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Bitcoin Payments Go Live At Overstock — Two Quarters Early
New submitter citab writes with news that "the first major retailer is now accepting bitcoins!" In December, Overstock.com announced that they would begin accepting Bitcoin for payment as early as the end of second quarter 2014, but decided to make it a priority task to avoid having someone else beat them to it. From the article: "Last Tuesday, the company struck a deal to handle Bitcoin payments through a service operated by the suddenly hot San Francisco startup Coinbase, and since then, a team of Overstock engineers has worked almost every waking hour to prepare the site for what is undeniably a key moment in the digital currency’s short history. ... [Overstock CEO] Byrne believes this can ultimately boost the company’s bottom line, but that’s not his only aim. For Byrne, a rather opinionated libertarian who’s unafraid to take his company places others fear to tread, embracing the cryptocurrency is as much a political statement as a business decision. Like so many others, he believes Bitcoin can free the world from the control of big banks and big government. 'It helps us fight the machine,' he says."
was Silkroad.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
This is fantastic news, and I hope more major retailers follow.
You can tell how powerful someone is by the magnitude of the crime they can commit and be able to get away with.
This is the big game changer right here. This is what has been holding everything back, up until now. With this policy decision things are really going to take off. Clearly it has been the lack of Bitcoin that has been holding Overstock.com back for all this time.
I guess I will actually have to consider buying things on overstock now.
I mostly ignored them due to their annoying commercials before.
How can a company be ok with selling something for 600, no wait 1000, no wait 700, no wait 1200--aaargh 500 dollars?
My understanding is that they provide an easy way to convert your bitcoins to USD during checkout.
It's good business. Bitcoin has got a lot of momentum from people who think like this and feeding their fantasies goes a long way.
It's no different than the fanboys who think that everyone who supports Linux in any fashion is rabidly anti-MS. Smart sales people will lean on this because it will generate sales even if the product isn't up to spec of another product and even if what they offer is available on Windows (like Steam games).
You get a lot of really delusional people throwing their money at something just to make it succeed even if you're not part of their crusade. That's why a lot of things like Bitcoin can't be taken too seriously yet... their early success is based on a consumer who's willing to pay more for less just to thumb their nose at The Man(tm).
to overthrow the tyranny of the evil payment and banking system, we will adopt a, uh, payment and banking system.
But since the code and infrastructure is less than 6 months old and depends on companies with less cash flow than lolcats.com instead of being crufty 25 year old code from evil companies with billions of evil fiat currency tokens, it's sure to be an awesome libertarian world changer!
Bitcoin is the Libertarian's Currency!
Taken from his rant:
"Libertarians love it because it pushes the same buttons as their gold fetish and it doesn't look like a "Fiat currency". You can visualize it as some kind of scarce precious data resource, sort of a digital equivalent of gold. Nation-states don't control the supply of it, so it promises to bypass central banks. "
Previewing comments are for sissies!
This option is only available for US customers. There's no problem sending US dollars to Overstock. It would be more useful if they exported to China. But then they'd have to deal with inbound customs on the China end.
This might also have something to do with the fact that you can't submit a fraud claim the way you can with a credit card.
Because big banks and big government will just go home and cry quietly in their pillows, powerless to stop either the loss of economic control or the loss of billions of dollars in transaction fees.
As many have pointed out before, BitCoin's intent was to facilitate anonymous transactions. It's to provide an alternative to currencies which are manipulated by various governments.
The 'semi' anonymity is a by-product of the design, but in no way should be relied upon..
Overstock Really needs to create an option that would allow the sale of goods without intermediaries. Using intermediary, aka, Coinbase, defies the purpose of using bitcoin to begin with.
If Overstock is that concern with the price fluctuations, they should be doing exchange in their back office (back end), not having customers to sing up for another website that they may or may not want.
I am sure they are reading this and will address this quickly. Until that happens I will continue using Ebay.
I don't think I'd want to use a website were the engineers "worked almost every waking hour".
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Which has irritated me somewhat, as it would have allowed me to bypass excessive currency conversion fees.
If you believe that he gave away his identity, then you do not know the CIA/FBI work methods or methods of similar agencies anywhere around the world.
You are made to believe that he made a mistake decribed in the newspapers.
They have found his identity using other, most likely, unconstitutional methods. Now that they have found identity, they reversed AND searched for his traces on internet to prepare a story how exactly he was found, so that the real method is not known. It is called parallel construction. Look it up. This method is very very old by the busy bees in cloaks and daggers.
Dear moderator, don't you think it's a bit harsh to moderate parent "Troll"? All they are saying is that it seems a tad hypocrite for a multi-million dollar CEO to claim to be doing this "to fight the machine" while it's clearly more "to improve the bottom line" (and the free publicity doesn't hurt either). I know, it barely rises above the daily noise of hypocrite ad campaigns and politicians, and you might be so desensitized that you didn't even notice it (particularly if you're living in the US), but still, I don't think parent is particularly inflammatory. Surely there are posts more worthy of your "-1 Troll" point on this site.
Bitpay charges retailers 1% for their service. Paypal (Visa etc..) charge between 4 and 7%. This is the major reason for both merchants and customers to prefer Bitcoin.
that company was wildly successful according to the CEO. A good percentage of sales are paid in bitcoins now and unlike credit cards there are no charge backs or ridiculously high merchant fees to deal with. If I were running a company I'd even be tempted to stop accepting traditional currencies / credit cards / paypal / etc. It would probably reduce losses by 3-5%. The only problem is a lot of people don't have a bitcoin client installed or bitcoins to pay with. What will be more interesting than a major retailer accepting bitcoins is when a major retailer stops accepting traditional currencies as a payment option in order undercut the competition on price. Hmm I just had a great idea for a company.
If overstock was such a huge believer in bitcoin then they would accept it as a payment method. and NO this is NOT what they are doing, they are still only accepting US dollars, they are just supporting a 3rd party payment method that allows people to convert bitcoins. In exchange for this convenience they lose the ability to get a refund.
Ummm...do you know where bitcoins come from?
Imagine the pent up demand, it will be crazy!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania
I just love it when bitcoin posts show up on Slashdot. The circle-jerk of anti-bitcoin butthurt makes me so happy. It's quieting down, though. We've got a major retailer accepting bitcoin, now.
Shouldn't you have gotten some bitcoins when they were $0.30 each, not so long ago?
Some of us are paying our taxes in bitcoin. Some of us are paying for gasoline with bitcoin. I am paying for local groceries and Amazon purchases with bitcoin. How long before all you anti-bitcoin circlejerkers realize what you have missed out on? I can't wait! It makes me giggle.
It's like watching Apple fanbois get crushed by the Android behemoth. I'm still smiling.
Parallel construction isn't exactly legal, but the trick is you have to prove that's what happened. If they can hide the fact that they found the "safe" trail only through breaking the law, they're free to do this with impunity.
That said, if there even IS a "safe" trail for them to find, he wasn't doing that great a job. There's a pretty simple set of things you ought to do if you really want to never be found, and he didn't do all of them.
buying crap refurbished, returned, and even outright used, products... they sell the retail equivalent of hot dog innards, the stuff that fell on the floor and got stepped on or run over by a forklift and didn't get picked up within the 5 second rule....
He's got a lotta high powered money protecting his rep, and very questionable business practices. Has he been able to find an auditor yet?
This writing is so funny I thought it was satire, until I checked out the linked article in Wired and discovered it was meant to be serious. So many gems per sentence, it's worth savouring the large amounts of bullshit crammed into each and every one. Just from the story summary :
For Byrne, a rather opinionated libertarian.....
Well, there's a good omen for what's to follow, plus plenty enough reason not to invest in his company or work for them.
who’s unafraid to take his company places others fear to tread,
Yes, places such as a quite poorly designed online shopping website selling clothes, clearly something so radically original and daring that no other company has ever dared contemplating such a risky and audacious strategy.
embracing the cryptocurrency is as much a political statement as a business decision.
And all the stuck-in-the-20th-century CEOs who thought that the way to make money was through "business decisions" rather than "political statements" will be left behind as this new approach leaves them looking like dinosaurs.
Like so many others, he believes Bitcoin can free the world from the control of big banks and big government. 'It helps us fight the machine,' he says."
Yeh, yeh, big government bad, taxes bad, fight the machine, blah blah, starting the revolution by selling pants online, etc, etc.
Bitcoins are not tender and do not include U.S. business practices. If we are to be successful, then we must "stay the course", and solve the issues we have. Bitcoins are undermining the already chaotic legal system and do no favours for anyone. Please stop.
He is crazy if you think about it; I am not.
Thanks, I'll take the one that isn't engineered to impoverish all but the connected elite.
Those who've benefitted the most by holding bitcoins are a connected elite. They're the ones who had the education, technology, and resources to understand, use, and acquire units of the currency. As Bitcoin becomes increasingly popular in the mainstream (with people who've had less access to the aforementioned benefits), those in that small group closer to the beginning will enjoy a substantial rise in the value of their bitcoins. That's fair, of course, but don't pretend you're part of a populist movement.
And the world goes around and around.