Reasons why mass of shops will not go for Bitcoin next few months

[hv_]

Just some potential show-stoppers here:


Too less known & distributed yet

Too techy

Market risks - high volatility

Operational risks - safe ?

Legal risks

Too less pressure (FIAT, Paypal,... still fine) / no business case

Setup costs

Do not know payments are not revertible / would save a lot of hunting costs

KYC...


Some other ideas  and / or contra arguments?

[Laosai]

Well yeah, one, the most important, the one why no shop will take the time to go to bitcoin:
Nobody uses it.

I mean lets be serious I don't know how many bitcoiners are out there but I'm ready to bet at anytime that we're not even 1 million around the world.
So less than 0.1% of the global population.
Why would they even care?

[franky1]

Well yeah, one, the most important, the one why no shop will take the time to go to bitcoin:
Nobody uses it.

I mean lets be serious I don't know how many bitcoiners are out there but I'm ready to bet at anytime that we're not even 1 million around the world.
So less than 0.1% of the global population.
Why would they even care?

well coinbase has 2mill registered customers. so i would say maybe 3-4million people(coz not everyone uses coinbase) atleast have touched bitcoin.. but as you say, ACTIVE bitcoin users i too would put at a safe 1mill constant users

[calkob]

I think bitcoins price over the nest few months will be very volatile in the run up to the halving.  i think in general bitcoin has a way to go yet before mass adoption.

[Daniel91]

Just some potential show-stoppers here:


Too less known & distributed yet

Too techy

Market risks - high volatility

Operational risks - safe ?

Legal risks

Too less pressure (FIAT, Paypal,... still fine) / no business case

Setup costs

Do not know payments are not revertible / would save a lot of hunting costs

KYC...


Some other ideas  and / or contra arguments?

Well, you already gave a lot good reasons.
I can add a few more connected with my country.
We don't have much bitcoin users and merchants don't have reason to accept bi9tcoin payments for only a few potential users.
Also, just a few people here heard about bitcoin so we first have to educate people about bitcoin before asking merchants to accept bitcoin.
We also have very strict financial laws.

[Amph]

well you need much more than few month, for real adoption, you need 5-10 years, so sit down and watch, because it's not a thing that can happen overnight

another thing to add is that you can actually need to buy bitcoin, where fiat is earned directly, you don't need to buy it, this might seem not an obstacle but it's in realiy it's an huge one

[coinpr0n]

I don't expect Bitcoin usage or merchant adoption to spike in the coming months, but the general direction seems to be towards increased usage generally. Better to be ready for mass adoption than to be early to the party.

[dothebeats]

Just some potential show-stoppers here:


Too less known & distributed yet

Too techy

Market risks - high volatility

Operational risks - safe ?

Legal risks

Too less pressure (FIAT, Paypal,... still fine) / no business case

Setup costs

Do not know payments are not revertible / would save a lot of hunting costs

KYC...


Some other ideas  and / or contra arguments?

All of this were very much known already in the bitcoin economy, and because of the reasons you stated above, people most likely wouldn't want to deal with bitcoins especially with their businesses. Give bitcoin a few more years to established itself in this world economy and see whether people would reconsider.

[BellaBitBit]

I don't expect Bitcoin usage or merchant adoption to spike in the coming months, but the general direction seems to be towards increased usage generally. Better to be ready for mass adoption than to be early to the party.

Absolutely.  It will be quiet for awhile but it could change overnight if one big tech company adopts it for use.  Glad to be in at this stage.

[Denker]

Real mass adoption will need several more years.I'm not a believer of the theory that we will see an unexpected influx over night just because of the next coming crisis. It will be a long term and slowly process, something like 10 years at least if you wanna have hundreds of million or a billion users and shops all around the globe dealing with it. Sounds disappointing but that is how I see it.

[franky1]

at first some would think to dismiss price volatility in the OP's list, because it is not a problem for merchants, as they can lock-in prices if they want to swap for fiat.

but the price volatility affects the customers who have to constantly decide, is it now a bargain to use 3yo old bitcoins that have quadrupled in price, or hold them for another 'possible' jump in value.

most bitcoiners have not hoarded for 3 years so they are still waiting for their big payday. thus while prices are still moving like crazy, people are less likely to spend, as they are aprehensive to spend at a possible loss that 'may' turn into huge gains in the near future. and as a side effect merchants dont see as much real usage and think its not worth the hassle implementing for such low usage

[Laosai]

Well yeah, one, the most important, the one why no shop will take the time to go to bitcoin:
Nobody uses it.

I mean lets be serious I don't know how many bitcoiners are out there but I'm ready to bet at anytime that we're not even 1 million around the world.
So less than 0.1% of the global population.
Why would they even care?

well coinbase has 2mill registered customers. so i would say maybe 3-4million people(coz not everyone uses coinbase) atleast have touched bitcoin.. but as you say, ACTIVE bitcoin users i too would put at a safe 1mill constant users

Thanks for the stats.
Hard to get a good estimation on the number of bitcoiners indeed, what about all those who don't have coin base but another wallet, but also all those who have a coinbase adress or multiple coinbase adresses plus other exchange plateform/wallet. I personally have something like 8 accounts in total, wallet online desktop and plateform exchange included.

But yeah the most important part of that is the incredible number of inactive users :/
1 million seems like a huge estimation in fact!

[Laosai]

at first some would think to dismiss price volatility in the OP's list, because it is not a problem for merchants, as they can lock-in prices if they want to swap for fiat.

but the price volatility affects the customers who have to constantly decide, is it now a bargain to use 3yo old bitcoins that have quadrupled in price, or hold them for another 'possible' jump in value.

most bitcoiners have not hoarded for 3 years so they are still waiting for their big payday. thus while prices are still moving like crazy, people are less likely to spend, as they are aprehensive to spend at a possible loss that 'may' turn into huge gains in the near future. and as a side effect merchants dont see as much real usage and think its not worth the hassle implementing for such low usage

I agree with the consumer aspect. I see that even when I'm in bitcoin since 2014 I still wonder every time I convert/use my btc "is it the good time, am I not going to lose money comparing to if I wait a month?" and hesitate a lot.

But how can merchants do that? You can accept btc as a payment and conclude a deal for a constant price? it must be a low one no?

[SFR10]

Well you may have a point here but I would like to answer base on the country I'm residing since each one of us have different situations regarding this matter. The main problem that haven't used BTCitcoin here is their lack of education regarding how it works (that's it), simple as that. There are two shops here who accept only BTCitcoin as their only means of payment and one of them is well known and keeps selling shoes to foreign buyers as well and has been few years and haven't seen a single problem with them that exist for using this kind of payment. Believe it or not, in where I am at the moment, only few use PayPal since it's banned here and BTCitcoin has higher percentage ratio of users among other available online methods of payment (even those that are not banned here). From what I'm seeing, it won't take too long for most merchants to accept BTCitcoin as well (next 2 years perhaps will be the time frame).

[hv_]

at first some would think to dismiss price volatility in the OP's list, because it is not a problem for merchants, as they can lock-in prices if they want to swap for fiat.

but the price volatility affects the customers who have to constantly decide, is it now a bargain to use 3yo old bitcoins that have quadrupled in price, or hold them for another 'possible' jump in value.

most bitcoiners have not hoarded for 3 years so they are still waiting for their big payday. thus while prices are still moving like crazy, people are less likely to spend, as they are aprehensive to spend at a possible loss that 'may' turn into huge gains in the near future. and as a side effect merchants dont see as much real usage and think its not worth the hassle implementing for such low usage

I agree with the consumer aspect. I see that even when I'm in bitcoin since 2014 I still wonder every time I convert/use my btc "is it the good time, am I not going to lose money comparing to if I wait a month?" and hesitate a lot.

But how can merchants do that? You can accept btc as a payment and conclude a deal for a constant price? it must be a low one no?

I guess that's the reason why we will see more middle man solutions hiding more or less bitcoin underneath ...

[franky1]

But how can merchants do that? You can accept btc as a payment and conclude a deal for a constant price? it must be a low one no?

merchants have their goods priced in fiat value. when the customer goes to checkout, the merchant at this point gets bitcoin valuation. Although you may think there is a 10 minute+ chance of price change, most middlemen services take the hit on that small time and base it on the time when the merchants requested the valuation, not the time the funds are finally settled.

other merchants who dont want to convert to fiat, dont care about volatility as they are obviously hoarding anyway, so short term changes are meaningless

[Meuh6879]

if it has any chance that the fiat value is devaluate ... you want to store your "value of work" in other system than FIAT system.

Bitcoin is the exact answer of this.

That's why gov. want capital control (ban cahs + negative interest) ... to avoid people to save his value of work.

money must be AND ALWAYS for exchange of work and good.
it NEVER must avoid store of value.

FIAT money is hell, now.
BITCOIN is the answer of everything.

[Laosai]

But how can merchants do that? You can accept btc as a payment and conclude a deal for a constant price? it must be a low one no?

merchants have their goods priced in fiat value. when the customer goes to checkout, the merchant at this point gets bitcoin valuation. Although you may think there is a 10 minute+ chance of price change, most middlemen services take the hit on that small time and base it on the time when the merchants requested the valuation, not the time the funds are finally settled.

other merchants who dont want to convert to fiat, dont care about volatility as they are obviously hoarding anyway, so short term changes are meaningless

Ah ok, instant transformation from bitcoin to fiat.
But well, such a thing is a bit useless in the sense that it becomes perfectly similar to fiat ^^

[franky1]

Ah ok, instant transformation from bitcoin to fiat.
But well, such a thing is a bit useless in the sense that it becomes perfectly similar to fiat ^^

its baby steps. first you teach merchants how easy it is to accept it, compared to the hurdles of setting up credit card processing contracts. and then later merchants see the advantage of hoarding.

prime example is Overstock.. first they accepted it and converted to fiat, now the CEO hoards like a maniac. and is now making his own 'stocks' based on blockchain technology and doing some lobbying here and there

[OROBTC]

...

My guess is that the reason merchants ("brick & mortar" selling to the public) don't use BTC is that it is too complicated!  Too complicated for the Average Joe to get BTC and to use it.  And the merchants themselves would have to get set-up.

franky1 wtote above that there are some 1,000,000 users of Bitcoin.  There are 320,000,000 or so living in the USA.

I think it is going to take a while...