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Comment by AznHisoka | Hacker News Reader

Is it me or are all the "has-beens", or unrelevant companies accepting bitcoin nowadays?

We had Overstock, who has fallen from its high. We had App.net, who is struggling to be relevant. now TigerDirect.

When is Starbucks or Apple going to accept Bitcoin?

Mm. The companies might have fallen from their high, but they're hardly irrelevant or dead. Overstock is advertised like crazy and has some pretty good deals to boot, Tiger competes directly with Newegg. App is a bit of an outlier there..

Starbucks or Apple? I'd assume the megacorps will take it up once the instability gets smoothed out a bit. Which is a problem of adoption, which means the faster the smaller fish like these adopt it, the faster the bigger ones will.

I predict Amazon will take BTC within the next 2-3 years.

>Tiger competes directly with Newegg

Interesting. The site designs always had me thinking they were two sides of the same coin.

I've typically bought computer stuff from Tiger Direct. About half of my computer parts have came from there for about the last 10 years or so. They aren't the absolute cheapest site online, but I've never had any problem with returns or customer service with them, so I keep with them.

> I'd assume the megacorps will take it up once the instability gets smoothed out a bit.

Why would they care if they get paid through bitpay or coinbase in USD anyway? It doesn't actually matter the current exchange rate for btc because they get the same USD anyway.

If it were me, it would be because the visual prices fluctuate on the site. If you put some stuff in your cart, wait a day, and find out the price went up by the equivalent of $100, it doesn't make the retailer look good.

Someone has to handle that transaction - like Coinbase.

Part of their risk is that Coinbase, still an early stage company, isn't reliable enough to process their volume. They could have issues with how they process transactions, all kinds of things could come up.

Part of it is being risk-averse to BTC itself, part is being risk-averse to early stage payment gateways.

> I predict Amazon will take BTC within the next 2-3 years.

I'm willing to bet a hundred doge this doesn't happen.

For (future) reference, that's $0.17 at current rates [1].

[1] http://coinmill.com/USD_XDG.html#XDG=100

Is that the next talking point for the Bitcoin opponents/skeptics? I guess once "no retailers accept Bitcoin" dried up, it's no surprise they found a new one.

Don't worry, we've still got the "Bitcoin is inherently deflationary and incentivises hoarding" talking point.

That talking point also becomes less convincing the more retailers start accepting Bitcoin.

That it's inherently deflationary is a fact (this stems directly from the fact that there is a limited supply). That it's popular doesn't change this.

> That it's inherently deflationary is a fact

That's true, but it's hardly a mistake. It was deliberate designed to be deflationary, and proponents of Bitcoin like that idea.

Problem is that we've had deflationary currencies, and they were terrible. People will soon find out how easy it is to manipulate a currency with limited supply.

> People will soon find out how easy it is to manipulate a currency with limited supply.

As opposed to inflationary government currencies, the entire point of which is to be endlessly manipulated by a central authority? I don't think the track record of those is anything to be proud of.

Then you don't remember the gold panics. The stability of inflation of inflationary government currencies over the last few decades is nothing short of astonishing.

I'm aware the choice was deliberate. That still doesn't make it any better of a system.

And of course proponents like the idea; they're already invested in Bitcoin. The more new people who use it, the greater value proponents' existing stockpiles will have.

> And of course proponents like the idea; they're already invested in Bitcoin.

That's a circular argument. Why would they have invested in Bitcoin in the first place?

Not really. "Ooh look, Bitcoin is deflationary, let's invest" → invest → "Hey everyone, come use this great Bitcoin thing!" is a logical chain of action.

How is TigerDirect a "has-been"? They're a direct competitor to Newegg.

They are actually a tad bit easier to deal with than Newegg for purchase orders. They also have a pretty good group in customer service. We order a lot from them and cdwg.

Well, Google is working on integrating Bitcoin into Google Wallet. Do you consider them a "has-been" too?

Google does a lot of things which it then happily drops. Google doing a thing is not really a reliable indicator of what Google thinks of it - the company as a whole is very freeform in its ideas process.

Google also worked on a novel way to collaborate with one another. Everyone can see how Google Wave has taken over the world!

TigerDirect is a "has-been" company? Do you live under a rock?

It's a start. You don't go from a tiny handful of sites started by Bitcoin enthusiasts to being accepted on Apple.com and in Starbucks retail locations in a day. A year or so ago, we were pretty much at the tiny handful of sites stage. We're starting to get some fairly second-rate internet retailers now, who have no reason to be interested in Bitcoin aside from pure business potential. It's a good step. Widespread adoption of something so unprecedented, poorly-understood, and potentially disruptive isn't going to happen overnight.

Ebay or amazon would be more useful. I bet it won't be long , after all, since they won't use it as reserve, it's just extra convenience.

I suspect it will be a while for ebay, given that they own PayPal. Bitcoin directly competes with PayPal's business model.

or Bitcoin could be one of paypal's payment methods

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