Topic: BitPay black friday numbers suck? (Read 3922 times)

Also, they don't give actual Bitcoin expenditure, just raw transactions. Given how much hype there was, and how Bitcoin users were being urged to take part in some way even if it was only a dollar equivalent transaction, because it was vital to create the appearance of Bitcoin as a payment system for commerce.

Yeah Bitcoin is in the adoption phase , but Bitpay goes backwards compared to it.

Not fair comparsion when visa has ATMs on every corner. Bitcoin is still in very early adoption phase

We all have the ability to look beyond the here and now, towards the future development of Bitcoin. We understand that by using BTC as payment we will help to grow the economy and in turn increase the value of our bitcoins. So the extra $1.15 actually pays itself off in long term growth.

A lot of people bring up the 'deflationary problem' as the reason that Bitcoin won't succeeed long term. These people have no vision. They are continuously proven wrong by Bitcoin's massive growth, and they will miss out on the amazing opportunity thats staring them in the face.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/12/02/black-friday-set-a-record-for-bitcoin-commerce-bitpay-says/

"During the Bitcoin Black Friday event on November 29, BitPay processed 6,296 bitcoin transactions in a single day, making it the most popular day in the history of bitcoin commerce"
1 second of the visa transactions?

Depends: one could buy BTC from cavirtex at ~15% under BitStamp prices on Friday.  Since BitPay uses the BitStamp rate, one achieved a discount of at least 10% after all fees.  Of course, you needed a Canadian VirtEx account

the problem is that it costs you money to convert from fiat to BTC though. $100 USD to BTC would cost you an additional $1 + .15 cents.. so yeah, if you're looking to help out the development of BTC, it's worth the extra cost.. but otherwise it's going to cost you a little more.

i think i will still do this with an amazon gift card though. $101.15 or a $100 gift card, and i can get 3% back.. so a win/win.

This ... ^^

You can just immediately buy the bitcoin back if you don't want to lose any bitcoin balance.  That way you're still supporting the community by paying in bitcoin. 

A brief report on my Bitcoin Friday experience

I shy away from unbridled consumerism, but I took Bitcoin Black Friday as an opportunity to purchase things I would buy anyways, help spread the word about this innovative new money, and stress-test the bitcoin network on this busy shopping day.  (Interestingly enough, someone at the rec-center yesterday brought up Black Friday and asked if I bought anything--I mentioned the bitcoin promotions and it was a perfect segue into a deeper discussion about Bitcoin--turns out he had thought about getting involved during the summer.  He asked what the price was now, I said around $1000 and....man....you should have seen the look on his face.)

Back to my report:  scanning a bitcoin-QR code with your phone, pressing "send," and then watching the BitPay invoice turn green a fraction of a second later is slick and futuristic--no typing in my credit card information!  With bitlisten.com playing in the background, you can hear the music made as transactions like yours and others from around the world flood the network--the future of money indeed. 

My GF and I purchased loose-leaf tea from www.tealet.com, unique flavoured lollypops from www.lollyphile.com,  honey and caramels from www.beesbros.com/bitcoin-store.html, soap from www.shiresoaps.com, bitcoin T-shirts from www.shirtoshi.com and www.pirateprintingcompany.com, nail polish from www.superblacklacquers.com, and a few Gyft cards from www.gyft.com.

Most of these vendors used BitPay, so the payment and ordering process was fast and efficient.  The time between transmitting my payment and the BitPay invoice showing "paid" was consistently less than a second.  And perhaps 2 seconds later I would receive a confirmation email from the vendor.  My biggest complaint was the amount of unnecessary data most the vendors still required on the order forms.  I do not like to give out my phone number since I detest telemarketers--I was disappointed that many vendors would not even process the order if I left this line blank.  Unlike Visa that needs to match you phone number, ZIP code, etc, when I pay with Bitcoin the vendor shouldn't care about my personal details: all I want to give is a shipping address and a name to ship it too.  Why does anything else matter?

I had planned on purchasing coffee form www.bitbrew.net, but had two problems: the first is that the coupon code "BTCFRIDAY" for 15% off didn't work; the second problem was that I couldn't figure out where I was supposed to send my bitcoins to (in the 3 seconds that I tried to solve this problem).  Consumers want a simple QR-code based experience like the one BitPay provides!

The purchase that went bad

Lastly, I tried to order a 1/10 oz gold eagle from Amagi Metals. The BitPay invoice came up, I sent the payment, but then the BitPay screen suddenly disappeared without ever saying "payment received."  I noticed my shopping cart at Amagi still had the gold coin in it, and later I received an email from Amagi asking if I needed help completing my order.  I verified on the blockchain.info that my payment was in fact received and confirmed.  The funds are still sitting in the address I sent them to. 

Was this a problem at Amagi's end?  A BitPay problem?  A man-in-the-middle attack?  I don't know, but I will next send emails to both BitPay and Amagi to try and get to the bottom of this issue. 

I have made about 25 BitPay payments in total and this is the only one I've had a problem with (and of course it may not even be a BitPay issue).


Overall, online shopping with bitcoin on Black Friday made me very excited for the bright future in store for this technology!

This can't be stated strongly enough. If I could have bought stuff direct for BTC I would have, but I couldn't so I had to trade for fiat first.

Think of a time in the (hopefully) not too distant future, where you don't *have* to convert to dollars to buy something, and neither does the merchant feel compelled to convert to dollars when the sale goes through.

What is *that* going to do to the exchange price?

imho, that is when the real fun starts.

this. there's always a conspiracy theory running amok. even though it's not certain, i would tend to believe their numbers though. they are a new up and coming company/service, so if they were to fudge their numbers, they'd lose a lot of credibility. and is it so hard to believe that we are achieving record numbers with bitcoin transactions? it absolutely makes sense.

Thing is Bitpay can't win.
If they don't announce their figures, people will say they are doing poorly.
If they do announce poor results, people will talk about how poorly they are doing.
If they do announce good results, they must of cooked the books so they mist be doing poorly.

Kind of pointless even discussing it really.

Cheating is done when you think you don't get caught.

those numbers look pretty good to me. i'm not sure why they'd cook up their numbers, as it would only cause more of a liability towards them down the road.

Here's another reason why the Bitpay numbers may suck:

Because Bitpay's payment system still sucks.  (Sorry guys)

I shopped on two websites this weekend and *both* of them timed out with Bitpay's API.

Sat there for 20+ minutes waiting for the bitpay payment page to refresh and confirm payment, and it never did.

Both merchants got all my invo and completed orders, but I was given no confirmation page.   Nothing.

Pretty sure people bailed while trying to buy.

Amazes me that Bitpay is the biggest and most successful and they don't have basic shit like this figured out yet ....

I've opened a ticket with them on it.  Unfortunately one of their employees who answers tickets has a difficult time comprehending complex descriptions of things.

Nowhere if they don't actually release verifiable data.  But to the OP question, do Bitpay's numbers suck?  I'd ask compared to what or whom?  What are "non-suck" numbers?  If the 6% of all Bitcoin transactions is to be believed, for Bitpay, that's likely a huge success.  As for Bitcoin supposedly being a transactional currency, who's $1000+ price is justified by merchant spending and not just speculation, that's a terrible number.  Just depends on the perspective of the individual.  

i doubt the numbers will look bad. there was lots of bitcoin fervor and fever this year.. maybe they are probably just withholding the information until it's "good times to release the news." maybe they are holding it for when they want for a rally to occur  

Somewhere between the left and right hemispheres of Anthony Gallippi.

True but where else is the data going to come from?