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Buy Newegg gear using Bitcoin
- DiabloD3 15y agoInteresting, but is he willing to cover lost items or shipping to insane countries?
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- bitspend 15y agoActually insurance may be a option in the very near future. We are working on adding many new features!
- ineedtosleep 15y agoConsidering how much people are charging in BTC for goods and services currently and the difficulty of earning BTC, I'd rather spend real currency. Note that I didn't check the Newegg BTC prices. I'm only applying what I've seen so far and expecting nothing different from bitspend/Newegg.
- simplestuff 15y agoThis is perfect for me as someone who does not live in the US. I live in Peru, don't have access to real electronics, cannot order from newegg without a US credit card / US address. If this site really does mail forwarding, then it would be awesome for me. I just wish they also did clothes, books, maybe amazon.com or something.
- testcock1 15y agoYou can use BTCBuy to buy amazon gift cards with bitcoin, just redeem the code on your amazon.com account, and you can buy it whatever you like.
- adrianwaj 15y agoBTCbuy also does newegg cards too: http://www.btcbuy.info http://www.btcbuy.info
- simplestuff 15y agoBTCBuy won't ship to me though. Amazon only ships a very small number of products to Peru. Electronics and clothes not included.
- OPAS 15y agoYou can use a package forwarding service to get shipping to Peru (or any other country) from US stores that don't ship outside the US. You can get a US address, order from Newegg (or any store you want) and forward your items to your country. See http://www.opas.com/how-it-works.php http://www.opas.com/how-it-works.php
- webXL 15y agoWhy wouldn't this work for any store or currency? Or is this just a creative way to go long on bitcoin?
- bitspend 15y agoExactly right. We may add more currencies in the future and additional stores asap. Suggestions appreciated :)
- binzup 15y agoin addition of you adding more stores. why dont you create a pay pal button type thing that allows developers to accept bitcoins. click HERE to buy in dollars. and HERE to buy in bitcoins
- phamilton 15y agoI wonder if they have to charge sales tax... (located in CA)
- baconface 15y agoSeems like another good technique for mining bitcoins.
- sdkmvx 15y agoIt's interesting to see that this guy wants to transfer BTC -> USD in the form of Newegg shipments, but I have yet to see anyone major accept Bitcoins directly. Newegg has something of useful value (like a hard drive). Both BTC and USD have no useful value in this sense. The actual item 1 USD is simply a piece of cotton-paper with ink on it. A BTC is a mathematical hash. Nobody major with useful objects accepts BTCs. They accept USDs. I would think that most people trading Bitcoins are just trading it. The price goes up and up because everyone is just buying and buying so they can sell before it goes back down. At some point, enough people are going to randomly decide they're done and sell at the same time, and the transfer price will go all the way to (near) zero. I haven't seen many people actively trying to make a real economy out of it. That's why I have no confidence in Bitcoin.
- bitspend 15y agoAccepting BTC directly would really be ideal from large vendors. But one very interesting thing about our service is the worldwide shipping. Newegg makes it very difficult to buy with a non-US (or non-Canadian) credit card. They won't ship outside the US or Canada either. So it really opens up the market to other people. Things like this are exactly what we at bitspend want bitcoin to be successful in. Opening up new markets.
- stock_toaster 15y agoI would imagine there is more to accepting international orders (and shipping there) than simply 'using non-US credit cards'. Things like tariffs, export restrictions, taxes (both source and destination company), international corporate status, fraud, etc. In light this, I find bitcoin espoused as 'opening up new markets' a bit of an odd statement.
- malandrew 15y agoFor individual orders by the end user, there really isn't that much more. Most of the additional costs such as import duties are typically the responsibility of the receiver.
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- tdignan 15y agoSketchy, but I love BTC
- drhodes 15y agoHow are you guys mitigating the volitility. Arbitrage? Seems to me with +- 10 USD in one day, if an order comes in during a top when the quote from newegg is for $20K and suddenly the exchange tanks you'll be stuck with a heavy loss. Of course, it works the other way too...
- bitspend 15y agoVolatility is not a real big issue because we can quickly move bitcoin into USD. If a customer sends bitcoin and wants to cancel before the order is placed, then there is no problem. We will just refund them. Customer always comes first.
- Steko 15y ago"Volatility is not a real big issue because we can quickly move bitcoin into USD." This is true today I guess. When everyone is trying to sell bitcoins it might not be so easy.
- quanticle 15y agoI wouldn't be so sure about that. The Bitcoin market is even less liquid than emerging market currencies. If there's a rush for the exit, there might not be enough buyers to allow a quick bitcoin->hard currency conversion.
- owenmarshall 15y ago>Volatility is not a real big issue because we can quickly move bitcoin into USD. ... thanks to speculation. If the market adjusts and people start heading for the exits, bitcoin will become highly illiquid.
- jrockway 15y agoGood point. Where can I buy Bitcoin FX options? If I am a business with Bitcoin exposure, I want to be able to hedge that. What do the markets think about this idea?
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- jnburham 15y agoHow do we know it's not a scam?
- GigabyteCoin 15y agoHow does any skeptical person know that it's not a scam? Give it time and see if/that other people use it successfully.
- simplestuff 15y agoI made an order through them tonight. I was worried too, so I made the order through "Clearcoin," which is a bitcoin escrow service (created by the founders of bitcoin from my understanding). So, one way to know to know it is not a scam is to use an escrow service (always a good policy, actually).
- trotsky 15y agoSay I'm in the US, but I have an overseas website hosting a browser exploit kit that pushes a trojan to non NATO type countries that steals their bitcoin wallet and mails it to me. I then spend those bitcoins with a US service like this and get a US company to ship goods to a US address. Let's even say the US service knows I'm shady but doesn't care as long as my bitcoins show. Who of any of us are breaking laws? My understanding of US standards is that hacking foreigners on foreign lands generally doesn't constitute a crime, and most jurisdictions don't seem to treat virtual goods like wow gold as actual theft. Seems like a rocky and lawless world out there for crypto currencies, especially with so many russians / eastern europeans involved in bitcoin. I have trouble believing I'd get very far calling up the FBI to report a bitcoin theft.
- jrockway 15y agoI have trouble believing that you'd get very far calling up the FBI to report that someone hit you on the head with a hammer for the purpose of stealing the $100 cash in your wallet. Basically, petty crimes are not important. Especially to the FBI. Whether Bitcoin or USD, they don't care. (Relevant internet meme: honey badger.)
- joev 15y agoThey apparently care about a missing hockey puck. "[The] FBI's Regional Crimes Task Force in Chicago reviewed the Chicago police sergeant's video and determined with "100-percent certainty" that Miller picked up the puck." http://sports.espn.go.com/chicago/nhl/news/story?id=6452071 http://sports.espn.go.com/chicago/nhl/news/story?id=6452071
- dimitrip 15y agoI am not in the US. Can I order products from this site and receive stuff from new egg in my home country (Russia)? Can I order from amazon if it is cheaper than newegg?
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- phamilton 15y agoHere's my theory (from right field) on where the free lunch is coming from: Bitspend is a hosting company that has invested a lot of extra rack space into mining equipment. They see the giant bubble brewing and have realized that bitcoin needs some legs to stand on. If bitcoin survives, Bitspend's mining operation makes a huge profit. If it crashes, they lose a lot. So giving people an easy way to use bitcoin as an actual currency rather than a speculative investment has a huge long term benefit for them. Whether my theory is true or not, I think many other heavy mining operations would benefit through similar services. If there are any other big miners out there, I hope you see the value you can add to your investment by doing things like bitspend.
- Astrohacker 15y agoIt's not a free lunch. They can sell the bitcoins on the market if they need USD.
- cdr 15y agoOnly so long as the market doesn't crash.
- jamie_ca 15y agoDon't even need that. BTC has been growing in "value" significantly over the past month or so. If they just wait a month between receiving bitcoins for payment and redeeming them for cash or whatever, that'll likely be a reasonable return on investment. Assuming, of course, that trends continue.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- mmaunder 15y agoDamn this is getting interesting. I'm a HUGE fan of bitcoin but I'm too chickenshit to accept payment for our business. (chickenshit being a summary for issues relating to IRS, fraud, currency stability, deflationary risk, etc) When the IRS throws their hat into the ring it's going to get serious, both in terms of positive PR for bitcoin and risk. That will happen once there's a full service economy in the currency i.e. ability to reliably: earn, spend, exchange, borrow, lend and save. 99% of this activity will be off the IRS radar and thus will be off their books.
- veb 15y agoThe IRS taxes... money, right? Does it tax virtual currency? Sorry, I'm not sure. My line of thought was perhaps there's something written where it states that only the official currency is taxed. I agree with you though, the whole Bitcoin thing is getting very interesting. P.S. would the down-voters explain? It's not like I know everything about tax law, I was simply asking a question. :)
- prodigal_erik 15y agoNo matter how you get paid, the IRS wants the same share of fair market value: http://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc420.html http://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc420.html. I can't think of a reason they'd treat bitcoin differently than foreign money.
- IgorPartola 15y agoBecause BTC is wothless. Or rather that is what you could try to claim. If I mine a bunch of BTC and then pay you with it, I have not assigned any value to it. And if you never convert it to USD, you do not assign value to it either. When you fill out your tax forms, what would you put for its value? Moreover the IRS has no standard way to measure it. They cannot use Mt Gox any more than they can use Craig's list. The BTC is way too small and fluctuates too much to be accurately measured unless USD is involved somewhere. I am not a lawyer or a CPA and the above is just a theory, not advice.
- jes5199 15y agoIt's still really, really hard to obtain bitcoins. And until that changes, what good does it do to be able to spend them?
- regularfry 15y agoI can't say I'd noticed. Admittedly it's not trivial, in that I don't know of anywhere you can just show up with a credit card and buy a bitcoin, but it's hardly rocket surgery to fund a MtGox account.
- ahi 15y agoIt's taken me the better part of a week to fund a MtGox account. 10 minutes to send bitcoin around the world. 5 days to complete a damn USD money transfer.
- regularfry 15y agoUrgh. In which case, you have my sympathies. It certainly wasn't that much of a hassle for me. Stick with it, I could certainly believe that MtGox is under a certain amount of strain right now. That being said, they aren't the only option: other exchanges are cropping up, and bitcoin-otc is also available.
- kaffeinecoma 15y agoIt's not hard, but it is very slow: create MtGox account; create Dwolla account; add your traditional checking account to Dwolla; initiate a xfer from checking -> Dwolla; wait (days) for xfer to complete; initiate Dwolla -> MtGox xfer (wait days); buy bitcoins with USD funds on MtGox. I started that process purely for the fun of some small-time speculation, but the whole hassle of the process made me realize why Bitcoin is important.
- orangecat 15y agoIt's still really, really hard to obtain bitcoins. I'd drop at least one "really"; you just need a decent AMD GPU. The relatively wimpy one in my iMac can generate 0.1 BTC/day, which at current exchange rates is a few dollars. It would be easy to do 5x better than that with a PC tower, without going nuts with a dedicated mining rig.
- adrianwaj 15y agoideas: - make bitspend a place for users to buy bitcoins - make bitspend a place for users to cash out bitcoins - build a reputation and move into ebay and amazon payments (can you become some type of power buyer or affiliate) - collect testimonials - provide a bookmarklet or plugin so users can browse the shopping sites transparently but pay on bitspend - a person could have an item they want to buy for say $30, instead of paying with bitcoins, they pay $100, and then get $70 change in bitcoins
- lallysingh 15y agoYou've gotta be real careful: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-gold#Crime_and_fraud http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-gold#Crime_and_fraud
- adrianwaj 15y agoFrom a purely economic standpoint, is it always in someone's interest to be fraudulent? You might get away with $x if fraudulent and 3 x $x if not. If you're selling rice and cookies at a supermarket and a mafia boss wants to buy them, what are you going to do, turn him away?
- briandear 15y agoYet another Bitcoin story. How nice.