Shops to accept Bitcoin/Litecoin?

Should cube shops accept bitcoin?

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Logical101

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Jul 28, 2013
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Lately bitcoin has started to become really popular and it is so easy to pay for things with it and there is no reason that an 8 year old couldn't make a transaction with bitcoin.
Everyone here knows that the vast majority of cubers don't have a credit card or paypal so why shouldn't cube shops accept bitcoin?

It would be easy for the parents of cubers, they could give their child a bit of bitcoin a year to spend on cubes, so they don't have to do the transaction stuff every time a new cube comes out.:tu

Discuss:
 
Honestly, for most businesses, Bitcoins are just way too unstable to use as currency. They are more useful as an investment than a store of value, because if Bitcoin loses 20% of its value (or more!) in a day then anyone who has stored all their money in Bitcoins has literally lost 20% of their money. There are other factors which worry me too, like the association with illegal activities, the mining system, and the fact that your money can be stolen/lost irrevocably just based on what happens to digital files.

So yeah, for shops, the big problem is that it's hard to be sure about the value of Bitcoins, and it's also hard to quickly convert them into normal money. Take a look at the price of the same cube on different sites - a lot of shops (especially the Chinese ones) sell cubes for pretty close to their cost, and make relatively little profit on each one. Bitcoins would just make it harder to stay afloat, since what you think is a profit now may turn out to be a big loss when you turn the coins back into $ or Yuan. It's true that some non-cube shops already do accept Bitcoin, but I think the situations there are different - either they don't sell a tangible product (e.g. adult websites), or the shop owners want to invest in Bitcoins by holding onto them and hoping the price will go up, or it's a gimmick to attract the kind of people who use Bitcoins.

PS: I can't believe Dogecoins are worth actual money. Wow.
 
qqwref said:
They are more useful as an investment than a store of value, because if Bitcoin loses 20% of its value (or more!) in a day then anyone who has stored all their money in Bitcoins has literally lost 20% of their money.
Click to expand...
I would guess some people have made good money on them given that the price went up from something like 30 cents to over $1000 peak...
 
qqwref said:
Honestly, for most businesses, Bitcoins are just way too unstable to use as currency. They are more useful as an investment than a store of value, because if Bitcoin loses 20% of its value (or more!) in a day then anyone who has stored all their money in Bitcoins has literally lost 20% of their money. There are other factors which worry me too, like the association with illegal activities, the mining system, and the fact that your money can be stolen/lost irrevocably just based on what happens to digital files.

So yeah, for shops, the big problem is that it's hard to be sure about the value of Bitcoins, and it's also hard to quickly convert them into normal money. Take a look at the price of the same cube on different sites - a lot of shops (especially the Chinese ones) sell cubes for pretty close to their cost, and make relatively little profit on each one. Bitcoins would just make it harder to stay afloat, since what you think is a profit now may turn out to be a big loss when you turn the coins back into $ or Yuan. It's true that some non-cube shops already do accept Bitcoin, but I think the situations there are different - either they don't sell a tangible product (e.g. adult websites), or the shop owners want to invest in Bitcoins by holding onto them and hoping the price will go up, or it's a gimmick to attract the kind of people who use Bitcoins.

PS: I can't believe Dogecoins are worth actual money. Wow.
Click to expand...

Actually, it doesn't have to work like that at all. Many businesses such as overstock.com and tigerdirect.com already accept bitcoin, but do an immediate conversion to USD at the time of the transaction. There is no risk in holding an "unstable" currency that way. It also ends up being way cheaper for the business because bitcoin has no inherent fees, whereas credit card companies or paypal charge rather high fees to process a transaction. When you are on razer-thin margins, those fees mean everything.

And arguments about "association with illegal activity" or "money can be stolen"... come on, how is that any different than actual cash? The us dollar is associated with far more illegal activity on a daily basis than bitcoin is.
 
It's equally easy to put money into a paypal account.

Parents could easily put a certain amount of money into a paypal account for the child to use each year.
 
I personally can not use paypal anymore because they banned my account over a single transaction that is apparently against their terms of service. (I'm not sure exactly how it violates their terms of service, but that's what they say, and I have no recourse).
If anyone ever buys knock-off puzzles or anything like that, those could similarly be against paypals terms of service and get a paypal account banned. Not saying it will happen, but it certainly could.
 
Zarxrax said:
Actually, it doesn't have to work like that at all. Many businesses such as overstock.com and tigerdirect.com already accept bitcoin, but do an immediate conversion to USD at the time of the transaction.
Click to expand...
OK, fair enough, but you're not really buying with bitcoin so much as simultaneously selling bitcoin to some other guy (for USD) and buying from the shop (with USD). You end up losing bitcoins and the shop ends up gaining USD, but also some third party has to buy the bitcoins for USD.

Zarxrax said:
And arguments about "association with illegal activity" [...] come on, how is that any different than actual cash?
Click to expand...
Obviously actual cash can be used for illegal activity too, but it's just the history of the thing. Bitcoins have a big public perception of relating to stuff like selling drugs and weapons (remember the big dive it took when Silk Road went down?) so it may have a hard time getting accepted by countries and big institutions. It's certainly more of a problem with the community than with the currency itself, of course.

Zarxrax said:
And arguments about "money can be stolen" [...] come on, how is that any different than actual cash?
Click to expand...
It's different because actual cash, when held electronically, actually has a lot of protections behind it. If you keep a sum of money in your bank, for instance, they have a very strong interest in making sure that money stays there, and so does the government - bank accounts are insured by the FDIC, up to $250k. Or, if you have a credit card or use a service like Paypal, and you get scammed out of money, they can reverse the transaction or remove the debt you incurred. Not so with a decentralized system like Bitcoin. If someone scams you, or something big happens in the Bitcoin economy and you lose coins, there's no big company that will step in and fix it, you have no recourse. You just have to try not to make that mistake again.

And when I talk about money being stolen, I'm also talking about hacking - computer systems are very difficult to secure and most people do not even try (see all the passwords of "password" and "123456" and so on around the world). Since your bitcoin wallet is just data, if someone can hack into your computer, they can take it - and again you have no recourse, unless you somehow track down the hacker and convince them to give it back. This is quite a bit different from something like a bank account or stock portfolio.
 
qqwref said:
And when I talk about money being stolen, I'm also talking about hacking - computer systems are very difficult to secure and most people do not even try (see all the passwords of "password" and "123456" and so on around the world). Since your bitcoin wallet is just data, if someone can hack into your computer, they can take it - and again you have no recourse, unless you somehow track down the hacker and convince them to give it back. This is quite a bit different from something like a bank account or stock portfolio.
Click to expand...

Yet you can remove the code from your computer and have them on paper
 
There are so many crypto currencies right now, I couldn't care less.. If you're mining, great, it's virtually free money, but let's be honest, other than exchanging for USD, there are very very few places you could turn your whatever-coins for 'real' goods, it is not of interest for 'real' businesses to receive other currencies.. Of course your favourite mmorpg is accepting crypto coins, they sell virtual goods, and no matter what money they get later as the currency fluctuates, they have nothing to lose, there won't be a significant change in credit card buyers for them anyway.. And as stated by others, there is no licit business receiving some sort of crypto-coin exclusively..
But, if you're not mining, there is nothing better than staying off, this ship has sailed..

SnipeCube said:
DogeCoins are awesome. I build a mining rig that get about 900 Kh/S. Spent about $700 originally and in return I have about $1700 of doge coin.
Click to expand...
This means nothing without a time reference..
 
Zarxrax said:
Actually, it doesn't have to work like that at all. Many businesses such as overstock.com and tigerdirect.com already accept bitcoin, but do an immediate conversion to USD at the time of the transaction. There is no risk in holding an "unstable" currency that way. It also ends up being way cheaper for the business because bitcoin has no inherent fees, whereas credit card companies or paypal charge rather high fees to process a transaction. When you are on razer-thin margins, those fees mean everything.

And arguments about "association with illegal activity" or "money can be stolen"... come on, how is that any different than actual cash? The us dollar is associated with far more illegal activity on a daily basis than bitcoin is.
Click to expand...

I'm glad someone here knows what they're talking about. I would have thought this community would be more ahead of the curve, but it sounds it's stuck at square one, somewhere in 2011.

I have to admit the ease of use is not quite there. As of this writing, I wouldn't trust my Mom with Bitcoin. And someone mentioned that the transactions are irreversible; this is true. Bitcoin isn't for everything. It's cash. But I would totally pay for a cube with Bitcoin from a reputable store.

My solution: wait just a year or two. There are Bitcoin related start-ups firing up all over the place and the development community is extremely vibrant. This is happening, and eventually it will be mainstream. It's kind of like the Internet in 1994.

Here's a really good podcast for those seeking to learn more: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cexawnOlR8
 
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