05.54
Unknown
These guys move quick and are obviously serious about Bitcoin. Thanks to our friend Osmosis from stuffexists.com for poking them for the info!
This is featured post 1 title
Replace these every slider sentences with your featured post descriptions.Go to Blogger edit html and find these sentences.
This is featured post 2 title
Replace these every slider sentences with your featured post descriptions.Go to Blogger edit html and find these sentences.
This is featured post 3 title
Replace these every slider sentences with your featured post descriptions.Go to Blogger edit html and find these sentences.
Tampilkan postingan dengan label merchants. Tampilkan semua postingan
Tampilkan postingan dengan label merchants. Tampilkan semua postingan
Kamis, 10 November 2011
Minggu, 23 Oktober 2011
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:
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.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.
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)."
"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.
Minggu, 28 Agustus 2011
The Bitcoin Factor
Let's take a look at costs incurred through what I will call a "Bitcoin Business Cycle" for a merchant using a MtGox and a Paxum account, versus a merchant doing business with a typical credit card company.
Assumptions:
I'm using the MtGox market rate at time of posting ($8.88/BTC). In this example, the merchant uses the Paxum Mastercard and withdraws from his account by ATM, once per month over the course of a year. I'm also assuming that over time, a merchant will be able to average out their profits and losses when converting their BTC to USD, such that no additional costs are incurred. I can see how this would be a controversial assumption, but as a Bitcoin trader and investor, I believe a savvy merchant should actually be able to avoid losses on their conversions, especially when using a deflationary currency like Bitcoin (this concept will be more obvious as Bitcoin really starts to catch on). There are already merchant service providers, like bit-pay that charge additional fees (2%, at last report) to absorb the conversion risk, which basically wipes out most of the benefit of using Bitcoin as a merchant.
*Credit card fees are estimated based on the example cited at the bottom of this article from the CBC.
The "Bitcoin Factor" is the ratio of credit card fees to Bitcoin Business Cycle fees. At today's market rate, and using the transaction services cited in my example, anyone doing more than 404 BTC in business is already saving money by accepting Bitcoin. Anything more, and a merchant saves more (because many of the transaction costs are fixed). I haven't even considered the cost of chargebacks, which don't exist in the Bitcoin realm.
Of course, there are already many other ways to convert your BTC to cash. If you're not in a hurry, you could even get the USD mailed to you in the form of a cheque and save the cost of using a Paxum Mastercard and ATM. I haven't looked at Dwolla's fees, but they might be even lower.
In a perfect world, a merchant would be able to cover his costs in BTC and not incur ANY additional fees beyond the 0.0005 transaction fee, but certain costs will inevitably remain payable in cash only (taxes and utilities, for example).
In conclusion, every merchant setup is a little different. Whether or not it is beneficial to accept Bitcoin will depend on the services used and the volume of transactions accepted. I hope that I've shown, however, that overall, there is a benefit for merchants to accept Bitcoin.
If anyone wants to use my spreadsheet to make their own calculations, here it is.
Assumptions:
I'm using the MtGox market rate at time of posting ($8.88/BTC). In this example, the merchant uses the Paxum Mastercard and withdraws from his account by ATM, once per month over the course of a year. I'm also assuming that over time, a merchant will be able to average out their profits and losses when converting their BTC to USD, such that no additional costs are incurred. I can see how this would be a controversial assumption, but as a Bitcoin trader and investor, I believe a savvy merchant should actually be able to avoid losses on their conversions, especially when using a deflationary currency like Bitcoin (this concept will be more obvious as Bitcoin really starts to catch on). There are already merchant service providers, like bit-pay that charge additional fees (2%, at last report) to absorb the conversion risk, which basically wipes out most of the benefit of using Bitcoin as a merchant.
*Credit card fees are estimated based on the example cited at the bottom of this article from the CBC.
The "Bitcoin Factor" is the ratio of credit card fees to Bitcoin Business Cycle fees. At today's market rate, and using the transaction services cited in my example, anyone doing more than 404 BTC in business is already saving money by accepting Bitcoin. Anything more, and a merchant saves more (because many of the transaction costs are fixed). I haven't even considered the cost of chargebacks, which don't exist in the Bitcoin realm.
Of course, there are already many other ways to convert your BTC to cash. If you're not in a hurry, you could even get the USD mailed to you in the form of a cheque and save the cost of using a Paxum Mastercard and ATM. I haven't looked at Dwolla's fees, but they might be even lower.
In a perfect world, a merchant would be able to cover his costs in BTC and not incur ANY additional fees beyond the 0.0005 transaction fee, but certain costs will inevitably remain payable in cash only (taxes and utilities, for example).
In conclusion, every merchant setup is a little different. Whether or not it is beneficial to accept Bitcoin will depend on the services used and the volume of transactions accepted. I hope that I've shown, however, that overall, there is a benefit for merchants to accept Bitcoin.
If anyone wants to use my spreadsheet to make their own calculations, here it is.
