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Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin

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Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin

#151

Post by logicallee »

wmf wrote: post #121
logicallee wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

IIRC someone implemented this attack (buying or selling small amounts could move the price on BitStamp and Coinbase would offer to buy/sell large amounts at that price), notified Coinbase, and now it's fixed.

Interesting :) Do you know what the fix was?

Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin

#152

Post by AnIrishDuck »

ThomPete wrote: post #111
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there are companies meeting the need for a "turnkey solution": you list Coinbase and they are an excellent example of a company doing that well and being quite successful at it. And if Coinbase goes bankrupt, all their users lose all their money. I've written about this extensively several times before, so I won't rehash the old points. But the summary is, if you trust your money to an entity that doesn't have insura…

So can a bank and you will loose all your money just ask the people of Cyprus. Bitcoin has been around for 4 years banks for several hundreds. Your point is true but trivial and hardly says anything conclusive or useful other than you don't trust 3rd parties. With time you wont have to.

> So can a bank and you will loose all your money just ask the people of Cyprus.

This is a silly comparison. In the USA, all deposits under $200k are guaranteed by the FDIC [1]. If the bank folds, you still get your money from the federal government. I imagine many similar institutions exist in other countries.

Why there was no such institution in Cyprus baffles me. Perhaps they haven't had to deal with institutional bank failures before. The point is that deposits in Coinbase or other bitcoin institutions are not covered by any such insuring body. They are hence inherently far riskier.

It all comes down to likelihood of failure. When institutions like coinbase fail, we call that "thursday". But if the FDIC folds, you should be less worried about your money and more concerned about hoarding ammo and cigarettes.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FDIC

Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin

#153

Post by sanswork »

DickingAround wrote: post #141
sanswork wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're ignoring the cost of acquiring bitcoins in that 3%. Also cheaper still to buy gift cards via raise, cardpool, giftcardgranny, hundreds of other results for "discount gift cards" which are 3%-6% off AND get your 1% cash back.

Who pays 3% markup to get their bitcoin? (coinbase is 1%)

I didn't say 3%. I said he didn't include it when saying he saved 3%.

Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin

#154

Post by jafaku »

logicallee wrote: post #151
wmf wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC someone implemented this attack (buying or selling small amounts could move the price on BitStamp and Coinbase would offer to buy/sell large amounts at that price), notified Coinbase, and now it's fixed.

Interesting :) Do you know what the fix was?

I think they were using the "last price" instead of the "weighted average", or some stupid mistake like that, and obviously without any sanity checks. Meaning someone could manipulate Coinbase's price by placing a tiny buy order for a very high price or a tiny sell order for a very low price.

Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin

#155

Post by sanswork »

ThomPete wrote: post #112

A lot of people are missing the point with these large sellars accepting bitcoin. It's not that they expect sales to explode but rather they want to experiment and get a feel for how it works. There will be a time where crypto-currency will be as normal as paying with credit card or cash.

Or they see overstock getting a lot of press out of it and want on board.

Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin

#156

Post by foobarqux »

blhack wrote: post #144

Reading these comments is depressing. Bitcoin isn't a few geeks trading bits over IRC anymore, guys. To some of the common bitcoin concerns: 1) They're easy to steal! Look at this person who did $something_stupid and had all their coins stolen! Yeah, sure...and if you had left $10,000 in cash just sitting on your table, the same thief could have stolen that as well. There are stories every single day of people having…

Why would a consumer use it over a credit card? Especially when you need to use a credit card or other payment method to buy the bitcoin in the first place?

Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin

#157

Post by sanswork »

blhack wrote: post #144

Reading these comments is depressing. Bitcoin isn't a few geeks trading bits over IRC anymore, guys. To some of the common bitcoin concerns: 1) They're easy to steal! Look at this person who did $something_stupid and had all their coins stolen! Yeah, sure...and if you had left $10,000 in cash just sitting on your table, the same thief could have stolen that as well. There are stories every single day of people having…

1) What are the best practises for having a bunch of bitcoin? You say you shouldn't keep it stored on your local machine but where? Keeping it stored on exchanges is kind of prone to failure in the bitcoin world. If you want to use a cold wallet you need a second computer that you don't plan to use for anything else and you need to learn linux or its pointless

2) Just because its new doesn't mean its better or makes more sense than the existing methods.

Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin

#158

Post by jafaku »

pistle wrote: post #119

Coinbase and BitPay signing up new retailers doesn't provide me additional belief that bitcoin is viable. The retailer doesn't believe in bitcoin. They get cash out ASAP. For a retailer, if they think they can move units by partnering with someone who will convert BC to cash, sure whatever. It's like adding PayPal. You don't see the 10,000,000 new consumers bought bitcoins!!! Who knew cryptocurrency could burn holes…

Every time Bitcoin makes a first step, haters will ask "but where is the second step?".

By the way, Overstock is now holding bitcoins (about 3% of their Bitcoin sales). I wouldn't be surprised if Newegg did the same after some time.

Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin

#159

Post by [deleted] »

moe wrote: post #73
aquadrop wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It has grown by a factor of 4 in the past two years (visible when you switch to the 2 year or 'all time' scale).

[deleted]

Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin

#160

Post by sanswork »

moe wrote: post #105
jdong wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely, but the numbers are still incredibly low. The customer adoption is only at a few thousand transactions per day. Those numbers would have to go up at least hundredfold for Bitcoin to be taken seriously as a currency.

Bitcoin is only 4 years old. Maybe it just takes a little longer to take over Visa in transaction volume? I really don't know what people like you expected. If it proceeds to double in size every year then the numbers will stop being 'incredibly low' very soon.

The point is it isn't doubling every year. Averaged over 4 years it has but over the past 12 months it hasn't grown at all.
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