Topic: A few thoughts to ponder (Read 836 times)

Hey man, thanks for giving directions..so there are answers to my "vendor"-concerns.
Have to admit I'm still more like "Hmmkay, seems not THAT complicated. Maybe I'll give it a try" and not really like "Alright, I want this BTC thing now!"

But maybe that's just me

Cheers

BitPay
 

That's a good question. Myself, I'd probably use something like the Mt Gox 24-hour or seven-day weighted average. Using spot prices would just be silly because they're all over the shop. Processors like BitPay possibly (not sure about this though) use the spot price but fix it only for 15 minutes.


BitPay: 1% - and they give you the fiat straight away!
Mt Gox: 0,6%


Avoid chargebacks and credit card/PayPal type fees.

That's a good point which also came to my mind. If one shop gets significant growth because of accepting BTC it could trigger other shops to jump on the train. That's a valid point.

An interesting question remains: How much more business will be generated just because of accepting BTC?
How many people have a steady flow or big stack of BTC which they would use regularly to buy goods in BTC-shops?

All other people have to buy BTC in order to buy stuff which they could have bought right away with $ . I would never buy BTC to pay with it if i could have paid directly with $/€.

Just talked to the vendor in me, here are his thoughts:
Since I'm a lazy vendor and i want things nice and easy (just as my customers), do I really have to sell them again to get Euros or Dollars? I could have taken €/$ in the first place, couldn't I?

Ok, I can imagine a bunch of nerds who got their coins early and cheap are keen to use them to buy things
So I could make some extra bucks parallel to the real bucks if I enabled them to spend their coins.
Don't you think the number of customers who want to use BTC is somewaht limited to the guys who mined their coins?
Of course those guys are keen to use the coins.
Everybody else has to buy them first, right? Why should they buy coins if they could simply buy stuff with Dollars?

This is confusing. I'm just a lazy vendor. So my advantage would be to get additional access to pretty limited circle of customers
and maybe they tell their Bitcoin friends.
Why don't they sell their coins first and buy my stuff with dollars?

How do I get $$$ out of my BTC? Automatically?
Who defines the exchange rate? What are my costs for selling BTC? I will have to include any fees in the price. Which means my BTC prices are different than my $$$ prices. This is confusing! I could re-calculate everything and spread the additional coists evenly. Which means my products are more expensive than before and the price could quite possibly be higher than in another shop which operates without bitcoin.
How can I calculate prices in realtime, since I noticed the exchange rate is pretty volatile? I want to make sure that this business is safe and I need reliability for my overall calculation.

Still not sure if a few customers more are worth the hassle. The people who'd like to pay with BTC could easily pay with €/$.
Whats their problem? What if those who just have their coins now have spent them all? Will they buy bitcoins for $$$ then to buy stuff at my store and I take the BTC and sell them for $$$? That means we both pay fees. 2x fees to a third party for a simple purchase at my store? What about cut the middle-man, just give me $$$
It seems to be a lot of work on my side for a few special customers.
***End of vendor emulation***

Please help me and explain to me why any "mainstream" vendor should feel the urge to allow a BTC payment from his customers. Attracting Bitcoin enthusiasts, ok. What else?

Let's hear some real advantages like "if you use BTC as payment option in your shop you will ..... " ??

Well, it would be a competition thing. If one big store started accepting them. All the BTC users would shop from there, then other businesses would be like they want a slice of the pie and start accepting them soon it will be important to accept them as your competitors accept them and you don't want to loose business.

The vendor could sell them to others or sell them for US dollars or Euro

That could help to get going.

I have to ask again: Why exactly should "mainstream" use BTC payment processing? Are there any advantages for the vendor?

1% isn't that bad. It's not as though PayPal's gonna be beating that any time soon.

Hopefully BTC payment processors will start coming mainstream, there is already Bitpay but it's fee's are high.

Which advantages do you see for any given vendor/seller if he began accepting BTC?

After receiving BTC for his goods, what will the vendor do with his coins?

I don't think BTC will ever go mainstream in the shops tho, but all major digital good sellers such as hosting companies and maybe even online music retailers will start accepting them. Imagine if Apple accepted them lol.

May be true but we have to get more than just BTC. It's going to fast to buy into it for most people. We need to start again from the ground up. Like NMC. NVC, TRC etc

Just a matter of time till companies start taking them on, that's what I think anyway.

I guess you could say crypto currency is somewhat of a gamble. Everyone is trying to mine these coins, while other say the network will implode. It would be great if more (Larger) companies started accepting BitCoin, and I doubt that will happen anytime soon.

I say diversity is good.

Another crypto currency shouldn't hurt, as you may be able to trade in different exchanges and in different currencies.

Another big exchange is definitely needed. Preferrably in Europe. Having said that, placing it in Europe maybe counter productive because the EU will try to put a thumb on it. But with Gox doing 80% or more of everything BTC related I definitely am not comfortable.
I like Gox, but that's too much concentration on one entitiy. btc-e maybe good, too. Most of my trading has taken place at bitcoin.de and i really like the idea of bitcoin.de being just an agent to bring to people directly together.
The bitcoin.de way of doing things of course takes longer than Gox, as you have to wait for the money to be transferred from one party to another. But there is no other bank account affected than mine and that of my trading partner. I like that approach even though it slows down the whole process.
Limiting the dynamics caused by automated trading (does anyone know how the Gox trading engine really works?) and trading bots may not be the worst idea.
bitcoin.de is planning to become an exchange similar to gox. If they succeed I am curious how and if things will change.
Also, Gox will be updating its trading engine with whatever outcome.

PS: They must be making shitloads of money at Gox.

Why do we do this?

What do we hope to accomplish?

Is BTC to much in value that we should buy alt currency such as DVC, NMC PPC and TRC in hopes they will rise in value?

What is your thoughts on starting 3 new coins that the newbies can create, promote and hoard?

Anything can have value if we give it value and a network

What say you?