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Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin

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Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin

#121

Post by wmf »

logicallee wrote: post #69
beaner wrote: 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…

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.

Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin

#122

Post by Nursie »

walden42 wrote: post #76
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.

I don't need consumer protection at Newegg. I don't know anyone that's ever had an issue with them.

LOL.

Until one day it all goes wrong, or management change and don't care about service so much.

And that also acts as a barrier for new entrants into the market, stifling competition. When you have to just trust that a new market entrant won't run off with your cash, why would you ever risk it?

There's a hell of a lot that consumer protections and existing payment instruments give us.

Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin

#123

Post by sp332 »

logicallee wrote: post #93
DSMan195276 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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$ do…

I mean, e.g. buying $800K worth of bitcoin in 15 minutes, so that you can increase the price and then buy $5M worth of goods NewEgg - would $800K in fifteen minutes press newegg's btc-denominated price well below wholesale on those same electronic goods?

The lower graph here shows the depth of the market. Right now, for $800k USD, you can move the price from $656/BTC to $665/BTC. So you might get a $67,700 discount on your $5,000,000 order.

Edit: spaced the link https://bitcoinity.org/markets

Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin

#124

Post by aianus »

sp332 wrote: post #120
NSEDhom wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you refuse to take any responsibility in life, Bitcoin is not for you.

Why take responsibility when a credit card company will do it for you? That's a MAJOR selling point of credit cards.

Because there's no such thing as a free lunch.

Sure, the bank/CC company will take responsibility for fraudulent charges. In return, they:

1. Randomly cancel your cards and mail you new ones to limit their risk. (No explanation other than 'security')

2. Refuse to let you use your cards to deposit on gambling sites (which are legal in Canada). They also charge extra fees for 'cash-like' transactions on things like forex sites.

3. Reject large purchases that are 'out of the ordinary' making you look like a jackass. This one happened to my dad while he was booking flights.

4. Skim 2-3% or more of each transaction.

5. Maintain onerous requirements for merchants. Square has helped a lot with this in the first world but in the rest of the world they don't even bother taking electronic payments because it's such a hassle to get approved, lease the machines, maintain a security deposit, etc.

Sometimes it makes more sense to just take the risk of getting scammed than deal with all of the above.

Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin

#125

Post by Nursie »

NSEDhom wrote: post #107
walden42 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't need consumer protection at Newegg. I don't know anyone that's ever had an issue with them.

Agreed. I've had to return things, replace damaged shipments, etc. Newegg has always been extremely helpful. I guess dishonest people can't imagine a scenario where merchants behave that way to, I don't know, retain customers instead of being forced to because their payments are being held hostage.

>> I guess dishonest people can't imagine a scenario where merchants behave that way to, I don't know, retain customers instead of being forced to because their payments are being held hostage.

There are literally thousands of years of history to look at that will show you how naive and ridiculous this view is. Try doing a quick web search on "Caveat Emptor".

And for more recent examples, well try reading anything much about the last few years of bitcoin.

Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin

#126

Post by aianus »

Nursie wrote: post #122
walden42 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't need consumer protection at Newegg. I don't know anyone that's ever had an issue with them.

LOL. Until one day it all goes wrong, or management change and don't care about service so much. And that also acts as a barrier for new entrants into the market, stifling competition. When you have to just trust that a new market entrant won't run off with your cash, why would you ever risk it? There's a hell of a lot that consumer protections and existing payment instruments give us.

So use Bitcoin where you trust the seller or the amount is small enough that you don't care and pay the 2-3% credit card insurance premium everywhere else. Win-win.

Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin

#127

Post by rplnt »

jdong wrote: post #94
moe wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true. Still 100% growth per year is not exactly 'no growth'.

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.

The biggest problem with Bitcoin being taken seriously as a currency is its investment value. If there is anyone using it to pay for goods and services, then they are most likely buying back the amount they spent. So there is not much reason to use this on sites like newegg.

Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin

#128

Post by sp332 »

aianus wrote: post #124
sp332 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why take responsibility when a credit card company will do it for you? That's a MAJOR selling point of credit cards.

Because there's no such thing as a free lunch. Sure, the bank/CC company will take responsibility for fraudulent charges. In return, they: 1. Randomly cancel your cards and mail you new ones to limit their risk. (No explanation other than 'security') 2. Refuse to let you use your cards to deposit on gambling sites (which are legal in Canada). They also charge extra fees for 'cash-like' transactions on things like for…

So what happened when credit cards went toe-to-toe with bitcoin? Bitcoin got its ass handed to it. http://pando.com/2013/08/27/an-expensive-lesson-against-sell... Ebay had to ban bitcoin sales because sellers were getting ripped off so often by credit card owners.

Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin

#129

Post by zapdrive »

jusben1369 wrote: post #104
xur17 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah but the other night I stopped at a Mexican food truck and was without cash. They didn't have Square or anything. I drove 3 blocks to the ATM only to buy something next to the ATM vs go back. So for my family of 4 I put $50 into one store vs the food truck. So a $50 lost sale is a lot of 2-3% to make up by not accepting cards at all.

It's not like they were selling digital copies of something, that they lost all of it. It all depends upon how much is their margin? Maybe they go home every night after selling all their stock. How long did they have to wait to sell that $50 worth of stock that you didn't buy? 5 minutes? 10 minutes? Were those 10 minutes worth $1.50 they saved on fees?

Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin

#130

Post by aianus »

sp332 wrote: post #128
aianus wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because there's no such thing as a free lunch. Sure, the bank/CC company will take responsibility for fraudulent charges. In return, they: 1. Randomly cancel your cards and mail you new ones to limit their risk. (No explanation other than 'security') 2. Refuse to let you use your cards to deposit on gambling sites (which are legal in Canada). They also charge extra fees for 'cash-like' transactions on things like for…

So what happened when credit cards went toe-to-toe with bitcoin? Bitcoin got its ass handed to it. http://pando.com/2013/08/27/an-expensive-lesson-against-sell... Ebay had to ban bitcoin sales because sellers were getting ripped off so often by credit card owners.

How so? The whole scam was predicated on abusing the chargeback feature of credit cards. This just proves that credit cards are terrible at cash-like transactions (buying cash/gold/bitcoins/gambling).
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