Re:LevelUp is Down to Half Its Former Headcount, and Needs t...
by potatolicious on Tuesday April 02, 2013 @03:09PM
(#5481463)
This isn't a good idea.
1 - Merchants don't take Bitcoin. LevelUp would have to convert BTC to USD for the merchant, and swallow any exchange rate fluctuations that may have occurred in the meantime (the value of BTC is, after all, far from stable). Even highly stable currencies are not completely free to exchange due to minor fluctuations in value over time. This is a money-losing proposition for LevelUp. This is part of why if you're spending GBP with your USD credit card the fees start piling up.
2 - Who would use it? Bitcoin has basically no presence outside of the tech community - and even there it's a tiny corner of the tech community (it's also the corner that thinks it's larger than it actually is). It would be nonsensical to invest that much effort doing such a niche thing in a product that is intended to be mass-market.
3 - Opportunity cost. LevelUp is in a do-or-die situation, there is no way they should do this over the thousands of other things they can do to save their company.
1 - Merchants don't take Bitcoin. LevelUp would have to convert BTC to USD for the merchant, and swallow any exchange rate fluctuations that may have occurred in the meantime (the value of BTC is, after all, far from stable). Even highly stable currencies are not completely free to exchange due to minor fluctuations in value over time. This is a money-losing proposition for LevelUp. This is part of why if you're spending GBP with your USD credit card the fees start piling up.
2 - Who would use it? Bitcoin has basically no presence outside of the tech community - and even there it's a tiny corner of the tech community (it's also the corner that thinks it's larger than it actually is). It would be nonsensical to invest that much effort doing such a niche thing in a product that is intended to be mass-market.
3 - Opportunity cost. LevelUp is in a do-or-die situation, there is no way they should do this over the thousands of other things they can do to save their company.