"Merchant acceptance is NEGATIVE for bitcoin" - page 2.

teukon

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Quote from: Melbustus on April 15, 2014, 10:19:12 PM

FWIW, Peter's brother and business partner, Andrew Schiff, seems a little more open to bitcoin. I spoke with him after a debate with Jeffrey Tucker a couple months back. Andrew is clearly influenced by his brother's stance, but also had some criticism of some of Peter's opinions, and was far more content to basically say "let's wait and see; maybe it'll work" than Peter is. Too bad Peter's the more public celebrity, though.

Interesting, I didn't know this. Let's see what I can add:

Tow Woods, an anarcho-capitalist and senior fellow at the Mises Institute, regularly fills in for Peter on his show. He's really quite interested in Bitcoin and while he reserves judgement on the technology as a whole (recognising a lack of strong historical parallels and that his own understanding is limited), he has commented on being impressed with the logic and lucidity demonstrated by various Bitcoin proponents (Erik Voorhees is his "go to guy").

I reject Peter's claim that greater merchant adoption will suppress the price. It seems as though he's ignoring why people are holding bitcoins in the first place. I find it almost impossible to justify the assumption that most people will want to reduce the dollar value of their bitcoin holdings as those bitcoins become more useful.

Mageant

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First it was Bitcoin doesn't work because people hoard it.

Now it's Bitcoin doesn't work because people *spend* it???

jparsley

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I dont think so. Although massive sells are the main reason for the recent drop

franky1

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merchant acceptance is negative?

whoever thinks that needs to talk to overstock.com, tiger direct.com foodler.com, and the other thousands of businesses. the story appears to be a opinion of a person and not a research result from many merchant interviews. thats why i think that the person making such a remark, is some one creating FUD to get cheap coins

RomertL

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I'm actually a merchant about to start to accept Bitcoin, but expect most sells to continue to be in fiat even if I give like 10% off for btc purchases, but let's see. If I against all odds get lots of purchases in btc I will put more effort in trying to spend btc rather than just holding on to them like I do now. I really like the idea of being completely out of the loop, but might be some time before that's possible...

jbrnt

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If a popular merchant accepts bitcoin, a lot more people will buy bitcoin for purchases. The amount of bitcoins users buy will be more than the merchant will sell after the purchase, so is a positive.

RomertL

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many merchants that starts to receive will också start to be more interested in SPENDING btc and will have more opportunities to do so. And some of the employees will probably ask for some of the salary in btc. Eventually many people will both earn AND spend most of the salary in btc and then it gets really interesting. Then we have something that resembles a currency more than a high risk investment, something that starts to seriously compete with fiat.

This will at least longterm have a stabilizing affect and drive up the price as I gets more useful and attracts booth investors and normal users.

franky1

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the real secret is. when rich people find out about bitcoin, they will try any tactic they can to tempt others not to buy in.. simply so they can buy in cheaper.

bananas

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It seems that Peter pointed a fact that nobody noticed. But as the market is manipulated, who knows.

testigodehumanidad

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Both extremes are off here. Peter Schiff is correct in saying that if 10x more businesses accepted bitcoin today, we might have a surge of sell orders creating downward pressure. He just leaves it there, however. If the sell orders push down the price, (as other people are noting here) there are millions of bitcoin investors, some of them very wealthy, ready to pounce on purchasing opportunities. This creates serious upward pressure.

The end result?

A huge increase in volume and a stabilizing effect.

Which debunks his other notion that it is too volatile. The more merchants accept bitcoin, the more the price will stabilize for the reasons stated above.

This is why bitcoin moves slower in comparision to the rest of the alt coin market. This will only continue, imo, as the currency becomes more widely accepted. Once the market cap reaches 100 billion...i think the 10% plus or minus moving days like the one we just saw recently will struggle to max out at 3%.

Also FWIW, I think Peter Schiff's brother is smarter than Peter. I spoke with Andrew at Occupy wall st while his brother was making an ass out of himself and he was having genuine conversations with occupy people. Much cooler guy, imo.

Paashaas

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"Merchant acceptance is NEGATIVE for bitcoin"

Dont feed the trolls!

goregrind

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Quote from: franky1 on April 16, 2014, 06:26:32 AM

wrong.
if a customer buys 8BTC at 500 ($4000) and a week later the price was 400 each. a smart customer would not use his bitcoin. he would keep the bitcoin in cold store and use his fiat.. thus no bitcoins would be sold.

why would anyone be stupid enough to sell bitcoins at a loss just a week later!!!

Because said customer just wants his console or whatever and doesn't want to turn into a btc speculator.
I was just pointing out that your argument was based on circumstantial evidence and it can go the other way around as well.
Basically what you're saying is: buy bitcoin and hope its value doesn't depreciate by the time you're ready to shop or
don't use bitcoin.

franky1

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Quote from: haploid23 on April 16, 2014, 07:03:13 AM

Quote from: khme88 on April 15, 2014, 09:36:49 PM

He says, essentially, that the more merchants that are accepting bitcoin the more the price of bitcoin will fall, because they instantly convert it back to fiat (thus putting in SELL orders). So customers who own bitcoins and use them actually sell them onto the market, indirectly.

And where would the customers first get bitcoin to pay the merchant? Oh that's right, the customer has to buy the bitcoin first. On a global scale, the amount of bitcoins that customers would have to buy, would equal the amount of bitcoins that merchants will sell.

exactly the person that bought 1BTC at $30 last year, would only need to sell 0.06btc now
meaning the customer has taken 1btc off the market, and only put 0.06 back on the market to buy a $30 item today. thus there are less bitcoins on the market, meaning demand is higher.

haploid23

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Quote from: khme88 on April 15, 2014, 09:36:49 PM

He says, essentially, that the more merchants that are accepting bitcoin the more the price of bitcoin will fall, because they instantly convert it back to fiat (thus putting in SELL orders). So customers who own bitcoins and use them actually sell them onto the market, indirectly.

And where would the customers first get bitcoin to pay the merchant? Oh that's right, the customer has to buy the bitcoin first. On a global scale, the amount of bitcoins that customers would have to buy, would equal the amount of bitcoins that merchants will sell.

franky1

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Quote from: goregrind on April 16, 2014, 05:41:50 AM

Quote from: franky1 on April 16, 2014, 05:18:22 AM

so now LESS bitcoin goes back to the market to give a merchant $4000. meaning the price does not tank, it rises as there is less bitcoin on the markets being sold.

so buying 10btc selling 8btc for the same exchange of fiat value between customer and retail. will help the price rise. help customers keep some wealth and for merchants, they will still get their fiat.

Customer buys 8BTC at 500 and in a week when he's ready to shop the btc price is down to 400 he now needs to buy more btc to make his initial purchase. oops.

wrong.
if a customer buys 8BTC at 500 ($4000) and a week later the price was 400 each. a smart customer would not use his bitcoin. he would keep the bitcoin in cold store and use his fiat.. thus no bitcoins would be sold.

why would anyone be stupid enough to sell bitcoins at a loss just a week later!!!

gagalady

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That doesn't sound right. Logically price should go up not down.

goregrind

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Quote from: franky1 on April 16, 2014, 05:18:22 AM

so now LESS bitcoin goes back to the market to give a merchant $4000. meaning the price does not tank, it rises as there is less bitcoin on the markets being sold.

so buying 10btc selling 8btc for the same exchange of fiat value between customer and retail. will help the price rise. help customers keep some wealth and for merchants, they will still get their fiat.

Customer buys 8BTC at 500 and in a week when he's ready to shop the btc price is down to 400 he now needs to buy more btc to make his initial purchase. oops.

counter

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Time is on our side, yes it is!

Yea but Peter seems to overlook the fact that the more merchants accepting Bitcoins means more people who will use/hold Bitcoins. It's a rather backwards argument if you ask me.

jubalix

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Quote from: solex on April 15, 2014, 09:49:19 PM

There are three stages:

Merchants not accepting bitcoins.
Merchants accepting bitcoins but converting them immediately to fiat.
Merchants accepting them and keeping a bitcoin holding.

This is a progression which must be undergone before Bitcoin can reach a plateau as a widespread and significant currency and payments system. It says a lot that the argument is moving from the inane Bitcoin "scam/ponzi/laugh" to Bitcoin "can't be successful as it is swapped for fiat after use". It means that the detractors are losing ground.

this....I see early adopters cashing out some bitcoins which will push price down a bit....but long term it helps spread the coins, but in any event the real $$$ are not in retail.

franky1

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the price drop was due to the FUD of china.

and as for the news that merchant adoption causing price drops. they have forgotten the crucial point. the customer adoption (buying coins) causes price rises.

for every customer buying a coin to use for retail, there is a merchant selling that same coin at a later date back to fiat. thus there is an equilibrium. not a drop.

take this last week for instance. imagine a customer buys 10 coins. the price was $400 each. the customer then looks around websites for a week and finally finds a product they want to purchase. they buy a product for $4000. which this week is 8 bitcoin (not 10btc as it would have cost the customer last week)

so now LESS bitcoin goes back to the market to give a merchant $4000. meaning the price does not tank, it rises as there is less bitcoin on the markets being sold.

so buying 10btc selling 8btc for the same exchange of fiat value between customer and retail. will help the price rise. help customers keep some wealth and for merchants, they will still get their fiat.

Topic: "Merchant acceptance is NEGATIVE for bitcoin" - page 2. (Read 4300 times)