Hacker News Reader

Comment by jds375 | Hacker News Reader

I think this really helps justify Bitcoin as a viable currency to the public. Seeing relatively large sales being done with Bitcoin at a well-known retailer is a big confidence booster.

View on HN

Seeing relatively large sales

For comparison, overstock sold 1.1B in 2012.. which is 2.6M in 21 hours vs 124K in 21 hours

So what you're saying is that on the first day of availability, Bitcoin made up 5% of their sales by volume. I'd consider that a pretty big success.

Check back in a few days. It's almost certainly going to go down, not up.

Has anyone been following what BTC price Overstock is allowing?

Because I seriously doubt you get market top or even average price in BTC for something.

Coinbase aggregates a few different markets to determine the price in real-time.

What about holiday sales being majority of yearly revenue?

Not really the case for Overstock.. Q4 2012 was 342M, Q1 2013 was 311M... their sales have been flat for 2012, 2011, and 2010.. so it's likely Q1 2014 is similar to last year

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=ostk

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=OSTK&annual

I don't see how it's anywhere near a viable currency for general use. The wildly fluctuating exchange rate, the fact that it's run on a public ledger (and the privacy loss implications of this), the relative difficulty of use compared to cash or debit/credit cards, and its uncertain legal status are all still problems in that regard.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com