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Overstock.com Is Now Accepting Bitcoins

339 points by ironchief 13y ago

selectout 13y ago
I'm impressed they followed through with this so quickly. Great to see the adoption starting to flow in places that non crypto nerds and tech enthusiasts visit.
blhack 13y ago
The importance of this news cannot be overstated. Overstock.com is the first "main stream" company (my mom shops there) that accepts bitcoin that I can think of. Wow. Good job, overstock.com team for getting this done so quickly!
- eli 13y ago
  I guess I just don't see it. To my cynical eye, it seems mostly like an easy way for Overstock to generate a bunch of positive press and perhaps make a few extra sales from bitcoin boosters. Sure, it's a nice milestone for bitcoin, but the importance seems, well, kinda overstated. I mean, a decade ago a bunch of big ecommerce sites took Flooz too, right? But hey, I thought the iPod was too expensive and Twitter was useless when they launched, so what do I know.
  - thekaleb 13y ago
    I was listening to a podcast where the hosts claim that the CEO is a libertarian and loves the idea of BTC as opposed to Federal Reserve Notes. But in addition, it does give them press coverage as well.
    - ihsw 13y ago
      This is mentioned in the article: > Like so many others, he believes bitcoin can free the world from the control of big banks and big government. “It helps us fight the machine,” he says. I cringed reading this, mostly because normal people don't feel quite comfortable with sentiment like "fighting the machine."
      - VMG 13y ago
        Early movers are often ideologically inspired - Stallman is a radical hippie, Jimmy Wales an objectivist. The crazies make the big bets.
      - waterlesscloud 13y ago
        You might be surprised at what normal people actually think. Get outside and talk to some folks. Very few are friends of "the machine."
    - _delirium 13y ago
      He's a libertarian for certain strange senses of libertarian. For example he thinks naked short-selling should be banned, which seems more like a pro-regulatory position (not just a randomly chosen position... the campaign against naked short-selling has been his #1 political passion for years). Mostly I think he just dislikes the finance industry.
      - yapcguy 13y ago
        Naked short selling should be banned. It's not just a regulatory issue. When you short a stock, you have to borrow the stock first, and then sell it. Obviously at some point you will buy back the stock, hopefully at a lower price so you make a profit, and then return the stock to the original owner. When you naked short sell, you don't borrow the stock first, you just claim you do. Everybody trades pieces of paper without settling the trade. This might seem convenient but someone can abuse this. For example, sell a billion shares in a stock which you don't own / have not borrowed, at a fire-sale price, thereby causing the share price of a company to crash because people start panicking once they see huge volumes being traded at a low price.
        paul_f 13y ago
        To naked short sell, someone has to be willing to buy from you a stock you neither own nor have borrowed. I think if they want to do that, they should be allowed to. Despite what a dumb idea that is.
        toast0 13y ago
        When you issue a buy order to an exchange, you don't get to specify that the seller needs to have the stock; you will only find out when the seller fails to deliver.
        _delirium 13y ago
        If one is a libertarian, wouldn't the assumption be that the market will handle this scenario? When someone takes the other end of your short, it's up to them to do appropriate due diligence on the counterparty risk. Maybe they want to demand you own the underlying security; maybe they don't want to demand it. As long as it's free individuals entering into contracts, I don't see the case for banning them from a libertarian perspective specifically.
  - deleted 13y ago
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- chaz 13y ago
  I'm not sure it's that big of a deal. I'm still looking for Bitcoin's killer app, and I don't think this is it. A killer app would take advantage of Bitcoin's unique properties and become preferred vs other payment methods. There isn't a clear reason for most consumers to go through the hassle/risk of BTC vs getting the consumer protection and rebates/rewards that credit cards offer.
  - blhack 13y ago
    Have you ever used BTC to buy something? It's the ease of amazon's "one click buy", but everywhere. It's really, really awesome.
    - alste780 13y ago
      Will an awesome user experience be enough? :) Plus, merchants can reproduce this UX by integrating Paypal, or perhaps Venmo in the future. The user experience is not a fundamental advantage to bitcoin.
      - NhanH 13y ago
        I don't know about Venmo, but from a UX perspectives, paypal is hardly an improvement over just inputting credit card information.
        aestra 13y ago
        For someone with a password manager and auto fill is most definitely is.
      - bdamm 13y ago
        It absolutely is. If I want to send money to my mother, who lives in a different country over 6000 km away, I have to go through absurd steps in order to do so. International money transfer. Western Union. Physically walking cash to some counter. If bitcoin is useful for her, I can just send her bitcoins. Paypal is frustrating; I have to make an account, she has to make an account, I have to fund my account, and to top it all off, Paypal can (and does!) refuse to transfer money sometimes. Absurd! This personal touch is the foundation of all that makes bitcoin worthwhile, in my opinion. The network is established and I can use it to send value to another individual or company, without going through any other intermediate. This is absolutely huge, in the same way that email is an easier way to send a message (instead of making a phone call) is absolutely huge (for email). People may choose to use services (like Coinbase) to make it easier, but they don't have to.
neals 13y ago
As a European, I have never heard of Overstock. Though they actually do ship here and prices can be displayed in Euro's. How big is this site? What is their angle? Are they just like a smaller amazon.com? Overstock sounds a little like lower priced articles from left over stocks or something...
- givehimagun 13y ago
  I think the left over stock is how they originally started. Based on where they are now, I'd categorize them as a smaller Amazon.
- selectout 13y ago
  While I know Alexa is far from accurate, it does show overstock.com to be the 621 largest universal site and 160th in the USA. That should show you scale. In 2010 (Fiscal Year) they has $1.1 billion in revenue with 1600 employees. They are publicly traded with a market cap just under $750 million.
  - neals 13y ago
    That is actually many times bigger than I would have guessed. That they're accepting Bitcoin is pretty huge for the Bitcoin movement then.
- deadfall 13y ago
  The site is pretty big. Been around for a while. I just watched a documentary from many years back about stocks and they talk about overstock.com being a victim of naked short selling. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overstock.com http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overstock.com
  - eli 13y ago
    Is there any evidence that the naked short selling was a real thing beyond the insistence of the CEO?
    - 13y ago
pat2man 13y ago
I just bought a watch using their bitcoin checkout. Since I was already logged in to Coinbase it a single screen to approve the payment. Then back to a page saying my order was complete. Couldn't be easier. This is a win for bitcoin but its a huge win for Coinbase. Their payment flow works well and I am sure Overstock accepting it will make it an easier sell for other merchants.
- toomuchtodo 13y ago
  Does Overstock.com have to wait at all for the transaction to be verified by the hashing network? Or do they consider it immediately verified?
  - Sambdala 13y ago
    For a transaction that either isn't shipped immediately (any retailer of physical goods) or that you can rescind (digital item with DRM), it's perfectly safe to accept a transaction that has been propagated to the network but that hasn't been 'confirmed' yet. However, you wouldn't want to, for example, run a gambling site that accepts and pays out bets immediately after they show up as 'unconfirmed' because you wouldn't have recourse if they managed to double spend.
  - fsckin 13y ago
    I would think that most merchants who asynchronously fulfill will assume the transaction was successful, then have a callback to validate before shipment and handle failure scenarios.
    - toomuchtodo 13y ago
      Completely agree. Was just curious if it showed up in the UX at all.
  - dangrossman 13y ago
    There's no actual bitcoin transaction going on that needs to be verified. When he purchased his watch, Coinbase decremented his balance in its database, and incremented Overstock's balance in the same database. No currency (crypto- or fiat) is involved until someone wants to make a deposit or a withdrawal.
nwh 13y ago
Wish people would stop using the term "bitcoins" as if they're singular metal entities, it seems to be where the perception that they are "too expensive" comes from. Bitcoin. Divisible to 8 decimal places.
- chaz 13y ago
  Isn't the same as accepting dollars? Or Euros? Or pesos? Plural seems right to me.
  - scarecrowbob 13y ago
    I think it's a pedantic point, as I believe that language is as language does.... however, there's no reason why it couldn't be like "gold", which is also highly divisible. You need the "s" plural for things that can't be divided (like dollar bills). Thus, we don't get paid in "golds". That said, semantically, coins aren't usually thought of as divisible things in a modern context-- they are pluralized, so bitcoin will probably be pluralized in the same way.
    - nwh 13y ago
      That's my thinking. Bitcoin is an outlier because "coin" is usually indivisible, where as "bitcoin" certainly is. You're never likely to see a price of more than one anyway, making the plural almost completely redundant.
    - VladRussian2 13y ago
      > Thus, we don't get paid in "golds". in case of gold it is in "kilograms" - still plural, even though it is divisible.
  - sp332 13y ago
    nwh has a point though. Bitcoins aren't things. It's not just that they don't have physical form. For example, you can record the serial number from a dollar bill and find it again later. You can't do that with "a bitcoin" because there is no bitcoin-thing that can be tracked, even digitally speaking. Each address has a balance, and each transaction deals with amounts of bitcoin. There is no owning or transferring of identifiable "bitcoins".
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- kaonashi 13y ago
  The more people rely on Bitcoin, the more volatile the economic activity surrounding it will be. It's not a 'failure' any more than a gold standard was a 'failure', but it's also suboptimal.
  - dantheman 13y ago
    As more people use it the less volatile it will be.
    - nhaehnle 13y ago
      In terms of exchange rate, Bitcoin will become less volatile, yes. I suspect that kaonashi was referring to something else: there are macroeconomic problems associated with a gold standard, such as its tendency to push countries into recessionary spirals, which are also to be expected if Bitcoin (or a Bitcoin-standard) were used as the "normal" currency. Note that this is not a problem as long as Bitcoin is only used as an intermediary during payment, where the majority use is $currency -> BTC -> $currency within a short time window, and where contracts are not denominated in BTC. However, an economy in which BTC is used as the major unit of account is liable to the same problems as we historically observed with the gold standard.
      - ogreyonder 13y ago
        After trying several times to write this reply without sounding snarky, because I am actually being sincere: can you link me to reading on historical problems directly caused by the gold standard? Or maybe some search terms? I've heard this assertion a lot in regards to bitcoin/deflation. However, everything I can find winds up in the same place. The gold standard was fine, but countries abandoned it so they could print endless money to fund World War I.
        13y ago
sshillo 13y ago
This is pretty huge. I'd be interested to know what overstock's strategy is for converting bitcoins back to fiat. I also wonder if there will be any tax implications here for purchases made in countries such as Norway that don't consider bitcoin real currency.
- beaner 13y ago
  Bitcoin is automatically exchanged to USD for them by coinbase at the time of the transaction.
- seiji 13y ago
  Why would Overstock want a bunch of tiny cars? http://www.fiatusa.com/en/ http://www.fiatusa.com/en/
james33 13y ago
How much volume are they actually going to get though? I'm excited to see more outlets accepting bitcoin, but to this point it still feels more like a marketing gimmick.
- kolev 13y ago
  They are not accepting Bitcoin. Coinbase is selling your bitcoins and giving the dollars to them.
  - james33 13y ago
    Right, which from the consumer perspective is accepting bitcoins. There's no need to be a smart ass.
    - kolev 13y ago
      Not really. The price isn't in BTC.
      - pantaril 13y ago
        But they are accepting payments in bitcoins.
        kolev 13y ago
        You don't get it, do you? One of the rules in e-commerce is to limit the path to the "submit order" button and remove any decisioning in the checkout process - otherwise you may lose the sale. Given Bitcoin rate greatly varies, if it Bitcoin is dropping, I won't buy as then I will have to spend more coins. If it's on the rise, I will wait more to spend less. In general, too much wondering to get the best deal. If price is in BTC and I own BTC, I buy when I need something without having to worry about it. Anyway, they don't accept Bitcoin as they: a) don't have a Bitcoin wallet; b) they don't have stable prices in BTC.
        13y ago
csmeder 13y ago
Is there a tax guide that would explain the consequences of me using some of the bitcoin I bought in 2013 to buy an item on overstock this month? As I understand it I would have to record the value I paid for the bitcoin in 2013, calculate the value it appreciated between when I bought it and the amount I am using to buy the item. And then report this as capital gains on my 2014 tax return? This sucks, this makes using bitcoin a lot more work than just paying with a credit card. Plus, it might mean having to hire an accountant instead of just using turbo tax?
- mcantelon 13y ago
  You seriously think the IRS is going to go after you for an order on Overstock?
  - cgore 13y ago
    Perhaps if you are a political enemy of $political_party_in_power.
    - mcantelon 13y ago
      Good point.
    - jasonwocky 13y ago
      I'm a political enemy of anybody who habitually doesn't pay their taxes, and thus by extension, raises mine.
      - mcantelon 13y ago
        You must boycott a lot of corporations.
        hbags 13y ago
        There's a difference between using legal tax structures to reduce (or eliminate) your bill, and simply not paying your taxes.
ddrager 13y ago
Just ordered a mini-helicopter on Overstock using Bitcoins. The checkout process was flawless. I used the Bitcoin client on my phone to send the amount by snapping a shot of the QR code on the website. Went right through, hit confirm, and the deal was done! Couldn't have been an easier process and can't wait to get my helicopter.
kyleblarson 13y ago
Could be interesting that they can tie physical shipping addresses to specific wallets.
- VMG 13y ago
  *addresses which are free and disposable
hairama 13y ago
Seems like these companies are rushing into this without fully understanding how the technology works or where it's going.
- d0ugie 13y ago
  And taking such risks impulsively yields big rewards, from time to time.
  - wdewind 13y ago
    Overstock isn't taking a risk here: they are getting the same exact USD they got before.
    - toast0 13y ago
      They're probably getting more USD than they got before, because the merchant fees are lower.
      - wdewind 13y ago
        Coinbase charges 1%. At overstock's volume they are probably getting a similar deal on CCs, although definitely not quite 1%.
- orthecreedence 13y ago
  If someone like Coinbase takes away 95% of the risk, then who cares? They just branded themselves as "forward thinking" and now have a potentially larger customer base (although they don't accept bitcoins if you're shipping internationally). Also, where is the technology going? Seems to me it's already there. If there are any fatal flaws that pop up, it's a matter of flipping the "accept bitcoin" switch to "off" and calling it a day. I don't see the issue here.
jrockway 13y ago
So does anyone sell FX forwards (etc.) on Bitcoin yet? It seems everything now prices their items in, say, USD, and then calculates the Bitcoin price at purchase time. This makes the economy very unstable as the prices are never consistent. If Bitcoin prices were stable, then people would start accepting salary in Bitcoins, leading to even more stability, and so on. Or is Bitcoin too young for that?
- w-ll 13y ago
  The Internet Archive pays some of its employees in Bitcoin.
JohnTHaller 13y ago
Overstock.com uses Coinbase and Coinbase handles the entire checkout process. It's really no different than checkout with PayPal. Except that it's never in bitcoin at all. Overstock never shows a bitcoin amount due, it's handled entirely at Coinbase's end. And no bitcoins are ever given to Overstock.com, they just get USD from Coinbase directly and the customer is charged the amount in bitcoins that convert to the amount of USD that their order is. It's a win win for Overstock.com, really, since they don't need to worry about the volatility and instability of bitcoin and only deal in USD but get to look forward-thinking by accepting bitcoin. Yes, they are accepting more risk because Coinbase.com could disappear overnight (FAR more likely than PayPal or Visa disappearing overnight), but they get some advantage for their risk.
- elwell 13y ago
  > no bitcoins are ever given to Overstock.com, they just get USD Ah, that makes sense. I was wondering how Overstock could take such a risk bitcoin's volatility.
  - asdfaoeu 13y ago
    Not really they've just replaced it with risk that coinbase goes bankrupt.
    - JohnTHaller 13y ago
      Exactly. Which IS a non-negligible risk as the bottom could fall out of the value of bitcoin at any time.
      - GigabyteCoin 13y ago
        Contrarily, the bottom could fall out of the U.S. dollar at any given time. A dirty-bomb could detonate above The Whitehouse tomorrow. We all have to place our faith somewhere. Some of us choose to place faith in numbers, some of us choose to place faith in governement. I prefer numbers.
ftwinnovations 13y ago
We recently began accepting it on our typing education websites http://www.Typing.com http://www.Typing.com and http://www.NitroType.com http://www.NitroType.com, though to an unfortunately meager response. Hopefully between Zynga and Overstock Bitcoin begins to be accepted as a true medium of exchange. The initial reaction was simply confusion and a lot of "what the heck is bitcoin??? is it paypal??", so the rollout really was more of a educational session than anything else.
- dispense 13y ago
  Users of Bitcoin are likely to be proficient keyboard users. People that aren't proficient keyboard users are not likely to be users of Bitcoin.
  - ftwinnovations 13y ago
    Well no, basically our audience is mostly made up of kids in school. That's the main problem.
    - CodeCube 13y ago
      But you see, it's not a problem at all ... at least, in the grand scheme of things. Every person that sees bitcoin in that checkout screen is going to say, "what the heck is bitcoin?" Then the next time they hear about bitcoin (like say, on the hit TV show Almost Human http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8LqlMzEe-I http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8LqlMzEe-I), they'll say, "oh, I've heard of that before, I wonder what it's about". And so on and so on. You're doing a service :)
      - ftwinnovations 13y ago
        Ah yes, agreed. I meant purely related to the previous comment implying that keyboard literate users are the only audience for bitcoins. And so I meant that my uses are not knowledge about bitcoin regardless of their keyboarding skills, being that they are for the most part quite young. But I'm definitely pleased to be educating millions of children about bitcoin. Actually it's all I expected when we began accepting it, but that is my way of showing my support. Just doing my part!
MattyRad 13y ago
It's refreshing that now I can spend my bitcoin on things I want! They got it working much faster than expected. Does anybody have any idea how returns would work? Do they just send the original amount of bitcoin to the payer's wallet? Or are returns even possible at this point in time?
- w-ll 13y ago
  Best guess is that you will receive the current USD value in coins back.
- andrewmunsell 13y ago
  From their site: "Returns and refunds on orders purchased with Bitcoins are eligible only for in-store credit, except in the case of cancelled or unfulfilled orders. Bitcoins can only be used for orders shipped to the United States."
  - MattyRad 13y ago
    Cool. Thanks!
timedoctor 13y ago
Great for publicity value. Not that useful for their business in any other respect (at the moment). This is a great time for ecommerce sites to start accepting Bitcoin to leverage it for publicity.
cadab 13y ago
So I wonder if anyone from the US could let me know, i'm from the UK and just tried to make a purchase it bitcoin, but I only get the option for CC, debit cards and paypal, no bitcoin. So is this US only?
dcc1 13y ago
US only, ffs there are countries outside the US

339 points by ironchief 13y ago

I'm impressed they followed through with this so quickly. Great to see the adoption starting to flow in places that non crypto nerds and tech enthusiasts visit.

blhack 13y ago

The importance of this news cannot be overstated. Overstock.com is the first "main stream" company (my mom shops there) that accepts bitcoin that I can think of. Wow. Good job, overstock.com team for getting this done so quickly!

eli 13y ago
I guess I just don't see it. To my cynical eye, it seems mostly like an easy way for Overstock to generate a bunch of positive press and perhaps make a few extra sales from bitcoin boosters. Sure, it's a nice milestone for bitcoin, but the importance seems, well, kinda overstated. I mean, a decade ago a bunch of big ecommerce sites took Flooz too, right? But hey, I thought the iPod was too expensive and Twitter was useless when they launched, so what do I know.
- thekaleb 13y ago
  I was listening to a podcast where the hosts claim that the CEO is a libertarian and loves the idea of BTC as opposed to Federal Reserve Notes. But in addition, it does give them press coverage as well.
  - ihsw 13y ago
    This is mentioned in the article: > Like so many others, he believes bitcoin can free the world from the control of big banks and big government. “It helps us fight the machine,” he says. I cringed reading this, mostly because normal people don't feel quite comfortable with sentiment like "fighting the machine."
    - VMG 13y ago
      Early movers are often ideologically inspired - Stallman is a radical hippie, Jimmy Wales an objectivist. The crazies make the big bets.
    - waterlesscloud 13y ago
      You might be surprised at what normal people actually think. Get outside and talk to some folks. Very few are friends of "the machine."
  - _delirium 13y ago
    He's a libertarian for certain strange senses of libertarian. For example he thinks naked short-selling should be banned, which seems more like a pro-regulatory position (not just a randomly chosen position... the campaign against naked short-selling has been his #1 political passion for years). Mostly I think he just dislikes the finance industry.
    - yapcguy 13y ago
      Naked short selling should be banned. It's not just a regulatory issue. When you short a stock, you have to borrow the stock first, and then sell it. Obviously at some point you will buy back the stock, hopefully at a lower price so you make a profit, and then return the stock to the original owner. When you naked short sell, you don't borrow the stock first, you just claim you do. Everybody trades pieces of paper without settling the trade. This might seem convenient but someone can abuse this. For example, sell a billion shares in a stock which you don't own / have not borrowed, at a fire-sale price, thereby causing the share price of a company to crash because people start panicking once they see huge volumes being traded at a low price.
      - paul_f 13y ago
        To naked short sell, someone has to be willing to buy from you a stock you neither own nor have borrowed. I think if they want to do that, they should be allowed to. Despite what a dumb idea that is.
        toast0 13y ago
        When you issue a buy order to an exchange, you don't get to specify that the seller needs to have the stock; you will only find out when the seller fails to deliver.
      - _delirium 13y ago
        If one is a libertarian, wouldn't the assumption be that the market will handle this scenario? When someone takes the other end of your short, it's up to them to do appropriate due diligence on the counterparty risk. Maybe they want to demand you own the underlying security; maybe they don't want to demand it. As long as it's free individuals entering into contracts, I don't see the case for banning them from a libertarian perspective specifically.
- deleted 13y ago
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chaz 13y ago
I'm not sure it's that big of a deal. I'm still looking for Bitcoin's killer app, and I don't think this is it. A killer app would take advantage of Bitcoin's unique properties and become preferred vs other payment methods. There isn't a clear reason for most consumers to go through the hassle/risk of BTC vs getting the consumer protection and rebates/rewards that credit cards offer.
- blhack 13y ago
  Have you ever used BTC to buy something? It's the ease of amazon's "one click buy", but everywhere. It's really, really awesome.
  - alste780 13y ago
    Will an awesome user experience be enough? :) Plus, merchants can reproduce this UX by integrating Paypal, or perhaps Venmo in the future. The user experience is not a fundamental advantage to bitcoin.
    - NhanH 13y ago
      I don't know about Venmo, but from a UX perspectives, paypal is hardly an improvement over just inputting credit card information.
      - aestra 13y ago
        For someone with a password manager and auto fill is most definitely is.
    - bdamm 13y ago
      It absolutely is. If I want to send money to my mother, who lives in a different country over 6000 km away, I have to go through absurd steps in order to do so. International money transfer. Western Union. Physically walking cash to some counter. If bitcoin is useful for her, I can just send her bitcoins. Paypal is frustrating; I have to make an account, she has to make an account, I have to fund my account, and to top it all off, Paypal can (and does!) refuse to transfer money sometimes. Absurd! This personal touch is the foundation of all that makes bitcoin worthwhile, in my opinion. The network is established and I can use it to send value to another individual or company, without going through any other intermediate. This is absolutely huge, in the same way that email is an easier way to send a message (instead of making a phone call) is absolutely huge (for email). People may choose to use services (like Coinbase) to make it easier, but they don't have to.

neals 13y ago

As a European, I have never heard of Overstock. Though they actually do ship here and prices can be displayed in Euro's. How big is this site? What is their angle? Are they just like a smaller amazon.com? Overstock sounds a little like lower priced articles from left over stocks or something...

givehimagun 13y ago
I think the left over stock is how they originally started. Based on where they are now, I'd categorize them as a smaller Amazon.
selectout 13y ago
While I know Alexa is far from accurate, it does show overstock.com to be the 621 largest universal site and 160th in the USA. That should show you scale. In 2010 (Fiscal Year) they has $1.1 billion in revenue with 1600 employees. They are publicly traded with a market cap just under $750 million.
- neals 13y ago
  That is actually many times bigger than I would have guessed. That they're accepting Bitcoin is pretty huge for the Bitcoin movement then.
deadfall 13y ago
The site is pretty big. Been around for a while. I just watched a documentary from many years back about stocks and they talk about overstock.com being a victim of naked short selling. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overstock.com http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overstock.com
- eli 13y ago
  Is there any evidence that the naked short selling was a real thing beyond the insistence of the CEO?
  - 13y ago

pat2man 13y ago

I just bought a watch using their bitcoin checkout. Since I was already logged in to Coinbase it a single screen to approve the payment. Then back to a page saying my order was complete. Couldn't be easier. This is a win for bitcoin but its a huge win for Coinbase. Their payment flow works well and I am sure Overstock accepting it will make it an easier sell for other merchants.

toomuchtodo 13y ago
Does Overstock.com have to wait at all for the transaction to be verified by the hashing network? Or do they consider it immediately verified?
- Sambdala 13y ago
  For a transaction that either isn't shipped immediately (any retailer of physical goods) or that you can rescind (digital item with DRM), it's perfectly safe to accept a transaction that has been propagated to the network but that hasn't been 'confirmed' yet. However, you wouldn't want to, for example, run a gambling site that accepts and pays out bets immediately after they show up as 'unconfirmed' because you wouldn't have recourse if they managed to double spend.
- fsckin 13y ago
  I would think that most merchants who asynchronously fulfill will assume the transaction was successful, then have a callback to validate before shipment and handle failure scenarios.
  - toomuchtodo 13y ago
    Completely agree. Was just curious if it showed up in the UX at all.
- dangrossman 13y ago
  There's no actual bitcoin transaction going on that needs to be verified. When he purchased his watch, Coinbase decremented his balance in its database, and incremented Overstock's balance in the same database. No currency (crypto- or fiat) is involved until someone wants to make a deposit or a withdrawal.

nwh 13y ago

Wish people would stop using the term "bitcoins" as if they're singular metal entities, it seems to be where the perception that they are "too expensive" comes from. Bitcoin. Divisible to 8 decimal places.

chaz 13y ago
Isn't the same as accepting dollars? Or Euros? Or pesos? Plural seems right to me.
- scarecrowbob 13y ago
  I think it's a pedantic point, as I believe that language is as language does.... however, there's no reason why it couldn't be like "gold", which is also highly divisible. You need the "s" plural for things that can't be divided (like dollar bills). Thus, we don't get paid in "golds". That said, semantically, coins aren't usually thought of as divisible things in a modern context-- they are pluralized, so bitcoin will probably be pluralized in the same way.
  - nwh 13y ago
    That's my thinking. Bitcoin is an outlier because "coin" is usually indivisible, where as "bitcoin" certainly is. You're never likely to see a price of more than one anyway, making the plural almost completely redundant.
  - VladRussian2 13y ago
    > Thus, we don't get paid in "golds". in case of gold it is in "kilograms" - still plural, even though it is divisible.
- sp332 13y ago
  nwh has a point though. Bitcoins aren't things. It's not just that they don't have physical form. For example, you can record the serial number from a dollar bill and find it again later. You can't do that with "a bitcoin" because there is no bitcoin-thing that can be tracked, even digitally speaking. Each address has a balance, and each transaction deals with amounts of bitcoin. There is no owning or transferring of identifiable "bitcoins".

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kaonashi 13y ago
The more people rely on Bitcoin, the more volatile the economic activity surrounding it will be. It's not a 'failure' any more than a gold standard was a 'failure', but it's also suboptimal.
- dantheman 13y ago
  As more people use it the less volatile it will be.
  - nhaehnle 13y ago
    In terms of exchange rate, Bitcoin will become less volatile, yes. I suspect that kaonashi was referring to something else: there are macroeconomic problems associated with a gold standard, such as its tendency to push countries into recessionary spirals, which are also to be expected if Bitcoin (or a Bitcoin-standard) were used as the "normal" currency. Note that this is not a problem as long as Bitcoin is only used as an intermediary during payment, where the majority use is $currency -> BTC -> $currency within a short time window, and where contracts are not denominated in BTC. However, an economy in which BTC is used as the major unit of account is liable to the same problems as we historically observed with the gold standard.
    - ogreyonder 13y ago
      After trying several times to write this reply without sounding snarky, because I am actually being sincere: can you link me to reading on historical problems directly caused by the gold standard? Or maybe some search terms? I've heard this assertion a lot in regards to bitcoin/deflation. However, everything I can find winds up in the same place. The gold standard was fine, but countries abandoned it so they could print endless money to fund World War I.
      - 13y ago

sshillo 13y ago

This is pretty huge. I'd be interested to know what overstock's strategy is for converting bitcoins back to fiat. I also wonder if there will be any tax implications here for purchases made in countries such as Norway that don't consider bitcoin real currency.

beaner 13y ago
Bitcoin is automatically exchanged to USD for them by coinbase at the time of the transaction.
seiji 13y ago
Why would Overstock want a bunch of tiny cars? http://www.fiatusa.com/en/ http://www.fiatusa.com/en/

james33 13y ago

How much volume are they actually going to get though? I'm excited to see more outlets accepting bitcoin, but to this point it still feels more like a marketing gimmick.

kolev 13y ago
They are not accepting Bitcoin. Coinbase is selling your bitcoins and giving the dollars to them.
- james33 13y ago
  Right, which from the consumer perspective is accepting bitcoins. There's no need to be a smart ass.
  - kolev 13y ago
    Not really. The price isn't in BTC.
    - pantaril 13y ago
      But they are accepting payments in bitcoins.
      - kolev 13y ago
        You don't get it, do you? One of the rules in e-commerce is to limit the path to the "submit order" button and remove any decisioning in the checkout process - otherwise you may lose the sale. Given Bitcoin rate greatly varies, if it Bitcoin is dropping, I won't buy as then I will have to spend more coins. If it's on the rise, I will wait more to spend less. In general, too much wondering to get the best deal. If price is in BTC and I own BTC, I buy when I need something without having to worry about it. Anyway, they don't accept Bitcoin as they: a) don't have a Bitcoin wallet; b) they don't have stable prices in BTC.
        13y ago

csmeder 13y ago

Is there a tax guide that would explain the consequences of me using some of the bitcoin I bought in 2013 to buy an item on overstock this month? As I understand it I would have to record the value I paid for the bitcoin in 2013, calculate the value it appreciated between when I bought it and the amount I am using to buy the item. And then report this as capital gains on my 2014 tax return? This sucks, this makes using bitcoin a lot more work than just paying with a credit card. Plus, it might mean having to hire an accountant instead of just using turbo tax?

mcantelon 13y ago
You seriously think the IRS is going to go after you for an order on Overstock?
- cgore 13y ago
  Perhaps if you are a political enemy of $political_party_in_power.
  - mcantelon 13y ago
    Good point.
  - jasonwocky 13y ago
    I'm a political enemy of anybody who habitually doesn't pay their taxes, and thus by extension, raises mine.
    - mcantelon 13y ago
      You must boycott a lot of corporations.
      - hbags 13y ago
        There's a difference between using legal tax structures to reduce (or eliminate) your bill, and simply not paying your taxes.

ddrager 13y ago

Just ordered a mini-helicopter on Overstock using Bitcoins. The checkout process was flawless. I used the Bitcoin client on my phone to send the amount by snapping a shot of the QR code on the website. Went right through, hit confirm, and the deal was done! Couldn't have been an easier process and can't wait to get my helicopter.

kyleblarson 13y ago

Could be interesting that they can tie physical shipping addresses to specific wallets.

VMG 13y ago
*addresses which are free and disposable

hairama 13y ago

Seems like these companies are rushing into this without fully understanding how the technology works or where it's going.

d0ugie 13y ago
And taking such risks impulsively yields big rewards, from time to time.
- wdewind 13y ago
  Overstock isn't taking a risk here: they are getting the same exact USD they got before.
  - toast0 13y ago
    They're probably getting more USD than they got before, because the merchant fees are lower.
    - wdewind 13y ago
      Coinbase charges 1%. At overstock's volume they are probably getting a similar deal on CCs, although definitely not quite 1%.
orthecreedence 13y ago
If someone like Coinbase takes away 95% of the risk, then who cares? They just branded themselves as "forward thinking" and now have a potentially larger customer base (although they don't accept bitcoins if you're shipping internationally). Also, where is the technology going? Seems to me it's already there. If there are any fatal flaws that pop up, it's a matter of flipping the "accept bitcoin" switch to "off" and calling it a day. I don't see the issue here.

jrockway 13y ago

So does anyone sell FX forwards (etc.) on Bitcoin yet? It seems everything now prices their items in, say, USD, and then calculates the Bitcoin price at purchase time. This makes the economy very unstable as the prices are never consistent. If Bitcoin prices were stable, then people would start accepting salary in Bitcoins, leading to even more stability, and so on. Or is Bitcoin too young for that?

w-ll 13y ago
The Internet Archive pays some of its employees in Bitcoin.

JohnTHaller 13y ago

Overstock.com uses Coinbase and Coinbase handles the entire checkout process. It's really no different than checkout with PayPal. Except that it's never in bitcoin at all. Overstock never shows a bitcoin amount due, it's handled entirely at Coinbase's end. And no bitcoins are ever given to Overstock.com, they just get USD from Coinbase directly and the customer is charged the amount in bitcoins that convert to the amount of USD that their order is. It's a win win for Overstock.com, really, since they don't need to worry about the volatility and instability of bitcoin and only deal in USD but get to look forward-thinking by accepting bitcoin. Yes, they are accepting more risk because Coinbase.com could disappear overnight (FAR more likely than PayPal or Visa disappearing overnight), but they get some advantage for their risk.

elwell 13y ago
> no bitcoins are ever given to Overstock.com, they just get USD Ah, that makes sense. I was wondering how Overstock could take such a risk bitcoin's volatility.
- asdfaoeu 13y ago
  Not really they've just replaced it with risk that coinbase goes bankrupt.
  - JohnTHaller 13y ago
    Exactly. Which IS a non-negligible risk as the bottom could fall out of the value of bitcoin at any time.
    - GigabyteCoin 13y ago
      Contrarily, the bottom could fall out of the U.S. dollar at any given time. A dirty-bomb could detonate above The Whitehouse tomorrow. We all have to place our faith somewhere. Some of us choose to place faith in numbers, some of us choose to place faith in governement. I prefer numbers.

ftwinnovations 13y ago

We recently began accepting it on our typing education websites http://www.Typing.com http://www.Typing.com and http://www.NitroType.com http://www.NitroType.com, though to an unfortunately meager response. Hopefully between Zynga and Overstock Bitcoin begins to be accepted as a true medium of exchange. The initial reaction was simply confusion and a lot of "what the heck is bitcoin??? is it paypal??", so the rollout really was more of a educational session than anything else.

dispense 13y ago
Users of Bitcoin are likely to be proficient keyboard users. People that aren't proficient keyboard users are not likely to be users of Bitcoin.
- ftwinnovations 13y ago
  Well no, basically our audience is mostly made up of kids in school. That's the main problem.
  - CodeCube 13y ago
    But you see, it's not a problem at all ... at least, in the grand scheme of things. Every person that sees bitcoin in that checkout screen is going to say, "what the heck is bitcoin?" Then the next time they hear about bitcoin (like say, on the hit TV show Almost Human http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8LqlMzEe-I http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8LqlMzEe-I), they'll say, "oh, I've heard of that before, I wonder what it's about". And so on and so on. You're doing a service :)
    - ftwinnovations 13y ago
      Ah yes, agreed. I meant purely related to the previous comment implying that keyboard literate users are the only audience for bitcoins. And so I meant that my uses are not knowledge about bitcoin regardless of their keyboarding skills, being that they are for the most part quite young. But I'm definitely pleased to be educating millions of children about bitcoin. Actually it's all I expected when we began accepting it, but that is my way of showing my support. Just doing my part!

MattyRad 13y ago

It's refreshing that now I can spend my bitcoin on things I want! They got it working much faster than expected. Does anybody have any idea how returns would work? Do they just send the original amount of bitcoin to the payer's wallet? Or are returns even possible at this point in time?

w-ll 13y ago
Best guess is that you will receive the current USD value in coins back.
andrewmunsell 13y ago
From their site: "Returns and refunds on orders purchased with Bitcoins are eligible only for in-store credit, except in the case of cancelled or unfulfilled orders. Bitcoins can only be used for orders shipped to the United States."
- MattyRad 13y ago
  Cool. Thanks!

timedoctor 13y ago

Great for publicity value. Not that useful for their business in any other respect (at the moment). This is a great time for ecommerce sites to start accepting Bitcoin to leverage it for publicity.

cadab 13y ago

So I wonder if anyone from the US could let me know, i'm from the UK and just tried to make a purchase it bitcoin, but I only get the option for CC, debit cards and paypal, no bitcoin. So is this US only?

dcc1 13y ago

US only, ffs there are countries outside the US