Bitcoin's First Steps into the Mainstream

The importance of this development should not be overlooked. The famous pick-up artist, "Mystery," has decided to start accepting Bitcoin for his merchandise.

Mystery has been featured on every major TV network, various talk shows, and all over the Internet. He also had his own reality show on VH1. His forums have 27,000 members, though most of his traffic is anonymous. For example, at the time of this posting, there are 215 members and 3051 guests online on his forums. Let me re-emphasize: most of his traffic is anonymous. Do you see where I'm going with this? The kids who are buying his merchandise would rather not have people know that they're studying pick-up guides or reading advice online about how to win over girls. How better to cover your tracks than to use Bitcoin?

Mystery's site, Venusianarts.com, has an Alexa ranking of 82,809 in the US and 113,798 globally.

From the Reddit post:

"Hi everyone. Over at Venusian Arts we've taken notice of your new "Bitcoin" currency.
The $30 price point, reached earlier this year, was a little bit concerning to us, but now it seems to have leveled out, so I went ahead and added "Buy Now with Bitcoin" links to our sales pages for our ebook and our dvd set (hopefully the wild swings in BTC price are done, since our interest is in using it as a currency, not as an investment vehicle)."

I guarantee he's not the only merchant that feels that way. It makes you wonder how many businesses are holding off on accepting Bitcoin while they wait for the volatility to settle out. To accept Bitcoin now is significantly less risky, especially if you're holding onto the coins for a few hours or longer, than it was between June and as recently as last week.

"Thank you all for your efforts in bringing us a payment processor for the future, since everyone knows that merchant accounts suck balls."

They certainly do.

Posted in: anonymity,mainstream,merchants