News Amazon says no to Bitcoin

This not a real surprise as the currency's value moves on a minute by minute basis by the time your order was posted it could be worth half what you paid if using bit coin the swings are a bit crazy and I guess amazon want no part of it.

 

Makes sense I suppose. Amazon is a bulk to the general public sort of online store. Most of whom are probably barely aware of bit coin. If even that. Some one like Scan who is smaller and has a niche techy customer base are more likely to see value in accepting bit coin and investing in the necessary infrastructure. Which they did.

 

Not entirely surprising, really. Most adopters of bitcoin seem to be more niche tech websites or companies looking to drum up a bit of publicity - "look at us, we're down with the kids, we accept bitcoin!"

Gareth - "Fractions of a pence"? Surely "fractions of a penny", as pence is plural?

 

Well that did not last that long

 

My local Cafe/Cake shop accepts BitCoins. https://twitter.com/CafeSawmill

 

Sure, there are a few small businesses that accept BitCoins, but I'd say they're doing so either because their owners are tech-savvy or because they see some free publicity in doing so.

 

Epic. How many Satoshis for a slice of cheesecake?

 

"In the UK and US, increasing numbers of retailers are accepting payment in Bitcoin - largely out of a hope that it will continue its rise in value, recover from the recent slump and make yesterday's £50 payment double in value or more."
Gareth, thats a load of waffle

Retailers dont give a damn, because they dont hold the currency, for the simple reason that tomorrow price could slump every bit as much as it could rise. They use a payment processor like Bitpay who takes their £50 worth of BTC, sells it for £50, keeps 1% for itself leaving the retailer with £49.50.
All the retailer does is total the fiat value of the order, let the customer pick the payment method, and if they pick BTC then it works out how much btc should be sent for the retailer to value that amount.
Theres no risk or reward for the retailer, zero. No retailer would stockpile bitcoin because its too volatile, and thats where the processors come in and sell it for them and give them the cash for 1% (or $30/mo with 0% fee).
Thats why retailers are jumping on board, and frankly these services are a big boost to bitcoin acceptance, cos retailers just want cash, how it arrives isnt an issue.

 

Plenty of big ones too. Scan being a perfectly good and relevant to anyone reading this.

All they do is integrate another payment processor, its really no different than accepting PayPal. That didnt happen overnight either, but plenty of retailers, big and small, accept PayPal for payments.

Give it time and it'll be the #1 payment method for internet transactions. Look at all the paywall sites like newspapers sites, instead of charging per month, they'll be able to allow per page views, or daily access. They dont as it stands because its not cost effective to send 1p to view a page, or 30p for a day. With bitcoins you'd just send a fraction of a bitcoin, and it'd cost the user about 1p, so 30p for access, 1p for the transaction.
For 2p, you could send someone on the other side of the world 1p. Why? heck knows, but try doing that with PayPal or international bank transfers in a cost effective way, £1m or £1, still only costs 1 pence to send.

 

A year? No one would take that bet, no matter how emphatic their belief in bit coin's rise to the top.

 

To be fair, my post (#8) that you quoted was directed to ferret141 in direct reply to his post saying that his local coffe shop accepts bitcoins, hence my use of "small businesses". I'd previously posted (post #4) that "Most adopters of bitcoin seem to be more niche tech websites or..." and I'd argue that Scan fall into that category - sure, they're a big player in the UK PC hardware scene, but that's still a niche business.

 

Retailers who employ more than 5 staff? Small businesses i can see some sense, but personally i'd call that idiotic and so would most people who run a business AS a business, rather than those who play the speculative game of 'what will it all be worth tomorrow'.
Anyone who can turn over say £1000/day from bitcoin, and can regularly see its value go from £1k to £0.9k or £1.1k and have that sort of volatility has an odd sense of running a business.

Either way, while some might, its certainly not what is driving its uptake in acceptance. Market demand and competitors accepting it is. Overclockers and similar sites will pick it up, not because they believe in BTC, but because Scan have adopted it.

Wow, i like how you basically perceived 'given time' into 'it'll happen overnight' and to your terms too, how could i resist?

Personally, i believe that it'll have widespread online acceptance within 5yrs, and a significant adoption on the high street.

5yrs is probably too soon, there isnt quite the need from the business end to pursue it. PayPal was one of the first of the online processors, there was no convenient and cheap solution like PayPal. That pushed businesses to adopt it. They were first on the scene, so expecting a company to come along 15yrs later and surpass that achievement when the need has been met, from a business standpoint, doesnt drive adoption.
What will is lower fees, customer adoption, worldwide access (plus even lower fees), but they wont drive it at the rate that PayPal did, simply because the only other alternative was CC processors. Thats fine for bigger businesses, but for small businesses and for regular folks its not. Then you have eBay, no more 'bank transfer, cheque or postal orders' - game, set & match.


I wouldnt take the 3yr bet based on my '#1 payment processor for internet transactions', let alone your heavily slanted 'if it beats a eBay pushing PayPal and its 15yr head start, vs Bitcoin's 5yr and Bitpays 2yrs or so, over the next 3yrs, cos those conditions are stupid, again. A household name vs 'a bit of what?'

But my statement, that GIVEN TIME it'll be the #1 payment method for internet transactions, will almost certainly happen. Its a digital currency for an ever converting digital world we live in. All content is moving to digital platforms, whether its news, music, or video, the alternatives while not dead are struggling.
The statement will happen, simply because the alternatives are terrible for the micro-transaction future we're heading towards, they're inferior for a digital age, and what better than a solution which costs 1p to anyone, anywhere, happens instantly.

Will it happen in 3yrs will it hell .

 

No dice G-man. Your premise is reasonable but I think its incomplete. For example paypal didn't really have to dethrone anyone it filled a void and became associated with a massively popular website. Any new payment system has a lot of work to do before making any sort of nudge into paypal's share.

I'm not taking a stance one way or the other but your terms are still way off a fair bet.

 

I'm intrigued to see who it will be that emerges as the worlds richest "Bittionaire" in the future, the likes of Murdoch, Branson, Greenspan, these guys don't miss a trick and I would be surprised if they don't get involved with Bitcoin in some way as they have the money to gamble with so if Bitcoin slumps, they hang on to it and when it's value suddenly skyrockets they make a killing.