My company started accepting bitcoin a few months back. We use BitPay.com to offload risk (they instantly convert a BTC payment into your preferred currency and cash you out at the going rate).
We haven't made any sales with BTC yet... (as my VP reminds me weekly ;-), but none-the-less, the company views it as a great alternative to what normally would constitute a "high risk" shipment (usually to countries were high credit card fraud rates or other scams originate from... if we get our money now, and there is no risk of chargeback, etc, then we will ship the order).
So, it's not really a "marketing ploy" as you put it, but rather a good vehicle to accept orders the company may have normally rejected due to too much risk.
So, uh, what's the company? I got me some Bitcoins here. (Partially serious; chances are you don't sell what I need, but if you did, I'd rather support a Bitcoin accepting company.)
Have patiencce. Bitcoin is a very new technology and mass adoption will definitively take time, but precisely because of that you will see significant rewards by being an early adopter.
I wish I could find the link but I read an interesting story about the history of successful new payment types. Dwolla (not), mPesa, PayPal, Venmo, btc. The successful ones all had an early sustained uptick. btc looked more like Dwolla which had not. So it appears that the patience argument, which in general makes sense, may not apply here.
I can't understand the point of your argument. You're saying that Dell chose to integrate Bitcoin because it will be noticed by Bitcoin users, who will then purchase Dell products with bitcoins. What is wrong with this motivation, and what other possible motivation would there be to integrate any payment method?
Major companies accepting bitcoin have gotten a fair bit of free press even if they haven't converted to sales in bitcoin.
So they aren't doing it to get bitcoin users they are doing it so that they get free publicity from the news media and bitcoin users going around talking about them all the time.
For example I've heard about Overstock more in the past year than I have in the past decade and they are constantly in the news. Despite the fact that bitcoin sales figures are low and have been in decline since day one for them.
> So they aren't doing it to get bitcoin users they are doing it so that they get free publicity from the news media and bitcoin users going around talking about them all the time.
That's almost certainly part of the story. But the only reason they get free publicity that they believe will benefit them is that some people are genuinely fans of Bitcoin, enough so that the negative effects of potential customers who hate Bitcoin will be outweighed by the positive effects of potential customers who love Bitcoin.
Any publicity that isn't negative will benefit them even if it is a neutral story for most people it still gets their name in front of the news watching public.
>enough so that the negative effects of potential customers who hate Bitcoin will be outweighed by the positive effects of potential customers who love Bitcoin.
I don't think people who hate bitcoin will avoid a store because they accept it. I mean I'm pretty vocally outspoken about bitcoin in that I don't think it offers anything for consumers and I don't think it will ultimately succeed but its not like I'm going to avoid Newegg from now on. :)
So ultimately by accepting bitcoin even if you don't get a single bitcoin customer you probably get spoken about in the news a bit which will maybe add more general customers. Thats more of a belief in free publicity then bitcoin though.
Overstock acceptance is absolutely not a marketing ploy. The CEO of overstock gave a talk at a Bitcoin conference. He is very passionate about certain areas of philosophy, and Bitcoin tickles his philosophical fancy.
