And overstock? Does it update daily or something???
Hello pabpete,
This is a good question and rarely explained well. As a business owner myself I tried to get answers to this very question because of several issues involved in excepting BTC or any other crypto currency for that matter for my business operations. Try and think about the business side of accepting BTC. Unless businesses can pay their employees, utilities, equipment maintenance, inventory, or any of the other long list of business expenses with crypto currencies the crypto currencies themselves are completely useless to them. So the minute I saw companies like Overstock.com and TigerDirect.com jump onboard to accept BTC I got curious. I started doing a lot of research to answer your very question here because I had to same one.
These companies are accepting BTC so how do they handle the exchange rates? This, by the way, is another issue that business have to contend with. Or do they?
The answer got simple as soon as I found both bitpay.com and coinbase.com. The businesses accepting the BTC for their products and services are not subject or exposed to the exchange rate of BTC when you make your purchase. When you order from tigerdirect.com and your invoice comes out to lets say $100 USD and you select BTC for your payment tigerdirect receives $100 USD and not the 0.1497005 BTC you paid for the items.
There's only 2 people involved in the transaction worried about the exchange rate. 1. The Buyer (you) 2. the BTC merchant services (bitpay.com or coinbase.com).
So to answer your question here. The exchange rate is not calculated by tigerdirect and they could care less as they are receiving USD for your transaction when you pay by BTC. Their merchant service for BTC (bitpay.com or coinbase.com) calculates the BTC to USD exchange rate at the current value of BTC/USD the moment of your transaction with tigerdirect. BTC is just another form or payment like Paypal. Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and Discover. When you use your Discover Card with tigerdirect they don't receive Discover Card Credits, Coins, or Vouchers to be used only where they're accepted. No they get USD for the Discover Card Charge.
I really wish more businesses understood this process as it would help ease their mind and hopefully get them to follow Overstock and Tiggerdirect's lead in accepting BTC too.
