Slashdot Mirror
Overstock.com Plans To Accept Bitcoin
SonicSpike writes "Overstock plans to become the first big U.S. online retailer to accept Bitcoin, as Patrick Byrne, the company's libertarian chief executive, warms to the virtual currency as a refuge from government control. Mr Byrne told the Financial Times that Overstock planned to start accepting Bitcoin next year – possibly by the end of the second quarter – a decision that he said was driven mainly by his own political philosophy. 'I think a healthy monetary system at the end of the day isn't an upside down pyramid based on the whim of a government official, but is based on something that they can't control,' Mr Byrne said."
It will be really interesting if this creates any stability in the value of bitcoin, or if not how pricing will work with something that can fluctuate in value so wildly... will the company convert BTC to cash right away, or will it keep it for a while before conversion (if ever)?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Perfect timing! I'm always in need of new stock market ideas! Thanks Overstock.com...you made my day!
I think you mean "O.co".
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Overstock.com still exists?..... Oooooh I see what they did there.
This press release brought to you by O.co, just a few days before Christmas!
Yikes. What this guy knows about monetary policy and central banking is - staggering. While national backing-free fiat currency may not be the most desirable way to do things, multiple entities issuing highly volatile (think internet speeds) banknotes of dubious value (CPU cycles? really?) is an insane step in the wrong direction.
But will it be cheaper or more expensive than using a credit card?
Accepting Bitcoins is surprisingly expensive. There's a volatility risk, and for a currency that can change by 10% in minutes, that's a real problem. Coinbase (which is a dealer, rather than an exchange) has a posted buying price, good for one minute, and some shopping cart systems use that. But that price is usually lower than the prices on the major exchanges; there's a conversion cost. So, as with retail money-changers, you pay a conversion fee. Also, like most money-changers, Coinbase will briefly stop buying during periods of high volatility or if they have trouble unloading their Bitcoins.
Then, of course, there's prying the money out of the Bitcoin broker or exchange. Overstock is probably in a strong enough position to demand a daily sweep into a real bank account, with serious penalties for failure to deliver.
If you look at the few Bitcoin-accepting businesses that sell real products with typical mail order retail markups, the Bitcoin price is usually significantly higher than the US$ price. Most of the stores that currently accept Bitcoin are selling T-shirts, posters, remaindered goods, and similar crap. Of course, that's what Overstock does, so it may be a good fit.
I don't want polticians to think outside the box. I want them to settle down and focus on actually keeping their countries running smoothly, rather than constantly trying to rebuild society to their own ideals. As soon as one set of reforms is finished, power changes hands and a new regime is announced to undo the reforms and impose new ones.
Yes, in theory. But even long term it's high risk, because in the event it did grow to that level of popularity it would likely become subject to strict government regulation or outright prohibition. It wouldn't be stable in the same way as other currencies though - it's intentionally deflationary in nature, which has some serious economic implications. Good for savers, but it'd make obtaining credit near-impossible. Credit, though it can be a source of disaster when overused, is also essential for economic growth. If it did somehow take over, it wouldn't be an economic panacea. It'd just eliminate current problems and bring in new ones.
...is a monetary system under private control. Take the commercial banking sector. The banks are on a roll here, they're "losing" money hand over fist, and world Governments are rolling over to ensure they don't fail. Who are the winners here? With the exception of Iceland, it ain't the Governments. In fact, the banks tried to fool the Icelandic Government into the belief that if a bank failed then so does the economy, the bankers were jailed and the banks sacked. The Icelandic Government is now in charge of the money supply, and as it stands now Iceland has the LOWEST deficit in all of Europe.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
Message to those who will complain in 2014 about how bitcoin is "not fair" because they failed to buy today:
See the signs. Read the news. Understand the protocol. And, consider investing. And, if you don't buy now, then for heavens' sake, don't complain in 2014 about "unfairness" after the overstock thing happens. It's not others' fault that you don't buy in time. Rewards (may or may not) come to those who take the risk.
I have read a lot of arguments against Bitcoin, but have never once coming across somebody complaining about it being unfair because they didn't get in early, before in your post now. There is nothing unfair about losing or earning money speculating in something as wildly unstable as Bitcoin, it is very similar to speculations in volatile stocks, just captures the interest of nerds more than the stock market usually do.
If you have a company and some money to burn (for coding the bitcoin business logic which will net you no profit), hurry and declare that you will be accepting bitcoins... The publicity stunt will get you on every news website and this will raise your non-bitcoin business, the only one that matters that is.
Improve at backgammon rapidly through addictive quickfire position quizzes: www.bgtrain.com
The Slashdot of 1997-2002 would have loved Bitcoin. The Slashdot of 2013 hates it for some reason. I wonder what changed?
That's easy. Most of the Slashdot crowd has grown up.
I don't respond to AC's.
There are a lot of very bitter people complaining that they never thought it would get this big.
Based on their comments it seems like many of the fanboys are early adopters (and miners, holders) of BTC with dreams of the value skyrocketing. These folks probably see the skeptics as nothing more than jealous because they missed the boat.
And on the flip side of the Casascius, it seems like many of skeptics and nay-sayers are simply sick of hearing about the Bitcoin revolution once or twice a day on Slashdot. These folks probably see the fanboys as engaging in a pump-and-dump scheme -- get folks jazzed to the point where everyone is following the Winklevii lead, pushing a ton of money into BTC futures and causing the per-coin value to skyrocket.
Both sides are making good and bad arguments.
You're funny, but you make no points of substance.
Confidence in the USD is falling. The only truly substantive difference between USD and Bitcoin for the user is the confidence level. And confidence in the USD is falling in part because of deliberate manipulation of the currency by The Fed. It's quite rational to believe that supporting alternate currencies is itself a rational act.
You may have heard before that the government which can do anything for you can do anything to you. It's still true. The government which controls the currency wields extraordinary power. If you believed that they would wield this power for good, then you would have a point — but you'd be provably delusional.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You need to get into freicoin
somewhere, on a Big Red Sign:
if(color==blue){speed--;}
Confidence in the USD is falling. The only truly substantive difference between USD and Bitcoin for the user is the confidence level.
Not accountability? I'd prefer the currency that is vastly less useful for tax evasion and money laundering, even if it's not quite as convenient for some things that governments don't like for stupid reasons. Not being able to order pot online is a small price to pay for keeping the Crime Finance Singularity from happening IMO.
Not even the deflationary nature of Bitcoin that libertarians fawn over? That seems like a pretty big difference. I'd prefer the currency that doesn't encourage hoarding and speculation of the currency itself.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Yeah... Pretty much. Using bitcoins for transactions is a lot like using gold. It adds conversion costs, and price stability is nill. Looking to gold, higher volume in trading and ownership does not really increase medium-term stability.
Living abroad, but getting your money in your home currency can be similarly frustrating. Another not-insignificant change since 97-02 is the Euro.
It really comes down to what problems is bitcoin designed to solve, what does it actually solve, and is the complexity worth the hassle? The transactional costs are substantially higher than credit card right now when you add in price hedging.
From wikipedia:
Integral to Bitcoin is a public transaction log, the blockchain, that records bitcoin ownership currently as well as in the past. By keeping a record of all transactions, the blockchain prevents double-spending. Cryptography is used to protect the integrity of the block chain
They are going to love tracking everyone even more. They might even mandate bitcoin (or come up with their own, I guess..)
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
The US dollar doesn't record transaction information. Bitcoin records every transaction ever made. How is the dollar better for preventing tax evasion than bitcoin would be if adopted as a currency?
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Bitcoin is fluctuating in value right now precisely because people are betting on its future usefulness as a currency.
Actually, they're merely betting on its future value. This idea that the value of a bitcoin is related to the usefulness of a bitcoin is false. It's merely an effect of supply and demand, to which usefulness is a factor, but hardly the only one, and probably not even the largest one at present.
Are dollars any less useful today than they were a hundred years ago, despite the much lower value they have today? The value of a currency is irrelevant to its usefulness. If it's worth less, then you're simply paid more of it for your work, and you pay more of it for things you want. If it's worth more, then you're simply paid less of it for your work, and you pay less of it for things you want. The value is in work and in property, the currency is just a measure, like meters and feet. You'll note that the length of a meter has nothing to do with it's usefulness of a unit of measure, and it would be useful as a unit of measure no matter what its length, just so long as its length is constant over space and time.
That's kind of what's driving this insane deflation Bitcoin is seeing. People want to invest in it, and so they decide how much they want to invest, say $100, and then they buy $100 worth of bitcoins, however many that is at the moment. It doesn't matter to them how many they get since the value of the currency is simply what they expect to exchange it for in the future, and they expect that to be more than they exchange for it in the present. Indeed, I guarantee you they're all looking at it not as "now I own 0.15 bitcoins" but rather "now I own $100 of bitcoins" -- bitcoins themselves are such a poor measure of value that people measure the number of bitcoins they have in terms of another currency rather than in terms of bitcoins because "0.01 bitcoins" doesn't hold any meaning to anyone because what it means changes far too often to be worth learning.
The same thing is certainly going on with gold. Is that 1 gram of gold really worth $50 to you? If so, it's probably only because you can exchange it for $50, not because you have anything you can do with it that you feel is worth its $50 cost. The same is true of bitcoins, but even worse because bitcoins are ultimately useful for nothing other than exchanging for other value, and people don't end up holding some small piece of metal in their hand wondering "why did I pay $50 for this?" They're told that 0.075 bitcoins are worth $50 and so they're worth $50 to them.
Dollars are really no different in that regard. What makes them different is that their value is regulated by the Federal Reserve. Bitcoin's (and gold's) value will vary depending upon supply and demand. Dollars would do the same thing, but the federal reserve regulates the value by changing the interest rate it charges for loans on money it creates out of thin air (or, actually, cotton). When it wants the value of a dollar to go down, it lowers the interest rate, so people are more easily able to acquire money and so the value goes down. When it wants the value to go up, it raises the interest rate, making money harder to acquire, and also pulling money back out of existence as the previous loans are repaid and not renewed and so that money is destroyed. The result is that supply and demand can be factored out of the currencies value, and it can become useful as a measure of value, since its most important quality in measuring value, like the meter, is that the measurement is stable over time. Bitcoin, of course, has no such mechanism in place, and so the value is always going to fluctuate randomly. It may become more stable over time as it sees more use, but whereas you can predict that dollars will see about a 4% annual inflation rate, and be worth about half what they are now in 20 years, you'll be unable to make any such predictions for bitcoin.
As for that inflation the federal reserve creates, I su
Confidence in the USD is falling. The only truly substantive difference between USD and Bitcoin for the user is the confidence level.
Not accountability?
HAHAHAHAHAHA
I'd prefer the currency that is vastly less useful for tax evasion and money laundering,
Completely common in USD.
Not even the deflationary nature of Bitcoin that libertarians fawn over?
That encourages spending, which is a good thing.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
After watching it lose half its value in one day, and after watching its value fluctuate from 200 to 1200 in under 3 months them drop by half overnight wouldn't affect its purchasing power at all.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
Sure they printed a shit ton of bills as you claim, but what you guys always fail to mention is that they destroy bills too. Now go back and rethink what you said and maybe take an economics class.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
And we can prove that the dollar holds its value. I can buy the same thing day after day and spend the same amount of money in dollars. How does that work for bitcoin whose value changes hour by hour?
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
Obviously the guy has some problem with how his government controls money creation.
But instead of attempting to fix the way the government works, he want to jump on bitcoin, for which money creation rules are not obvious. We have no proof there is not someone with a secret way to create bitcoins.
I have read a lot of arguments against Bitcoin, but have never once coming across somebody complaining about it being unfair because they didn't get in early, before in your post now.
Are you reading with your eyes shut? Every single article is riddled with people who say it is a Ponzi scheme (take for example the post right before yours). Then somebody corrects them, pointing out that a Ponzi scheme is one in which later investors money is used to pay off the early investors and therefore bitcoin is not a Ponzi scheme. And then the original poster fires back saying that the early investors got in when it was cheap and now investors have to pay full price (nevermind that the early investors paid full price when it was cheap, and people were naysaying it back then, too). So, yeah pretty much multiple times in every article, it boils down to people complaining that they can't get in for what the original miners or investors got in at.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
That "depending on how you measure it" is important. The government would like you to think it's 2.1% but that's due to hinky accounting. The actual rise in the cost of living is north of 3%.
If you are willing to defer fulfillment on spending your earnings, you should be able to enjoy realistic returns on those savings. That you can't is due to higher-than-it-should-be inflation. That is, the government is stealing your wealth.
It doesn't matter what bitcoin costs when it is used to transmit USD. Bitcoins are just elements of a protocol for secure transmission of funds. Because they are in limited supply, they are valuable, but you don't need to speculate in bitcoins to use them to transmit funds at much lower cost than other systems allow.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
in various countries, bitcoins have been siezed by governments. bitcoins have been regulated by governments. bitcoins have been banned by governments. bitcoins have been taxed by governments.
And the good thing with bitcoin is that it's basically just a very well standarized protocol meaning that all site using bitcoin are all compatible with each other.
With Amazon's payment, that is "yet anoter site where I need to have an account, in addition to PayPal and co" (luckily, lots of people are already buying stuff from amazon, and thus had an account anyway. Meaning that Amazon didn't have much problem carving it self a place on the payment scene, even if it came after PayPal. But that won't necessarily be the case for any newcomer on the USD/EUR/etc. payment scene).
Whereas with bitcoins, it doesn't mater if the merchant is using coinjar.io (as suggested above) or bitpay or coinbase. As long as it follows the bitcoin protocol, it plays nicely with everyone else. You don't need to have an account at coinjar.io or at a potential new in-house payment processor from overstock. Just send the requested amount of bitcoin (the total amount of USD of the goods your buying converted in whatever is the current exchange rate du jour) to the specific public hash for this transaction using the source of your choice (official bitcoin-qt client, a web wallet, the withdraw funciton of some exchange, the wallet associated with your mining pool, whatever)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]