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Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin

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Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin

#31

Post by pathy »

oleganza wrote: post #25
sanswork wrote: post #2

Pay 1% more(or 3%-8% more if you have a cash back card and depending on where you bought your coins) to save them 2% and lose all consumer protections in the deal. It's no wonder there is almost no consumer growth in the bitcoin world while new merchants are announced every other day.

Paying in Bitcoin makes a lot of sense: 1) You don't have to provide private info like CC number. 2) If you bought bitcoins at X and now they are valued at 10X you may effectively enjoy 90% discount on all purchases. All these mythical user-protecting chargebacks are almost never used by consumers for refunds (companies who care about brand help them settling refunds) and almost always for the cases when you CC detai…

For 2), surely you would have to pay capital gains tax on the increase in value. To be fully compliant with the law, it may be hard to enforce in reality.

Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin

#32

Post by chrismorgan »

oleganza wrote: post #25
sanswork wrote: post #2

Pay 1% more(or 3%-8% more if you have a cash back card and depending on where you bought your coins) to save them 2% and lose all consumer protections in the deal. It's no wonder there is almost no consumer growth in the bitcoin world while new merchants are announced every other day.

Paying in Bitcoin makes a lot of sense: 1) You don't have to provide private info like CC number. 2) If you bought bitcoins at X and now they are valued at 10X you may effectively enjoy 90% discount on all purchases. All these mythical user-protecting chargebacks are almost never used by consumers for refunds (companies who care about brand help them settling refunds) and almost always for the cases when you CC detai…

And if you bought bitcoin at 10X and they are now valued at X you may effectively enjoy paying 1000% of asking price on all purchases.

Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin

#33

Post by user24 »

sanswork wrote: post #27
user24 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> almost no consumer growth in the bitcoin world There are quite a few metrics on http://www.bitcoinpulse.com/ that seem to indicate otherwise.

Which ones? The number of accounts on a website? The number of transactions is flat as is the transaction volume.

I was going by the number of wallets & some of the repo stats.

You're right though, it's not gaining consumer adoption, but it is gaining merchant, infrastructure and developer interest.

Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin

#34

Post by lazzlazzlazz »

oleganza wrote: post #25
sanswork wrote: post #2

Pay 1% more(or 3%-8% more if you have a cash back card and depending on where you bought your coins) to save them 2% and lose all consumer protections in the deal. It's no wonder there is almost no consumer growth in the bitcoin world while new merchants are announced every other day.

Paying in Bitcoin makes a lot of sense: 1) You don't have to provide private info like CC number. 2) If you bought bitcoins at X and now they are valued at 10X you may effectively enjoy 90% discount on all purchases. All these mythical user-protecting chargebacks are almost never used by consumers for refunds (companies who care about brand help them settling refunds) and almost always for the cases when you CC detai…

And if you bought Bitcoins at X and now they're valued at .1X... now what? A revolutionary new way to gamble on the price of an online purchase?

Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin

#35

Post by sanswork »

user24 wrote: post #33
sanswork wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which ones? The number of accounts on a website? The number of transactions is flat as is the transaction volume.

I was going by the number of wallets & some of the repo stats. You're right though, it's not gaining consumer adoption, but it is gaining merchant, infrastructure and developer interest.

Yup, definitely gaining merchant adoption(its awesome for merchants) and developer interest(its really interesting technology).

Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin

#36

Post by mrb »

asdfaoeu wrote: post #12
sanswork wrote: post #2

Pay 1% more(or 3%-8% more if you have a cash back card and depending on where you bought your coins) to save them 2% and lose all consumer protections in the deal. It's no wonder there is almost no consumer growth in the bitcoin world while new merchants are announced every other day.

True there's no advantage to paying with bitcoin currently and most people are just using it for the novelty value. But enough growth and merchants will just have to offer discounts with bitcoin purchases to stay competitive.

If the numerous and massive data breaches, and subsequent credit card theft and fraud events of the last few years have taught us anything, it is that yes paying in bitcoins has one fundamental advantage: you are never handing the store your full billing info which can be stolen and reused by fraudsters.

Now, Bitcoin also has its own security challenges (eg. how to secure a wallet), but there are solutions (hardware wallets) making it a fundamentally more secure way of transacting online.

Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin

#37

Post by user24 »

sanswork wrote: post #35
user24 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was going by the number of wallets & some of the repo stats. You're right though, it's not gaining consumer adoption, but it is gaining merchant, infrastructure and developer interest.

Yup, definitely gaining merchant adoption(its awesome for merchants) and developer interest(its really interesting technology).

I think a lot of the merchant adoption is driven more by marketing than anything; newegg will get a spike of sales from enthusiastic bitcoiners because of this.

Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin

#38

Post by mrb »

sanswork wrote: post #11
mrb wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are wrong, there is tremendous consumer growth happening. The two biggest US processors (BitPay and Coinbase) release numbers every once in a while. One example: "Since [...] October, along with the integration with Shopify in November, [...] the transaction volume has tripled." Source: http://blog.bitpay.com/2013/12/11/bitpay-exceeds-100-000-000...

Where are you seeing it? Overstock the most regularly promoted name as a retailer has only seen dropping numbers since they started. Notice bitpay stopped reporting 7 months ago? Coinbase has also been called out on posting contradictory numbers on their blog posts in the past which lead to them deleting most of their posts related to numbers.

Overstock is just one merchant, one data point. Not enough to draw a conclusion. On the other hand, BitPay represents 30k merchants.

And they did not stop releasing numbers. They recently announced processing $1 million every single day. This is 3.3x their daily average of 2013. Source: http://www.pfhub.com/bitpay-processing-1-million-per-day-ove...

Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin

#39

Post by lsc »

sfjailbird wrote: post #14
sanswork wrote: post #2

Pay 1% more(or 3%-8% more if you have a cash back card and depending on where you bought your coins) to save them 2% and lose all consumer protections in the deal. It's no wonder there is almost no consumer growth in the bitcoin world while new merchants are announced every other day.

> lose all consumer protections Nonsense. Consumer protection laws apply no matter the payment method.

"Consumer protections" - not "Consumer protection laws" - All of the "consumer protections" I have actively used were given to me not by law, but by the credit card company. (some of those are mandated by law, of course.)

Of course, I have been passively protected by consumer protection laws, and yes, I would receive the same passive protections when paying via cash or bitcoin.... but when those laws are violated, it's almost never worth it to bring up a legal case. If I pay cash, and I get screwed, I complain to the vendor. However, if the vendor does not give me satisfaction, it's usually just not worth paying a lawyer.

It /is/ however, often worth it for me to call my credit card and get them to take the charge off.

While the credit card might not get me many (or any) more legal rights, it certainly gives me rather a lot more practical power if I have a dispute with a retailer (vs. using cash or bitcoin)

Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin

#40

Post by sfjailbird »

Nursie wrote: post #28
sfjailbird wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Credit card chargebacks have nothing to do with consumer protection laws. It is just a feature of the credit card payment system (good or bad, depending on point of view).

False. Here in the UK the credit card company, as a party to an incurred debt, has a legal responsibility to the consumer that encompasses various things like product quality and returns/refunds. If the retailer does not live up to their responsibilities then the CC provider has a legal responsibility to return the money. This is under section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act.

You get no additional protections regarding quality/returns/refunds when paying by credit card, that you wouldn't have if paying by bitcoin, or cash.

You get the option of pulling the payment back unilaterally, but this is subject to those same consumer protection laws, so the merchant can still come after you if you do so without a valid reason as stipulated by the law.

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