Do You Accept Bitcoin?

[TTBit]

Bumping this for info...

I came across lastpass.com and liked their service, wanted to use it to save some passwords for my phone. It is $1/mo, so I emailed them and asked if they would consider bitcoin as payment, instead of paypal.

I received a response:

"Thanks for the suggestion - right now this doesn't look very user friendly."

I sent a friendly follow-up, thanking him for his time, saying I respectfully disagree and to please consider bitcoin in the future.

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[mizerydearia]

Bumping this for info...

I came across lastpass.com and liked their service, wanted to use it to save some passwords for my phone. It is $1/mo, so I emailed them and asked if they would consider bitcoin as payment, instead of paypal.

I received a response:

"Thanks for the suggestion - right now this doesn't look very user friendly."

I sent a friendly follow-up, thanking him for his time, saying I respectfully disagree and to please consider bitcoin in the future.

I wrote to Sales Inquiry - LastPass for Consumers with the following:

A Bitcoin community member posted to Bitcoin forums suggesting they had contacted lastpass.com asking if LastPass would consider accepting Bitcoin as a method of payment.  They continued suggesting that LastPass.com had responded claiming "right now this doesn't look very user friendly."

I would like to understand this response further so as to provide opportunity for Bitcoin to improve so as to become more user friendly in the perspective of LastPass.com.  If you are willing, please elaborate and I will relay this to the community so they may further improve Bitcoin so as to potentially gain wider acceptance.

Thank you.

P.S. http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=909.msg15771#msg15771

[mizerydearia]

Response from LastPass

There's no way our average customer is going to download a P2P app to pay - they want to do everything in the browser. We have a hard enough time just getting people to use PayPal.

[jgarzik]

Response from LastPass

There's no way our average customer is going to download a P2P app to pay - they want to do everything in the browser. We have a hard enough time just getting people to use PayPal.

You should point out that no downloads are required with http://www.mybitcoin.com/

[Gavin Andresen]

I'm a happy LastPass subscriber... and I hate to say it, but they're right.  At this point there's no way the average consumer will use Bitcoin, even via a website like mybitcoin.com.

I think it will be a few years before bitcoin and bitcoin-related services are reliable and trustworthy enough for the average consumer.  Don't get me wrong, I think bitcoin is a fantastic idea and has a good chance of being Really Important, but it is going to take a long for it to get accepted as a viable alternative to other payment solutions.

[TTBit]

What is the risk to LastPass? So they have a handful of customers pay 16 btc/mo instead of $1/mo?

MtGox could offer them a payment option, and send them cash each month automatically.

[S3052]

I agree with the current situation. Its too co mplex.

At the same time I disagree about the timing. Why cant the smart people here work this out and work together with some early adopters (maybe someone can convince LastPass or another site to work together with us to try)?

Cant we challenge our self to do this in a week?

[FreeMoney]

I agree with the current situation. Its too co mplex.

At the same time I disagree about the timing. Why cant the smart people here work this out and work together with some early adopters (maybe someone can convince LastPass or another site to work together with us to try)?

Cant we challenge our self to do this in a week?

For some things maybe it makes sense to work as a reseller/affiliate. You get a discount from the site for buying bulk, pay them with FRNs and accept BTC from customers. It's good for everyone because the affiliate has the BTC knowledge, the retailer gets extra sales and the customer has the convenience/anonymity of bitcoin.

[jgarzik]

bitcoin, as a whole, took a great leap forward when MyBitcoin introduced its Shopping Cart Interface (SCI).

This brings bitcoin in line with the other major e-currencies/e-commodities, each of which offers the same basic merchant interface:

Pecunix: http://info.pecunix.com/pecunix_pri.htm
Liberty Reserve: http://www.libertyreserve.com/en/help/merchants/sci/
GlobalDigitalPay: https://www.globaldigitalpay.com/merchant_api.htm
Perfect Money: http://perfectmoney.com/documents/perfectmoney-sci-2.0.doc

If you can understand HTML forms and MD5/SHA signatures, you can implement a payment gateway for any of the above (including bitcoin).

Obtaining an industry-standard merchant interface was a big milestone for bitcoin, and we have now reached and surpassed it!  Kudos to the MyBitcoin guys.

The main problem for general consumers, in my opinion, is the difficulty of obtaining and storing bitcoins.  Most consumers will not be bitcoin miners, which means they will need easy, idiot-proof ways of obtaining bitcoins.  bitcoinmarket and mtgox are far too complex for the "average consumer" IMO, who just wants to have money, and use money.

You shouldn't need a login, nor need to understand the concept of bid/ask prices, in order to obtain bitcoins.  Your average "Aunt Tillie" would be completely confused by mtgox.  If we want bitcoin to succeed, you need to make it as easy as possible for interested parties to obtain bitcoins.

https://buybitcoins.com/ is one place that approaches the needed simplicity (though it seems broken at the moment), by only requiring a credit card number. https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/ is another great place for people to get a few bitcoins in an easy way.  And if you already have e-currency, my store is my attempt to ease the process of obtaining bitcoins.

[kiba]

I been thinking of funding a series of bounty for browser extensions that store as well automatically receive bitcoins.

I also want to do it in conjuction of forming the first ever bitcoin mutual aid society, the Bitcoin Mutual Aid Association at http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1395.0

[Bruce Wagner]

The idea of promotion of bitcoin through an organized letter-writing campaign by potential customers and/or donors, is brilliant, effective, and One I've been preaching. 

In fact, this thread gives me another brilliant idea.

I'm going to go create it.    I'll be right back...  and show it to you.

[Elevens]

I wonder what would happen if a bunch of us started to do the same thing...

I encourage it!  There are many businesses.  I am focusing primarily on geek, technology, or artist-related sites/businesses.  You're welcome to contribute if you'd like.  I can link the reply in the first post as I have been doing.

Hello. I am unfamiliar to BC system yet and stumbled upon this topic searching for something a little else through Google and just wanted to post my opinion over the tactic that you are about to choose (or have already chosen).
I think that the persistent and aggressive advertising of the system through rapid and partly artificial referencing to it (and inquiring about it) will cause too much harm to it's reputation and goodwill in future.
Why won't you start collecting digital signatures with appropriate validation facts under the document, declaring your will and desire to buy goods and services using Bitcoins instead? Demonstrate the potential of the system better than generating a noise background – I think that is when the future will start moving towards us faster.

[casascius]

Hello. I am unfamiliar to BC system yet and stumbled upon this topic searching for something a little else through Google and just wanted to post my opinion over the tactic that you are about to choose (or have already chosen).
I think that the persistent and aggressive advertising of the system through rapid and partly artificial referencing to it (and inquiring about it) will cause too much harm to it's reputation and goodwill in future.
Why won't you start collecting digital signatures with appropriate validation facts under the document, declaring your will and desire to buy goods and services using Bitcoins instead? Demonstrate the potential of the system better than generating a noise background – I think that is when the future will start moving towards us faster.

I am not sure about that.  The thing about Bitcoin, is there are a lot of things about its fundamentals, that when some people see it, they say - ah ha! - this is what I've been waiting for.  And they support it, sort of out of a political motivation, as sort of a way of doing a good turn for mankind.  There are enough of these sorts of people out there to make it happen.  For everyone else, Bitcoin will come out of left field.

I own a majority share of a small business that provides time clock services to payroll companies and employers across the U.S.  We recently made the decision to start accepting Bitcoin.  We don't sell anything to the public, so I'm not necessarily eager to go slap our name on the "trade" page, but this billing cycle (March 1) we sent out all our invoices (perhaps 1,000) with a pay stub that says "We Accept Bitcoin at https://www.swipeclock.com/scci/BTC", listed right after Visa/Mastercard/Amex.  I don't expect an influx of Bitcoin payments, but it's one small step: 1,000 companies now have a vendor they can pay with BTC, which is one drop of oil in the machine.

[eMansipater]

Hello. I am unfamiliar to BC system yet and stumbled upon this topic searching for something a little else through Google and just wanted to post my opinion over the tactic that you are about to choose (or have already chosen).
I think that the persistent and aggressive advertising of the system through rapid and partly artificial referencing to it (and inquiring about it) will cause too much harm to it's reputation and goodwill in future.
Why won't you start collecting digital signatures with appropriate validation facts under the document, declaring your will and desire to buy goods and services using Bitcoins instead? Demonstrate the potential of the system better than generating a noise background – I think that is when the future will start moving towards us faster.

I am not sure about that.  The thing about Bitcoin, is there are a lot of things about its fundamentals, that when some people see it, they say - ah ha! - this is what I've been waiting for.  And they support it, sort of out of a political motivation, as sort of a way of doing a good turn for mankind.  There are enough of these sorts of people out there to make it happen.  For everyone else, Bitcoin will come out of left field.

I own a majority share of a small business that provides time clock services to payroll companies and employers across the U.S.  We recently made the decision to start accepting Bitcoin.  We don't sell anything to the public, so I'm not necessarily eager to go slap our name on the "trade" page, but this billing cycle (March 1) we sent out all our invoices (perhaps 1,000) with a pay stub that says "We Accept Bitcoin at https://www.swipeclock.com/scci/BTC", listed right after Visa/Mastercard/Amex.  I don't expect an influx of Bitcoin payments, but it's one small step: 1,000 companies now have a vendor they can pay with BTC, which is one drop of oil in the machine.

+5 to you.  This is how bitcoin gradually becomes actually useful.

[Dobry Den]

Be sure to always cite the exchange rate (so that people know how liquid Bitcoin is), and you can even throw in some media coverage articles to both legitimize Bitcoin to people who don't know about it and to let a journalist explain Bitcoin for you.

[Garrett Burgwardt]

Hello. I am unfamiliar to BC system yet and stumbled upon this topic searching for something a little else through Google and just wanted to post my opinion over the tactic that you are about to choose (or have already chosen).
I think that the persistent and aggressive advertising of the system through rapid and partly artificial referencing to it (and inquiring about it) will cause too much harm to it's reputation and goodwill in future.
Why won't you start collecting digital signatures with appropriate validation facts under the document, declaring your will and desire to buy goods and services using Bitcoins instead? Demonstrate the potential of the system better than generating a noise background – I think that is when the future will start moving towards us faster.

I am not sure about that.  The thing about Bitcoin, is there are a lot of things about its fundamentals, that when some people see it, they say - ah ha! - this is what I've been waiting for.  And they support it, sort of out of a political motivation, as sort of a way of doing a good turn for mankind.  There are enough of these sorts of people out there to make it happen.  For everyone else, Bitcoin will come out of left field.

I own a majority share of a small business that provides time clock services to payroll companies and employers across the U.S.  We recently made the decision to start accepting Bitcoin.  We don't sell anything to the public, so I'm not necessarily eager to go slap our name on the "trade" page, but this billing cycle (March 1) we sent out all our invoices (perhaps 1,000) with a pay stub that says "We Accept Bitcoin at https://www.swipeclock.com/scci/BTC", listed right after Visa/Mastercard/Amex.  I don't expect an influx of Bitcoin payments, but it's one small step: 1,000 companies now have a vendor they can pay with BTC, which is one drop of oil in the machine.

I'd donate if I could. And any chance that code for generating the payment addresses could be posted? Could be useful for other businesses.

[casascius]

I'd donate if I could. And any chance that code for generating the payment addresses could be posted? Could be useful for other businesses.

I went low tech.

I generated a bunch of addresses in the client, loaded them into the web app.  The web app dispenses one (and records the invoice number) each time the page is used. If an address has already been allocated to an invoice, it gives the same one if the same invoice number gets entered, so they are hard to inadvertently waste.

[spenvo]

Steve Gibson's www.grc.com will be accepting Bitcoin.  This was me:    

TOM:  I'm glad you're able to keep watching, Mike.  All right, let's move into Listener Feedback #111, start it off with Spencer in Fayetteville, Arkansas.  And like we mentioned at the top of the show, a lot of Bitcoin questions in here because people are excited about this.  But when you start using it, you immediately start having questions.  When I was launching it during the show last week I had questions about, well, wait a minute, it doesn't seem to be connecting, how long does it take to connect, all that kind of thing.  So here's Spencer's question.

He says:  I'm a longtime fan of Security Now!, great stuff, and was very intrigued by last week's topic, Bitcoin.  I perused the trade page that lists eCommerce sites that accept bitcoins as payment.  As one of the most visible crypto geeks on the web, would you, Steve, ever consider supporting Bitcoin payments in exchange for GRC products?  And then he says:  Errata:  A very large number of bitcoin transactions occurred on February 9th.  Just a coincidence that Security Now! aired that day?  Take care.

STEVE:  Well, I had a number of listeners write in with that question.  And the answer is yes.  I think - I like the idea.  I think it's cool.  I did write my own eCommerce system.  So my feeling is, I mean, why not?  What the heck?  I'm not sure what it would mean to do that, but I think it would be fun.  So next time I'm in my eCommerce system making some changes - I probably will be at some point in the future.  I haven't touched it, knock on wood, actually since I wrote it.  It never had any bugs.  So it's been a while since I've been in there.  But I know that our legislature in Washington keeps looking at all of the tax revenue which is being lost because Internet transactions are nontaxable under most circumstances, and I don't know how long that moratorium is going to continue.  So I keep watching that nervously, thinking, okay, well, I'm probably going to have to go back in and deal with tax at some point.  So when I'm in there, I think I probably will.  I think that would be cool.  Basically what it would mean is that I would be publishing that long alphanumeric string token, which would be our Bitcoin account.  And people who had bitcoinage could move money over to us that way, which it would be authenticable, and it would be irreversible and, I think, fun.  So I plan to do that.

TOM:  How much would it be in bitcoins?  Would you just keep it at parity?  We drove up the value of bitcoins, I think, talking about it last week.

STEVE:  Actually, I think that also happened, yes.  We drove it above a dollar per bitcoin.  I know that it generated a lot of traffic.  There was a comment on the Bitcoin.org page saying that - no, it was the Bitcoin status account on Twitter said that, due to unusual level of activity, they were having problems with their server.  So I think we did tax them.  Our listeners taxed them.

TOM:  We did some stress testing.

STEVE:  Yeah.  So I guess I would somehow use the current currency trading rate versus the U.S. dollar for bitcoinage, which you could probably determine online, to determine at any given time what fraction of bitcoins was equal to the price of the software.  So, interesting problems.

[mizerydearia]

The idea of promotion of bitcoin through an organized letter-writing campaign by potential customers and/or donors, is brilliant, effective, and One I've been preaching. 

In fact, this thread gives me another brilliant idea.

I'm going to go create it.    I'll be right back...  and show it to you.

Are you back yet? ^_^

[mizerydearia]

Feel free to show your support to XKCD if you would liek!

<Randall> here's how far I'll go: if anyone types this URL, they can see a black hole into which they can deposit bitcoins: http://xkcd.com/bitcoin/

http://blockexplorer.com/address/1Lg2rvxbBPC8jp2YJoV5xL7sdyTjueMUot