Zealots and Criminals, Is no one using bitcoin for legitimate purchases?

[Stampbit]

It was Paypal President David Marcus that said "The big question is whether [Bitcoin] is going to go mainstream or stay limited to just a few zealots and criminals." I started my bitcoin business, stampbit.com, with the intention of finding out for myself. Its been two months since i have started and have seen very little interest for this bitcoin version of USPS click'n'ship. No its not instant like clicknship, nor can i reasonably compete with my supplier on price, but then again i am trying to provide something that may prove inaccessible to anyone without a paypal account or credit card, and do it in a way thats much more convenient that how USPS does.

But you'd think after two months i'd get the hint, no one cares! Yet i realized it was not only me when i stumbled upon bitcoinstore.com who so generously posts their sales figures in order to urge buyers to take the initiative and support bitcoin by allowing them to remain competitive. For these last two months ive seen these figures climb at a snails pace, in line with my own business. So maybe by business was just a bad idea, but what about bitcoinstores? Their prices are CHEAPER than its competitors newegg and BHPhoto! And they have all the same features as their competitors. Its only shortfall is that its selection is not as vast, but for a new businesses its selection is quite generous. So why then is bitcoinstore not beating them?  

• Price fluxations put all the risk on buyers.
• No one wants to take any risk when they have cheap, easy, safe, fiat.
  

And how do we create that price stability?

• E-commerce.
  

Alright so maybe bitcoin is just so small of an economy that it would not be reasonable to expect any business to thrive solely on it. How big of an economy is bitcoin exactly, in terms of USD? Looking at blockchain.info's USD transaction volume chart we can see the daily transaction volumes this past month reach a low of 1 Million per day to a high of 12.5 Million. That is Per Day. How much of that do you think is going towards legitimate bitcoin business?



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[Stampbit]

One telltale sign of legitimate business transaction volume comes from a press release from major bitcoin transaction processor bitpay, which claims a reported volume of 5.2 million in the month of march. According to the aforementioned chart, a volume of $130,643,703 occurred on all major exchanges during the month of march. 5.2 Million of $130 Million is 4%, this is including precious metal dealers who act as a proxy currency for coin sellers who wish to remain anonymous. That a legitimate business must compare itself to a criminal enterprise as some sort of symbol of merit reveals the state that bitcoin is in. What this then becomes in not an issue of who is profitable, or whether the price will ever become stable enough to be useful as a currency, but what congress will think when it comes time to determine whether this new currency has enough legitimate use to warrant keeping it legal. Unlike the speculators that plague the markets in hopes of using this new technology as a manipulative get rich scheme, we bitcoin entreprenurs actually believe in this currency enough to ride our whole business on it, but as we are finding out the hard way it looks as if we might be the only ones.



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[moni3z]

If you advertised anonymous ship n click on Silk Road you'd probably get a lot of business lol

Lot's of bitcoins went to buy Asics, pizza and amazon credits. Lot's are used to buy virtual visa cards too

[Isokivi]

I'll be happy to publish some rough figures on my small part (btctrinkets):

I've been in business for eight months exactly today. I initially started with three products and no website, and have been gradually growing my selection and added an online-store, so after the initial roll-out a large portion of my sales are more recent. To date I carry 9 different items, the tenth is waiting for photographs and eleventh is in production. My plan has all along been to keep re-investing what I initially put in and it has seemed like a sound plan so far.

I have shipped out around 200 packages.
I have sold roughly 330 items.
On an average my page sees about 140 loads a day.
On an average week I sell one item, recently it has been hovering at just about three.

What I really like about your service is that it caters to a need of another bitcoin merchant: I myself can only cover so much of my expenses without converting to fiat. Hosting, stamps and any computer hardware I need.

Would I use it ?
- Sadly no, with the average size and value of my packages and my geolocation it's not viable.

I wish I had more encouraging words to throw in, because I really belive your service is the type we need, I don't want to convert to fiat constantly and I believe there are others who think alike. When we reach the point where a business accepting bitcoin can use said btc on their own expenses, be it hosting, delivery, wages, bills or goods the we can really say we have a functioning economy and infrastructure.

One aspect is getting visibility, it's hard.. even when your willing to pay for it, there are only a handfull of worthwhile places to toss your money in atm.

[worldinacoin]

I used the Bitcoins to purchase Pokemon cards and GPUs, wonder how criminal that is

[Stampbit]

If you advertised anonymous ship n click on Silk Road you'd probably get a lot of business lol

Lot's of bitcoins went to buy Asics, pizza and amazon credits. Lot's are used to buy virtual visa cards too

You would think but then im the one who has to answer to the cops. Unfortunately there's nothing i can do about this but so is the nature of the beast.

[Stampbit]

I'll be happy to publish some rough figures on my small part (btctrinkets):

I've been in business for eight months exactly today. I initially started with three products and no website, and have been gradually growing my selection and added an online-store, so after the initial roll-out a large portion of my sales are more recent. To date I carry 9 different items, the tenth is waiting for photographs and eleventh is in production. My plan has all along been to keep re-investing what I initially put in and it has seemed like a sound plan so far.

I have shipped out around 200 packages.
I have sold roughly 330 items.
On an average my page sees about 140 loads a day.
On an average week I sell one item, recently it has been hovering at just about three.

What I really like about your service is that it caters to a need of another bitcoin merchant: I myself can only cover so much of my expenses without converting to fiat. Hosting, stamps and any computer hardware I need.

Would I use it ?
- Sadly no, with the average size and value of my packages and my geolocation it's not viable.

I wish I had more encouraging words to throw in, because I really belive your service is the type we need, I don't want to convert to fiat constantly and I believe there are others who think alike. When we reach the point where a business accepting bitcoin can use said btc on their own expenses, be it hosting, delivery, wages, bills or goods the we can really say we have a functioning economy and infrastructure.

One aspect is getting visibility, it's hard.. even when your willing to pay for it, there are only a handfull of worthwhile places to toss your money in atm.

This is understandable, such a small business cannot afford the risk of being a bitcoin-buyer, even on something as small as postage. It is my intention to make this automated (if i can find anyone who is willing to help for a share) so that businesses can streamline their process as they would stamps or endica, but at the moment i have aimed this at consumers and perhaps small businesses.

[bluemeanie1]

It was Paypal President David Marcus that said "The big question is whether [Bitcoin] is going to go mainstream or stay limited to just a few zealots and criminals." I started my bitcoin business, stampbit.com, with the intention of finding out for myself. Its been two months since i have started and have seen very little interest for this bitcoin version of USPS click'n'ship. No its not instant like clicknship, nor can i reasonably compete with my supplier on price, but then again i am trying to provide something that may prove inaccessible to anyone without a paypal account or credit card, and do it in a way thats much more convenient that how USPS does.

now what sort of person doesn't have a paypal account or credit card?

either 1) very poor people. 2) criminals who don't want to divulge their identity.  can you think of anyone else?  if so please let us know.

[Isokivi]

now what sort of person doesn't have a paypal account or credit card?

either 1) very poor people. 2) criminals who don't want to divulge their identity.  can you think of anyone else?  if so please let us know.

I have both, I'd rather have neither... to be more specific I'd rather live in a world where both are obsolete.

[domob]

now what sort of person doesn't have a paypal account or credit card?

either 1) very poor people. 2) criminals who don't want to divulge their identity.  can you think of anyone else?  if so please let us know.

I have both, I'd rather have neither... to be more specific I'd rather live in a world where both are obsolete.

I've got a PayPal account, but also had lots of trouble with it and I withdrew all funds from it about a year ago and don't plan on using it.  I have no credit card and don't want one, either, but maybe it is easier in Europe to not have one than in the US.  But I find it rather troubling for how many things you need one when travelling - we had to get a credit card just for vacation in the US, even though we had never needed one before and also didn't need it afterwards.

[glub0x]

It was Paypal President David Marcus that said "The big question is whether [Bitcoin] is going to go mainstream or stay limited to just a few zealots and criminals."

i use bitcoin and not in a criminal way.

[r3wt]

my uses of bitcoins to date:

bought psu, ram, and case fan from bitcoinstore. (.78 BTC)

bought computer monitor from bitmit (.35)

bought windows vista digital delivery from bitmit (.4) called Microsoft and it was actually an authentic copy. i was amazed.

paid domob to compile a linux program for me . (.08)
 
paid off a loan (.2)

bought an athlon x64 from gary492 (.14)

yeah i think i'm legally in the clear here. my whole draw on bitcoins is that it doesn't require a credit report, credit card, bank account and i'm in charge of essentially my own bank. its the future and i genuinely enjoy being a part of it.

[VeeMiner]

I buy humble bundle regularly with bitcoin, and I bought mining hardware with bitcoin...

[Birdy]

Alright so maybe bitcoin is just so small of an economy that it would not be reasonable to expect any business to thrive solely on it. How big of an economy is bitcoin exactly, in terms of USD? Looking at blockchain.info's USD transaction volume chart we can see the daily transaction volumes this past month reach a low of 1 Million per day to a high of 12.5 Million. That is Per Day. How much of that do you think is going towards legitimate bitcoin business?

One need to remember that those stats include every transaction, if you just move your coins around they are included in this list.
If you have to move coins multiple times, they add up again.
There are far less coins used to buy things daily.

[domob]

paid domob to compile a linux program for me . (.08)

My uses so far: Received 0.08 BTC as above and received 0.1 BTC for another small task.

But honestly, I would be very delighted if something I need could be paid in bitcoin in the future (so far there was nothing).  Possibly I'll switch my webhosting to a bitcoin accepting one for a starter.

[r3wt]

paid domob to compile a linux program for me . (.08)

My uses so far: Received 0.08 BTC as above and received 0.1 BTC for another small task.

But honestly, I would be very delighted if something I need could be paid in bitcoin in the future (so far there was nothing).  Possibly I'll switch my webhosting to a bitcoin accepting one for a starter.

i recommend namecheap. their plans are only listed in year units, but if you contact support you can pay per month. 4.95 usd/mo for 4GB ram, 20 processes, 25 gb space and the best damn cpanel i've ever seen. plus their support people are nice as fuck. they definitely go the extra mile. i even asked them if i could run a bitcoin client on their server and they said sure, as long as it doesn't exceed the process limit.

[bluemeanie1]

It was Paypal President David Marcus that said "The big question is whether [Bitcoin] is going to go mainstream or stay limited to just a few zealots and criminals." I started my bitcoin business, stampbit.com, with the intention of finding out for myself. Its been two months since i have started and have seen very little interest for this bitcoin version of USPS click'n'ship. No its not instant like clicknship, nor can i reasonably compete with my supplier on price, but then again i am trying to provide something that may prove inaccessible to anyone without a paypal account or credit card, and do it in a way thats much more convenient that how USPS does.

But you'd think after two months i'd get the hint, no one cares! Yet i realized it was not only me when i stumbled upon bitcoinstore.com who so generously posts their sales figures in order to urge buyers to take the initiative and support bitcoin by allowing them to remain competitive. For these last two months ive seen these figures climb at a snails pace, in line with my own business. So maybe by business was just a bad idea, but what about bitcoinstores? Their prices are CHEAPER than its competitors newegg and BHPhoto! And they have all the same features as their competitors. Its only shortfall is that its selection is not as vast, but for a new businesses its selection is quite generous. So why then is bitcoinstore not beating them?  

• Price fluxations put all the risk on buyers.
• No one wants to take any risk when they have cheap, easy, safe, fiat.
  

And how do we create that price stability?

• E-commerce.
  

and how do we do E-Commerce?  by offering insurance and reversibility on transactions, ie. legal tender.  In other words 'FIAT'.

maybe bitcoin people should venture out of their houses once in a while?

[r3wt]

It was Paypal President David Marcus that said "The big question is whether [Bitcoin] is going to go mainstream or stay limited to just a few zealots and criminals." I started my bitcoin business, stampbit.com, with the intention of finding out for myself. Its been two months since i have started and have seen very little interest for this bitcoin version of USPS click'n'ship. No its not instant like clicknship, nor can i reasonably compete with my supplier on price, but then again i am trying to provide something that may prove inaccessible to anyone without a paypal account or credit card, and do it in a way thats much more convenient that how USPS does.

But you'd think after two months i'd get the hint, no one cares! Yet i realized it was not only me when i stumbled upon bitcoinstore.com who so generously posts their sales figures in order to urge buyers to take the initiative and support bitcoin by allowing them to remain competitive. For these last two months ive seen these figures climb at a snails pace, in line with my own business. So maybe by business was just a bad idea, but what about bitcoinstores? Their prices are CHEAPER than its competitors newegg and BHPhoto! And they have all the same features as their competitors. Its only shortfall is that its selection is not as vast, but for a new businesses its selection is quite generous. So why then is bitcoinstore not beating them?  

• Price fluxations put all the risk on buyers.
• No one wants to take any risk when they have cheap, easy, safe, fiat.
  

And how do we create that price stability?

• E-commerce.
  

and how do we do E-Commerce?  by offering insurance and reversibility on transactions, ie. legal tender.  In other words 'FIAT'.

maybe bitcoin people should venture out of their houses once in a while?

Yoda says: The FUD is strong with this one.

[r3wt]

It was Paypal President David Marcus that said "The big question is whether [Bitcoin] is going to go mainstream or stay limited to just a few zealots and criminals."

i use bitcoin and not in a criminal way.

Maybe the article would be better written as "Zealots and Criminals, Is it possible for anyone anywhere to pay or get paid without breaking any laws?". Technically if you get cash out of an ATM and spend it in a shop somewhere else your a money transmitter and need to be registered as such. That's the way the fascist states like it, everyone's guilty of something.

yep. america has become its own oppressor.

[dave111223]

How many butthurt threads do you need to open, with shock value titles, whinging about how Bitcoin sucks, and your business doesn't make any money because bitcoin is no good etc.. etc..

"I opened up a store selling dingleberries for USD, but no one bought any...cuz it's impossible for make money using dollars...cuz only douchebags use USD and douchebags don't even buy dingleberries"