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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 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.
My understanding is that they provide an easy way to convert your bitcoins to USD during checkout.
They use coinbase which, like bitpay, will convert the btc into usd for the supplier. They will have their usd payment just as quickly as any other payment processor so there is no issue of the price dropping before an item is even prepared for shipping let alone before it is shipped.
You can tell how powerful someone is by the magnitude of the crime they can commit and be able to get away with.
They don't actually accept bitcoins (or quote prices in bitcoins). What they do is offer a 3rd party check-out option. At the time of check out, the amount of USD will be converted to bitcoins according to the rate quoted by 3rd party (coinbase) and buyer would have to send the quoted amount. According to FAQ, quotes are valid for 10 minutes.
This mode of payment conveniently comes with a number of restrictions, in particular any orders paid for in this manner are not refundable in either USD or bitcoin, all buyer can get back is store credit.
More importantly, I don't see what is there to gain for bitcoin users. Privacy afforded by bitcoin is lost here since buyer identity is known to at least two parties - Overstock and Coinbase.
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!
Are you joking, or did you drink gallons of the bitcoin kool-aid? There's no reason that a single bitcoin should be worth more than $1, much less close to $1,000. It's all based on speculators, rather than any inherent value to bitcoins. Why make early-adopters and the founders of a single crypto-currency wealthy, when we can create new crypto-currencies as needed?
If crypto-currencies catch on, bitcoin will just be one of many, and I expect it to be worth a small fraction of the current bubble price caused by speculators rather than people actually using it as money.
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.
Bitcoins don't have an inherent value, they're just numbers. Gold has an inherent value because it can be used for stuff. Bitcoins don't.
If Bitcoin is meant to replace the US Dollar then the total value of all Bitcoins will have to equal the total value of all US Dollars.
There was approximately $1.24 trillion in circulation as of December 25, 2013.
There can be no more than 21 million bitcoins
This puts the value that a bitcoin should have at the time it totally replaces the US Dollar at: 59047.6 US Dollar.
Of course there are issues with this simplification, but it's a nice place to start.