Bitcoin is responsible for less than 1% of Overstock's revenue

[~Bitcoin~]

There are not enough bitcoin users till now and only few tech lovers know about bitcoin and its potential. Many people stil lack easy access to internet and for them bitcoin is still some hifi tech which they afraid to try.

[The One]

What sort of idiot would spend their coins on the sort of stuff you can buy at overstock? Anyone who'd use an asset that has increased for than 5x in 2.5 years and has a questionable transaction time for day to day purchases is out of their mind. 

Get in your head guys- Bitcoin is now a commodity.

There's far better options out there in the altcoin or traditional payments space for these sort of purchases.  I for one think that is a very, very good thing overall. 

Smart people are not idiots. You are an idiot that's for sure.

If i want to spend $500 cash, then i would look at BTC price. If i feel it will go down a bit, then i would use BTC to buy goods and wait till BTC go down a bit and use the $500 cash to buy back, plus a bit extra, of BTC. Now whom an idiot.

[stripykitteh]

The CEO of Overstock looks back at their decision to add bitcoin as a payment method in their online store in 2014:

http://www.coindesk.com/into-the-war-room-overstock-looks-back-on-bitcoin-embrace/

But despite all the excitement that move generated he had this to say:

While bitcoin is responsible for less than 1% of our annual revenue, our experience integrating it with our website allowed us to understand the true potential of blockchain technology.

Obviously he is really excited by blockchain tech etc etc etc - but the standout for me was that despite all the publicity and the hype, less than 1% of their revenue is paid for using bitcoin.

At this rate this coin is never going to be used as a currency - the community is too small, and only a fraction of that community is willing to spend bitcoin as opposed to hoarding/saving it.

I like to look at the products on Overstock, I haven't shopped there recently because I would rather shop at Amazon and other cheaper places. I am pretty happy that Overstock has Bitcoin Payment methods available so the people that were into Bitcoin from when it was just starting out could purchase pretty much anything that they want because the price went super high (that is if they held their coins during the price increase).

[Dorky]

The recent cointelegraph article at https://cointelegraph.com/news/crypto-capital-markets-to-save-mankind-from-new-global-financial-storm said...

When the next financial crisis hits, 2017/18 Crypto Wallet adoption will pass 500m users in just months and rise to one to two bln by 2019.

This tallies with what I wrote here...

Once all the network and infrastructure are set in place + hyperinflation strikes, you will see countless getting into bitcoin.

The adoption will skyrocket in a very short period of time. The price will skyrocket upward and catch everyone off guard.

The only thing that catches the attention of most people is NOT the utility of bitcoin but is the price of bitcoin traded.

As long as you do not see hyperinflation + global economic collapse, you will continue to see tepid adoption rate in bitcoin.

I don't believe we need to wait until 2030 to see a $500,000 in price.
We may see such level much sooner.

[jc89]

That 1% is not shocking at all. There is not much people using bitcoin today to contribute more in any company's revenue. The number of bitcoin users worldwide does not even have 1% of the total population in the world so this rate is more than normal to me. Just wait a little more, when bitcoin becomes more popular, when bitcoin's value become at least 10,000 USD per BTC. Then you will see that 1% revenue will soar high exponentially.

[squatz1]

See the thing that they'd have to think about at this point in time is that without Bitcoin they wouldn't or may not have that revenue at all, so in a business mind I'd rather get my name out there through the bitcoin hype get some business from normal users and bitcoin users and then I'd be fine.

I think they got a lot of free advertising through the time when they were first accepting Bitcoin and that really did help them as a whole. So, I think they did a good job with using Bitcoin to their advantage and really helping them out as a whole.

So Bitcoin did help them I think it built them up completely and put them as a direct competitor to Amazon, if they're on a different scale.

[alyssa85]

See the thing that they'd have to think about at this point in time is that without Bitcoin they wouldn't or may not have that revenue at all, so in a business mind I'd rather get my name out there through the bitcoin hype get some business from normal users and bitcoin users and then I'd be fine.

I think they got a lot of free advertising through the time when they were first accepting Bitcoin and that really did help them as a whole. So, I think they did a good job with using Bitcoin to their advantage and really helping them out as a whole.

So Bitcoin did help them I think it built them up completely and put them as a direct competitor to Amazon, if they're on a different scale.

Good point. I wonder how many bitcoiners gave Overstock a look for the first time because of that campaign, and maybe did a token bitcoin purchase, and then continued to use them but with credit card purchases.

[QuestionAuthority]

I guess I'd need to know how many customers 1% is and how much revenue they generated before judging if that's bad. Overstock might have had a large boost in revenue but only a few customers. Companies commonly have board meetings and discuss ways to increase their market share by only 1-2%. A 1% increase could be considered a success for some companies.

Visa, MasterCard, bank accounts and PayPal have 99% of the current market share for online purchases, Bitcoin has less than 1%. Why would an experienced businessman like Patrick Byrne expect that would change just because he starts accepting Bitcoin?