How will bitcoin make inroads into the super market?

[prezbo]

Okay I get that but bitpay takes ownership of the coin right? So if they take a coin valued at 20 and it drop to 2. You have an issue.

Not if they sell the coin at Gox immediately.

The point is it doesnt matter who you pass the buck to. Someone is going to get fucked. Whether it is the store, bitpay, or the customer. Everyone is at the mercy of price instability. If the price changes from the time you buy the coin to the time you make it to the store you lose, if the prices changes before the store transfers to bit pay they lose, same thing for bitpay.

You can't look at this as a one time thing. Bitpay has (probably) hundreds of orders per day. One some of them they lose some money during the conversion, on others they gain some. In the long run it probably pretty much evens out.

[xxjs]

I thought this discussion would be about solutions for the confirmation waiting period.

That is easy, use a new company just like bitpay, only that it pays bitcoins to the merchant instead.

How does that solve the confirmation wait time?  You do realize that bitpay doesn't pay merchants until the payment to bitpay has been confirmed right?

Well i did not, but anyway, some company could go between the buyer and the seller, taking the risk.

[Transisto]

When bitcoin will be accepted by super makers and become "maintream" every online niches will have accepted it, international money transfer, and drug trade ... will have already made the price in the 100 000$ range.  (Yes 2 trillion $ market cap)

Can we please have this discussion around that time ?

[Stephen Gornick]

The one reason I can think of is because they would rather hold their value in bitcoins instead of dollars before they are spent.

Exactly.

If accepting bitcoins draws in customers for a merchant then bitcoins will be a payment method considered.

There are online gamblers, for example, who are winning (yes, some do win) and who aren't planning to cash out via an exchange.  They will spend bitcoins at merchants.

Another angle ... merchants can easily sell USD gift cards online in exchange for bitcoins.