Topic: [POLL] Accept Bitcoins only? Please vote in the poll. (Read 1914 times)

IIRC the seller will typically pay ~3% fees for credit/debit, which is usually more than BTC/USD exchange fees. This fee is invisibly added to prices, that's why some things appear cheaper when priced in BTC.

The transaction isn't really complete until the buyer runs out of time to issue a chargeback, which can be up to 120 days.
http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/07/31/credit-card-chargeback-merchant-disputes/
If you're a merchant, Bitcoin trades the risk of chargeback (which averages a loss) for exchange rate volatility (which averages a gain).

It's less about being an "enthusiast" or "entrepreneur" and more about being realistic. Accepting only bitcoins for a non-bitcoin related business makes no sense.

So far it is less than 30 % that think that Bitcoin only is a good way to. I will keep this opened to possibly get even more votes, but the poll starts to be representative. I interpret this result as that most of Bitcoiners today are entrepreneurs (of any kind) and minority are enthusiasts. Thus only few would highly appreciate the Bitcoin only way and would be willing to change their service provider just because it is highly pro-Bitcoin oriented. The rest would be happy if just Bitcoins are supported. Although it would be probably a nice experiment to start with Bitcoins only, it would sooner or later turn into supporting other ways too. This is why I can now vote against Bitcoin only in the poll.

I think you should hold all options open. Bitcoins, PayPal and Google Checkout etc.

people are not very eager to spend bitcoins. they also seem to think in general that when using bitcoins, prices should be lower because eventually bitcoins will go up. in general IME

I'm not sure how BTC has low fees and quick transactions, at least on the buyer side. I could pay with a debit card and get charged nothing extra and the transaction is instant.

On the seller's side, I'm guessing you get charged somehow? But exchanging BTC to fiat and then withdrawing must have some fees.

I believe others answered that already. It mostly depends on the business model, it doesn't have to be an expense for you necessarily, as bitcoin has really low fees and quick transactions.

Wrong window/thread? 

No, our users should be of quite normal distribution regarding to BTC.

ASIC and pertinent IPOs will destroy this.

It's too early to launch a service with BTC as the only way of payment. To begin something new, you need to get the largest possible customer base, and few people have BTC today. Or do you have any reason to believe your business will be more appealing to BTC owners than non owners?

That is definitely one of the possible scenarios. It might be affected by the quality and price of our services and also by our competition. If we are not significantly better either in price or quality then they are likely to leave to our competition. On the other hand, if we are better, it might be an impulse for them to get into Bitcoin just because the need to pay for our services.

It would definitely alienate those customers who already read about Bitcoin and did not like it (or worse).

And by the end of the day it is of course about the numbers - would the number of customers willing to pay in Bitcoin only be enough to give us a solid paycheck? Would the Bitcoin only strategy encourage Bitcoiners to leave their current service providers and go with us just to support our effort? Or would they be reluctant to do so? Are today's Bitcoiners still more enthusiasts who believe in Bitcoin because of its principles or are they more of people who use Bitcoin solely because of its direct advantages (e.g. no fees)?

Of course that from strictly economical point of view, it is more likely that we earn more money if we provide as many payments methods as possible. But being one of the Bitcoin enthusiast I can risk a part of the income to support the idea. The question is whether it is a good way to do so and whether someone would even care.

If it's not related to bitcoin, why would you solely have the option to pay with bitcoin? Wouldn't that alienate your customers?

 ;Donly bitcoin makes you like a second silk road

Don't you have to pay fees with paypal etc.? Give the fees, you don't have to pay with bitcoin, to the consumer

In our particular case, this is possible since expenses are not directly connected to the services we offer. Expenses are mostly on vages, HW, hosting and a like, but providing a service to one more customer makes no difference. So we can do the discount like some people suggest.

In your car example case, you can always replace discount for Bitcoins with extra charge for non-Bitcoins. But of course, this might cause your customers go somewhere else where it is cheaper. This means that if you have strong competition on the market (i.e. you can not make difference in things like quality or support - think about selling Red Bulls), discount with Bitcoins implemented as an extra charge for non-Bitcoins would be much like Bitcoins only way - you will end with only Bitcoin customers.


So far the poll is slightly for having other methods + Bitcoin, but we would need much more votes to have it clearly.

 Who is going to subsidies that discount? After all, if you can buy an car for a discount with bitcoins, who's
going to cover that spread?   

I'd say, use other payment methods as well, but give a discount or benefits to those that pay with bitcoins. That would probably promote bitcoin the best.

If Bitcoin is a preferred payment mechanism, give a discount for using it equivalent to the convenience it gives you.

What reason would you have to do bitcoin only? All that does is limit the way customers can pay for your services. Most of the time you would want as many ways to pay as possible. That is the reason places like wal-mart accept: creditcards/debitcards/cash/check/ebt/wic/moneygram. Notice how they did not limit themselves to one option.

I mean sure, only bitcoin is a great way to promote bitcoin, however do expect a massive hit to revenue.

+1

True, but so long as the OP is allowed to set prices in each currency independently, he should take advantage of it. Once they start mandating that BTC prices must equal fiat_exchange+fees (or some other weird rule), then he'll have to choose.

Thanks, I have added a poll too, so please vote.

Bitcoin still has a lot of room to grow, so I would accept bitcoin and some other payment options too, if I were you.

If your service interests me I would prefer paying in bitcoin though. I have exceptional levels of hate built up over the years against paypal, banks and the like.

Normally I would say it's not a good idea to alienate customers based on their currency preference, that it would be awesome to just add Bitcoin as an extra so people can pay anonymously, but the problem is governments are going to get so desperate soon I predict it will soon be impossible to do business in conventional currencies if you are at all associated with Bitcoin because of the ridiculous laws they're going to introduce. I think anyone trying to set up a Bitcoin business needs to have a look at the history of wealth transfer and capital flight to have a proper understanding of what they're getting into when it comes to using Bitcoin.

Pretty soon it's going to be a question of them or us the more governments realise that they can't control Bitcoin at all.

In fact I preffer other methods of payments possible even if I pay with BTC because it make the site less likely as scammy.

It depends on the acceptance and seriousity to your project at all... It could be good for bitcoin if a project that mainly is not related to bitcoin at all choose to accept only bitcoin as a payment imo

We are working on an online project which is not related to the Bitcoin world in any way. So far we are offering free services to thousands of users every day, but within a couple of months we should introduce commercial services too. And I am thinking about this:

Would it be a good thing to go with Bitcoin ONLY for accepting payments for the commercial services? Would accepting Bitcoin and Bitcoin ONLY encourage Bitcoiners to go with us, or would they NOT care at all if we also implement PayPal and fiat methods?

Would it make a difference? If we want to support Bitcoin by accepting it, would accepting Bitcoin only be appreciated more by the community than just accepting it besides others?

What do you think?

Of course that we can start with Bitcoin and add PayPal later and thus effectively finding the answer ourselves later, but once we do PayPal, there is hardly how to take it back down.