describes the unhappy persons priorities in the early 1800'th industrialisation, not a model for society or a goal to strive after.

You can argue that the perfect consumer is locked in perpetual unhappyness, but Bitcoin users are liberated and not slaves to consumerism.

We do not need to take the pyramid bottom up!

Marslow would turn in his grave if he knew that his pyramid is being used by marketing folks to showe goods down peoples throat.

[herzmeister]

i don't mean marketing. If you really want to close economic loops, you have to start at people's basic needs first, things that people need every day, like food. If farmers largely start to accept bitcoins, then everything else will follow.

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

I believe there already are closed loops. Perhaps not 100% closed but almost. Many Bitcoin Internet startups have the ability to pay pretty much all of their expenses in bitcoins. Our company pays a portion of our expenses in bitcoins, and we also accept bitcoins in our online store.

I know many other companies in Finland alone that pay a significant amount of their expenses in bitcoins, and accept bitcoins for something.

SatoshiDice is, as far as I know, an example of a completely closed loop. Everything, in and out, is done with bitcoins. If there are other examples of completely closed loops, I'd like to hear about them.

Interesting. What expenses are paid in bitcoins?

I'm also wondering if operating this way will enable any efficiencies that are large enough to attract attention from competitors (besides S.Dice). 

[Technomage]

Interesting. What expenses are paid in bitcoins?

Web hosting, VPN connections, encrypted cloud storage, and even wages to an extent, can be paid with bitcoins these days. Purely Internet based companies don't really have too many other expenses. Even advertising can be done with bitcoins, which is something S.DICE has been doing a fair bit.