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Dell Starts Accepting Bitcoin
An anonymous reader writes: Mainstream retail companies have been slow to adopt Bitcoin, perhaps skeptical of its long-term value or unwilling to expend the effort required to put a payment system into place. Today, Bitcoin adoption got a momentum boost with Dell's announcement that it will accept Bitcoin as a payment method. Dell is by far the biggest company to start accepting Bitcoin. It's interesting to note that Dell, like many of the larger companies interacting with Bitcoin right now, is doing so through a third-party payment processor. On one hand, it's good — we don't necessarily want each company building their own implementation and possibly screwing it up. On the other hand, it scales back slightly the decentralized and fee-less nature of Bitcoin, which are important features to many of its supporters.
The bitcoin community is highly technical. They will probably sell a lot of systems making it available as an option. They will convert their bitcoin to cash instantly minimizing currency risk.
Dell is using coinbase to convert the bitcoins to dollars, because no large business in their right mind would store any real assets in bitcoins.
If anything, this demonstrates another example of how bitcoin will never catch on as an actual currency. It's a middleman at best (real money converted to bitcoins, bitcoins converted back to real money).
....It needs to go through a middleman.
Employee Wages and benefits
Suppliers
Taxes
Real Estate
Utilities
Most all of these things need cash. And even if they could be paid in bitcoin most companies wouldn't want to do that infrastructure themselves and would outsource it.
Dell's accepting bitcoin! Now that we have that out of the way, allow me to complain about payment processors ruining bitcoin. Now that's news!
Of course they are converting it, but if they have a supplier in China that will accept Bitcoin too and they want prefer using Bitcoin to save days and thousands of $ in processing fees. Have you ever done an international wire transfer? It's long and painful while Bitcoin is free and instant. Nobody expected the market to change at once, just like the email didn't remove all fax machines at once, but 1 at the time.
nobody wants bitcoin but everybody wants money. news at 11.
How do they forward the taxes owed to the IRS? Or is it just considered barter?
This is not new tech. US dollars, Euros, Pounds Sterling, you name it are represented digitally. The only thing bitcoin offers is to do that anonymously and a network that is accessible by the ordinary person - not just banks.
I also think Dell is using the accepting Bitcoin announcement as a PR stunt - a gimmick.
How many geeks are gonna think ,"Dell is cool! I'll buy from them!" and then use their VISA card?
And considering how volatile, insecure, and all the other problems that Bitcoin has, Dell better limit purchases by this "money".
With a government backed currency, it's highly unlikely that the money will be worth MUCH less the next day - even in some banana republic. Or someone orders something via Bitcoin, Bitcoin skyrockets the next day and the customer's $1,500 order now costs him $3,000 - they are gonna cancel or be REAL pissed.
There is a lot of currency risk with Bitcoin - over and above normal risk with government backed currencies. government backed currencies have central banks to limit volatility and stabilize its value - Bitcoin does not.
If examined further, experienced currency traders could come up with even more.
it scales back slightly the decentralized and fee-less nature of Bitcoin
Fee-less? Like the charges that all the credit card processors levy? ...or do you mean hidden fees that are just passed on to the customer?
Non calor sed umor est qui nobis incommodat.
You can bet every computer purchased through BitCoin is going to make a stop by the NSA. Buying a computer with untraceable currency AND having an interest in cryptography!? Either one alone would get you labelled an "extremist."
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Your logic is bad - sorry. If I can pay them directly in bitcoins, they accept bitcoins. That's what accepting means. What they do with them after that point does not in any way change the flat out fact that they accept them.
Why accept bitcoin? Bitcoin is a mathematical experiment, but all of the alleged real-world advantages have already been disproven - except for the "no inflation", which is irrelevant as a regulator can just change the definition of a bitcoin in the same way as they changed the definition of a USD in the '70s.
There is nothing to gain from it unless you've invested in bitcoin and want to pump it up a bit.
they're accepting GE stock because I can sell stock to a third party and use the money to buy a Dell product. Makes for a good headline though.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
How much is that computer? Three billion Doge!
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
I wish people would stop using the term untraceable when talking about those crypto-currencies, because the blockchain will forever hold every single transaction it has ever processed. It's the complete opposite of untraceable.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
it scales back slightly the decentralized and fee-less nature of Bitcoin, which are important features to many of its supporters.
This is a dumb complaint. Even if you think Bitcoin is great, there's no way it's going to do away with financial middlemen and transaction fees. Those things exist for too many different reasons. And even the fees it will eventually do away with, there would have to be some intermediate state between now and then, where businesses rely on some other business to deal with the processing of Bitcoin transactions, since Bitcoin hasn't become accepted as real currency yet.
Oh yes, I know, I'm going to get a whole speech about how Bitcoin is just as real as the US dollar because fiat currency is all made up and imaginary and all prices are set by the market and bla bla bla. I'm not claiming that Bitcoin isn't worth anything, but just that it hasn't been accepted as currency yet. If I can pay my bills or buy something with Bitcoin, it's the exception and not the rule. Plus, the value of Bitcoin is still very volatile. In practical terms, buying Bitcoins is more comparable to a speculative stock investment than it is to converting money into another currency.
So the reality of what's happening is, due to some level or customer demand, or maybe because they got a no-lose deal from their bitcoin processor, or perhaps it's just a publicity stunt, Dell has decided to accept a volatile stock as payment. Whatever you pay in Bitcoin immediately gets turned into dollars-- so Dell is really still working with dollars, but they've allowed a bitcoin payment processor to work as an intermediary to convert to the transaction into dollars.
It's a neat development, but you can't expect Dell to operate on Bitcoins at this point.
FYI. It's = It (i/ha)s.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Whenever there is any serious bitcoin news, I come here to read the bitter comments. Just a few months ago, I was seeing comments such as, "wake me up when a REAL retailer like Amazon or Dell takes bitcoin."
Well, now Dell takes bitcoin. Don't you think maybe you should read up a little about how this newfangled Public Key Cryptography works? These damn kids and their goddamn bubbles. Shoulda bought when it was $50 last year, you'd be paying off your house...
But now it's over $600!!!!!! NO WAY are you going to pay $630 for magical mystery internet money!! No way in hell. That's OK, you know. It's deflationary, after all. It doesn't really matter when you get in, whether now or next year after it adds another right-hand zero. It'll always seem too high, because that's what a deflationary currency does from an inflationary perspective.
It's amazing how a site supposedly for nerds has such a significant audience of people who sound like willfully ignorant, prejudiced luddites. "Currency of drug addicts" is a long-dead trope. Isn't the software appealing even if only for its technical merits and solution to the Two Generals' Problem?
It's obvious from the comments I scanned over that the /. crowd is not very up on bitcoin.
You wanna send money for free with bitcoin? Be prepared to wait.... weeks perhaps. On the other hand... paying a measly .60$ transaction fee will send a hundred million bitcoin in 15 minutes.
Love the 'Anonymous' coin bs too. Shame on you, you bunch of insensitive clods. There are coins that have been created to be difficult to trace... bitcoin is not one of them and never has been.
Dell accepting bitcoin also has nothing to do with 'ruining' the decentralization of bitcoin. Any more than if the olive garden or Amway started taking it. End result though are more transaction fees, making it more profitable and sustainable to use bitcoin.
Hell, you don't even need internet access to use it... it's been adapted to radio based networks already.
Pull your head outta your butt kids... :) Bitcoin is here to stay.
I remember when I actually cared about having a 5 digit /. id. Wow.... that was a loooong time ago.
You pay taxes in US Dollars in the US. You need to convert anything to that. Like if you sold a bunch of goods to someone in Europe and got paid in euros. No problem, and you can keep some of that in Euros if you like, but you need to sell some of those Euros to a bank (or other entity) and get dollars to pay the IRS. They only take dollars.
I think a more accurate description of the Bitcoin community would be "highly greedy" or "has a poor understanding of economics". I don't think technical has anything to do with it. In fact if you've some technical knowledge, some understanding of the size of the financial system, and then knowledge about the bitcoin protocol you quickly come to the realization that it has a deal breaker problem (it has several in fact) and that is that it can't scale to be the amazin' world wide currency the faithful want it to be, it can't handle the transaction load that things like the Visa network does, because of the nature of the protocol.
So all the technically savvy people I know do not involve themselves in bitcoin.
Basically I see a few types of people who are in to bitcoin:
1) Hedge fund traders/scammers/etc. Basically people out to make a quick buck. They don't believe in Bitcoin other than they believe they can make money on it due to the volatility, complete counterparty risk, etc. It is just a market to be exploited and left.
2) Self described "Crypto-anarchists" aka "greedy wannabe libertarians" who think that bitcoin will free them from the tyranny of having to pay taxes for such unnecessary things like roads, clean water, and such. They like it because they think it'll lead to a world where they get to keep their money and be free of laws.
3) Doomsdayers/gold-bugs who have a poor understanding of the concept of money (namely that it is a theoretical construct and always has been, regardless of what item is used to represent it) and think that the world and economy are doomed, but if you have the right magic currency, you'll be ok. Because bitcoin has something "backing it" that makes it worth something no matter what and thus it is great.
4) People using it for money laundering, like the Silk Road. They use it because they figure it is harder to trace than dollars/euros/etc and so use it for payment for illegal items.
If anything, this demonstrates another example of how bitcoin will never catch on as an actual currency. It's a middleman at best
"Actual" currency is just the middleman to trading goods and services. So I guess dollars will never catch on either.
No. Goods and services are not only traded using currency. They may be traded using other non-currency assets as well. However trading assets has a capital gain/loss tax implication in the U.S.
A recent IRS advisory said virtual currency is to be treated as an assent not a currency. So lets say you receive some bitcoins. At some future date you spend these bitcoins. Since these bitcoins are an asset you have to account for their gain or loss in value for the days that you held them and declare a loss or gain on your taxes. In short spending bitcoins has the paperwork overhead of selling stocks, its not like spending dollars at all.
Ex. You buy one coin at $500 and another at $600. Coins are priced at $800 at the time of a future purchase. You buy something for $1,200, 1.5 coins. Using FIFO (first in first out) your basis for the outgoing 1.5 coins is $500 + $300 = $800, and the basis for the returning 0.5 coins is still $300. You experienced a gain of $400 on the 1.5 coins at the time of the sale and that $400 would seem to be taxable income. Apologies if I botched the math, hopefully the point gets across.
So if you buy a laptop from Dell and the IRS discovers you paid in bitcoins you may be expected to provide some sort of accounting for the coins used, date acquired, value on that date, etc.
No. Goods and services are not only traded using currency. They may be traded using other non-currency assets as well.
Where is the strawman you are arguing against that said the word "only"?
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
"Actual" currency is just the middleman to trading goods and services.
No. Goods and services are not only traded using currency. They may be traded using other non-currency assets as well.
Where is the straw man you are arguing against that said the word "only"?
Currency is not **the** middleman, it is **a** middleman.
I'm not arguing against bitcoins. I'm pointing out that it is an asset in various legal jurisdictions and that this has huge implications that are only now coming to light.
You totally missed the point of my post.
I don't know why you got hung up on the word "the", when the point was to refute the assertion that a middleman is worthless. I never said it was a currency middleman or an asset middleman... and I don't disagree with your analysis... but that makes no difference to my argument.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
Sounds like a perfectly legit attempt to hand out free money to me.
Where do I send the 3 copies of my passport?
It make perfect sense to go through a third party payment processor in the beginning when Dell cannot accurately predict how often bitcoins are selected as payment method.
As soon as Dell ships enough systems payed through bitcoin, I expect the big differenct to Paypal/Mastercard/... is that there will be competition amongst third party payment processors....and if not they will do it internally.
If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. If it's still moving, nationalize it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.
Casteism