Who is promoting bitcoin for purchasing goods and services?

[qwerty555]

I learned of Bitcoin on March 31st this year and became a fan instantly, buying my 1st coin 3 days later.

I have  many questions which this community may be able to help me with so I will start with two.

If bitcoin is to have longevity I would think eventually it must be generally accepted to purchase almost anything anywhere.

So

1 Who is out there promoting bitcoin with merchants?

Is there an organization which handles this?

If so how is it funded?

If no organization exists..why not?



2 How much of the approximate  $150M /day which is traded is actually from the purchase of goods or services? ( an approx % is ok for a start)

where can I find data on bitcoins used for purchases or is this inherently unavailable due to the anonymity of transactions?

TY

[1714862591]

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[odolvlobo]

I promote it. Whenever I order something online I make a suggestion to accept Bitcoin and I explain all the advantages.

We can't rely on some organization to promote Bitcoin. That won't work.

It is impossible to know how much of the transactions are for buying things. I think this chart might come close. It removes transactions involving the top 100 addresses. That eliminates Satoshi Dice and exchange transactions.

http://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions-excluding-popular

[bitrainbow]

I have an online retail shop on etsy And in the interest of accepting BTC as payment, I am going to undertake creating a word press website of my own, so that I can contribute to the growing number of merchants furthering the validity of this currency.

If anyone has done this before, or has a better suggestion than wordpress (keep in mind I am not a coder, but a layperson) I would appreciate any words of wisdom, experience on the subject of creating a site and making the conversion. Also any links to helpful sites would be appreciated as well.

Also, is anyone here is setting up an online marketplace that is a collective of sellers operating in bitcoins, this is also something I am interested in being a part of.

[alyssa85]

It's decentralised, so there's no organisation looking after it as such.

But some vendors are accepting Bitcoins - eg the domain registrar Namecheap is now accepting bitcoins when you buy or renew a domain. I have a domain coming up for renewal in September, so i might see what their bitcoin price is (this is the real test - will they charge a premium, will it be on the mtgox exchange rate, who knows!)

My feeling is that a lot of vendors would like to accept bitcoins, the problem is that customers don't want to spend them. They'd rather spend dollars and hoard bitcoins. They've been corrupted by all those venture capitalists piling in to "trade" bitcoins against dollars, as though it was a stock instead of a currency.

Spend bitcoins and also try to earn them via commerce, and the more chance it will turn into a "real" currency out of the control of governments. As long as it remains an "asset" and people use fiat for their real needs, it will just be on the fringes.

[The Bitcoin Catalog]

This is essentially our mission 

[BTCisthefuture]

It's up to everyone to spread the word about bitcoin and try to educate others and show merchants the benefits of accepting bitcoin as a payment,  even you the OP play a crucial role in this.

You can't really find out what % of people actually spend bitcoins, but as of right now I would say it's very few, especially in the last half year or so. With the price changing so dramatically and the value having going up so fast so quick bitcoin has turned into an investment/commodity instead of a currency. 

I like to think if more major companies get involved with bitcoin it will bring some stability to the market and help strengthen bitcoin as an actual currency.  If not, then I wouldn't be surprised if another form of p2p currency that is able to address some of the problems of bitcoin takes over in the coming years and becomes the major leader.

[nebulus]

Coingig is.

[Elwar]

If bitcoin is to have longevity I would think eventually it must be generally accepted to purchase almost anything anywhere.

Done.

http://www.bitspend.net

Next question?

Edit: .com to .net

[qwerty555]

thank you

1 coingig reviewed....any indication of volume in BTC per /month? I can see that it is relatively new..how long has the site been up and running?

2 Bitcoincatalogue..I have signed up for email and wish you the best of luck with your 1st issue May 5th

3 bitspend.com will not open  is there a problem?

All of this is positive and I am aware of payment facilities such as bitpay but the lack of a dedicated organization promoting BTC with targeted retailers using professional marketing techniques is surely going to slow down the adoption of BTC as a generally and EASILY accepted payment method.

As North America seems to be one of the more popular locations for BTC owners it would be nice to see an association formed to promote BTC to merchants.

One of the clear drawbacks is the wild price swings and retailers do not wish to be exposed to risk ( or have no time or organization competent to manage that risk) on the difference between BTC rate at time of purchase versus BTC rate at time of conversion to fiat.

Off the top of my head the possible solution is the association has to GUARANTEE the exchange rate to the retailer.

How can they do this??

suggestions welcome!!

One idea is that the Association has to either prepurchase BTC at an averaged out rate in order to guarantee the exchange rate to the merchant. This may well be extremely profitable to the association if the merchant is tied in to the exchange rate but the price keeps rising. ( you may have to share the windfall)

Alternatively it may soon be possible to hedge against fluctuation through IG index although this is more complicated  and requires an expert in the field.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/ig-offers-clients-the-opportunity-to-deal-on-bitcoin-2013-04-16

So any other suggestions as to how retailers can be guaranteed a fixed rate on their BTc to eliminate the risk involved in the price fluctuation. this in turn will make acceptance of BTC more interesting to them.

[nebulus]

1 coingig reviewed....any indication of volume in BTC per /month? I can see that it is relatively new..how long has the site been up and running?

You are right the site is new. I'll give you and others some numbers to bring things into perspective.

We launched on April 5, 2013. So far it has been 20 days and we have not invested anything into advertising.
As of current, we've had a little below 3000 unique visitors and over 30000 views.

We had 3 reddit posts regarding the site that caused significant upticks in traffic.
Currently we have 171 products. We also had a few orders, totaling slightly below 5BTC.

Amazon has about 2 billion products.
So we are aiming at 2bil to 171 as x to 1BTC, x = 11 mil BTC market. (Very very rough estimation)

We have a number of things lined up to up our exposure via free promotions to bring these numbers up.
After that we are going to invest serious into the marketing. Does that help?                                      

[pekv2]

[Goal]Help to get authorized computer hardware stores to accept/adopt bitcoin.

[qwerty555]

well it appears from this news article dated today Fri 26th that there is an organization ( called "bitcoins early adopters" ) . I am unsure what their madate is or who they are but I will make a new post to try to find out.

http://www.3news.co.nz/Is-Bitcoin-the-currency-of-the-future/tabid/421/articleID/295666/Default.aspx

The most important part for Bitcoin to grow is for merchants to accept Bitcoins, because as more major merchants accept Bitcoin the more interest people have to buy, because they actually use those Bitcoins at merchants," says Mr Karpeles.

To help that happen Bitcoin's early adopters will meet for a conference next month in California to map out the currency's future.

Read more: Is Bitcoin the currency of the future? - Story - Business - 3 News http://www.3news.co.nz/Is-Bitcoin-the-currency-of-the-future/tabid/421/articleID/295666/Default.aspx#ixzz2RbFOSJae

[qwerty555]

Dear Nebulus

Yes that helps. Just the sort of info I need. TY

[Elwar]

3 bitspend.com will not open  is there a problem?

Sorry, it is bitspend.net

You can buy anything on the Internet with bitcoins.

[morningtime]

Hello,

I sell downloadable software for Bitcoins on www.appmerce.com. I offer Bitcoin as a payment method.

I'm also promoting Bitcoin among merchants.

[chronocoin]

Even though it has some problems, it's good for purchasing goods or services.

[BitcoinUK]

The UK scene is small when it comes to bitcoins and right now i am making a website (currently it looks ugly), which will inform people about bitcoin, the history of bitcoin, lists of businesses in the UK accepting it, and a list of confident / smart people that can be used for media interviews, plus much more eventually.

I will be looking for help and idea's how to expand it so if you are UK based pop me a message and ill let you see my alpha test site and get any idea's/support you wish to offer.

[Welsh]

We all do. Almost every time I purchase something for a retailer online. I  send them a email and contact their support team and tell them the advantages of implementing Bitcoin. I also point them to resources which I find are useful for people who don't particularly know much about the currency.

[skull88]

I promote it. Whenever I order something online I make a suggestion to accept Bitcoin and I explain all the advantages.

This, and everybody should do this, it isn't much work and if everybody does this it could make a huge difference.

[BitcoinUK]

I also believe that within the community it really needs to be highlighted that people should be looking towards starting product businesses as they can make a lot more % by selling products then they can day trading or mining, with less risks.

My site will (once released) show people that would normally buy coin from the UK regularly, to instead of converting their FIAT to dollar and purchasing coins on the exchanges. Have a list of drop shippers and methods to advertise products in bitcoins, and then simply hand their FIAT+customers delivery address to the drop shipper, then keeping the bitcoin.

At the moment £1000 turns into 12.5BTC purchasing it by going through exchanges just to buy coin. But with £1000 and a drop shipper that supplies goods at 20% below retail price. By selling at proper rate using the retail price as a guide you can end up with 16.6BTC without having to worry about american exchanges or verification.

The whole obsession that mining or buying coins direct through MTGox being the only routes into bitcoin is getting ridiculous.