Will the companies accepting bitcoin continue to pour in?

[notig]

It seems like every day I'm seeing several companies starting to accept bitcoins. Is it just me or is this a considerable change?

For instance today on reddit I see: Namecheap, 33Mail, .. okay just 2 I see but still!

edit: franksdomains
edit2: cisthene.com

[Stephen Gornick]

It seems like every day I'm seeing several companies starting to accept bitcoins. Is it just me or is this a considerable change?

 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_effect

[sublime5447]

No. and what does it matter if they do? Saying I accept bitcoins is easy, now getting people to spend them with you is another story all together.
As these sites realize that no one is spending btc they will just do away with it or move to other alt. currencies.

[Le Happy Merchant]

No. and what does it matter if they do? Saying I accept bitcoins is easy, now getting people to spend them with you is another story all together.
As these sites realize that no one is spending btc they will just do away with it or move to other alt. currencies.

Who says nobody is spending?

[sublime5447]

I do I know because everyone has had a death grip on their coins since the price spike. People use BTC for 2 things drugs and speculation.

[Melbustus]

I do I know because everyone has had a death grip on their coins since the price spike. People use BTC for 2 things drugs and speculation.

In addition to speculation, I use mine for domains, poker, settling debts with friends, and electronics/pc-hardware. My wife and I are also planning on having lunch at a local place this week that accepts bitcoin. Plus, I just found out that my mechanic takes bitcoin (which was a total surprise, but obviously awesome).

[lebing]

Why wouldnt they?

[weex]

I don't think BitPay or anyone else charges a monthly fee. Unless you're talking about screen real estate in your checkout process, there is no reason for a company to remove Bitcoin acceptance graphics and features. As the price rises, more BTC will be spent on the things people want or need and yeah that will only increase the snowball effect.

[phatsphere]

From where do you get this info? Is there a central collection of such newly accepting pages?

[Hiver]

No. and what does it matter if they do? Saying I accept bitcoins is easy, now getting people to spend them with you is another story all together.
As these sites realize that no one is spending btc they will just do away with it or move to other alt. currencies.

Who says nobody is spending?

Yesterday I bought a "rare" copy of Final Fantasy 7 from a friend, and was going to buy some ecigerettes but the vendor's website wasn't functional. I think Sublime is projecting.

[poly]

For more merchants to accept bitcoin, the userbase must increase. There's really two things that can happen from now:

1) More and more vendors accept bitcoin, causing more users, and this is where bitcoin takes off.
2) Vendors realize that they are getting few sales through bitcoin, and after a while remove bitcoin.

Right now, we're seeing more vendors accepting bitcoin. Namecheap is in the implementation stages, and there's quite a few sites to come.

[Luno]

For more merchants to accept bitcoin, the userbase must increase. There's really two things that can happen from now:

1) More and more vendors accept bitcoin, causing more users, and this is where bitcoin takes off.
2) Vendors realize that they are getting few sales through bitcoin, and after a while remove bitcoin.

2 is kinda like how OWS faded out.

If the value of Bitcoin goes up fewer will be spend. The Dollar value of the spend coins per month might increase but the number of Bitcoins circulated in commerce will go down!

On the other hand, a drop or levelling in price will increase spending.

[poly]

For more merchants to accept bitcoin, the userbase must increase. There's really two things that can happen from now:

1) More and more vendors accept bitcoin, causing more users, and this is where bitcoin takes off.
2) Vendors realize that they are getting few sales through bitcoin, and after a while remove bitcoin.

2 is kinda like how OWS faded out.

If the value of Bitcoin goes up fewer will be spend. The Dollar value of the spend coins per month might increase but the number of Bitcoins circulated in commerce will go down!

On the other hand, a drop or levelling in price will increase spending.

Spending 1 BTC or 100 satoshi is irrelevant if they have the same buying power. For example, a GDP of 500 trillion doesn't mean anything if milk costs $50 a bottle.

[Luno]

For more merchants to accept bitcoin, the userbase must increase. There's really two things that can happen from now:

1) More and more vendors accept bitcoin, causing more users, and this is where bitcoin takes off.
2) Vendors realize that they are getting few sales through bitcoin, and after a while remove bitcoin.

2 is kinda like how OWS faded out.

If the value of Bitcoin goes up fewer will be spend. The Dollar value of the spend coins per month might increase but the number of Bitcoins circulated in commerce will go down!

On the other hand, a drop or levelling in price will increase spending.

Spending 1 BTC or 100 satoshi is irrelevant if they have the same buying power. For example, a GDP of 500 trillion doesn't mean anything if milk costs $50 a bottle.

You're right, it just seemed that post's in this thread did not differentiate between the value of the spent coins and the number of spent coins.

The best advertising a "proof" of Bitcoin's utility is increasing exchangerate. However, this also put breaks commercial adoptation. Imagine it was gold coins appreaciating as fast as Bitcoins and people would rather save them than use them.

So my thought is that adoptation and utility is cyclic opposite. There are periods of high exchangerate when people learn about Bitcoin and get some and there are periods where Bitcoin is cheaper and advances in use and markets happen and more people spend them.

[Technomage]

"People are not spending coins" is such a stupid myth. Now that the price has risen quite a bit, they are actually more likely to spend them. That's how it goes with me at least. It feels like I'm spending less money since stuff costs less, and I actually have more purchasing power, and obviously there are more and more ways to spend coins which helps to counter the thought of "I'm better off buying with fiat anyway". That thought is starting to get more false every day.

Not spending because you'd rather hold money simply means that you don't need to spend. There is nothing you need to buy. If there is something you need to buy, then it's a different story. It doesn't matter which currency you use, even if you're afraid that spending BTC's will reduce your investments into it, you can simply buy that amount back with fiat at some point.

[piramida]

There's a huge market of digital goods which can *only* be sold using bitcoins, and I'm not talking about illegal stuff. It is pretty hard and expensive to get CC merchant account, and it is very unreliable and expensive to use paypal for business (firsthand experiences please before you comment), and it's not even available anywhere but few countries.

So there's about 5 billion people in the world who, if they want to sell digital goods online, have no easy solution to accept payments, maybe only some local digital money which have hard limits and huge percentages and are not available in other parts of the world. Will the companies accepting bitcoin continue to pour in? Heh.

[just1nmc]

There's a huge market of digital goods which can *only* be sold using bitcoins, and I'm not talking about illegal stuff. It is pretty hard and expensive to get CC merchant account, and it is very unreliable and expensive to use paypal for business (firsthand experiences please before you comment), and it's not even available anywhere but few countries.

So there's about 5 billion people in the world who, if they want to sell digital goods online, have no easy solution to accept payments, maybe only some local digital money which have hard limits and huge percentages and are not available in other parts of the world. Will the companies accepting bitcoin continue to pour in? Heh.

There are also plenty of benefits in accepting bitcoins for physical goods. When I sell on eBay or Amazon, I'm looking at fees between 8% and 15%. Being able to sell for bitcoins would be huge in reducing that, which is why I'm really hoping for bitmit.net or a similar service to grow.

[granolageek]

If the value of Bitcoin goes up fewer will be spend. The Dollar value of the spend coins per month might increase but the number of Bitcoins circulated in commerce will go down!

On the other hand, a drop or levelling in price will increase spending.

But the dollar value is an excellent proxy for the amount of goods and services purchased. That is what matters, not the number of actual BTC.

[notme]

If the value of Bitcoin goes up fewer will be spend. The Dollar value of the spend coins per month might increase but the number of Bitcoins circulated in commerce will go down!

On the other hand, a drop or levelling in price will increase spending.

But the dollar value is an excellent proxy for the amount of goods and services purchased. That is what matters, not the number of actual BTC.

Short term, sure. Anything longer than a year or so and dollar value is a horrible yardstick.

[Piper67]

I do I know because everyone has had a death grip on their coins since the price spike. People use BTC for 2 things drugs and speculation.

In addition to speculation, I use mine for domains, poker, settling debts with friends, and electronics/pc-hardware. My wife and I are also planning on having lunch at a local place this week that accepts bitcoin. Plus, I just found out that my mechanic takes bitcoin (which was a total surprise, but obviously awesome).

hah, you're actually arguing with sublime? He's a troll with a hankering for alt cryptocurrencies... he just pulls this data out of his ass.