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Amazon denies report of accepting Bitcoin as payment
- I_am_tiberius 5y agoOn the other hand they look into it: "We remain focused on exploring what this could look like for customers shopping on Amazon."
- tobltobs 5y agoCould you translate this to plain English for people who do not understand Crypto Hopium?
- cycrutchfield 5y ago“This is good for Bitcoin”
- I_am_tiberius 5y agoSorry, I'm not a native speaker. Did I do anything wrong? My interpretation of what their statement means is that they don't plan to allow bitcoin payments but they anyway try to do tests with it internally.
- SahAssar 5y agoThat's just marketing speak for saying they don't want to say anything.
- chrisseaton 5y agoAmazon denies report of considering accepting Bitcoin as payment.
- mtalantikite 5y agoThe first thing that came to mind when hearing they were looking for a blockchain lead was they were hiring for an AWS service. Why would a company that operates famously on thin margins (not the AWS side of things) accept a "currency" that could take a 7% price swing in a day.
- xwdv 5y agoFor speculation.
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- stingraycharles 5y agoWouldn’t they be able to do that without integrating Bitcoin as a payment gateway?
- anyfoo 5y agoYeah. If they were interested in speculating using Bitcoin, they would just buy Bitcoin, instead of essentially letting their end customers decide, wouldn't they?
- hhmc 5y agoUnless you pull the tesla trick of accepting payment in BTC but reserving the right to refund in either BTC or USD -- granting yourself a soft option on BTCUSD. Altough surely not worth the effort unless you have a lot of refund flow.
- bouncycastle 5y agoyou know you can do much more with blockchain tech than just payments? My hunch is that they could be building an NFT marketplace. It makes sense.
- mtalantikite 5y agoIf they're getting into NFT it's to sell shovels to the speculators.
- dadoge 5y agoWhat a silly episode. First, the B Word conference also helped prop up the price of Bitcoin recently. There was also a lot of bullish “on-chain” metrics lately - more new people holding Bitcoin longer, etc. a few on Bitcoin have been predicting a bit of a supply shock for the last couple weeks Anyway… I also think it’s totally silly of an idea that Amazon would accept Bitcoin payments now. Tesla just backed out of doing so. Very few in the US have much interest in using BTC outside as a store of value. Many other countries in South America and Africa will adopt Bitcoin for more legit reasons before big companies in the US hop on board IMO…those areas have way messier of monetary systems and serve as actual better use cases for Bitcoin
- endisneigh 5y agoSounds like a nightmare - if Amazon did accept BTC, if you purchased something in BTC would Amazon send you a 1040 at the end of the year for capital gains? If you made returns you could see capital losses? Would they be obligated to send you BTC or the denominated fiat in USD (or whatever currency) at the time of purchase. If they can choose then obviously they're going to choose such that it's in their advantage. I'm not sure if it's still the case, but it used to be that on eBay it was a nightmare to do a similar thing with foreign currencies. You'd have a foreign transaction fee and an additional currency conversion fee. Some people complained additionally that when you received a refund it was received in the seller's currency so you had to pay again to have it converted back to the original currency.
- wmf 5y agoBitcoin is bad but all of those were solved years ago by BitPay.
- endisneigh 5y agoDon't understand your response - I didn't say these things were problems. It's more of a matter of what Amazon will decide to do. Even with Bitpay the questions would still stand.
- wmf 5y agoSorry, I thought you meant it's a nightmare for Amazon to figure out how to accept BTC. I agree that buying stuff with BTC is a nightmare which is why in reality virtually no one bothers (and the few people who do spend BTC just "forget" to do the paperwork).
- gruez 5y agoIt's already a solved problem. Most bitcoin payment processors allow you to get paid in USD (basically doing the conversion for you). If you decide to accept bitcoins directly, you don't get capital gains/losses unless you sell.
- sdan 5y agoWhat's funny is that this rumor started as a joke on Twitter, was picked up by some UK newspaper (iirc) and then spread through the media
- brighton36 5y agoThe messages people want to hear, are typically the most mimetic. It is funny though.
- deepvibrations 5y agoExactly! So funny that these news outlets are duped into believing these obviously made up stories. I guess they probably don't care if it gets them a few extra clicks. Hopefully they will at least lose some credibility through this.
- bloheropod2 5y agoI don't really see how this is a "rumor" nor a "joke"... The job posting is very real and is still on Amazon's website. https://www.amazon.jobs/en/jobs/1644513/digital-currency-and-blockchain-product-lead https://www.amazon.jobs/en/jobs/1644513/digital-currency-and... "Digital Currency and Blockchain Product Lead" on the "Payments Acceptance and Customer Experience" team... that doesn't seem like much of a joke to me.
- echelon 5y agoNot sure why your comment is flagged/dead, but that is indeed a legitimate job posting for something that sounds highly blockchain / crypto related. (Unless someone else controls the "amazon.jobs" domain.) > "The Payments Acceptance & Experience team is seeking an experienced product leader to develop Amazon’s Digital Currency and Blockchain strategy and product roadmap. You will leverage your domain expertise in Blockchain, Distributed Ledger, Central Bank Digital Currencies and Cryptocurrency to develop the case for the capabilities which should be developed, drive overall vision and product strategy, and gain leadership buy-in and investment for new capabilities. " That sounds like bitcoin.
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- thedangler 5y agotinfoil hat. I think it was a false news plant to cover the pump and dump that happened today to cover other obligation by some big players.
- matheusmoreira 5y agoI wouldn't be surprised. BTC rose from 32k to 38k in a matter of hours yesterday and it's already dumping. Only found out why hours ago, not sure if this news came before or after...
- ceejayoz 5y agoOh, that’s quite the Bart chart.
- matheusmoreira 5y agoHuh, didn't know about this. Nice.
- chrisco255 5y agoThe pump was caused by $1B in liquidated short positions in less than 1 hour.
- herpderperator 5y agoSource?
- chrisco255 5y agohttps://markets.businessinsider.com/news/currencies/crypto-short-squeeze-bitcoin-liquidation-short-trading-margin-options-bearish-2021-7 https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/currencies/crypto-s...
- paulpauper 5y agoDropping hard. Goes to show how you can be right yet still lose due to path dependency.
- jack_herer 5y agodo I need an account to login?
- WheelsAtLarge 5y agoAmazon will never bet on Bitcoin as it's primary virtual coin. It makes 0 sense since there's too much volatility plus it's open to manipulation by outsiders. As an active international company, Amazon is perfectly positioned to create its own virtual coin. They've created their own transportation service since what is available did not meet their needs. Likewise, the credit card companies take a big chunk of their profits and don't meet all their needs. It's only a matter of time before they go after them. I bet they're making plans to create it and use it for internal transactions aiming for it to be used by all the shoppers. Eventually it will be convertible to any currency and Bitcoin will be one of them. This is the power of being big and getting bigger. This is a multi year project but it's coming.
- dadoge 5y agoWhat value does a virtual coin they maintain have for them and us consumers?
- WheelsAtLarge 5y agoThink about why countries have their own currency and don't automatically adopt some other country's money and you can start to figure out why it's advantageous to create your own coin. Historically it has been a huge problem for countries that let their citizens make their own money so they make it illegal. I don't know why that's changed recently but as long as it's legal companies will create their own. It really does become free money for the company.
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- daveguy 5y agoI'm not so sure. I would be surprised if they made their own coin given the regulatory scrutiny that would bring. I don't think they'll necessarily use Bitcoin though.
- paxys 5y ago
- m3kw9 5y agoHow’s that for an exemplary pump and dump?
- trident5000 5y agoWasnt big news to begin with. Nobody uses bitcoin to pay for things. Well see what Twitter does though.
- modeless 5y agoOf course this would be the headline HN would pick. But read what else the spokesperson had to say: “We’re inspired by the innovation happening in the cryptocurrency space and are exploring what this could look like on Amazon,” a spokesperson for the company told CNN Business. “We believe the future will be built on new technologies that enable modern, fast and inexpensive payments, and hope to bring that future to Amazon customers as soon as possible.” Will Amazon accept Bitcoin for payment before the end of the year, as rumored? No. Does Amazon hate cryptocurrency and think it's a scam? Also no. Will Amazon accept some form of cryptocurrency as payment at some point in the future? Given this statement, possibly yes.
- phasnox 5y agoIt baffles me the amount of blind fanatical hate Bitcoin gets in HN. It shouldn't though, as most of them live in first world countries and have never experienced the calamities of hyper inflation and wealth seizure by the government.
- blibble 5y ago> It shouldn't though, as most of them live in first world countries and have never experienced the calamities of hyper inflation yes, they're used to monetary stability unless they've used Bitcoin
- phasnox 5y agoI think they are just used to compliance.
- herbst 5y agoStability is so relative. Comparing my portfolio to 1 year ago. My dollars and euros lost value, all my crypto is worth at least twice as much. I don't care about stable if this is the long term game.
- thecupisblue 5y ago
- filmgirlcw 5y agoWhat would accepting a non-Amazon controlled crypto even do for them? The transaction fees for BTC are low right now but wildly variable, and would add another layer of complication to Amazon's systems. Amazon probably has the lowest transaction fees in the world, I would guess, based on the volume of transactions it has. It has credit card partnerships with a number of banks and issuers. The speculative nature of accepting Bitcoin or another crypto is all well and good, but I can’t see shareholders super stoked to see the less profitable side of the business accepting money this way. If Amazon wanted to speculate on BTC, it could buy it same as any other entity. Sure, if Amazon had its own coin, that would be interesting, but not only would that face the same scrutiny that Facebook's Libre faced (possibly even worse, given Amazon is the third or fourth richest company), for Amazon users, there is no clear incentive to use an Amazon coin versus a normal credit card or whatever local payment systems Amazon might use. Speaking as a consumer, I really don’t care about what payment method is most profitable for any of the places I shop. In fact, I almost exclusively use American Express, which has the highest transaction fees (obv. I have a Mastercard and a Visa for certain countries), because it also gives me the most value/best protection/rewards I enjoy. Hell, I have an Amazon American Express card that gives me 5% back on all Amazon purchases — so any Amazon coin or other crypto would have to offer me a better return. I get the appeal in areas where Amazon isn’t as dominant as it is, in say, the US. But even then, I would think more basic logistical issues relate to storing and delivering goods would be higher priority than a payment method that has lower transaction fees.
- ffggvv 5y agowhat type of currency goes up 20 percent on some unverified rumor from a newspaper no ones ever heard of
- chadanon 5y agoBuy the rumor. Sell the news.