Petition for sites to accept Bitcoin?

[Decoded]

Hey guys, if we were to come up with a huge petition and invite everyone you know to sign it, we could potentially get thousands of signatures. If we could get this, we could show it to any major company and hopefully sway them towards accepting bitcoin.

Any ideas? Will it work? Will it not? Improvements?

[European Central Bank]

i'd guess the companies would think you were a bunch of cranks. you could set up an escrowed order group buy type of thing but even then that's a weird type of blackmail.

[Milkduds]

It would work if we honestly had a leg to stand on,in causing these sites to lose business if they did not play ball.
Sadly bitcoiners are gamblers,traders and darknet users to most of these sites and they do not see much upside in adding a feature that could just create more work for them in the end.
Was thinking about this after I think you read the same thread about the medical website and chewing over the same thought.
We are as a community a little narrow focused by nature due to people wanting to cash in on bitcoin and due to the history of early adopters.
It almost was a good thing at first but now its showing its true teeth and we need to some how expand the field in a more diligent manner.

Dating sites seem like a good spot to hit up but they are really about mining personal data and bitcoin would detract a bit of info collection on that side. Really not sure the best tact but its going to take a huge shift to grow the biosphere of bitcoin to get different people involved.

[bestluck]

That is a nice idea with that companies will at last start to accept bitcoin for their business and if they will not then we all will use only those companies which will provide us the service with bitcoin payment method.

[franky1]

this was tried a while ago.
the issues:
90% of signers didnt even live in an area the retailer served and a few retailers felt it was an empty gesture.
people crowded together and then spammed the emails of the company because the petitions were not working.
the retailers released standardised "we do not have plans to add bitcoin as a payment method in the near future"

if your going to make a petition site. atleast try to get people to suggest the retailers they will actually use themselves, rather then retailers they hope will create some free PR by mentioning bitcoin.

the best advice i can think of is not think internationally. think local.
find other bitcoiners in your area and host a meetup. find out where most people in your area shop the most and will actually USE bitcoin there regularly.
then find the most confident person or savvy person in your area who knows how to get someone to be bitcoin ready in 5 minutes, to go speak to that store.

usually the best place to start is a local bar/pub by making that the local venue for the bitcoin meetups/social events. start with a fiat bartab and gently introduce the staff to bitcoin. suggest asking the staff if they are asked to pay with bitcoin they show a QR code on paper they have in their pocket or stuck to the backing card of the orderpad. treat it like a game, relaxed test, trial. dont go to a-hole bossy about getting staff to do it. and then the staff can deem it as "paid" when they see a payment appear on a bookmarked link on their phone.
happily able to then take the fiat out of the bartab instantly. then let all the local bitcoiners start getting excited when you walk back to the table(s) and tell them they can now buy their drinks and meals with bitcoin.

works even better if the confident savvy one of the group is a bitcoin buyer. he puts fiat in a bartab, and by the end of the night he has bitcoin via the others in the group buying drinks, essentially making him the exchange while everyone else feels they are paying for their meal in bitcoin.

after a few regular social meetups the savvy guy can either carry on indirectly buying bitcoin this way. or help the bar setup an account with a payment service to get paid direct without any of the bartab funds going back and forth

then when you want to expand to other local retailers think smart. independent gas stations, independent grocery stores would be used more regular than a once a decade furniture /decorating store. also i mentioned independent stores because national chains dont give local managers much athority/ability to make new options available.

but in short. if you are not willing to do your part to make bitcoin useful where you live. dont expect bitcoin to grow legs and come running to your town.

[xuan87]

It is a good idea however, all of us come from different area different country and nobody know the true identity, how can the company sure that all the person who sign is legit, and because it's come from different country i think the company will have a doubt because the company can't measure the marketing target

i think it is better to ask all of the bitcoin user to join and open a business and it used bitcoin payment

[Adar Korin]

You would be better to target vending machine manufacturers who supply to major soft drink and confectionery products that are placed in very visible areas such as rail and bus interchanges as well as airports and stadiums.

Other types of vending machines include power recharge and even water (cold and frozen) vending machines.  The number of these types of vending machines is increasing all the time, schools, colleges and universities have them also.

Ride sharing companies such as Uber or their competitors that are springing up should also be approached - the advantage is a cashless ride which gives the driver greater safety as they are less likely to be robbed.

[NamedUser]

Hey guys, if we were to come up with a huge petition and invite everyone you know to sign it, we could potentially get thousands of signatures. If we could get this, we could show it to any major company and hopefully sway them towards accepting bitcoin.

Any ideas? Will it work? Will it not? Improvements?

It sure as hell couldn't hurt! How should we electronicly sign though? I doubt it would work for all businesses but the more the merrier!

[Adar Korin]

Hey guys, if we were to come up with a huge petition and invite everyone you know to sign it, we could potentially get thousands of signatures. If we could get this, we could show it to any major company and hopefully sway them towards accepting bitcoin.

Any ideas? Will it work? Will it not? Improvements?

It sure as hell couldn't hurt! How should we electronicly sign though? I doubt it would work for all businesses but the more the merrier!

Just have a Tap and Go system with pre-loaded BitCoins and use it like any other tap and go device such as for transport trains and buses.

[JeffBrad12]

Hey guys, if we were to come up with a huge petition and invite everyone you know to sign it, we could potentially get thousands of signatures. If we could get this, we could show it to any major company and hopefully sway them towards accepting bitcoin.

Any ideas? Will it work? Will it not? Improvements?

That is the worst things in my mind and not showing the credibility of bitcoins and I can say you will like a moron just caused by the companies aren't making a bitcoin payment method and making a petition. please avoid this way dude that is will preventing the companies from accepting bitcoin caused by the arrogant pf bitcoiners.

[richardsNY]

The problem isn't stores not accepting Bitcoin as payment option. Let's pretend we manage to get a few merchants on board via this way. They will start with a very interested and open mind set, but as soon as they see that no one is using Bitcoin to pay for things, then they don't see the added value, and thus end up rewinding everything to the point that they stop accepting Bitcoin as payment option. The real problem is that people aren't spending their coins, beside via internet on digital goods. Physical stores that sell physical goods via the internet will be left with zero Bitcoin paying customers.

[bri912678]

I often see sites requesting donations/tips through paypal,and I often feel like contacting them to suggest adding a Bitcoin tips address to their site. Sadly I never found the motivation to make that suggestion yet. However, I might contact a few sites after reading this thread. Some popular open source software developers have paypal donation buttons, but no Bitcoin addresses. Adding addresses could make the developers money and spread awareness of Bitcoin to the software users.

[Slark]

Don't try to write a petition about Bitcoin and direct it to your local Pub or hardware shop, it most likely won't happen.
But we can influence big international sites, services and shops. We seriously start with spamming Humble Bundle - they at some point introduced bitcoin payments.
And then - I don't know why discontinued bitcoin support. I was so disappointed.

[7788bitcoin]

Hey guys, if we were to come up with a huge petition and invite everyone you know to sign it, we could potentially get thousands of signatures. If we could get this, we could show it to any major company and hopefully sway them towards accepting bitcoin.

Any ideas? Will it work? Will it not? Improvements?

I thnk the best way is for the bitcoiners to actually use bitcoin for their purchases and not just hodling them. Many merchants gave up accepting bitcoin just because there was actually no one using them to make purchases.

[mrcash02]

I don't know if it would make them accept Bitcoins. Surely this was already made before.

The smartest online businesses are looking for Bitcoin and Crypto-Currencies informations to learn more about it and if it worth for them. If we proove to those shops that their profit would increase if they started accepting Bitcoins, they surely would accept it instantly, because they want more profit as possible. If more people start using BTCs, joining Bitcointalk Forum and spread the word over the internet, more sites would accept Bitcoin as payment method.

[agamasrori]

Hey guys, if we were to come up with a huge petition and invite everyone you know to sign it, we could potentially get thousands of signatures. If we could get this, we could show it to any major company and hopefully sway them towards accepting bitcoin.

Any ideas? Will it work? Will it not? Improvements?

Just Give it try. I think it could be work. If the site find way to get benefit of bitcoin, I think  they will accept bitcoin. I am very sure that all of virtual activity would be popular in the future becouse the technologi is allways moving forward. How to participate this event.

[Backside walkaround]

I think online petitions are useless in general, and though a large corporation might acknowledge such a thing, it won't sway anyone.  But who knows, it could work and if you're set on having bitcoin accepted it's worth a shot.  Then again I'm not sure what the big deal with that is.  Cash money is still the best payment method, and bitcoin has too many problems in my mind.  Better to just keep it and speculate with it. 

[Hirose UK]

Hey guys, if we were to come up with a huge petition and invite everyone you know to sign it, we could potentially get thousands of signatures. If we could get this, we could show it to any major company and hopefully sway them towards accepting bitcoin.

Any ideas? Will it work? Will it not? Improvements?

I think that huge petition will not affect as we expect. probably will just see what written on the petition, but don't really care.

so it's just like informing the sites that there is a cryptocurrency called bitcoin. imo

[ObscureBean]

I don't think we would be able to convince companies, especially major ones, with just a few thousand signatures though. And I'm not sure we can realistically expect to get even close to 100,000 people participate in the petition. And then there is the fact that the 100,000 signatures would be for Bitcoin as a general payment method and not for it to be used with a specific service or website. Among those 100,000 only a few would actually be interested to use Bitcoin on any one site we contact. We would need millions of signatures for companies to take notice IMO.

[Pursuer]

Hey guys, if we were to come up with a huge petition and invite everyone you know to sign it, we could potentially get thousands of signatures. If we could get this, we could show it to any major company and hopefully sway them towards accepting bitcoin.

Any ideas? Will it work? Will it not? Improvements?

this is a great idea but why a petition with signing anything,...?

instead I think it is a lot better that we start submitting request tickets with the sites we want to see bitcoin payment on. for example on steam there was a lot of tickets and a lot of forum posts asking them to accept bitcoin and they finally gave in and did it.

the same thing can be done with any other site.