Why Merchant Adoption Doesn’t Matter for Bitcoin
One of the biggest questions surrounding Bitcoin is why it is worth anything at all. A popular candidate for answering this question is the influence of merchant adoption. Unfortunately for proponents of this theory, things haven’t been making sense lately. In their Bitcoin-focused blog BitBeat, the Wall Street Journal stated: They go on to cite a post from coinbrief.net which argues that “the most important pieces of news are those that cover major players in the Bitcoin community or cover breakthroughs—or setbacks—in mainstream adoption.” “After last week’s news that Dell would start....
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Undoubtedly, Bitcoin can be called the world’s first truly global currency that has the potential to reduce friction and complement global e-commerce and the Internet age. But while Bitcoin can be used by almost everyone to buy almost anything online, we were interested in discovering which countries are the most accommodating when it comes to locations where people can spend Bitcoin. Merchant adoption may seem rather insignificant, especially if we consider that most of these businesses don’t actually hold any bitcoins i.e. it is common practice to instantly convert digital coins into....
The recent bitcoin price action demonstrates that it’s time for a more grown-up culture of building, development and adoption around Bitcoin.
Most merchants who adopt Bitcoin do not keep the bitcoins they earn but instead sell them for dollars on exchanges immediately using payment processing services such as BitPay. Consequently, the merchant creates selling pressure at the exchange, which drives the price down. So far this effect has been relatively mild, but there is a real possibility that the “merchant adoption” effect could spiral out of control if the selling pressure from new merchants is so great as to induce other people to dump their bitcoins. Once this happens, the price of Bitcoin could drop to zero in minutes. This....
Bitcoin company executives and analysts including Irene Katzela, CEO of Chain of Points, firmly believe retailer and merchant adoption is the key to bitcoin mainstream adoption. Since 2014, the bitcoin industry and market have seen a rapid emergence of bitcoin-accepting merchants. Companies like TigerDirect and Expedia have begun to offer bitcoin as one of their main payment methods. Currently, bitcoin is perceived more as a store of value and a safe haven asset rather than an actual digital currency. Some bitcoin investors like Roger Ver argue that the development community of bitcoin....
Anyone with even the slightest interest in the privacy concerns of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies would have little trouble finding a venue to watch and listen to the debate. Currently there are three positions on the issue. The first are the full bore Libertarians, like the Cypherpunks of years past whose motto was: “Privacy is necessary for an open society in the electronic age. Privacy is not secrecy. A private matter is something one doesn’t want the whole world to know, but a secret matter is something one doesn’t want anybody to know. Privacy is the power to selectively reveal....