.

[Phinnaeus Gage]

The crazy part for me is that my wife was buying from wordpress today. She is setting up a wedding website for her sister. She is sending them an email stating that their acceptance of BTC was the final persuasion.

Yes, this is big news. Other sites will follow wordpress and reddit.
Rally time?

Development on Squidoo started in 2005, launching a beta testing period in October of that year. The launch team consisted of Seth Godin, his book editor Megan Casey, former Fast Company employee Heath Row, Corey Brown, and Gil Hildebrand, Jr.

[nevafuse]

Too bad Peter Thiel isn't still in charge of Paypal.  Bitcoin seems right up his alley.  But Paypal has fallen pretty far from the tree.  I can see BitInstant or Bitpay totally replacing Paypal in the near future.  Maybe Peter should throw some money at one of those companies.  That's an investment I would get behind.  Bitpay or Bitinstant accepting investment money for ownership shares?

[flix]

Excellent Jon Matonis article on this:
What's Your Bitcoin Strategy? WordPress Now Accepts Bitcoin Across The Planet
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmatonis/2012/11/16/whats-your-bitcoin-strategy-wordpress-now-accepts-bitcoin-across-the-planet/

I awoke to incredible news this morning. Leading web publishing service WordPress.com announced that they will begin accepting the nonpolitical cryptographic money Bitcoin as a payment method for various upgrades.

Then I remembered that WordPress is our online publishing platform. It’s also the blog platform for The New York Times, CNN, Reuters, Mashable, NBC Sports, GigaOm, TechCrunch, ELLE Girl, RealClearPolitics, TED, National Football League, General Motors, UPS, eBay, Sony, and Volkswagen.

[Isokivi]

Awesome. Now if only reddit followed suite:

[Gabi]

Great news! 

[Benson Samuel]

Payment companies seem to be the next low hanging fruit for Bitcoin.

What do they stand to lose by adding a Bitcoin wallet to their existing offerings?

Gives more visibility for Bitcoin and adds tremendous value to their product offerings as well.

[giszmo]

Why are people so eager about reddit? Who cares? Reddit users know about bitcoin and it's a "small" geeky group anyway.

The Wordpress-move itself is more interesting for why they did it than the fact that they did it. The press release weighs 100x more than any news about stolen bitcoins and some pot heads buying on silkroad. If silkroad is a reason to fight bitcoin, freedom of speech is a reason to support it.

What exactly would reddit accepting bitcoin add to this other than being a follower?

[niko]

What's interesting is that it allows people with blogs to accept bitcoin donations and then use those bitcoins directly to pay for extra services.
It creats a closed economy for the bloggers.
A blogger from Iraq/Kenya/Cuba can get now hold of bitcoins simply by blogging.

Excellent point, and a good answer to my concern below:

Pay Another Way: Bitcoin

At WordPress.com, our mission is making publishing democratic — accessible and easy for anyone, anywhere. And while anyone can start a free blog here, not everyone can access upgrades (like going ad-free or enabling custom design) because of limits on traditional payment networks.

Today, that changes: you can now buy WordPress.com upgrades with bitcoins.

PayPal alone blocks access from over 60 countries, and many credit card companies have similar restrictions. Some are blocked for political reasons, some because of higher fraud rates, and some for other financial reasons. Whatever the reason, we don’t think an individual blogger from Kenya, Haiti, Cuba, or Iraq should have diminished access to the blogosphere because of payment issues they can’t control. Our goal is to enable people, not block them.

This is good news, but: How exactly is this target group supposed to get hold of bitcoins? Oh, right. There are no bitcoin exchanges in Kenya, Haiti, Cuba, or Iraq. I am not being sarcastic, but genuinely concerned about this problem.

Thank you, dancupid!

[JackH]

Very good news indeed. I celebrated this by closing my paypal account for good.

Great, you should send them an e-mail telling them that you have converted to bitcoin.

Oh but what a dance on their grave I did. Trust me, Bitcoin got mentioned many times during their "but why did you leave our crap service?" questionnaire. I basically did a comparable chart for them nailing the benefits of Bitcoin to their service. I hope their CEO sees it, lol

[Isokivi]

This is good news, but: How exactly is this target group supposed to get hold of bitcoins? Oh, right. There are no bitcoin exchanges in Kenya, Haiti, Cuba, or Iraq. I am not being sarcastic, but genuinely concerned about this problem.

Iraq: nothing
Kenya: https://localbitcoins.com/postal_code/ken/nairobi/9999/?unit=km&listing_amount=10&
Haiti: none
Cuba: none

1/4 this should give you some hope.

[paraipan]

This is good news, but: How exactly is this target group supposed to get hold of bitcoins? Oh, right. There are no bitcoin exchanges in Kenya, Haiti, Cuba, or Iraq. I am not being sarcastic, but genuinely concerned about this problem.

Iraq: nothing
Kenya: https://localbitcoins.com/postal_code/ken/nairobi/9999/?unit=km&listing_amount=10&
Haiti: none
Cuba: none

1/4 this should give you some hope.

You didn't count the miners http://blockchain.info/connected-nodes

[Trader Steve]

I would not be surprised if their knee jerk reaction was: "Remove bitcoin from your site, or else we will freeze your PayPal accounts"

A move like that would have a very high potential of backfiring.

Wordpress has a big soapbox, and PayPal needs Wordpress more than Wordpress needs PayPal.

This is extremely important. WordPress is synomous with freedom of speech. This allows us to reframe the Bitcoin debate from being used to buy drugs to ensuring our freedom of speech. We saw how fast the Internet rallied against SOPA, PIPA, etc. Bitcoin will get a lot more public support for freedom of speech. Coupled with the everyone with a soapbox using Bitcoin to pay for their soapbox ... I cannot really think of a more important propellant for public Bitcoin support.

PayPal recently fired 325 employees and 120 independent contractors. If they tried to freeze WordPress they would encounter a fury from the Internet like SOPA did. I imagine a lot of bloggers would boycott Paypal out of spite.

The "bitcoin enables electronic freedom of the word press" angle on this that WP have gone out of their way to highlight kind of makes EFF lawyers look like yellow muppets for not getting out in front of ... maybe this will give them some spine?

LOL agreed...

[remotemass]

Will it be easier to have shopping carts with a bitcoin escrow system in wordpress sites?

[giszmo]

This is good news, but: How exactly is this target group supposed to get hold of bitcoins? Oh, right. There are no bitcoin exchanges in Kenya, Haiti, Cuba, or Iraq. I am not being sarcastic, but genuinely concerned about this problem.

Iraq: nothing
Kenya: https://localbitcoins.com/postal_code/ken/nairobi/9999/?unit=km&listing_amount=10&
Haiti: none
Cuba: none

1/4 this should give you some hope.

Wordpress!!! Guys, a blogger that tells his customers that they get an add free blog if they tip him, can get bitcoins by spreading the word! How awesome is that?

(yes, it has been implied earlier in this thread but some people seam to not read every single post in this awesome thread )

[dancupid]

This is good news, but: How exactly is this target group supposed to get hold of bitcoins? Oh, right. There are no bitcoin exchanges in Kenya, Haiti, Cuba, or Iraq. I am not being sarcastic, but genuinely concerned about this problem.

Iraq: nothing
Kenya: https://localbitcoins.com/postal_code/ken/nairobi/9999/?unit=km&listing_amount=10&
Haiti: none
Cuba: none

1/4 this should give you some hope.

Wordpress!!! Guys, a blogger that tells his customers that they get an add free blog if they tip him, can get bitcoins by spreading the word! How awesome is that?

(yes, it has been implied earlier in this thread but some people seam to not read every single post in this awesome thread )

I'm sure there are important blogs by serious journalists in countries that are facing the paypal/visa embargo who can now fund their journalism directly through bitcoin - pay for their vpn/vps, pay to update the tools they need to freely express themselves.
They can be supported by ordinary individuals and other journalists who care about what they have to say.

[giszmo]

Very good news indeed. I celebrated this by closing my paypal account for good.

… and so did I. Funny how you have to click 7(?) times on ok, continue, really close, really really close, i'm sure, … even after you gave them detailed info on why you quit. Oh, damn, I forgot to write "R.I.P. Paypal"

[freespirit]

That's great news!

NOW IS THE TIME to write (again) to all those merchants you would like to accept Bitcoins and tell them about Wordpress' announcement!

[elux]

PayPal alone blocks access from over 60 countries, and many credit card companies have similar restrictions. Some are blocked for political reasons, some because of higher fraud rates, and some for other financial reasons. Whatever the reason, we don’t think an individual blogger from Kenya, Haiti, Cuba, or Iraq should have diminished access to the blogosphere because of payment issues they can’t control. Our goal is to enable people, not block them.

So, let me get this straight... Freedom of speech shouldn't be limited to "the free world"?

That's a preposterous idea! WordPress? How very silly. More like WorldPress, I say.

God knows what these poor people will actually do given freedom of speech.

Freedom? In Haiti! Cuba!? Iraq!? My, what are these people thinking? It's not all rosy down there, you know.
If these people can freely share opinions and collaborate as we do in London, Paris and New York...
People might get angry, they might get upset, indeed, they could upset the very way of things.
You heard what happened in Moscow when technology stumped the censors, you saw what happened with the Arabs.
People were upset, they assembled in numbers, yes, whole governments crumbled in months. No, we'll never see the end to this. Tsk, tsk, tsk.
 

As the old saying goes: "Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one."

(Freedom of the press is now also available in Kenya, Haiti, Cuba, and Iraq.)

Empowered. By WordPress.

* (Paypal, Visa, Mastercard: not accepted.)

[foo]

Why are people so eager about reddit? Who cares? Reddit users know about bitcoin and it's a "small" geeky group anyway.

Yes, reddit is a tiny site, only used by nobodies like Barack Obama:

http://www.reddit.com/user/PresidentObama/submitted/

[gweedo]

Why are people so eager about reddit? Who cares? Reddit users know about bitcoin and it's a "small" geeky group anyway.

Yes, reddit is a tiny site, only used by nobodies like Barack Obama:

http://www.reddit.com/user/PresidentObama/submitted/

Over 3 billion page views is nothing of course