bitcoin groupon

[Jered Kenna (TradeHill)]

Instead of only pledging a one time purchase, why not allow people to list either items and amounts or a monthly or yearly estimated purchase? That way the site can support service providers and utilities as well.

As a business owner, I would actually be a little bit suspicious of an offer that came with guaranteed escrow by someone else of coins to buy things from my store even before I've agreed to take them? That sounds like setup if you don't know more about bitcoin and the motivation. As that business owner, I'm interested in my market and how much they think they might spend, but I'm also likely to be realistic enough to know that the only sales that count are the ones I've deposited (after any refunds, charge-backs, fraud and counterfeiting, taxes and transaction fees are removed of course).  The selling point for bitcoin isn't new business, it's no transaction fees and no crazy charge-backs.

I think a bitcoin wishlist site is a great idea, and I would post to it. I would be happy to help build it if you don't mine putting it up on Google App Engine. A simple, but solid site would take about a day, but it will be a few days before I could start.  I'm coming up on soft and then hard launch on my current project.


Another opportunity if someone wants to go for it.
For vendors who don't want to support bitcoin, someone else could build a concierge service.
You pay the concierge in bitcoin covering the price, shipping and a convenience fee, she buys your item using legal tender and ships the item to you.
Maybe the service could use the wishlist to find and contact customers.

I agree and as a business owner I'm going to accept BTC because I want to not because it's going to do great things for my business at this time.
If I were larger then maybe it would matter more. If I had 100 people saying they want to buy things from me if I take BTC I'd go for it though.
I think the wishlist is simple but could easily grow and it's simple. Simple is good.

[1715148677]

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[comboy]

I'm really glad there is some interest. I was missing some project lately that I'm not doing for money I already started and I will let you know how it goes.

About discussion:

• I think we should stick to dollar amounts - btc value still varies quite much and $ value is something that mechants understand
• about escrow, I'm skeptical. ScriptGadget argument seems valid for me, and also I think our community is still small enough to trust these people with higher number of posts. From our side, I'd like it to be understood that if you declare yourself, you gonna buy it, but from the store owner side, it's rather obvious these are not 100% transactions, it rather only shows potential interest, so my vote would be rather against the jar, but I'm totally open for discussion

[Jered Kenna (TradeHill)]

I'm really glad there is some interest. I was missing some project lately that I'm not doing for money I already started and I will let you know how it goes.

About discussion:

• I think we should stick to dollar amounts - btc value still varies quite much and $ value is something that mechants understand
• about escrow, I'm skeptical. ScriptGadget argument seems valid for me, and also I think our community is still small enough to trust these people with higher number of posts. From our side, I'd like it to be understood that if you declare yourself, you gonna buy it, but from the store owner side, it's rather obvious these are not 100% transactions, it rather only shows potential interest, so my vote would be rather against the jar, but I'm totally open for discussion

Yeah we need to list it in USD for sure.
Even if a few don't actually buy it shows that there are a lot of people with BTC looking to use it and it's growing.

[Ian Maxwell]

Listing in USD is a good idea, since it nullifies my other concern: people pledge 20 BTC when that means 16 USD, and their offer is accepted two years later when it means 130 USD.

[FatherMcGruder]

Listing in USD is a good idea, since it nullifies my other concern: people pledge 20 BTC when that means 16 USD, and their offer is accepted two years later when it means 130 USD.

What if people chose whether to denominate their pledges in bitcoins or USD?

[Anonymous]

Youre missing something obvious here. Would a bitcoin  merchant want to be involved in a bitcoin groupon ? Then you can use bitcoins or at least a link to the product....

Its also good if a hundred bitcoiners get a discount at a USD store 

[FreeMoney]

This gives me an idea. People want to buy stuff with coins, but the merchant doesn't take coins. Intermediary accumulates orders and bitcoin payments from consumers and negotiates a bulk deal with the merchant. Consumers get to use bitcoin. Intermediary pockets the difference. Merchants get extra sales and eventually take Bitcoin directly.

Easier said than done I'm sure.

I guess it's essentially a sales affiliate who handles currency conversion too.

[comboy]

Youre missing something obvious here. Would a bitcoin  merchant want to be involved in a bitcoin groupon ? Then you can use bitcoins or at least a link to the product....
Its also good if a hundred bitcoiners get a discount at a USD store

Idea is obviously neat, but putting it in compressed version I think we are still far too small for this to work.

Its also good if a hundred bitcoiners get a discount at a USD store 

This gives me an idea. People want to buy stuff with coins, but the merchant doesn't take coins. Intermediary accumulates orders and bitcoin payments from consumers and negotiates a bulk deal with the merchant. Consumers get to use bitcoin. Intermediary pockets the difference. Merchants get extra sales and eventually take Bitcoin directly.

Easier said than done I'm sure.

I guess it's essentially a sales affiliate who handles currency conversion too.

Basically as above. I think we are too small yet. Intermediary would also need to take high risk currently because of bitcoin price changes while collecting bitcoins. And there are not that many of us, so discount rather wouldn't be high, so I would prefer to exchange my btc to dollars manually at desired rate, and then have pleasure of just clicking and having (without sharing with 3rd party what am I buying, and possibly also my address?)


But I'm just saying I don't think it would work yet. Whoever implements some idea first gets some advantage, so...these ideas are nice indeed.

[Ian Maxwell]

What if people chose whether to denominate their pledges in bitcoins or USD?

That would be ideal, but we already have a volunteer building the site and I don't want to throw too many specs at him at once. Once it's up we can start refining it.

[FatherMcGruder]

That would be ideal, but we already have a volunteer building the site and I don't want to throw too many specs at him at once. Once it's up we can start refining it.

Obviously he can do whatever he wants and owes me nothing. I promise my gratitude as long as the result contains the original idea.

[Ian Maxwell]

I hope comboy frees his source code so we can add features ourselves, instead of driving him crazy with coding requests.

[comboy]

OK I've prepared something. And before I share in public I would love some alpha testers, to make sure it works not only for me. If you have a few minutes, please PM me.

More info to come.

[comboy]

I have some travelling on the weekend, but I wanted to show you something before going away so here it is:

http://bitcoinity.org

I've implemented I think the most important part that is confirmation of forum accounts, and this very bruteforce basic wanted sites list. If you like playing with software that may crash at any moment, feel free to check it out.

Little problem is, that once I started coding I couldn't stop myself and now I want to add 100 things there :/1

Usability will be improved, currently I just focused on collecting data properly. I'll be very happy to hear about issues and suggestions. As for these already stated:

• I guess I can add entering amount in bitcoins if you really think there is need for it (then I would recalculate their value according to some exchange everyday so that we have up to date total amount in dollars)
• About open source, yeah well I think why not (no guarantees), I'm doing this for fun non profit, however I would prefer to build solid skeleton on my own, if there are any requests currently I think in many cases I may code them faster than it would take to cooperate with somebody on this.

PS. Looks awful as promised.
PS2. Fixing my english welcome.

[Ian Maxwell]

Um... sorry dude, I won't tell my mother my password and I won't tell you either.

Maybe I'll create a dummy account and use that login to check it out.

[FatherMcGruder]

Very nice. Much better than I expected. I recommend either not rounding dollar amounts or rounding up. I pledged 8.99USD for a DVD, but the site says 8.00$. Also, use USD instead of a dollar sign. Perhaps you'll allow users to select different currencies?

Um... sorry dude, I won't tell my mother my password and I won't tell you either.

Maybe I'll create a dummy account and use that login to check it out.

You use the same password for everything?

[comboy]

Um... sorry dude, I won't tell my mother my password and I won't tell you either.

Maybe I'll create a dummy account and use that login to check it out.

Read carefully and tell me where I wrote something that may suggest such thing (so I can fix it). I do not need you forum password. Forum account confirmation is done with sending a prvate message on the forum to bitcoinity user.

I'm about to hit the road so I won't be responding fast. Form of data presentation will be improved for sure because now it's hard to read.

[comboy]

Very nice. Much better than I expected. I recommend either not rounding dollar amounts or rounding up. I pledged 8.99USD for a DVD, but the site says 8.00$. Also, use USD instead of a dollar sign. Perhaps you'll allow users to select different currencies?

• Thanks a lot
• quiclky changed from $ to USD before going out, seems better indeed
• will fix that amount summing bug as soon as I get back
• other currencies sound very reasonable especially for some more local online stores, but I guess some conversion will be needed for easier comparison

[Ian Maxwell]

Oh, sorry! The suggestion wasn't on the site, it was my own assumption when I saw you say here "you need a forum account" and then saw the login and password thing on the site. Apologies.

[Ian Maxwell]

Okay, now I've looked at the site and it looks great. Pledged $65.00 total so far.

When it asked for a URL I first wrote "http://www.xkcd.com" and was told "Hey, that looks like a new site!" so I changed it to just xkcd.com. This is okay right now since we're small and duplicates can just be manually merged if they happen, but maybe it's a point for future work.

[Distribution]

My pledge to ThinkGeek at 17.98 USD still stands. I will get the Pocket Ref Book and the Annoy a Tron.