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Overstock's First Day Of Bitcoin: $130,000 Sales, 840 Transactions, CEO "Stunned"
Submitted by Michael Krieger of Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,
Upon the conclusion of the Senate hearing on Bitcoin this past November, I tweeted that I thought we had entered Phase 2 of the Bitcoin story. A month later, following news that Andreessen Horowitz had led an venture capital investment of $25 million in Coinbase, I wrote:
As I tweeted at the time, I think Bitcoin began phase two of its growth and adoption cycle upon the conclusion of the Senate hearings last month (I suggest reading: My Thoughts on the Bitcoin Hearing).
I think phase two will be primarily characterized by two things. More mainstream adoption and ease of use, as well as increasingly large investments by venture capitalists. In the past 24 hours, we have seen evidence of both.
Phase 2 so far is going even more positively than I had expected. Overstock.com accelerated its plans to accept BTC by many months, and the early rollout has been a massive success. The company’s CEO just tweeted:
#Bitcoin's first full day on @overstock.com was a huge success: 840 orders, $130,000 in sales. Almost all new customers. #stunned
— Patrick M. Byrne (@OverstockCEO) January 10, 2014
This is absolutely huge news and any retail CEO worth their salt will immediately begin to look into Bitcoin adoption.
I hope financial publications that missed the biggest financial story of 2013 continue to mock it with covers of unicorns and waterfalls. It’s the most bullish thing I can imagine.
Furthermore, the purchased items are varied...
Items most purchased by #bitcoin users at @overstock: sheets, mobile phone cases, flash drives, bath towels. I expected more video cards.
— Patrick M. Byrne (@OverstockCEO) January 11, 2014
The apparent ease of acceptance and use has spurred demand for Bitcoin itself which has pushed back above $1000...
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@aerojet: I completely agree. There are quite a few of these crypto currencies out there. Why and how does Bitcoin go to $1,000 and continue to get front page coverage? Not to mention Congress gives it the o.k. nod. This is unheard of and unprecidented which means its being ran or manipuated by governmental powers.
A therefore B. Crystal clear logic. Thanks for your contribution! Keep up the great work!
so much for being anonymous.....
Bitkon is not anonymous.
This pseudo anonymous.
so i pony up $1000 to bitcoin for one unit. twenty minutes later i buy $1000 dollars worth of overstock crap, using my bitcoin account. meanwhile, bitcoin has increased by $100 in value. question...do i get change?
If one bitcoin is worth $1100 at the time of purchase, then you would pay 0.90909 BTC for goods valued at $1000.
But how many hours must I spend, deep under the earths crust, breathing in the Black Lung and listening to the creaking shafts wondering if I'll ever see my babies again, to mine that Bitcoin?
Think of the children. Sign the petition outlawing Bitcoin in Australia.
Daniel died because he was lured into a world where criminals and drug dealers use an unregulated currency called “bitcoin”
unless the overstock items were priced in bitcoins?
Until and unless there is MUCH wider adoption, goods wil remain priced in USD, Euro, etc.
When payng you will see invoice for $100 or whatever... you click on "Pay with Bitcoin" during checkout...Coinbase or Bitpay automatically calculate the current exchange btc/$ and you pay that amount of bitcoin. Period.
pipes " Until and unless there is MUCH wider adoption, goods wil remain priced in USD, Euro, etc."
Comment:
Even with mass adoption, bitcoins and evverything else is priced in fiat money. You go to overpriced or whatever place and they price their products based upon what they would get when converted into fiat. The only way you get a system that leaves fiat is when you can pay the slave masters in bitcoins or gold, etc. Until then, everything is just a derivative of fiat, which is why fiat must die.
I bought gas last week for $3.20 a gallon. It is now $2.98 a gallon.
Gas has no utility and do I get change back? Is this the argument you are making?
you don't have to buy one unit. it has 8 decimals
"it has 8 decimals"
And very soon, it will be have 128 decimals. LOL
Yes. You will be settled in cash.
Nope. Of course if the btc price falls to $900 twenty minutes later they won't call asking you for change, either
Well I'll be damned, they are using it as a currency after all.
Won't Overstock now sell those acquired BTC to buy more stuff to over-stock?
For now, yes. Coinbase handles the payments. They take the BTC, and deposit fiat to overstock's bank account so they can pay their suppliers. Very easy to set up - any merchant can do this.
In the future if they have suppliers who accept BTC, then the conversion does not have occur. Also they may choose to hedge BTC holdings once such services were offered.
o.co would save a little bit if they didn't have to exchange currencies so often, so I'm sure they'd like to have vendors that sell products in btc. I have no idea what fees they pay to coinbase as an exchange, although I doubt it is very much. Probably paying coinbase about 0.1% or less for currency exchange.
While I think digital currency too ephemeral, I hope this marks the beginning of a global transition to free money. Without monopoly power over money, governments will be able to do far less damage to the economy.
What's needed is an anonymous, gold-backed system to give the flexibility and anonymity of digital currency with the fundamental soundness and security of gold.
Who will provide this gold backing, and why would you trust them?
I'm sure these evil bastards will forego usury too. They're like angels and shit now.
Competitors emerge. Some steal. Others develop a reputation for trustworthiness. The market regulates. Genuine choices emerge.
Free banking. Look it up.
His point is that once you back it with a physical asset, you have then undermined the entire purpose of a digital fiat currency since it can be confiscated, repatrioted or even....stolen. Or another popular method in today's world, tied to a paper version of that commodity and then manipulated at will.
Who backs it with a physical asset though? You're most likely going to be trusting another person (corporation or otherwise) with storing an asset to back a currency - you're right back to where central banking started.
You had me up until "free banking". No one - and I mean no one - accepts risk or incurs expenses without charging you for it.
With all due respect, you are ful of shit. Look it up.
If you want to pump Btc or any other cc, then have at, but at least don't discredit the pumpers who've come to the discussion armed with something more potent than hot air and "look it up".
P.S. what non-critical thinker gave you an up arrow? Maybe half-an arrow at best, but the closing comments truly merit 10 downs
"Who will provide this gold backing, and why would you trust them?"
Bingo. What country do you put your gold vault? How much do you want to pay to maintain that vault? What about moving gold in and out? What about the chance that that nation's FBI knocks on your door and puts yellow tape around your gold? Fuck that. The physical nature of gold is not always a good thing.
What country do you put your gold vault? Whichever country you choose could just as easily outlaw bitcoin transactions as gold ownership.
How much do you want to pay to maintain that vault? A reasonable, modest fee.
What about moving gold in and out? What about it?
What about the chance that that nation's FBI knocks on your door and puts yellow tape around your gold? That same FBI could give you the choice of handing over your bitcoin account/password (whatever its called) or face X years in prison.
The physical nature of gold is not always a good thing. For the most part, it is. The ephemeral nature of bitcoin is also a liability.
Set it up, bro. I'll check it out after you create it. In the meantime be sure to keep bitching about fiat and bitcoin.
Gold backing will be provided by Hatoshi or or Latoshi. If you fully and infinitely trust some Satoshi, what prevents you from just boundless to trust some Hatoshi or Latoshi ? LOL
Yeah you could even get JP Morgan or Goldman Sachs to 'back' a digital currency with gold , or even the US Government - I am sure that would work just great ....
What you describe would only have the remotest chance of actually becoming a reality. When I think about the most likely outcomes, that one doesn't even make the list. The rent seekers will never willingly let go. To get this to stop we need to put a bullet in the head of each and every one of them. So my sense is that Bitcoin is within the realm of the plutocracy. It is either a seriously clever scam or a red herring.
The transition to free money under the strict guidance of the Fed and the U.S. Senate?!!!
You have a very rich sense of humor! LOL
If you don't accept bitcoin you're a fucking moron. Cost to implement $0. What have you got to lose?
So incredibly complex Overstock implemented it...6 months early.
You would lose the joy of surrendering 2.5% of gross revenue to the bankers.
What's moronic is blithely assuming that TPTB will simply allow this to continue without either shutting it (i.e. commercial applications) down, or taking their pound of flesh.
Any ebullience at this stage is predicated on Governments sitting back and allowing BC to flower unfettered. Good luck with that.
If they make no move against BC, or find a way to tax the crap out of it, then it may imply they want this to flourish.
The NWO has always spoken of a global currency. If you remove the physical cash and replace it with one that can be tracked/manipulated/taken, than this is the wet-dream of evil.
TPTB might want an independent form of currency to flourish? With no way to leverage it into debt?
I'd like a hit of whatever you're smoking.
Independent...? Are you kidding me?
The entire system of BC depends on the Internet. Who invented that? How many 3letter agencies intercept/read/copy/file/store every single f'ing thing on that Internet?
The evil we are not to speak of wants to steer all commerce to a single, global, cash-less system. They MIGHT want BC to flourish (said might because my crystal ball is in the repair shop), to get people use to having a digital-only form of transaction.
Once that system is in place, total control is just a keyboard click away.
But what would I know, I'm not sold on this concept nor do I see any form of cyber-savior. I only see the opposite... Cyber Hell.
Crickets...
No Soup For You!
A society without cash money - a society of slaves.
You've evidently had more than enough already, and while it might relieve your glaucoma's discomfort it hasn't cured it. Who the fuck said anything about independent? (aside from you and in italics no less. talk about a feeble straw man argument)
It isn't hard to understand why they want an all-digital currency. It is because you can inflate the hell out of it and there isn't these worthless coins and notes laying all over the place to illustrate to everyone the evidence of the crime taking place. And before you say "Bitcoin can't be inflated that way" rest assured, that if the powers that be are in any way involved, they already have the crime all figured out.
If this hunch of yours is enough to keep you out of the Bitcoin economy, my faith in Darwinism is reinforced.
You are confused between "Darwinism" and "cretinism".
Two sides of the same coin. Not confused in the least.
Why do ANYTHING that goes against TPTB then? Surely these are not men, but Gods, and only a fool would ever dare to defy them!
Now, let us all sit in a circle and sing praises to our Lord Jamie.
I think you totally missed my point TM.
Edit: oh, and don't go putting words or implications in my mouth, I don't like/respect/worship these ass-hats TM and you already know that.
The most repugnant of these pumpers are quite adept at employing transparent strawmen arguments and hyperbole.
To wit:
If you aren't a goldbug then you are either profoundly ignorant, unbearably stupid, or have an agenda.
And yes, everyon who is against bitcoin is implicitly in support of the Fed. Bitcoin is a DOLLAR ALTERNATIVE, not a GOLD ALTERNATIVE.
Why couldn't a cryptocoin backed by PMs be that alternative?
Why couldn't paper notes backed by PMs be an alternative?
Because history has proven that supposedly "backing" anything with PMs inevitably leads to theft and fraud via overissuance of that which is supposedly backed by PMs.
Why can' we just have stayed with physical precious metals? One can (speciously) call them "unwieldy", but it is a fact that NONE of the corruption and crimes inherent in our modern monetary world could have occurred had the world stuck to specie money as the ONLY currency.
akak shows his ignorance of free banking.
Specie was most assuredly NOT the only type of currency in existance.
It CERTANLY doesn't have to be one or the other. But akak can't stand the thought that someone would diversify 1% of their holdings into bitcoin because that hurts him, and if it hurts him, it MUST be evil, no matter how good it actually is for those using it and for society as a whole.
Tmosley, you ignore what I was claiming, and put words into my mouth that I never said.
I have never tried to claim that specie money (physical gold and silver) has been the ONLY type of currency in existence in the modern era (although in certain times and places it was, with salubrious results), only that virtually EVERY attempt at issuing currency "backed" by precious metals has inevitably ended in fractionally-reserved fraud and corruption. Paper currency, and most especially fiat currency, has been an unmitigated disaster every time it has been FORCED onto any population.
But, in the tradition of the inherent insanity of our species, we refuse over, and over, and over again to ever learn the lessons taught by each and every bankster-imposed scam to swindle the bulk of humanity from their hard-earned savings and standards of living with "convenient" paper currency.
It's time to call a spade a spade, and condemn ALL paper for what it is: a bankster-issued license to steal.
akak, you once again show your ignorance of free banking. Please use wikipedia to educate yourself.
Once you have read the article on free banking, compare and contrast that system to cryptocurrencies. You will likely find that cryptocurrencies are an evolutionary step of free banking, one that removes the possibility of currency mismanagement, as it is now managed by algorithm rather than by people, no matter how market regulated they are. There are those who have said that paper currencies would be ideal, if they were only managed by angels rather than men. Well, here, now, we have a currency that is managed not by an angel, but by distributed computing. You should never trust a small group of unaccountable men, but you can generally trust 51% of the people to be free of corruption. If there is more corruption than that, then you've got worse problems than a collapsing monetary system.
That is an interesting perspective, Tmosley, and I will certainly consider and ponder it.
Figure out a way to do that without relying on a trusted third party and the world will beat a path to your door.
Some idiots say: Bitcoin is a threat to the U.S. dollar.
At that time, they forget that Bitcoin is supported by the U.S. Senate and the U.S. Army.
http://bitcoinmagazine.com/8531/u-s-air-force-building-bitcoin-payment-g...
If someone thinks, that the system which represents a real threat to the hegemony of the dollar will have the support of the Senate and the U.S. Army, he is definitely a full idiot.
I doubt they have learned from their past mistakes and they will continue to prod a virus into an unstoppable masterpiece of evolution. Check out torrents, theyve been attacked on all fronts by govt and corporate interests, how'd that work out for them? Well, they took weak little old torrents and forced them into a fitness function of being immune to govt oppression and now torrents simply can't be stopped with all sorts of new technology being created and adapted in the pursuit of keeping torrents alive.
Wow- guess China is moronic for shutting Bitcoin down then, huh?
After all, what does China know about currency?
There goes 5000 years down the drain....
China allows private citizens to own and trade bitcoin. But they sure are making it difficult for their people to exchange Yuan to Bitcoin. Reading between the lines, China's central bank may be showing fear. Doesn't seem to matter, though. Volume of BTC trading in China is still the highest of any country.
Chinese are smart people. They will not allow to cheat themselves via any crap-coins, instead of real money - gold and silver.
bitcoin?! LOL
Grandiose ideas of universal happiness and prosperity without difficulty, always occupied the thoughts of fools.
Just another way for the dumb masses to buy crap they don't need, with money they don't have. At least it's all "virtual".
Digital. It's digital currency.
Bitcoin - it is not a currency.
Bitcoin - a technology. Technology grabbing money.
But they do have it. That is (one of) the point(s) of bitcoin. No fractional reserve banking.
Interesting how people get blinders on when a (their personal) holy cow is at the sword.
TM, do tell how unlimited splitting (50 decimal places, 500.....whatever eh? It's PAWssible!!!).... is any different from unlimited printing.
So, only 21 million bitcoins, EVAH, but hey, we can reprice/transact by simply decimalization.
Bitcoin as it is currently viewed/used mucks up price/value even more than fiat, not to mention 10-15% volatility in minutes being commonplace.
To infinity and beyond.........
OR, it is NOTHING but a medium of exchange. As a store of value it has no place in the monetary firmament, except as pure speculation.
ori
ori, that is literally the dumbest thing I have ever heard.
Decimalization is fine, because it *GASP* DOESN'T CONFISCATE PURCHASING POWER. It makes the owner of bitcoins their own central bank. They get to spend less and less on goods as time goes on.
You sound like a fucking Keynesian with that tripe.
Bitcoin will follow an S-curve based on its adoption. Babies are volatile as well, that doesn't mean that we don't associate with and rely on adults.
Think TMos....
Bitcoins are not limited. They are infinitely decimalizable (my word)...and as recent events have shown, infinitely manipulatable too....
So there goes the there are only 21 million bitcoins ever meme as well as as they are un-manipulatable.
I'm not sure whether it is a TPTB mark of the beast scam or not, but it hardly meets the definitions of money, wealth.... on any account really.
Trackable, traceable, hackable, crackable....heck, fiat looks better at this instant, you need to work really hard to make a good counterfeit from what I hear.
Plus, the very fact that you have "tumblers" to "wash" your coins means it is already filthy "money", kind of like blood diamonds....child porn, hard drug runners......
While I am all for open markets, bitcoin is wayyyyy too mafia friendly.
And everyone knows the mafia have the best technical minds working for them.
ori
Can't tell if trolling or just stupid.
You value state control far too much. Nice job conflating bitcoin with kiddie porn, though. I thank you for destroying your own credibility with that comment so I don't have to waste any further time on you.
Are you suggesting that a bitcoin represented as 1.0 is more valuable than a bitcoin represented as 1.00000000? You should get together with Peter Schiff. He has a similar understanding of fractions.
No it is not like unlimited printing FRN's. Each new FRN is the same value as all the other prior FRN's. This dilutes the asset value of the owners of the prior FRN's. That dilution of asset value is transfered (aka stolen) by the printing process, to the players given the new FRN's.
Cutting up the existing BTC's into smaller parts increases the number of (now smaller) tokens available to be used, BUT the holders of the existing BTC's are proportionally rewarded by holding more of the new smaller tokens. No extra player gets anything for free... unlike when new FRN's are printed.
This does not diulte the asset value of the existing owners of BTC's.
It's different from printing FRNs in the same way cutting 1 oz of gold into two 1/2 oz pieces is different from printing FRNs.
Ori, I'm curious - the difference between fractional Bitcoin transactions and creating more fiat! There are still 21m bitcoins, but there is more fiat in the system. One is a revaluation, one is a dilution. This is completely different?
Unless I'm missing something. If all of a sudden there were 42m bitcoins, that would be a dilution.
I'm neither pro or anti bitcoin.
And I'm happy to be corrected if I'm wrong about this premise.
Y'know what, all the way up the thread, I jumped the logic train on this one.
Dilution Vs. Revaluation
Thanks jmcadg et. al.
Apologies.....
ori
Bitcoin - it is not a medium of exchange. Bitcoin - a means of deception.
Bitcoin is like your collection of porn, just because you have one, does not mean you have someone to give you a blowjob. It just allows you to masterbate by yourself, for your own pleasure, with your imaginary girlfriend on your computer screen, therefore technically it's all "virtual". Yes, there are a few people who will make "real" money, be it fiat or not, but it's no different than the people who produced that collection of porn on your computer.
According to many so-called 'experts' these are Tullip Bulb's - how can you pay for something with a Tulip Bulb ?
When govts figure out bitcoin's best use is illegal purchases, money laundering, and evading capital controls, we'll see it banned soon enough.
That's not it's biggest use you Moron - that is what paper cash is for.
Although I do agree about the bit about capital controls.
Oh , and good luck banning a globally distributed computer file.
Without taking sides on the point, please allow me to assert that the better phrasing would be to say that TPTB would criminalize its use.
So many posters have told us that 'they tried to ban marijuana. how well did that work?'
That is a fallacious argument. Neither you, nor I, nor TPTB can ban anything. What TPTB can do, however, is to heavily discourage use.
Murder is illegal yet it happens. Marijuana use is illegal (in many places) yet it happens. The "you can't ban it argument" requires that we believe that no one is in jail for smoking or selling dope and that no one is issued citations for smoking it. The argument falls apart there, and what a poster should write is that "TPTB will penalize its use". I'm not saying that TPTB will do that, but they can certainly try.
In most jurisdictions in the USSA you need a license to cut fucking fingernails, and while plenty of folks evade that, you can't credibly argue that the requirement isn't widely adhered to.
Could use of Btc be taxed at a higher rate than USD? Yep. Folks in Colorado are now paying a special sales tax to buy dope. Could it be taxed at a national level? Yes again. "Our" Congress can pass a law to do anything they please - no matter the wishes of the people they putatively represent. SCOTUS has a great big rubber stamp for that too. (See: the majority opinion that Obamacare = Tax)
Why needed ban "distributed computer file" if you can just banning Bitcoin traffic ?
Or do you think that providers are above the law?
And how the fuck do you propose 'banning' bitcoin traffic ? You would need to shut the entrire internet down. Why don't we just shut down all the power plants and move back into mud huts while we're at it ...
Yup.
Dollars are laundered, used to buy sex slaves, used to by drugs, used to buy hitmen.
Your argument is that the government should ban dollars.
The government cannot ban yourself trade drug from the Afghanistan.
Unless bitcoin is designed by tptb... in fact if bitcoin would be all that we are told then it would be banned lomng ago, not endorsed by even Bernank himself.
And still, nobody have explained this little fact:
http://bitcoinrichlist.com/top500
500 wallets hold more than 35% of total bitcoins, this means that probably less than 100 persons hold more than half of all bitcoins... i would never touch such a wealth transfer scam.
No shit! Look at all the guys with 100 million dollars in "bitcoins". What a truly amazing scam this is.
When something is a scam there is a clear reason for it .
Please explain because I do not see why this is a scam , all I can see is financial innovation.
you dont see a clear reason? the stupidity of bitbugs blows my mind...
I agree completely.
What kind of maroon gets a six figure return in 3 years.
Or a measly 4 figure return in one year.
What a clown. What a fool. THose bitbugs are just downright idiots. /sarc
A bunch of dudes have over $100 million in "bitcoins" that were spun up out of nowhere by computer CPUs running a process that accomplishes nothing. And you don't see the scam?
The Fed prints money and "buys" government debt. It debases the currency and causes all kinds of financial imbalances but:
a) We know where the Fed is. They hold meeting. There are members and officers.They are backed by the banks and the government.
b) I'm no accountant but I'm pretty sure the Fed makes entries in both sides of the ledger when they do their trickery. One side gets funds and the other side a debt that will, supposedly, be paid back.
Try finding these two things with bitcoin. The innovation is that "money" is created without corresponding debt. It's a monumental scam and a sign of how foolish our world is. Like all scams it works because people want something for nothing.
I think you guys have forgotten money itself as a concept is a "scam".
It doesn't have any value. Not joules. No calories. It is entirely invented.
So Bitcoin conforms to that model. There's no difference. It's no more or less a scam.
Here's a multi-part question for you: Do you play video games? In those games, have you ever used real currency (dollars) to purchase enhancements, cheats, "weapons" or anything else? Why or why not? Do you realize that people are paying real money for such incredible made up nonsense. You realize you can, theoretically at least, write your own version of that game and give yourself all the features, power ups, cheats, or whatever you want? That's what is wrong with Bitcoin--sure, it uses crypto, yadda yadda yadda. But there is nothing about it, NOTHING that is real or difficult, it is no different than those virtual "things" that people pay money for. And, this is why I allege that it is a very cleverly designed scam.
But believe whatever you want. If you want to be a lazy fat-ass and use real dollars to buy virtual money, more power to you. Just understand how quickly "and it's gone" can take place in the digital age.
Binko,
You mention that Bitcoin is created without corresponding debt. Doesn't that also reflect negatively on Gold? As gold is mined or if a sunken gold treasure is reclaimed, is there debt attached? Is it a scam?
Bitcoin challenges us look again at how we define money and currency.
In prison cigarettes are often used as currency. If I and my trading partners agree to use bottle caps as currency, what business is it of yours? If I dig through the recycle bins and acquire bottle caps against agreed to rules, that would be a scam. Bitcoin's rules are clearly stated and bitcoiners agree to those rules through their participation. Do you know what the rules are? If so and you disagree with those rules, that is perfectly fine. The market is still working out who is a participant and who isn't, and what the value should be. The fact that some people have many bitcoins doesn't affect the usefullness of the bitcoin network. As if a bunch of dudes owning tons of gold doesn't make gold less valuable.
Yes, correct - you can see a scam of financial innovation.
Top 1% own 40% of all dollars in America (ouch, worse then what you just cited about bitcoin)
Yet what did you use to pay your internet bill?
worse? umm, not exactly, 1% would be 3 000 000 not 500 or 100, so... go learn basic math.
typo
"richest 1% of the American population own 34.6% of the country's total wealth,"
And the richest 20% have 85% of all dollars.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distribution_of_wealth
again, assuming that the populatuon of US is more than 300 million, then 1% of that is 3 000 000. With bitcoin we are talking about not millions of people but hundreds. A handful of people sit on shitloads of bitcoins (ca 50% of all bitcoin supply) that they got for free (first portion of bitcoins were piece of cake to mine). Everybody who pays into bitcoins now, trasfers their hard earned wealth to those people. Thanks but no thanks.
That's just AWFUL. They can only spend it once! It's like a complete holocaust that they can't spend infinite amounts of printed money!
Welcome to 3 years ago.
I wonder if these things will become like social media and people will just drop them cuz they're not the "cool crypto currency".
"Dude! Bitcoin is like so 2015. It's all about DonkeyPunchCoin now!"
There is no doubt in my mind that bitcoin is a psyop by tptb, so much endorsement from mainstream, unbelivable, better stay away from this nwo wet dream.
Yup.
Psyop by tptf. That's why bitcoin turned JPM into a hardcore patent troll?
JPMorgan's "Bitcoin-Alternative" Patent Rejected (175 Times)http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-12-15/jpmorgans-bitcoin-alternative-p...
So the crypto currency warriors defending the truth of unregulated money exchange are buying discounted 1000 thread count Egyptian cotton sheets with their Bitcoins?
I am confused, I thought Bitcoins were for fighting fiat governments?
Real men sleep in comfort.
Or you could've gambled some of your beer money 6 months ago and then turned your profits into gold and silver.
I'm sure it has been much more profitable for you to spend your days on ZH bashing bitcoin
This is an interesting development.
I could see indie gamers/artists taking BTC as the perferred payment method. Virtual goods for virtual currency, no middleman.
With all due respect, there is always a middle man...unless of course you prefer to throw caution and your Btc to the wind.
If you think that there is no need for middlemen (taking their cut for their services), then go out and buy 10 Btc, send them to my wallet, and I promise to send you the Brooklyn Bridge in exchange. Honest! ;)
The verifiers are already taking their cut of the transactions. You can circumvent that if you want to throw more caution to the wind, or if you pay for your gaming face to face. Verification also only tells me (the recipient) of the validity or your Btc. It doesn't do a damn thing for your receiving said bridge.
"Trust" is a word that appeared often in Satoshi's (and others) papers. Trust in miners, trust in fellow miners, and trust in a transaction's counterparties. Tell me that there's no way for someone to know who sent the Btc and who received it? Yahoo!!!! So you'll have no recourse if you don't recieve your bridge. Unless of course you want to pay an escrow service, and that aint free by a longshot.
The IRS are pleased to support Overstock and look forward to receiving delivery/customer data.
FED/Treasury doesn't use the IRS like it used to. They pull in revenue off of printing and out of the EU.
"new aphlaque_duck
Vote up!4
Vote down! 0
You would lose the joy of surrendering 2.5% of gross revenue to the bankers.
" FTW!!!Early bitcoin farmers who magically churned up bitcoins with minimal effort are joyous. They can exchange their magic "coins" for high value real-world goods.
When reality asserts itself the dumb vendors who jumped on this bandwagon will be left holding a bunch of worthless algorithms.
I thought these were virtual - now you are saying they will actually be holding something ?
Please clarify ?
typical bitbug, no brain whatsoever.
LOL Those Bitcoin owners sure couldn't wait for the opportunity to unload their bitcoins for something of value. What does that tell you?
That it is being used as a currency ?
Not the sharpest knife in the drawer, eh?
So 130k gets spent and that's a signal for you that they are dumping ?
Maybe you should sharpen up a little , bitcoin has a 12B market cap - 130k represents around 0.001% of that base.
Seriously? If you keep bitcoins in your bitcoin wallet instead of "spending them" or converting them to something else then you are holding them. What is hard to understand about this? Do you have money in your checking or savings account? If so, you are holding dollars to some small degree (or whatever other currency your account is denominated in)
BINGO Binko
In a nutshell.
Exchanging real goods for imaginary crypto currency, that requires uninterrupted electricity (it grows on trees you know), and an electronic device strapped to your ass 24/7, god forbid the network goes down, to get a loaf of bread.
Funny how it's mostly high end shit idnit?
Ah well, isall fun an games anyway.
'Til it isn't..
FBI agents stocking safehouses?
jb
Bitcoin up 5.86%
Dogecoin up 11.44%
To the moon!
wow
so intriguing
many thanks
don't forget to fill out your Schedule DOGE
http://imgur.com/EadNpL6
People converting their bitcoin into durable goods!
Bitcoin Is a High-Tech Dinosaur Soon to Be Extinct
Stephen Mihn provides very interesting historical perspective on Bitcoin. If you study the history you can know the future. Currencies come and go and some was even thought to be better than Gold for a while, but only for a while. Once you can "print" or "create new Gold" - it is not Gold any more.
http://sufiy.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/bitcoin-is-high-tech-dinosaur-soon-t...
What's your argument for once all 21 million bitcoins have been mined?
"What's your argument for once all 21 million bitcoins have been mined?"
An unlimited number of Bitcoin clones can be created. It's basically money printing, done by computer nerds instead of governments.
The argument that Bitcoin is deflationary is nonsense. Pure inflation of the money supply.
Sure bitcoin, litecoin,duduheadcoin......
Then the FX markets will trade between those instead of $, Euro, Yen, CAD, NZD etc etc.
Google "fungibility". Learning is good. Let's try it.
An infinite amount of metal can be mined. What's your point? Those other currencies will be iron to bitcoin's gold.
But I'm sure you're right. We should all transact in dollars like good little civilians instead.
If I can stop abiding by Fight Club's "1 fight at a time" rule for a sec, may I take a stab at "what's your point?"
Using your illustration, the points are that:
I'm not a goldbug (sliverbug would be closer but still not correct), but do the above bullet points answer your question? (Your reply would be yes or no, but as I've come to expect nonsequiturs and strawmen, I won't be dissappointed if you can't find the 'y', the 'e', and the 's' on your keyboard)
P.S. your statement that Btc will be the gold to the other cc's iron, is a hope rather than a statement of fact. Speculate onward!
You get a red arrow for pidgeonholing me with your y-e-s bullshit.
1. Gold is scarcer than iron. Yes.
Bitcoin is scarcer than all other cryptocurrencies combined. Yes.
Dollars currently have value despite a potentially infinite number of other fiat currencies. The value of the dollar does not depend on the number of other fiat currencies that exist (if that is your supposition, I invite you to PROVE IT). Why should bitcoin be different?
2. Gold has unique properties, sure. Bitcoin does as well. That is, it has first mover advantage. Sort of like the advantage gold has over platinum or palladium, which are both monetary metals, but have never been used as money as they weren't discovered until long after gold and silver had taken over the role of money.
3. There isn't a point there. Gold isn't valuable because of its industrial uses, and you are an imbicile if you think it is.
4. Same as having a bunch of fiat currencies. Sort of like telling early European settlers "Why buy Manhattan for $28 worth of beads when there is all that other land over there?" Well, Manhattan got settled early, and was in a good position for trade, and look what happened. BTC got accepted early, was in a good position for trade, so it went from $0.003 to $1000 in a short period of time. Maybe those other currencies will see more interest, like the rush to settle the West, but so what?
5. If you think metals aren't infinite, I must urge you not to go outside and look up. You might just have your illusions shattered, leaving you a broken, sobbing mess.
Thanks for putting words in my mouth, pidgeonholing me, and being a gigantic homosexual in general. I wish you nothing but the worst.
-1 for calling chem out for ruining an otherwise excellent rebuttal with an unnecessary insult and then making the very same mistake. otherwise, since everyone's butting in, will take a stab:
1. how so? of course if you add up all the other cc's, BTC will be more scarce, but you could say the same of any of them individually when compared with an aggregate of the rest. when compared individually, devcoins (take one example) are ultimately scarcer than BTC, because 90% of them are being held back to be given to those who earn them by doing productive work vs. spending a shitton of fiat to either "buy" them directly or buy a supercomputer to mine them
2. "first mover advantage" if you were to ever research the history of gold in human civilization going back 50,000 odd years, you might find that BTC is much more analogous to napster than gold in this respect.
3. Gold isn't valuable because of its industrial uses, in its current industrial uses, you would most likely be correct, but it is a huge assumption if you were to consider possible past & future potential uses beyond that which is considered by the mainstream.
4. BTC got accepted early, was in a good position for trade. sorry, will give you the early acceptance part, but comparing Manhattan's geographic advantages with BTC's trade advantage over other cryptos is a massive overstatement without further evidence to back up the claim i/m/o. the jump in price may or may not be due to its trade advantages over other cryptos, that remains to be seen. personally, it's my opinion that something like primecoin will prove to be much more robust due its unique cryptographic design.
5. good snark, though i would say that sobbing during the comtemplation of the infiniteness of space is a sign of becoming whole more than anything. but that's personal opinion and YMMV.
Insults aren't the same as employing logical fallacies.
1. The market will choose what is best. The market has thus far chosen bitcoin. You can tell by comparing the market caps of bitcoin and its imitators. Despite the fact that many people have, in fact, gotten rich quickly with bitcoin, it is not and never was a "get rich quick" scheme. It is simply a new concept created to make government issued fiat obsolete.
2. Napster had centralized servers to seize, if you will recall. Where do I go to seize bitcoin's servers? There are none. Who can I shoot in the head to end this threat? No-one. Sure there is a big mining co-op that is almost up to 51%, but if that were compromised, the people running it would abandon it pretty quick, as it is in their best interest to keep the system free and fair. Once abandoned, the honest version of the blockchain would quickly take back over.
There were other attempts at digital currency prior to bitcoin that better fit your analogy. BTC is more like bittorrent. Distributed and practically indestructable, even anonymous if you do it right. To claim that the value of bitcoin can be diluted by imitators is sort of like claiming that the utility of bittorrent can be diluted by imitator p2p clients. It may be true, but it's not really happening. If a better client comes along then so be it. I never said that you should put 100% of your money in bitcoin. I have made a point of saying that you shouldn't have more than 10% currently, and even that much is really extreme, it should be more like 1-2% of your non-dilutable currency portfolio, with the rest being in PMs.
3. The best money is completely useless industrially. If hoarding money harms the economy by denying some material to industry, then you have PROBLEMS. Also, you are no longer saving money, but SPECULATING IN A COMMODITY.
4. You can keep your opinions to yourself they are irrelevant. Only the market's opinion is relevant, and the market has selected bitcoin. This is clearly apparent in its market cap and the fact asserted in the very title of this article.
5. The point is that there is a practically infinite amount of metal in the universe, and there is a lot more of it floating out in near space than has ever been mined on Earth. When circumstances change, you had better be able to change your mind lest you be stuck holding a bag full of buggy whips in a world with FTL travel and teleporters, nevermind automobiles. Of course, gold will likely always be important, but it has different properties from cryptocurrencies, and as such they have different uses. Gold remains on top for value storage, as it requires physical force to steal, where your wallet might be compromised along with many others because of some new technology. But that risk is much lower than the constant theft of purchasing power at the hands of the central banks, which is why BTC and co. are a replacement for FIAT currencies NOT GOLD.
excellent points, worth considering. yeah, considering that i don't own a supercomputer to justify the arbitrage in the energy costs, and thus my ability to acquire BTC is based by the amount of fiat i can get my hands on, my opinion is irrevelant. this is precisely my point, irrelevant that it is. BTC might be as decentralized as bitTorrent in its technical design (depending how you feel about sha256), but in its monetary design (which is equally if not more important), it remains to be seen whether it's decentralized anymore than the minimum needed to have the appearance of being decentralized.
cheers for burying the insults. it makes your argument stronger, in my irrelevant opinion.
Market chooses Bitcoin? Where do you get this nonsense? Or do you think that the Fed and the U.S. Senate it is the "Market"? LOL
co-inki-dink that "precious metals" (in the monetary sense of the term) all have superconductive properties? or perhaps a hint of something deeper?
transactions will still be processed, because miners will still collect mining fees.
Whats that? Pay to move money? :D
Yes, but it is a lot cheaper than banks, because you aren't locked in to a particular miner. This is why it costs 7 cents to move any amount of BTC you might have in your wallet while Western Union charges you $50 to move $300, or why your bank charges you $20-35 to do a bank wire.
IRS..... Tick Tock Tick Tock. IRS forces you to show your cost in goods sold to create a basis(ie Precious Metals) so they can discover short and long term capital gains for you to pay on. Why do all the morons in this new BTC world think they will never be the on the same lightning rod ???
That is $130,000 without having the pay 3% to the credit card companies and banks also to process those transactions. That is $3900 vs. paying about 1% for a bitcoin merchant service which is $1300.
Do the math if Overstock averages half that over the next year.
$65,000 * 365 = $23,725,000
New customers or not if they paid swipe fees at 3% that costs them
$711,750
vs 1% processing fee
$237,250
That is 33% in overstock's pocket and/or margin to play with as far as pricing goes to compete against other retailers now. On your big ticket items or high dollar value overall orders you have price advantage over your competition who doesn't take bitcoin if the customer wants to pay in bitcoin. For example orders over $100 you don't charge the customer sales tax, free shipping, etc.
Also with that type of savings they can afford to hire a few tech people to deal with hedging the volatility of bitcoin and cut out the merchant completely if they want to.
Unfortunately, the size of the transactions ( in data terms) will grow to the point where you will have to pay more to have your bitcoin transaction prioritised. Over time, that cost to pay by bitcoin will grow.
Agreed but over time the technology will progress and you won't need a middleman period and have hedging strategies payment options all integrated into online retailers systems like Amazon.
They will be using stuff like mastercoin or ripple for example to bypass the exchanges outright like BTC-E for commerce and direct hedging. The priority thing will be pretty much a non-issue or a newer coin with faster transaction times for example will eventually step in and take the lions share of the crypto-currency market for online retail transactions. It is all building up now towards this sort of outcome at least for online digital transactions locally (except for China right now) and globally.
Remember companies like Overstock still need to buy things like office supplies and such if there is an eco-system where they can use those coins to buy stuff like office chairs, etc. they will be better off just recycling some of the coins that way instead of priority in getting cash from a bank, exchange if they accept them directly.
Once you count in the hassle of Bitcoin income taxes/reporting, is it worth 1% of all purchases one dies online? To me it's not.