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Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin

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Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin

#81
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what the timer is referring to. The 15 minute timer is in place due to the exchange rate. Newegg prices their items in dollars, BitPay converts it to a BTC price and presents that price to the user. They can't show that same BTC price forever, becasue if the price of bitcoin drops by 50% over 24 hours, and you decide to leave your window open and order then instead of now, you will get whatever you are buy…

If it's a moving spot price that lasts just 15 minutes, is the exchange market deep enough to keep people from abusing this? By placing a huge number of buy orders at a time when the market is quite shallow, all within a few minutes (temporarily driving the exchange price up sharply) the BTC-denominated price of goods on Newegg can become very low in a 15-minute windows. Huge numbers of orders ($millions) could then…

Honestly, the price of the BTC is decently stable, I wouldn't expect anything to happen which would effect their prices enough to make a difference within a 15-minute window.

Ex. The Bitcoin is on an uptrend and went up 30$ in the window between when I checked it ~8 hours ago and just now. Even if it managed to do that in a 15-minute window of time, that's only 30-dollars off of every 600 dollars you spend. A 100$ dollar order will only see a 5 dollar 'discount'. And if it goes the other way, they make a bit more, so over time I'm guessing it'll mostly even out, Maybe a bit more in the consumers favor if we assume the BTC price will end-up going up.

Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin

#82
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your question doesn't make sense to me. > when can customers expect their money to be protected after they convert their savings into bitcoin, without trusting their coins to a third party service like Coinbase, and without spending a solid week learning how to safely store their coins themselves? As you point out in your own statement, there are companies meeting the need for a "turnkey solution": you list Coinbase…

You could use multisig transactions so that you don't put your trust centrally in one third party service, for example you could trust three independent services to each hold a private key, that way 2/3 would have to be compromised at the same time in order to for something bad to happen. For more robust security you could add services and need 3/5, 6/10, etc. I'm not sure of the exact implementation details, but in…

Unfortunately, the naive implementation of this precludes day trading.

Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin

#83
post #65
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.

I wonder this too - I rarely use cash right now, because I get: 1) Cashback (1-3%) 2) Chargebacks if needed by using a credit card. Bitcoins are basically like cash in my mind - very easy to move around, but no protections in case of it being stolen, and no cashback. I think Bitcoin is very neat technology, and has some useful features (transferring money between people quickly and easily with basically no fees), but…

Please consider using cash at small and local businesses when possible. You pay the same amount either way, and the extra 2-3% goes to the local business instead of to Visa.

Additionally, I've been to one or two stores that will actually give a small discount on cash purchases. I hope that trend continues.

Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin

#84
post #65
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.

I wonder this too - I rarely use cash right now, because I get: 1) Cashback (1-3%) 2) Chargebacks if needed by using a credit card. Bitcoins are basically like cash in my mind - very easy to move around, but no protections in case of it being stolen, and no cashback. I think Bitcoin is very neat technology, and has some useful features (transferring money between people quickly and easily with basically no fees), but…

I'm wondering why Coinbase doesn't offer a cashback program where they would charge the merchant the typical 2-3% and pass it on to the payer as a discount. This would hugely incentivize paying with BTC. The merchant should be indifferent about this fee since he has to pay it already 95% of the time.

Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin

#85
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://blockchain.info/charts/estimated-transaction-volume-... this looks like a typical exponential curve to me

That looks like the price spiking and lots of trades happening, or alternatively a major individual player moving their coins around. It definitely says nothing about consumer adoption.

Moving coins is almost-free, but not 100% free. Why would a major player want to lose money?

Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin

#86
post #83
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder this too - I rarely use cash right now, because I get: 1) Cashback (1-3%) 2) Chargebacks if needed by using a credit card. Bitcoins are basically like cash in my mind - very easy to move around, but no protections in case of it being stolen, and no cashback. I think Bitcoin is very neat technology, and has some useful features (transferring money between people quickly and easily with basically no fees), but…

Please consider using cash at small and local businesses when possible. You pay the same amount either way, and the extra 2-3% goes to the local business instead of to Visa. Additionally, I've been to one or two stores that will actually give a small discount on cash purchases. I hope that trend continues.

I do tend to somewhat favor cash when using food trucks, and other small stores - I figure it's a little faster than waiting for them to fiddle with their phone, and it saves them a little bit of money.

Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin

#87
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder this too - I rarely use cash right now, because I get: 1) Cashback (1-3%) 2) Chargebacks if needed by using a credit card. Bitcoins are basically like cash in my mind - very easy to move around, but no protections in case of it being stolen, and no cashback. I think Bitcoin is very neat technology, and has some useful features (transferring money between people quickly and easily with basically no fees), but…

I'm wondering why Coinbase doesn't offer a cashback program where they would charge the merchant the typical 2-3% and pass it on to the payer as a discount. This would hugely incentivize paying with BTC. The merchant should be indifferent about this fee since he has to pay it already 95% of the time.

Kind of done already: http://blog.coinbase.com/post/88587641102/announcing-merchan...

Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin

#88
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...

https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions I don't see any growth. Also, 70k transactions/day - one average shopping mall.

Of course it doesn't have that much growth. Everyone is trying to get rid of their overvalued dollars and euros :).

Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin

#89
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...

https://blockchain.info/charts/estimated-transaction-volume-... this looks like a typical exponential curve to me

It's hard to accurately measure adoption level mostly because of the decentralised nature of Bitcoin, but looking at the transaction volume is a really bad approach. One individual sending money back and forth can generate tremendous volume (similarly with exchange moving their funds between hot wallet and cold storage). Same goes for transactions count (if you are moving big enough funds you don't have to pay fee), plus there are things like satoshidice or reddit tip bot that tend to move towards off-blockchain transactions now.

Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin

#90
post #85
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That looks like the price spiking and lots of trades happening, or alternatively a major individual player moving their coins around. It definitely says nothing about consumer adoption.

Moving coins is almost-free, but not 100% free. Why would a major player want to lose money?

https://blockchain.info/address/12sENwECeRSmTeDwyLNqwh47Jist...

Transparency reasons, for example?

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