Topic: BitPay Reaches New Heights, Accumulates More Than 30,000 Merchants Globally (Read 917 times)

I agree. Bitpay allows companies to cash out, which bitpay then has to sell the btc thru an exchange, which is subject to monitoring by taxing authoritarians. Why invite that curse??
In the short term Bitpay may be "helping adoption rates" but only in a half measure way. It creates constant dollar price pressure rather than growing the bitcoin "accept and then spend/pay" network. They are not helping to convert to a btc as money economy/world. Rather they are making it easier for btc hodlers to buy things and merchants to cash out.

We need companies to accept bitcoin, then spend them as money. I think Patrick Byrne said he would consider paying his workers in BTC. I've read of some start-ups paying their workers in BTC. This is great but we need also want all the pizza joints to pay for flour, electronics retailers to pay warehouses and manufacturers, and bitcoins to go B2B generally.

Bitpay is a middleman, imposing fees on businesses for "services". Unless these businesses are coerced to accept thru bitpay for taxation reasons, they will very quickly realize they can save 1% by managing their own wallets. Bitcoin disintermediates middlemen.
Expect to see a tax placed on bitcoin exchanges and businesses forced to use "btc acceptance services".

That is where bitpay is leading us. We need businesses to accept btc as money, not dollar vouchers.

there could be 1 million merchants and the price is at 200 USD. people also have to use it.

While I understand your concern (in that it does usually result on coins going right back on the market), it also helps create liquidity. Over time we will hit a stable price range, at which the effects will be negligible and the volume/liquidity itself will be well worth it. It'll just take a while to get there.

to be honest I'm glad that more merchants are accepting "bitcoins" as payments, but in reality they are just extending their support for cash in most cases. These vendors are just using these payment processors to get more USD from other customers, then these companies put the coins back for sell to individuals on bitstamp. That net effect moves bitcoins from holders to other private buyers, while undercutting market prices to ensure the sale of the coins in a timely manner.

I really hope that these companies are holding at least some of the coins they are receiving, otherwise I think the increase of selling of bitcoins could ultimately hurt bitcoin price in the short term.

We need Coinbase to step it up in the merchant arena. Most businesses I know of are just going with Bitpay because they are the ones being innovative. CB is falling behind bad.

Very true. Number of clients is one thing, actual volume is is what it counts. The few merchants listed in the article are big names, but I suspect has low volumes compared to coinbase.

Any idea about the daily transaction volumes (equivalent to USD) and the number of clients for Coinbase? I did a simple Google search, but couldn't find any of the latest figures.

Open sourced cart software would be an awesome thing. I know larger businesses will still need merchant services to process orders etc. but it would be great for small start up sites. The fees for having a cart built if you don't know how to code it is exorbitant. 

In the spirit of bitcoin we should really have an open source decentralized way to provide web based payments...

There are others, like coinbase. The only difference is Bitpay is making the addons for carts, and paying the fees to get on sites like 3dcart which is $5000.

im thinking 50k by end of 2014

Not to rain on BitPay's achievement, but we REALLY need competition.

Monopoly isn't good for any market.

When they had the new EU HQ in Amsterdam opened they said; they expected a nice 35k merchants by the end of this year, but they are now sitting on 30k!!!

100k end 2014. Bitcoin price will go much higher sooner ore later

According to the company insiders at BitPay, it has grown exponentially in the past couple of years.
For instance, whereas there were close to 1,000 merchants signed up in September 2012, the number went up to 10,000 merchants a year later in September 2013.
Currently, the company has more than 30,000 merchants globally.

Not bad at all

BitPay Reaches New Heights, Accumulates More Than 30,000 Merchants Globally
http://www.forexminute.com/bitcoin/bitpay-reaches-new-heights-accumulates-more-than-30000-merchants-globally-33301