11 ms·

Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin

377 points by mrb 12y ago

twodayslate 12y ago
This seems pretty huge for Bitcoin. Newegg sells much more than computer parts now. Glad to see that Newegg is headed back more to their roots though
- gcb0 12y ago
  i would rather see they dump the crappy products that now dominates their catalog and amazon's. the world does not need yet another 500 models of USB powered ventilators.
sanswork 12y ago
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.
- mrb 12y ago
  You are wrong, there is tremendous consumer growth happening. The two biggest US processors (BitPay and Coinbase) release numbers every once in a while. One example: "Since [...] October, along with the integration with Shopify in November, [...] the transaction volume has tripled." Source: http://blog.bitpay.com/2013/12/11/bitpay-exceeds-100-000-000-in-bitcoin-transactions-processed.html http://blog.bitpay.com/2013/12/11/bitpay-exceeds-100-000-000...
  - sanswork 12y ago
    Where are you seeing it? Overstock the most regularly promoted name as a retailer has only seen dropping numbers since they started. Notice bitpay stopped reporting 7 months ago? Coinbase has also been called out on posting contradictory numbers on their blog posts in the past which lead to them deleting most of their posts related to numbers.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    - user24 12y ago
      I'd like to see a source for your claim that "Overstock ... has only seen dropping numbers since they started." I think you're probably getting it from the FOX Business interview in May, but that's not really as cut-and-dried as you're making out. [1] http://www.coindesk.com/overstock-ceo-patrick-byrne-1-6m-bitcoin-sales/ http://www.coindesk.com/overstock-ceo-patrick-byrne-1-6m-bit...
      - sanswork 12y ago
        http://onbitcoin.com/2014/01/31/bitcoin-executives-testify-in-new-york-to-persuade-regulators-coinbase-circle-overstock/ http://onbitcoin.com/2014/01/31/bitcoin-executives-testify-i... http://www.coindesk.com/overstock-million-bitcoin-sales-future-projections/ http://www.coindesk.com/overstock-million-bitcoin-sales-futu... http://www.coindesk.com/overstock-ceo-patrick-byrne-1-6m-bitcoin-sales/ http://www.coindesk.com/overstock-ceo-patrick-byrne-1-6m-bit... Jan 1 - 170K Jan 2-29 - $15K/day average Next 36 days to March 4th they do $400K - $11K/day average Next 83 days to May 27th they do $600K - $7200/day average
        user24 12y ago
        Thanks! Hmm. It is only to be expected that the initial spike would drop off. It'll be interesting to see if that downwards trend continues or not.
    - mrb 12y ago
      Overstock is just one merchant, one data point. Not enough to draw a conclusion. On the other hand, BitPay represents 30k merchants. And they did not stop releasing numbers. They recently announced processing $1 million every single day. This is 3.3x their daily average of 2013. Source: http://www.pfhub.com/bitpay-processing-1-million-per-day-overstock-com-gets-1-6-million-in-bitcoin-payments-773/ http://www.pfhub.com/bitpay-processing-1-million-per-day-ove...
  - aquadrop 12y ago
    https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions I don't see any growth. Also, 70k transactions/day - one average shopping mall.
    - pwim 12y ago
      Wow, that's amazingly low. Especially because I'm guessing most of these transactions are just mixing services. I wonder how much represent actual transfers of wealth between individuals? I would guess less than 1K per day, which would make it incredibly low compared to all the hype bitcoin has got.
      - macNchz 12y ago
        Indeed. In searching around to find something to compare these numbers with, I found that Walmart alone processed 10 million register transactions in 4 hours on Black Friday in 2012[1]. Even if all 70k bitcoin transactions every day were actual purchases (rather than shifting money around), it'd take 5 months to do what Walmart did in 4 hours. 1. http://news.walmart.com/news-archive/2012/11/23/walmart-us-reports-best-ever-black-friday-events http://news.walmart.com/news-archive/2012/11/23/walmart-us-r...
    - moe 12y ago
      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).
      - jdong 12y ago
        That hardly tells anything about consumer adoption though, but about trade volume.
        moe 12y ago
        That's true. Still 100% growth per year is not exactly 'no growth'.
  - lomocotive 12y ago
    https://blockchain.info/charts/estimated-transaction-volume-usd?timespan=all&showDataPoints=false&daysAverageString=1&show_header=true&scale=0&address= https://blockchain.info/charts/estimated-transaction-volume-... this looks like a typical exponential curve to me
    - jdong 12y ago
      That looks like the price spiking and lots of trades happening, or alternatively a major individual player moving their coins around. It definitely says nothing about consumer adoption.
      - knocte 12y ago
        Moving coins is almost-free, but not 100% free. Why would a major player want to lose money?
        jdong 12y ago
        https://blockchain.info/address/12sENwECeRSmTeDwyLNqwh47JistZqFmW8 https://blockchain.info/address/12sENwECeRSmTeDwyLNqwh47Jist... Transparency reasons, for example?
    - comboy 12y ago
      It's hard to accurately measure adoption level mostly because of the decentralised nature of Bitcoin, but looking at the transaction volume is a really bad approach. One individual sending money back and forth can generate tremendous volume (similarly with exchange moving their funds between hot wallet and cold storage). Same goes for transactions count (if you are moving big enough funds you don't have to pay fee), plus there are things like satoshidice or reddit tip bot that tend to move towards off-blockchain transactions now.
      - kalleboo 12y ago
        > One individual sending money back and forth can generate tremendous volume Which is what the "days destroyed" measurement looks to compensate for https://blockchain.info/charts/bitcoin-days-destroyed https://blockchain.info/charts/bitcoin-days-destroyed https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bitcoin_Days_Destroyed https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bitcoin_Days_Destroyed
  - kaonashi 12y ago
    Transaction volume and consumer growth aren't even close to the same thing.
    - mrb 12y ago
      Yes it is! The numbers I posted ($1M/day today, up from $300k/day in 2013) are transactions made on BitPay's platform for services and goods sold by BitPay's merchants, 99% of which are B2C companies (see https://bitpay.com/directory https://bitpay.com/directory). Real stuff sold to real customers, in bitcoins. I think you are confused and thought I was talking about transaction volume on the Bitcoin p2p network.
- asdfaoeu 12y ago
  True there's no advantage to paying with bitcoin currently and most people are just using it for the novelty value. But enough growth and merchants will just have to offer discounts with bitcoin purchases to stay competitive.
  - StavrosK 12y ago
    Isn't that illegal?
    - sanswork 12y ago
      Credit card companies use to dictate that you couldn't charge different prices for them but they were sued and lost so now you can.
      - digitalsushi 12y ago
        The Dodd-Frank act, 2010, with the Durbin Amendment, made it so that vendors could impose a restriction on credit card purchases up to 10 dollars. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodd%E2%80%93Frank_Wall_Street_Reform_and_Consumer_Protection_Act#cite_note-21 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodd%E2%80%93Frank_Wall_Street_...
      - yebyen 12y ago
        Citation please. I've been charged extra at my favorite Chinese restaurant for using a card, so it's not that I don't believe you, but I would really like to know the relevant decision. (Upvoted)
        belandrew 12y ago
        Visa and Mastercard settled so there was no decision needed. http://www.justice.gov/atr/public/press_releases/2010/262867.htm http://www.justice.gov/atr/public/press_releases/2010/262867... I believe American Express settled later.
  - mrb 12y ago
    If the numerous and massive data breaches, and subsequent credit card theft and fraud events of the last few years have taught us anything, it is that yes paying in bitcoins has one fundamental advantage: you are never handing the store your full billing info which can be stolen and reused by fraudsters. Now, Bitcoin also has its own security challenges (eg. how to secure a wallet), but there are solutions (hardware wallets) making it a fundamentally more secure way of transacting online.
- sfjailbird 12y ago
  > lose all consumer protections Nonsense. Consumer protection laws apply no matter the payment method.
  - Nursie 12y ago
    Not true in all places. In the UK part of your protection is the fact that there is a third party involved (your credit card issuer) who has a variety of responsibilities to the consumer over and above the responsibilities of the retailer. In practice this means you get better protection as the money can be taken back from the retailer by a third party with a big stick.
    - sfjailbird 12y ago
      Credit card chargebacks have nothing to do with consumer protection laws. It is just a feature of the credit card payment system (good or bad, depending on point of view).
      - Nursie 12y ago
        False. Here in the UK the credit card company, as a party to an incurred debt, has a legal responsibility to the consumer that encompasses various things like product quality and returns/refunds. If the retailer does not live up to their responsibilities then the CC provider has a legal responsibility to return the money. This is under section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act.
        sfjailbird 12y ago
        You get no additional protections regarding quality/returns/refunds when paying by credit card, that you wouldn't have if paying by bitcoin, or cash. You get the option of pulling the payment back unilaterally, but this is subject to those same consumer protection laws, so the merchant can still come after you if you do so without a valid reason as stipulated by the law.
        12y ago
- user24 12y ago
  > almost no consumer growth in the bitcoin world There are quite a few metrics on http://www.bitcoinpulse.com/ http://www.bitcoinpulse.com/ that seem to indicate otherwise.
  - sanswork 12y ago
    Which ones? The number of accounts on a website? The number of transactions is flat as is the transaction volume.
    - user24 12y ago
      I was going by the number of wallets & some of the repo stats. You're right though, it's not gaining consumer adoption, but it is gaining merchant, infrastructure and developer interest.
      - sanswork 12y ago
        Yup, definitely gaining merchant adoption(its awesome for merchants) and developer interest(its really interesting technology).
        user24 12y ago
        I think a lot of the merchant adoption is driven more by marketing than anything; newegg will get a spike of sales from enthusiastic bitcoiners because of this.
- oleganza 12y ago
  Paying in Bitcoin makes a lot of sense: 1) You don't have to provide private info like CC number. 2) If you bought bitcoins at X and now they are valued at 10X you may effectively enjoy 90% discount on all purchases. All these mythical user-protecting chargebacks are almost never used by consumers for refunds (companies who care about brand help them settling refunds) and almost always for the cases when you CC details got stolen and used by someone else. Of course, bitcoin payments do not leak your private keys, so the entire class of problems goes away.
  - sanswork 12y ago
    1) You're ordering something to be delivered you have to provide the same info. 2) True, but now once you've spent them does it make sense to buy them back and do it again? Because most companies are afraid of chargebacks and will take steps to avoid them. Bitcoin payments don't but any minor lapse in personal computer security likely will.
  - pathy 12y ago
    For 2), surely you would have to pay capital gains tax on the increase in value. To be fully compliant with the law, it may be hard to enforce in reality.
    - runeks 12y ago
      Depends on your country of residence. In the US, I believe this is the case, in Denmark, this isn't the case (http://taxinsights.ey.com/archive/archive-news/danish-assessment-board-bitcoin-currency-fluctuations-taxable-details.aspx http://taxinsights.ey.com/archive/archive-news/danish-assess...).
      - pathy 12y ago
        Of course. It does vary on a country to country basis. I believe most countries consider BTC an asset rather than a currency, thus incurring the capital gains tax. Sweden for example does, and I believe Norway as well. Funny that, Scandinavian countries usually have similar legislation. ( http://blog.btcx.se/bitcoin-nytt/dags-att-deklarera-bitcoin-2014/ http://blog.btcx.se/bitcoin-nytt/dags-att-deklarera-bitcoin-... )
- soup10 12y ago
  Bitcoin is still mostly a speculative vehicle. 9/10 links about bitcoin are not real news and are just propped up by people with a stake in it. Nobody else cares.
- aianus 12y ago
  To be honest, for some merchants (Amazon) I really don't need my credit card protections and I'd rather get the 2% back.
- xur17 12y ago
  I wonder this too - I rarely use cash right now, because I get: 1) Cashback (1-3%) 2) Chargebacks if needed by using a credit card. Bitcoins are basically like cash in my mind - very easy to move around, but no protections in case of it being stolen, and no cashback. I think Bitcoin is very neat technology, and has some useful features (transferring money between people quickly and easily with basically no fees), but I fail to see the incentive for me to use it to replace my credit card. The business receiving it receives all of the benefits. If stores passed the savings onto the consumer with 2 or 3% cashback, I could potentially see people using it. Especially if this was returned as points or something, similar to how it's treated for credit cards.
  - coldpie 12y ago
    Please consider using cash at small and local businesses when possible. You pay the same amount either way, and the extra 2-3% goes to the local business instead of to Visa. Additionally, I've been to one or two stores that will actually give a small discount on cash purchases. I hope that trend continues.
    - xur17 12y ago
      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.
      - jusben1369 12y ago
        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.
        zapdrive 12y ago
        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?
- walden42 12y ago
  I don't need consumer protection at Newegg. I don't know anyone that's ever had an issue with them.
  - NSEDhom 12y ago
    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.
    - Nursie 12y ago
      >> 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.
  - Nursie 12y ago
    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.
    - aianus 12y ago
      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.
      - Nursie 12y ago
- wyager 12y ago
  >lose all consumer protections in the deal. Well I don't care about the ability to do chargebacks from newegg, and I care a lot about the ability to not get my financials stolen by hackers, so the "consumer protection" Bitcoin offers here looks pretty good to me.
- awt 12y ago
  You should try paying for something with BTC once, just for fun.
  - sanswork 12y ago
    I have. I've been interested in bitcoin for years now. But my interest doesn't translate to me thinking it will be successful as a consumer tool.
BenC88 12y ago
Could somebody explain the reasoning behind "customers have 15 minutes to complete their bitcoin payment before their invoice expires"
- dingdingdang 12y ago
  Taking into account the potential for extreme value fluctuation seems a reasonable guess to me.
- comboy 12y ago
  It's something normal among bitcoin payment processors because of high price volatality (you could start a payment and only finish it if the bitcoin value goes down).
- nly 12y ago
  Bitcoin is decentralised, so, from Neweggs perspective, the transaction is never completed 'online'. Their payment processor (I'm guessing it's going to be Bitpay) has to wait until they see your transaction on the Bitcoin network before they tell Newegg that it's paid. Think of it as waiting for a cheque to arrive. A timeout is just sensible so you're not reserving stock.
  - beaner 12y ago
    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 buying for half the price. Bitpay guaranteed the USD price that was set on the item to the merchant. Now they owe it, but have only collected half. Thus Bitpay would be out hundreds of dollars (or whatever half your order is). Similarly, if the price rose by 100% over 24 hours you could accidentally pay double. So they put a timer on it.
    - logicallee 12y ago
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- halviti 12y ago
  Please don't comment unless you have something to contribute other than an unsupported opinion. Payment processors like bitpay put cash right into bank accounts, and people at newegg will likely never even deal with a single bitcoin themselves. If you're sorry a business has found another way to make money with little effort, you're probably not the audience for this forum.
- exo762 12y ago
  Elaborate?
sillysaurus3 12y ago
Great. So, when can customers expect their money to be protected after they convert their savings into bitcoin, without trusting their coins to a third party service like Coinbase, and without spending a solid week learning how to safely store their coins themselves? This is exactly a "schlep blindness" problem that a startup could be solving. Deliver a turnkey solution for consumers to store their own coins. Don't make them learn a labyrinthian set of rules, or worry about what's dangerous or what isn't. Protect consumers, and bitcoin adoption will follow. Large-scale bitcoin adoption can't occur until bitcoin is made safe. Did you hear about the guy who took his macbook into an Apple store for some routine repairs, and one of their employees made off with his 15 BTC? The employee hooked his harddrive up to a different computer, scanned it for a "wallet.dat" file, saw it was unencrypted, and robbed him. Was it dumb of this customer not to be using encryption? Yes. On the other hand, was it dumb of him to be storing so much wealth in bitcoin right now, given how easy it is to lose your money? Objectively, yes. This isn't an insurmountable problem, but people have to start working on it in order to solve it.
- runeks 12y ago
  I think hardware wallets (like the Trezor), or smartphones with a TPM module is the solution. This will take time, however (the latter more than the former). The reason it will take time is that the concept of storing your own money digitally, like is the case with Bitcoin, is an entirely new concept that software and hardware needs to adapt to. With all other solutions (VISA, PayPal, bank wires), you're asking someone else to transfer your money, with Bitcoin you're doing it yourself. Basically, each user needs a greater level of security than PayPal, VISA and banks have internally, since Bitcoin payments are generally irreversible after an hour or so (and often much sooner). This isn't something that is done overnight, and people have started working on it, but it takes time to, first of all, develop the hardware, and, second of all, develop and implement the interface between the hardware wallet and the actual payment request (ie. when I arrive at a BitPay invoice payment page, how do I pay using my hardware wallet?).
- ogig 12y ago
  There is people working on that issue. For example Trezor is an easy to use bitcoin safe. I think it's headed in the right direction: http://www.bitcointrezor.com/ http://www.bitcointrezor.com/
rickbrown 12y ago
Great Post
ThomPete 12y ago
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.
- sanswork 12y ago
  Or they see overstock getting a lot of press out of it and want on board.
pistle 12y ago
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 in pockets!??!?! articles because that's not happening. The real problem was never "people don't have a place to spend bitcoin." It was "people don't have time or risk tolerance to manage bitcoin."
- jafaku 12y ago
  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.
blhack 12y ago
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 cash stolen from them. The people keeping that much value stored on their local machine are usually pretty crazy bitcoin evangelicals. These are not normal people who bought some coins on coinbase. 2) It doesn't do $things_credit_cards_do! No, it doesn't! What you people seem to be missing is that it's a totally new way of transferring value. It has its own quirks, requires its own security models, etc. It also does $things_credit_cards_dont_do! That's why people have an interest in it!
- EthanHeilman 12y ago
  >It doesn't do $things_credit_cards_do! Boats are totally useless they only travel on water. Why would anyone prefer a boat to a truck for moving freight?
- pauletienney 12y ago
  I do agree. However, i feel there won't be strong adoption without a great advantage for customers.
  - laichzeit0 12y ago
    Let's see. I could pay for hardcore online pornography in a pretty anonymous way. I could board a flight with a flash drive containing $1million dollars in BTC. I don't have any draconian restrictions on who I can and can't exchange my "money" with. If you send me BTC and the network confirms I never have to worry about your cheque "bouncing". I could donate to Wikileaks without a company like MasterCard or Visa deciding who I can and can't send my money to. I can do all these things on my own without having some third party potentially fucking me over or charging me a monthly fee. I consider all these things great advantages. It also doesn't mean I need to abandon credit cards or other forms of value transfer. But in those cases I now have an alternative I did not have had BTC not existed. It's a weird black and white kind of logic that HN has where it seems for Bitcoin to succeed it must replace everything currently in use. That's a false dichotomy. They can mutually coexist. Right tool for the job.
throwaway5752 12y ago
Newegg itself is not accepting Bitcoin, it is not keeping a balance in Bitcoin, and it has no exposure to Bitcoin related risk. It has a payment processor, Bitpay, that accepts Bitcoin. As long as you have a competent engineer on staff, it's about as difficult as accepting PayPal. It's nice that this is happening, but the headline should be, "BitPay lands Newegg as client". The maturity of the services around Bitcoin helps everyone that holds them, so it's not unimportant. It's just a very, very far stretch from a merchant directly accepting and holding a currency balance in BC.
- aroch 12y ago
  > it's about as difficult as accepting PayPal Hah! Bitpay fails often, and it fails in mysterious ways. Manual intervention on up to 10% of payments is no beuno.
ghshephard 12y ago
Pretty amazing - I went and made a purchase on NewEgg using CoinPocket on my iphone - total time for transaction was under 10 seconds, including the time to scan the QR code, click send, and have Newegg recognize I'd sent payment. CoinPocket / NewEgg were within $0.15 of their exchange amounts on a $31.89 purchase. So, CoinPocket thought it was $31.89 that I was sending, and NewEgg thought I was sending $31.74. All in All - Bitcoin made purchasing a lot more easy than having to type in a Credit Card number or login to Paypal.

377 points by mrb 12y ago

This seems pretty huge for Bitcoin. Newegg sells much more than computer parts now. Glad to see that Newegg is headed back more to their roots though

gcb0 12y ago
i would rather see they dump the crappy products that now dominates their catalog and amazon's. the world does not need yet another 500 models of USB powered ventilators.

sanswork 12y ago

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.

mrb 12y ago
You are wrong, there is tremendous consumer growth happening. The two biggest US processors (BitPay and Coinbase) release numbers every once in a while. One example: "Since [...] October, along with the integration with Shopify in November, [...] the transaction volume has tripled." Source: http://blog.bitpay.com/2013/12/11/bitpay-exceeds-100-000-000-in-bitcoin-transactions-processed.html http://blog.bitpay.com/2013/12/11/bitpay-exceeds-100-000-000...
- sanswork 12y ago
  Where are you seeing it? Overstock the most regularly promoted name as a retailer has only seen dropping numbers since they started. Notice bitpay stopped reporting 7 months ago? Coinbase has also been called out on posting contradictory numbers on their blog posts in the past which lead to them deleting most of their posts related to numbers.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - user24 12y ago
    I'd like to see a source for your claim that "Overstock ... has only seen dropping numbers since they started." I think you're probably getting it from the FOX Business interview in May, but that's not really as cut-and-dried as you're making out. [1] http://www.coindesk.com/overstock-ceo-patrick-byrne-1-6m-bitcoin-sales/ http://www.coindesk.com/overstock-ceo-patrick-byrne-1-6m-bit...
    - sanswork 12y ago
      http://onbitcoin.com/2014/01/31/bitcoin-executives-testify-in-new-york-to-persuade-regulators-coinbase-circle-overstock/ http://onbitcoin.com/2014/01/31/bitcoin-executives-testify-i... http://www.coindesk.com/overstock-million-bitcoin-sales-future-projections/ http://www.coindesk.com/overstock-million-bitcoin-sales-futu... http://www.coindesk.com/overstock-ceo-patrick-byrne-1-6m-bitcoin-sales/ http://www.coindesk.com/overstock-ceo-patrick-byrne-1-6m-bit... Jan 1 - 170K Jan 2-29 - $15K/day average Next 36 days to March 4th they do $400K - $11K/day average Next 83 days to May 27th they do $600K - $7200/day average
      - user24 12y ago
        Thanks! Hmm. It is only to be expected that the initial spike would drop off. It'll be interesting to see if that downwards trend continues or not.
  - mrb 12y ago
    Overstock is just one merchant, one data point. Not enough to draw a conclusion. On the other hand, BitPay represents 30k merchants. And they did not stop releasing numbers. They recently announced processing $1 million every single day. This is 3.3x their daily average of 2013. Source: http://www.pfhub.com/bitpay-processing-1-million-per-day-overstock-com-gets-1-6-million-in-bitcoin-payments-773/ http://www.pfhub.com/bitpay-processing-1-million-per-day-ove...
- aquadrop 12y ago
  https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions I don't see any growth. Also, 70k transactions/day - one average shopping mall.
  - pwim 12y ago
    Wow, that's amazingly low. Especially because I'm guessing most of these transactions are just mixing services. I wonder how much represent actual transfers of wealth between individuals? I would guess less than 1K per day, which would make it incredibly low compared to all the hype bitcoin has got.
    - macNchz 12y ago
      Indeed. In searching around to find something to compare these numbers with, I found that Walmart alone processed 10 million register transactions in 4 hours on Black Friday in 2012[1]. Even if all 70k bitcoin transactions every day were actual purchases (rather than shifting money around), it'd take 5 months to do what Walmart did in 4 hours. 1. http://news.walmart.com/news-archive/2012/11/23/walmart-us-reports-best-ever-black-friday-events http://news.walmart.com/news-archive/2012/11/23/walmart-us-r...
  - moe 12y ago
    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).
    - jdong 12y ago
      That hardly tells anything about consumer adoption though, but about trade volume.
      - moe 12y ago
        That's true. Still 100% growth per year is not exactly 'no growth'.
- lomocotive 12y ago
  https://blockchain.info/charts/estimated-transaction-volume-usd?timespan=all&showDataPoints=false&daysAverageString=1&show_header=true&scale=0&address= https://blockchain.info/charts/estimated-transaction-volume-... this looks like a typical exponential curve to me
  - jdong 12y ago
    That looks like the price spiking and lots of trades happening, or alternatively a major individual player moving their coins around. It definitely says nothing about consumer adoption.
    - knocte 12y ago
      Moving coins is almost-free, but not 100% free. Why would a major player want to lose money?
      - jdong 12y ago
        https://blockchain.info/address/12sENwECeRSmTeDwyLNqwh47JistZqFmW8 https://blockchain.info/address/12sENwECeRSmTeDwyLNqwh47Jist... Transparency reasons, for example?
  - comboy 12y ago
    It's hard to accurately measure adoption level mostly because of the decentralised nature of Bitcoin, but looking at the transaction volume is a really bad approach. One individual sending money back and forth can generate tremendous volume (similarly with exchange moving their funds between hot wallet and cold storage). Same goes for transactions count (if you are moving big enough funds you don't have to pay fee), plus there are things like satoshidice or reddit tip bot that tend to move towards off-blockchain transactions now.
    - kalleboo 12y ago
      > One individual sending money back and forth can generate tremendous volume Which is what the "days destroyed" measurement looks to compensate for https://blockchain.info/charts/bitcoin-days-destroyed https://blockchain.info/charts/bitcoin-days-destroyed https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bitcoin_Days_Destroyed https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bitcoin_Days_Destroyed
- kaonashi 12y ago
  Transaction volume and consumer growth aren't even close to the same thing.
  - mrb 12y ago
    Yes it is! The numbers I posted ($1M/day today, up from $300k/day in 2013) are transactions made on BitPay's platform for services and goods sold by BitPay's merchants, 99% of which are B2C companies (see https://bitpay.com/directory https://bitpay.com/directory). Real stuff sold to real customers, in bitcoins. I think you are confused and thought I was talking about transaction volume on the Bitcoin p2p network.
asdfaoeu 12y ago
True there's no advantage to paying with bitcoin currently and most people are just using it for the novelty value. But enough growth and merchants will just have to offer discounts with bitcoin purchases to stay competitive.
- StavrosK 12y ago
  Isn't that illegal?
  - sanswork 12y ago
    Credit card companies use to dictate that you couldn't charge different prices for them but they were sued and lost so now you can.
    - digitalsushi 12y ago
      The Dodd-Frank act, 2010, with the Durbin Amendment, made it so that vendors could impose a restriction on credit card purchases up to 10 dollars. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodd%E2%80%93Frank_Wall_Street_Reform_and_Consumer_Protection_Act#cite_note-21 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodd%E2%80%93Frank_Wall_Street_...
    - yebyen 12y ago
      Citation please. I've been charged extra at my favorite Chinese restaurant for using a card, so it's not that I don't believe you, but I would really like to know the relevant decision. (Upvoted)
      - belandrew 12y ago
        Visa and Mastercard settled so there was no decision needed. http://www.justice.gov/atr/public/press_releases/2010/262867.htm http://www.justice.gov/atr/public/press_releases/2010/262867... I believe American Express settled later.
- mrb 12y ago
  If the numerous and massive data breaches, and subsequent credit card theft and fraud events of the last few years have taught us anything, it is that yes paying in bitcoins has one fundamental advantage: you are never handing the store your full billing info which can be stolen and reused by fraudsters. Now, Bitcoin also has its own security challenges (eg. how to secure a wallet), but there are solutions (hardware wallets) making it a fundamentally more secure way of transacting online.
sfjailbird 12y ago
> lose all consumer protections Nonsense. Consumer protection laws apply no matter the payment method.
- Nursie 12y ago
  Not true in all places. In the UK part of your protection is the fact that there is a third party involved (your credit card issuer) who has a variety of responsibilities to the consumer over and above the responsibilities of the retailer. In practice this means you get better protection as the money can be taken back from the retailer by a third party with a big stick.
  - sfjailbird 12y ago
    Credit card chargebacks have nothing to do with consumer protection laws. It is just a feature of the credit card payment system (good or bad, depending on point of view).
    - Nursie 12y ago
      False. Here in the UK the credit card company, as a party to an incurred debt, has a legal responsibility to the consumer that encompasses various things like product quality and returns/refunds. If the retailer does not live up to their responsibilities then the CC provider has a legal responsibility to return the money. This is under section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act.
      - sfjailbird 12y ago
        You get no additional protections regarding quality/returns/refunds when paying by credit card, that you wouldn't have if paying by bitcoin, or cash. You get the option of pulling the payment back unilaterally, but this is subject to those same consumer protection laws, so the merchant can still come after you if you do so without a valid reason as stipulated by the law.
        12y ago
user24 12y ago
> almost no consumer growth in the bitcoin world There are quite a few metrics on http://www.bitcoinpulse.com/ http://www.bitcoinpulse.com/ that seem to indicate otherwise.
- sanswork 12y ago
  Which ones? The number of accounts on a website? The number of transactions is flat as is the transaction volume.
  - user24 12y ago
    I was going by the number of wallets & some of the repo stats. You're right though, it's not gaining consumer adoption, but it is gaining merchant, infrastructure and developer interest.
    - sanswork 12y ago
      Yup, definitely gaining merchant adoption(its awesome for merchants) and developer interest(its really interesting technology).
      - user24 12y ago
        I think a lot of the merchant adoption is driven more by marketing than anything; newegg will get a spike of sales from enthusiastic bitcoiners because of this.
oleganza 12y ago
Paying in Bitcoin makes a lot of sense: 1) You don't have to provide private info like CC number. 2) If you bought bitcoins at X and now they are valued at 10X you may effectively enjoy 90% discount on all purchases. All these mythical user-protecting chargebacks are almost never used by consumers for refunds (companies who care about brand help them settling refunds) and almost always for the cases when you CC details got stolen and used by someone else. Of course, bitcoin payments do not leak your private keys, so the entire class of problems goes away.
- sanswork 12y ago
  1) You're ordering something to be delivered you have to provide the same info. 2) True, but now once you've spent them does it make sense to buy them back and do it again? Because most companies are afraid of chargebacks and will take steps to avoid them. Bitcoin payments don't but any minor lapse in personal computer security likely will.
- pathy 12y ago
  For 2), surely you would have to pay capital gains tax on the increase in value. To be fully compliant with the law, it may be hard to enforce in reality.
  - runeks 12y ago
    Depends on your country of residence. In the US, I believe this is the case, in Denmark, this isn't the case (http://taxinsights.ey.com/archive/archive-news/danish-assessment-board-bitcoin-currency-fluctuations-taxable-details.aspx http://taxinsights.ey.com/archive/archive-news/danish-assess...).
    - pathy 12y ago
      Of course. It does vary on a country to country basis. I believe most countries consider BTC an asset rather than a currency, thus incurring the capital gains tax. Sweden for example does, and I believe Norway as well. Funny that, Scandinavian countries usually have similar legislation. ( http://blog.btcx.se/bitcoin-nytt/dags-att-deklarera-bitcoin-2014/ http://blog.btcx.se/bitcoin-nytt/dags-att-deklarera-bitcoin-... )
soup10 12y ago
Bitcoin is still mostly a speculative vehicle. 9/10 links about bitcoin are not real news and are just propped up by people with a stake in it. Nobody else cares.
aianus 12y ago
To be honest, for some merchants (Amazon) I really don't need my credit card protections and I'd rather get the 2% back.
xur17 12y ago
I wonder this too - I rarely use cash right now, because I get: 1) Cashback (1-3%) 2) Chargebacks if needed by using a credit card. Bitcoins are basically like cash in my mind - very easy to move around, but no protections in case of it being stolen, and no cashback. I think Bitcoin is very neat technology, and has some useful features (transferring money between people quickly and easily with basically no fees), but I fail to see the incentive for me to use it to replace my credit card. The business receiving it receives all of the benefits. If stores passed the savings onto the consumer with 2 or 3% cashback, I could potentially see people using it. Especially if this was returned as points or something, similar to how it's treated for credit cards.
- coldpie 12y ago
  Please consider using cash at small and local businesses when possible. You pay the same amount either way, and the extra 2-3% goes to the local business instead of to Visa. Additionally, I've been to one or two stores that will actually give a small discount on cash purchases. I hope that trend continues.
  - xur17 12y ago
    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.
    - jusben1369 12y ago
      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.
      - zapdrive 12y ago
        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?
walden42 12y ago
I don't need consumer protection at Newegg. I don't know anyone that's ever had an issue with them.
- NSEDhom 12y ago
  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.
  - Nursie 12y ago
    >> 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.
- Nursie 12y ago
  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.
  - aianus 12y ago
    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.
    - Nursie 12y ago
wyager 12y ago
>lose all consumer protections in the deal. Well I don't care about the ability to do chargebacks from newegg, and I care a lot about the ability to not get my financials stolen by hackers, so the "consumer protection" Bitcoin offers here looks pretty good to me.
awt 12y ago
You should try paying for something with BTC once, just for fun.
- sanswork 12y ago
  I have. I've been interested in bitcoin for years now. But my interest doesn't translate to me thinking it will be successful as a consumer tool.

BenC88 12y ago

Could somebody explain the reasoning behind "customers have 15 minutes to complete their bitcoin payment before their invoice expires"

dingdingdang 12y ago
Taking into account the potential for extreme value fluctuation seems a reasonable guess to me.
comboy 12y ago
It's something normal among bitcoin payment processors because of high price volatality (you could start a payment and only finish it if the bitcoin value goes down).
nly 12y ago
Bitcoin is decentralised, so, from Neweggs perspective, the transaction is never completed 'online'. Their payment processor (I'm guessing it's going to be Bitpay) has to wait until they see your transaction on the Bitcoin network before they tell Newegg that it's paid. Think of it as waiting for a cheque to arrive. A timeout is just sensible so you're not reserving stock.
- beaner 12y ago
  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 buying for half the price. Bitpay guaranteed the USD price that was set on the item to the merchant. Now they owe it, but have only collected half. Thus Bitpay would be out hundreds of dollars (or whatever half your order is). Similarly, if the price rose by 100% over 24 hours you could accidentally pay double. So they put a timer on it.
  - logicallee 12y ago

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

halviti 12y ago
Please don't comment unless you have something to contribute other than an unsupported opinion. Payment processors like bitpay put cash right into bank accounts, and people at newegg will likely never even deal with a single bitcoin themselves. If you're sorry a business has found another way to make money with little effort, you're probably not the audience for this forum.
exo762 12y ago
Elaborate?

sillysaurus3 12y ago

Great. So, when can customers expect their money to be protected after they convert their savings into bitcoin, without trusting their coins to a third party service like Coinbase, and without spending a solid week learning how to safely store their coins themselves? This is exactly a "schlep blindness" problem that a startup could be solving. Deliver a turnkey solution for consumers to store their own coins. Don't make them learn a labyrinthian set of rules, or worry about what's dangerous or what isn't. Protect consumers, and bitcoin adoption will follow. Large-scale bitcoin adoption can't occur until bitcoin is made safe. Did you hear about the guy who took his macbook into an Apple store for some routine repairs, and one of their employees made off with his 15 BTC? The employee hooked his harddrive up to a different computer, scanned it for a "wallet.dat" file, saw it was unencrypted, and robbed him. Was it dumb of this customer not to be using encryption? Yes. On the other hand, was it dumb of him to be storing so much wealth in bitcoin right now, given how easy it is to lose your money? Objectively, yes. This isn't an insurmountable problem, but people have to start working on it in order to solve it.

runeks 12y ago
I think hardware wallets (like the Trezor), or smartphones with a TPM module is the solution. This will take time, however (the latter more than the former). The reason it will take time is that the concept of storing your own money digitally, like is the case with Bitcoin, is an entirely new concept that software and hardware needs to adapt to. With all other solutions (VISA, PayPal, bank wires), you're asking someone else to transfer your money, with Bitcoin you're doing it yourself. Basically, each user needs a greater level of security than PayPal, VISA and banks have internally, since Bitcoin payments are generally irreversible after an hour or so (and often much sooner). This isn't something that is done overnight, and people have started working on it, but it takes time to, first of all, develop the hardware, and, second of all, develop and implement the interface between the hardware wallet and the actual payment request (ie. when I arrive at a BitPay invoice payment page, how do I pay using my hardware wallet?).
ogig 12y ago
There is people working on that issue. For example Trezor is an easy to use bitcoin safe. I think it's headed in the right direction: http://www.bitcointrezor.com/ http://www.bitcointrezor.com/

rickbrown 12y ago

Great Post

ThomPete 12y ago

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.

sanswork 12y ago
Or they see overstock getting a lot of press out of it and want on board.

pistle 12y ago

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 in pockets!??!?! articles because that's not happening. The real problem was never "people don't have a place to spend bitcoin." It was "people don't have time or risk tolerance to manage bitcoin."

jafaku 12y ago
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.

blhack 12y ago

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 cash stolen from them. The people keeping that much value stored on their local machine are usually pretty crazy bitcoin evangelicals. These are not normal people who bought some coins on coinbase. 2) It doesn't do $things_credit_cards_do! No, it doesn't! What you people seem to be missing is that it's a totally new way of transferring value. It has its own quirks, requires its own security models, etc. It also does $things_credit_cards_dont_do! That's why people have an interest in it!

EthanHeilman 12y ago
>It doesn't do $things_credit_cards_do! Boats are totally useless they only travel on water. Why would anyone prefer a boat to a truck for moving freight?
pauletienney 12y ago
I do agree. However, i feel there won't be strong adoption without a great advantage for customers.
- laichzeit0 12y ago
  Let's see. I could pay for hardcore online pornography in a pretty anonymous way. I could board a flight with a flash drive containing $1million dollars in BTC. I don't have any draconian restrictions on who I can and can't exchange my "money" with. If you send me BTC and the network confirms I never have to worry about your cheque "bouncing". I could donate to Wikileaks without a company like MasterCard or Visa deciding who I can and can't send my money to. I can do all these things on my own without having some third party potentially fucking me over or charging me a monthly fee. I consider all these things great advantages. It also doesn't mean I need to abandon credit cards or other forms of value transfer. But in those cases I now have an alternative I did not have had BTC not existed. It's a weird black and white kind of logic that HN has where it seems for Bitcoin to succeed it must replace everything currently in use. That's a false dichotomy. They can mutually coexist. Right tool for the job.

throwaway5752 12y ago

Newegg itself is not accepting Bitcoin, it is not keeping a balance in Bitcoin, and it has no exposure to Bitcoin related risk. It has a payment processor, Bitpay, that accepts Bitcoin. As long as you have a competent engineer on staff, it's about as difficult as accepting PayPal. It's nice that this is happening, but the headline should be, "BitPay lands Newegg as client". The maturity of the services around Bitcoin helps everyone that holds them, so it's not unimportant. It's just a very, very far stretch from a merchant directly accepting and holding a currency balance in BC.

aroch 12y ago
> it's about as difficult as accepting PayPal Hah! Bitpay fails often, and it fails in mysterious ways. Manual intervention on up to 10% of payments is no beuno.

ghshephard 12y ago

Pretty amazing - I went and made a purchase on NewEgg using CoinPocket on my iphone - total time for transaction was under 10 seconds, including the time to scan the QR code, click send, and have Newegg recognize I'd sent payment. CoinPocket / NewEgg were within $0.15 of their exchange amounts on a $31.89 purchase. So, CoinPocket thought it was $31.89 that I was sending, and NewEgg thought I was sending $31.74. All in All - Bitcoin made purchasing a lot more easy than having to type in a Credit Card number or login to Paypal.