Topic: [ANN] BitcoinStore.com (Beta) - Electronics super store with over 500K items! - page 18. (Read 75307 times)

So we are using coin taint to attempt to track customer discounts across multiple merchants? I suspect this will lead to all sorts of customer complaints and ruin the reputation of all the merchants involved rather than generate sales. Anyone actually consider a high degree of privacy to be a useful feature of Bitcoin?

It doesn't look that bad, the sites that came before this looked far worse.

When you are ready with a fully-functional, attractive site. I have a marketing scheme idea for you.

1) Partner with TangibleCryptography, Bitinstant or another one of these cash deposit direct to bitcoin outlets.
2) Ask them to issue a coupon code for your store (say $100 off $1000). Coupons go to people who purchase $1000 worth of btc from them and who are first-time customers (I assume they do KYC to check this).
3) Eliminate coupon code sharing by requiring that the bitcoins used to make the purchase match the bitcoins purchased from the cash to bitcoin outlet
4) Identify a few popular items that you can offer competitive prices for.
5) Post the item and detailed bitcoin purchase, download, and coupon acquisition instructions on "slickdeals.net" Also post a price comparison vs. Amazon, newegg, etc.

Expect to lose some money off this. The goal is to get name recognition for the bitcoinstore + bitcoin acquisition methods in a very widely used deal forum.  
Ideally you can get the absolute cheapskates who populate slickdeals.net to regularly scan your site for new offers and post about them autonomously.

Presumably the name recognition will help your partner as well.

[I don't think you should do this until the site has been substantially upgraded. It looks a bit like a low-price scam site right now. (I mean that in the nicest possible way.)
Scam sites often involve purchasing hardware from foreign companies. These companies also ask for wire transfer, etc. less reversible methods of payment than credit cards.
Thus you have to improve your image]

Any timeline on the international shipping issue?

Yes, exactly. Thank you for extending the effort to understand this. I was afraid that my explanations are too convoluted or assume some advanced knowledge.

It would be also good for the Bitcoin itself if more users could actually build the Bitcoin application themselves and not rely on the high priesthood to provide them with a pre-made build.

There are several hundred SSD drives:

http://www.bitcoinstore.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=SSD

I think on Monday I will be ready to lower the order minimum.

So one distributes the source code under a FLOSS license, provides instructions on downloading the free as in free beer Visual Studio 2012 Express and compiling the software and bingo the censorship is effectively bypassed. In other words one can have software freedom, but only if one compiles the software oneself. A very interesting idea.

Well, I don't have an actual device itself, but my coworker has some evaluation unit from Korea. He is saying that it works exactly like Apple iOS devices except that the cost of development license is zero. On your own device, with your own developer license, you can run whatever you like.

This is why I said it would be a good test of open-source-ness: Satoshi Bitcoin client that anyone can build using free development tools (free as in free beer: Visual Studio 2012 Express). It would be a great experiment in portability and resilience of Bitcoin.

It is a Windows RT device, which means that all software for this device must be distributed via the Microsoft store. It is a closed censored ecosystem like Apple iPhone / iPad.

Ultimately you are probably right. But the current situation is that anyone can get a developers license for free together with Visual Studio 2012. So for the moment this would be an actual test of open-source-ness.

Are you aware of the fact that you will not be able to use Bitcoin with this device without first obtaining permission from Microsoft?

I want to buy a Microsoft Surface with bitcoins.  Will you guys stock this item?

I'm not seeing any SSDs for sale via your site. Do you sell them? If not, can you add them to your inventory?

Yes, that is me,  and at the half way mark, Bitcoin HAS outperformed Gold and Silver by more than 100x.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxC0dIBPzZg
I look forward to watching things progress over the next year.


There are already more than 15,000 employees ready to ship every single order that comes through Bitcoinstore.com
I don't need any investors,  just some diligent people to polish off the site.

Bitcoin is currently in a chicken & egg problem, but Bitcoinstore.com is one more step to bring the needed infrastructure into place to make bitcoins easy for everyone to use.

This is great Roger.

Reputable sites like amazon have absolutely no incentive to accept a currency that has maybe a few thousand users regularly purchasing physical (and legal) goods with it, and furthermore, to provide sanction to such a legally-uncertain and scam-ridden project. I think that digital currency will ultimately succeed, but this libertarian-utopianist approach with which bitcoin innovators on this forum expect bitcoin to grow makes me want to dump all my holdings and wait a year or two. Isn't this the same guy who bet $10k that bitcoin would outperform gold/silver by 100x by august of next year? According to bitcoin's market potential, it would have to grow many, many factors of 10 to reach real-world currency status, but it won't ever get there by trying to defy and ignore the world economy. Instead, our innovators create this insular, oftentimes hostile, community that wants nothing to do with the 'banker-controlled, fiat toilet paper money'.

Bitcoin will never achieve these wild utopia fantasies until our community's innovators realize that merely replicating institutions of the fiat-economy and then slapping on a "BITCOIN ACCEPTED HERE" logo is very much undervaluing and ignoring bitcoin's unique markets. Amazon has nearly 70,000 employees --- if Roger Ver expects this to grow into more than a novelty shop, he will need investors. And what to tell these investors when the flagship accepted currency has as few users as it does today?

A bitcoin debit card, where one can keep holdings in bitcoins and then instantly convert to dollars for a sale is a rational, step-by-step approach to bitcoin growth that allows it to display its unique features (ease of supplying, no banks) within the context of the already established world economy. Other examples of "piggybacking" bitcoin's use-value onto the world economy include superior competition to moneygram and other international send-money operations, micro-transactions (finally achieve goal of monetizing e-content?), and of course, black markets and other privacy-conscious transactions (VPN's). Once these connections to the world economy are in place, bitcoin will have attained sufficient popularity for such e-stores as BitcoinStore to succeed.

Are you planning to offer shipping via USPS for international orders yes or no?

By the way the first thing I look at when considering an online retailer is shipping options, and I really do appreciate finding this out without having to load up a shopping cart and going to the checkout. So as far as I am concerned this is critical to the User Experience.

We should have the kinks worked out in a couple of weeks. If you see anything that's broken though, please report it here!

Thanks,
-Jon

great news indeed! 

the shop though.. feels rather alpha right now. stuff like filters not working etc. should be obvious at first glance. i think i will check again in a few weeks.
800k$ per quarter seems like a lot for such a small economy. i hope it works out.

Wow, that's really cool.

The list of things that I need Fiat for is really getting thin. Basically only my groceries and clothings are left.