News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Now Accepting Bitcoin on Dell.com by aroch on Friday July 18, 2014 @01:15PM (#8054246)
I feel like merchant adoption is being done for the sake of "looking cool" not because they really care or their users really want it. Actual adoption of bitcoin by consumers has remained relatively flat
Re:Now Accepting Bitcoin on Dell.com by MichaelGG on Friday July 18, 2014 @02:03PM (#8054583)
As a merchant, this is essentially the main reason we started taking Bitcoin.

But it's also because we need a payment method that our customers cannot reverse is important to us. Bigger international customers will do a wire, but there's a lot of smaller guys and Bitcoin is a bit easier than Western Union sometimes.

But for Overstock and Dell? It's pure marketing.

Re:Now Accepting Bitcoin on Dell.com by tabrischen on Friday July 18, 2014 @01:59PM (#8054556)
It's not only one-sided. Huge brand like Dell and Newegg lend massive streetcred to bitcoin as a legitimate method of payment and goes a long way towards changing perception about the ease of bitcoin transactions, which would drive up user adoption over time.

User may not want it now because they're not familiar with the technology behind it or perceive it as being an uncommon and difficult/unsafe method to use.

But once they see bitcoin as an available payment option on all their favorite retail sites, they would be interested to at least learn more about it.

Re:Now Accepting Bitcoin on Dell.com by baddox on Friday July 18, 2014 @02:32PM (#8054765)
I don't understand. How would integrating Bitcoin make a company "look cool" if no one is interested in companies integrating Bitcoin?
Re:Now Accepting Bitcoin on Dell.com by prawn on Saturday July 19, 2014 @11:57AM (#8057797)
I always assumed that companies like Coinbase offered very favourable terms for building in Bitcoin support in the interest of driving forward public awareness of the currency. Obviously if Bitcoin becomes a major thing, then Coinbase is very well positioned.
Re:Now Accepting Bitcoin on Dell.com by adeptus on Friday July 18, 2014 @01:33PM (#8054376)
Maybe if you turn this chart sideways it will look flat, otherwise... up, up and away!

http://blockchain.info/charts/my-wallet-n-users

Re:Now Accepting Bitcoin on Dell.com by unbudgingprawn on Friday July 18, 2014 @01:41PM (#8054427)
Number of transactions would probably be a better metric

http://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions

Re:Now Accepting Bitcoin on Dell.com by pistle on Friday July 18, 2014 @01:54PM (#8054521)
"WARNING: Forgotten passwords are UNRECOVERABLE and will results in LOSS of ALL of your bitcoins!"

I hate when my banker says this to me about online banking.

Re:Now Accepting Bitcoin on Dell.com by StavrosK on Friday July 18, 2014 @02:38PM (#8054803)
Then use Coinbase, which says "you'll have to trust us with your coin, and hope we don't get hacked".
Re:Now Accepting Bitcoin on Dell.com by aianus on Saturday July 19, 2014 @06:21AM (#8057122)
Honestly, I prefer it to "WARNING: Your password must be 6-8 characters and contain no numbers or symbols"
Re:Now Accepting Bitcoin on Dell.com by sanswork on Friday July 18, 2014 @02:17PM (#8054688)
Thats the number of accounts on a website. Anyone can create as many accounts as they want and they don't limit that chart to accounts with bitcoin. It's a pointless metric that is easily faked. Given the number of wallets with bitcoin in them worth >$50 isn't really growing I'd say its pretty likely a lot of those are fake/unused accounts.
Re:Now Accepting Bitcoin on Dell.com by jcliff on Friday July 18, 2014 @01:18PM (#8054275)
flat based on what?
Re:Now Accepting Bitcoin on Dell.com by aroch on Friday July 18, 2014 @02:23PM (#8054722)
The number of bitcoin transactions/day hasn't really changed, at all, despite all these vendors adopting it.

http://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions

Re:Now Accepting Bitcoin on Dell.com by mrb on Monday July 21, 2014 @01:04PM (#8064653)
You fail at reading a graph (in your defense, the data is noisy). But smooth it by looking at the quarterly averages and it is clear there was a +40% growth from 45k to 65k transaction/day over the last year: http://i.imgur.com/XJs4V74.png (or see www.quandl.com/BCHAIN/NTRAN-Bitcoin-Number-of-Transactions and select "quarterly".)
Re:Now Accepting Bitcoin on Dell.com by aroch on Monday July 21, 2014 @03:18PM (#8065484)
No, I didn't fail at reading anything. The increase is both within the noise of the data and insignificant. 20K transactions is nothing, hell given the number of BTC that are "washed" through pools, one person could easily account for 5K of those transactions.
Re:Now Accepting Bitcoin on Dell.com by mrb on Monday July 21, 2014 @04:44PM (#8065888)
+40% is significant (insignificance would be <5%).

If it really was noise, http://i.imgur.com/XJs4V74.png wouldn't show a relatively smooth exponential-looking curve.

Re:Now Accepting Bitcoin on Dell.com by aroch on Monday July 21, 2014 @05:24PM (#8066093)
Are you really arguing that a pitiful increase of 20K over a year, in a system where every single change in any holdings causes a transaction to occur, is significant for this system? I shudder to think of the reality distortion field you live in.

For sake of argument, let's say that coinbase keeps 100 small, hot wallets around. Every time coinbase rearranges funds in their wallets, they could create between 1 and infinity transactions. If, on average, they rearrange funds daily in such a way that 25 transactions occurs, they would account for 50% of your increase alone.

Given that all exchanges and processors routinely shuffle funds around, and every move is recorded as a transaction, you need exchanges (in total) to make 55 more transactions/day to make up your superduper exponential growth.

20K increase in transactions in bitcoin is no increase in transactions.

Re:Now Accepting Bitcoin on Dell.com by mrb on Monday July 21, 2014 @05:57PM (#8066249)
Your math is way off. It is 20k transaction PER DAY. 5.9 MILLION transactions were processed in 2014Q2, up from 4.1 MILLION in 2013Q2. That is an increase of 1.8 MILLION!
Re:Now Accepting Bitcoin on Dell.com by dictum on Friday July 18, 2014 @01:24PM (#8054311)
Not sure if that's what the parent reply means, but while there's no baseline to compare growth in consumer usage of bitcoin, you can compare it to the growth in business acceptance of bitcoin.
Re:Now Accepting Bitcoin on Dell.com by sanswork on Friday July 18, 2014 @02:31PM (#8054760)
Number of wallets with more than pennies in them, interviews with merchants who accept it, number of transactions per day.
Re:Now Accepting Bitcoin on Dell.com by rockyleal on Friday July 18, 2014 @01:38PM (#8054408)
[citation required]