Operation Bitcoinstorm!

[Ente]

What Bitcoin needs for broad adoption is more services and merchants accepting them. It got a lot better in the last weeks, but we still dont have (enough) large players on board.

I started ordering christmas presents some days ago, paying most of them with awful paypal.. So I add a note to every order to promote bitcoins!
Something like:

"I would love to pay via Bitcoins, to leave out Paypal(-fees). This would serve as a competitive advantage too. Read more at http://bitcoin.org/about.html"

English is not my primary language. There may be a better "intro"-page too. I am sure you guys have helpful ideas?

So, if many shops get many hints about bitcoins. showing them demand, as well as showing a way to get a headstart before competitors, as well as reducing fees - it should convince at least a few of them?

Furthermore, I will write some e-mails to some of the larger chinese sellers. Like DX and similar. They have a big interest in getting more international customers and reaching customers which cant have paypal to begin with. Also, they probably work with a small margin because of competition.

Tl:Dr:
Write a note about bitcoin when you order stuff online!

Ente

[kwukduck]

weusecoins.com is a much better intro point i think.

[chickenado]

What Bitcoin needs for broad adoption is more services and merchants accepting them.

This has been said so many times that it's almost a universal truth by now.  

I'm not sure if this is true though. I don't see bitcoin competing with traditional payment methods or replacing them 1:1. It has too few advantages to the average merchant and average consumer.

Where I see bitcoin succeeding is in killer apps that were not possible before bitcoin, eg. distributed contracts.

[cbeast]

What Bitcoin needs for broad adoption is more services and merchants accepting them.

This has been said so many times that it's almost a universal truth by now.  

I'm not sure if this is true though. I don't see bitcoin competing with traditional payment methods or replacing them 1:1. It has too few advantages to the average merchant and average consumer.

Where I see bitcoin succeeding is in killer apps that were not possible before bitcoin, eg. distributed contracts.

Bitcoin transactions are more profitable for vendors, maybe only a few percent but that's a lot these days.

KILLER. APPS. MOAR.

[Ente]

..thats why I don't find it important (now) to have a nicer client, POS systems or physical bitcoins. The killer app in this moment is the (relative) ease and fee-saving of bitcoin. Once you often have the choice to use bitcoin instead of PP the rest will quickly follow.

Thanks for the hint about weusecoins.com! Any other suggestions? bit-pay.com would be an other idea, I would prefer a non-profit infopage though. I dont think we have more than 30 sec for the average vendor to skim through the link we provide?

Ente

[dancupid]

What Bitcoin needs for broad adoption is more services and merchants accepting them. It got a lot better in the last weeks, but we still dont have (enough) large players on board.

I started ordering christmas presents some days ago, paying most of them with awful paypal.. So I add a note to every order to promote bitcoins!
Something like:

"I would love to pay via Bitcoins, to leave out Paypal(-fees). This would serve as a competitive advantage too. Read more at http://bitcoin.org/about.html"

English is not my primary language. There may be a better "intro"-page too. I am sure you guys have helpful ideas?

So, if many shops get many hints about bitcoins. showing them demand, as well as showing a way to get a headstart before competitors, as well as reducing fees - it should convince at least a few of them?

Furthermore, I will write some e-mails to some of the larger chinese sellers. Like DX and similar. They have a big interest in getting more international customers and reaching customers which cant have paypal to begin with. Also, they probably work with a small margin because of competition.

Tl:Dr:
Write a note about bitcoin when you order stuff online!

Ente

Regarding the Chinese sellers - btcchina.com accepts withdrawal in RMB via the QQ payment system, which makes it very easy to pay sellers in China for just about anything.
Obviously that's not quite the same as them accepting bitcoin directly, but if they knew how easy it was to convert to rmb in China, small online sellers would be quick to accept it - unfortunately few have heard of bitcoin. It would be hard for big sellers as the ability to exchange bitcoins in China is a little limited - but for small orders it would work very well.

[tvbcof]

I've had bad luck on E-Bay lately.  Three things I have bought have ended up being one of 1) not in the possession of the seller after all, 2) wrong item sent, or 3) lost (or something) in the mail.  The total is around $850.

I will get all of my money back even of the flaky sellers would prefer to just keep my money.  This is because I am using paypal.  I will continue to prefer paypal unless a Bitcoin merchant will send me the item and accept my Bitcoin transfer after I have received the item and am satisfied with it.

I advise anyone considering doing business with Bitcoin to not get to glassy-eyed about the nicety of 'no charge-backs' because it is not necessarily a desirable thing to everyone in all situations.  I also expect that 'no charge-backs' are especially interesting to people who, for whatever reason, may be particularly prone to getting hit by them.

[MysteryMiner]

Where I see bitcoin succeeding is in killer apps that were not possible before bitcoin

Yeah, killer apps like assassination market. The only missing component was anonymous and untraceable payment system like Bitcoin.

[cbeast]

Where I see bitcoin succeeding is in killer apps that were not possible before bitcoin

Yeah, killer apps like assassination market. The only missing component was anonymous and untraceable payment system like Bitcoin.

What's an assassination? I've never heard of that before. I guess that must be something that can't be done with cash. 

[MysteryMiner]

Where I see bitcoin succeeding is in killer apps that were not possible before bitcoin

Yeah, killer apps like assassination market. The only missing component was anonymous and untraceable payment system like Bitcoin.

What's an assassination? I've never heard of that before. I guess that must be something that can't be done with cash. 

Take a read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination
and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assasination_market

I'm waiting for such a market, just I was waiting for Silk Road.

[cbeast]

Where I see bitcoin succeeding is in killer apps that were not possible before bitcoin

Yeah, killer apps like assassination market. The only missing component was anonymous and untraceable payment system like Bitcoin.

What's an assassination? I've never heard of that before. I guess that must be something that can't be done with cash. 

Take a read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination
and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assasination_market

I'm waiting for such a market, just I was waiting for Silk Road.

I was being sarcastic as noted by the  here's your sign.
Law enforcement could trace/honeypot/shutdown SR if they really cared. The entire Bitcoin network barely registers as any money at all for anything. When Bitcoin is worth many billions of USD then SR could raise an eyebrow. Murder OTOH, would raise an eyebrow and be shutdown quickly.

[julz]

Where I see bitcoin succeeding is in killer apps that were not possible before bitcoin

Yeah, killer apps like assassination market. The only missing component was anonymous and untraceable payment system like Bitcoin.

What's an assassination? I've never heard of that before. I guess that must be something that can't be done with cash. 

'assassination market' is a term that should probably be understood in terms of a system which allows paying the 'reward' without the payee or payer knowing who the other party is, nor having to interact physically in any way. (e.g no 'dropsite' for cash)

In this case, it won't do to compare the situation with some arrangement made with briefcases full of cash, It is indeed an application requiring cryptography and anonymous untraceable digital cash.   Although bitcoin might not be anonymous and untraceable if used naively, it's arguable it could be used in such a manner for applications such as this.
See Jim Bell's famous 1997 article 'Assassination Politics'  - http://cryptome.org/ap.htm


Along with the possible use of Bitcoin in kidnapping,extortion etc - this is one of the reasons I see government 'coin-taint' tagging overlays upon Bitcoin to be an inevitability. People seem to assume such a tagging system would punish the innocent - but it could be implemented in a way that was designed only to inconvenience them to the point of cooperating with authorities to provide information regarding the closest spend-points of the tainted coin. Upon such cooperation, their address-branch would be untainted.

[cbeast]

You don't need Bitcoin to do illegal things. In fact, it makes it too easy to catch crooks using Bitcoin. PGP email and cash would do the same thing. Killers don't live by the same rules everyone else does. That's why it's so difficult for agents to infiltrate organized crime. [tinfoil hat] In fact, that's also probably why it's so difficult to reach high levels of government bureaucracy. [/tinfoil hat]

Tagging, blacklisting, whitelisting, etc. just show how much easier it is to make crime more difficult. Saying that we shouldn't use a technology because it is beyond law enforcement is like saying in 1900 (ish) that they should ban automobiles because they can outrun police horses.

[Ente]

Wait.. How exactly did we get from "lets promote bitcoin to merchants" to "is bitcoin good, bad, to-be-banned"?
But then not many people here seem to like my initial idea to begin with..

Ente

[cbeast]

Wait.. How exactly did we get from "lets promote bitcoin to merchants" to "is bitcoin good, bad, to-be-banned"?
But then not many people here seem to like my initial idea to begin with..

Ente

Merchants can hand out scratch off cards with purchases that have random Bitcoin value. Something similar is done with coupon type local currencies, but Bitcoin has the potential to gain support quickly.

[chickenado]

Where I see bitcoin succeeding is in killer apps that were not possible before bitcoin

Yeah, killer apps like assassination market. The only missing component was anonymous and untraceable payment system like Bitcoin.

What's an assassination? I've never heard of that before. I guess that must be something that can't be done with cash. 

Take a read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination
and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assasination_market

I'm waiting for such a market, just I was waiting for Silk Road.

Such a market wouldn't be practicable because Bitcoin is not perfectly anonymous, it's only "good enough" for most purposes.

If an assassination is ever successfully funded by Bitcoin, we should expect some serious forensic analysis of the block chain and the biggest exchanges.   Then, "good enough" will no longer be enough to protect the hitman's identity.