The snowball effect of bitcoin-only sale

[johnyj]

I run a small forum with 150 or so dedicated members. The site renewal came up and instead of asking for cash donations I posted my BTC wallet and only accepted BTC.

I received 0.00BTC.

Guys posted complaining that they wanted to give but couldnt figure out how to get BTC. I had posted links to various methods but it was too much of a PITA for anyone to do.

I think that's the barrier...it's too hard to convert your government money into BTC. Too hard and takes too long and costs too much.

Exactly, people tends to select the most easy way to pay, not exchange and pay

The only people that can pay right away are those bitcoin miners and early adopters, but after they spent their mining income and difficulty went to roof, they also have less motivation to spend their coins

Some virtual currencies in game have to be bought with fiat money, the gaming company usually provide an easy way to purchase those currencies. If you provide bitcoin-only sale, you should also provide your customer an easy way to purchase bitcoin, and that part of service should be provided by exchanges

[crumbs]

If i have a hot widget, and want to sell as many of them at the highest possible price, i should make purchasing it as frictionless as possible.  Today, this means accepting Bitcoin as an option -- making any form of payment exclusive can never help, but only hurt, the sales volume. 
If i then feel investing in Bitcoin is wise, all i'll need to do is buy Bitcoin.  As long as the cost of that transaction* is lower than the profits i've gained by making my widgets available in any currency, profit.  I can also pick & choose the timing & volume of my investment in Bitcoin, and profit from Bitcoin's volatility.

*Some of these costs could be discounted if you allow that the customers buying my widgets in "Bitcoin-only" sale would have to convert their fiat into Bitcoin, thus effectively increasing the fiat price of my widgets.

[countryfree]

Your reasoning is quite good but the problem is finding the leader who will start the revolution.

Can you imagine Apple selling its next iPhone 6 only in BTC?
Can you imagine Ford selling its next Mustang only in BTC?

Maybe David Bowie could sell its next songs only in BTC?

[johnyj]

If i have a hot widget, and want to sell as many of them at the highest possible price, i should make purchasing it as frictionless as possible.  Today, this means accepting Bitcoin as an option -- making any form of payment exclusive can never help, but only hurt, the sales volume.  
If i then feel investing in Bitcoin is wise, all i'll need to do is buy Bitcoin.  As long as the cost of that transaction* is lower than the profits i've gained by making my widgets available in any currency, profit.  I can also pick & choose the timing & volume of my investment in Bitcoin, and profit from Bitcoin's volatility.

*Some of these costs could be discounted if you allow that the customers buying my widgets in "Bitcoin-only" sale would have to convert their fiat into Bitcoin, thus effectively increasing the fiat price of my widgets.

At first glance this has the same effect as bitcoin-only sale, just you buy the coins later with all the income, but the point is promote mass adoption. If your customers are interested to buy bitcoin-only products, they might buy more coins than just your widget worth and some of those coins will support some other merchant's bitcoin-only sale later on

[johnyj]

Your reasoning is quite good but the problem is finding the leader who will start the revolution.

Can you imagine Apple selling its next iPhone 6 only in BTC?
Can you imagine Ford selling its next Mustang only in BTC?

Maybe David Bowie could sell its next songs only in BTC?

I'm afraid this is going to happen sooner or later, once you made some bitcoin-only sale, you might never look back at fiat

During the starting phase, some merchants might prefer that only 1% of their sales go to bitcoin, but soon they will find out that this part of the companies sale contribute more than other parts of the sales to the company's total revenue and then they will increase the percentage accordingly

It just a public awareness, I'm already planning bitcoin-only sale for some of my products and I will keep track on the status of those sales

[crumbs]

If i have a hot widget, and want to sell as many of them at the highest possible price, i should make purchasing it as frictionless as possible.  Today, this means accepting Bitcoin as an option -- making any form of payment exclusive can never help, but only hurt, the sales volume.  
If i then feel investing in Bitcoin is wise, all i'll need to do is buy Bitcoin.  As long as the cost of that transaction* is lower than the profits i've gained by making my widgets available in any currency, profit.  I can also pick & choose the timing & volume of my investment in Bitcoin, and profit from Bitcoin's volatility.

*Some of these costs could be discounted if you allow that the customers buying my widgets in "Bitcoin-only" sale would have to convert their fiat into Bitcoin, thus effectively increasing the fiat price of my widgets.

At first glance this has the same effect as bitcoin-only sale, just you buy the coins later with all the income, but the point is promote mass adoption. If your customers are interested to buy bitcoin-only products, they might buy more coins than just your widget worth and some of those coins will support some other merchant's bitcoin-only sale later on

I understand that mass adoption is the goal here.  But unless i'm mistaken, you're implying that beyond that, the seller would also profit financially by limiting his customers to Bitcoin-only transactions.  If that's the case, i'd like to understand the logic behind that claim, specifically how trading in Bitcoin exclusively would benefit me more than simply offering Bitcoin as an option.
If i misunderstood, and you're simply calling for merchants to ignore profits & selflessly promote Bitcoin, i'm with you.

[johnyj]

I understand that mass adoption is the goal here.  But unless i'm mistaken, you're implying that beyond that, the seller would also profit financially by limiting his customers to Bitcoin-only transactions.  If that's the case, i'd like to understand the logic behind that claim, specifically how trading in Bitcoin exclusively would benefit me more than simply offering Bitcoin as an option.
If i misunderstood, and you're simply calling for merchants to ignore profits & selflessly promote Bitcoin, i'm with you.

From just your business point of view, getting more sales should be more important. But it could take some time to see the ripple effect of bitcoin-only sale: After some of your customers learned to get bitcoin and pay for your products, they will realize many benefits of bitcoin, and spread the words to others and get more people involved. And the more people start to provide bitcoin-only sales, the more popular bitcoin will become, demand rise, value increase

If merchants simply offering bitcoin as a payment option, this ripple effect might never happen, people will just ignore the bitcoin and pay with fiat, they simply don't have the motivation to get bitcoin at the first place

[FreeMoney]

My site only accepts bitcoin. To accept old style money would probably put us out of business one way or another.

[countryfree]

My site only accepts bitcoin. To accept old style money would probably put us out of business one way or another.

Congratulations, but we need more, an iconic product that everybody wants to buy. Ice-cream would be nice. Imagine it would be impossible to buy an ice-cream without bitcoin. That would make BTC really successful. Maybe it could be done in one town for one day for a start.

[johnyj]

Today I passed by the local post office and saw that on their credit card reader terminal there is a small piece of instruction of how to use mobilephone to pay a certain bill:
1. Launch an app called Bart issued by the local banks
2. Input the amount of money they want to pay
3. Scan the QR code from local merchants' terminal
4. Pay, merchant terminal will issue a confirmation in couple of seconds

I think this is exactly how bitcoin should be used

From an user point of view, people have to first buy credits and store them in Bart app, that is the same as buying bitcoin and store them in an online wallet account, the only difference is that user's bank might directly give user the app and connect the app to their bank account, while purchase of bitcoin is still problematic

[Stampbit]

Not possibility, fantasy, no one is using bitcoin for legitimate purchases, just look at bitcoinstores sales figures. This correlates with my own business. Looks like paypal was right.

[johnyj]

Not possibility, fantasy, no one is using bitcoin for legitimate purchases, just look at bitcoinstores sales figures. This correlates with my own business. Looks like paypal was right.

I just saw someone bought Humble Bundle with bitcoin 
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=243164.0

[AliceWonder]

• Their suppliers and employees want to be paid in FIAT. Since all of their suppliers want to be paid in FIAT.
  

Yes, but that also is a positive.

My model (currently early development) will basically have two wallets kept separate.

Wallet A - just has bitcoin purchased via fiat.
Wallet B - just has bitcoin paid by customers. Wallet B gets sold for fiat.

Keeping them separate means transactions can't be tracked from buyer to supplier. It also ads some cost but if I'm smart I can sell high and buy low and come out ahead.

So doing business that only accepts bitcoin but keeps incoming and outgoing separate means more money moving through the exchanges and more money moving through the exchanges actually helps stabalize the price and stable price means more people are willing to risk using the currency for their on-line purchases which means a predictable stable increase in the value of bitcoin.

In my mind anyway, I'm not exactly mr. business whiz.

EDIT - what I was trying to say is it doesn't matter in my model because all incoming bitcoin will be sold for fiat anyway.
So suppliers who want to be paid in fiat will be paid in fiat and suppliers who want to be paid in bitcoin will have to be paid in bitcoin I purchased with fiat because I don't want the blockchain used to track my business.

This moving of coin in and out of the exchanges will help stabalize the cost of bitcoin to some degree because I'll be sellling at least once a month if not more often and probably buying at least once a once. As lots of business do that, it helps dampen the effects of people dumping on the exchanges.