It's true they may save a bit but probably not as much as you might think. How many merchants do you know that accept Bitcoin directly, I don't think I've ever come across one, they all use some third party processor like Bitpay and I doubt Bitpay offers its service for free.
Even 1% discount could be worthwile for regular purchases or one-time high value ones (ie gold bar). Afaik BitPay didn't charge any fees initially, but introduced some small fees quite recently, still much lower than cc/PayPal.
How do you get your BTC?
Unless you're a factory mine, you *buy* it before you can use it. Which means fees/premiums/your time. Way in excess of that 1%
There are plenty of other ways to get BTC. You could
sell stuff/provide services and take bitcoins, altcoin trading, investing, gambling etc. You could also find someone who is willing to sell at market price outside of exchanges.Usual exchange fee for buying is around 0.2%, so much less than 1%. Fiat transfer fees are the issue, but are less significant if you trade larger amounts.
So you're saying that to get Mom interested in the 1% discount she could get in the 1% of the stores by using BTC, I should tell her to
1. sell something for BTC
2. trade altcoins (hard to understand where/how Mom got her altcoins, so I won't ask)
3. investing (just get some BTC by investing, Ma, I have no idea what that means but it's super easy)
4. gambling (Mom, just get BTC is by gambling, what can possibly go wrong?)
5. find someone selling off-exchange @ market (i.e. find a criminal or idiot)
Overlooking the fact that she'd need to
have BTC for everything other than (1), and that the intrepid financiers engaging in (2) through (5) end up in the gutter, crying hot salty tears, and also assuming Mom is not batshit crazy... do you honestly think she'd do any of the above for 1% savings (not from the stores she normally shops, but some obscure merchant she never heard of, the one that accepts BTC)?
? Roughly $8 US at current rate, $24 at bubble-burst? How, pray tell, did you plow through such a princely sum?
