
Bitcoins can now be used to pay for Domino’s Pizza - elleferrer
http://www.digitaltrends.com/web/virtual-bitcoins-can-now-be-traded-for-dominos-pizza/
======
patio11
Bitcoin: a currency for which capability to buy pizza is noteworthy, required
custom programming, comes with a 10% novelty tax, and is incapable of
maintaining a single price for 24 hours.

~~~
euroclydon
Surely there is more to the Bitcoin movement that a desire for a currency
that's worse than those sponsored by nation states. Just pointing out that
Bitcoin sucks does nothing to address the underlying reason why people want to
use Bitcoin. Where I live, alternative currencies seem to have sprung up as a
response to feelings of disgust with the current economic system, or mistrust
of government or bankers.

States and groups are looking at how the federal reserve is currently
purchasing more than half of all newly issued U.S. Treasury Bonds, and drawing
the inevitable conclusion that the the failure of the system is accelerating.
The natural end to an inflationary currency is BOOM! There is a desire out
there for a deflationary currency. Bitcoin is deflationary, right?

Now I think _Bitcoin Sucks_ is sound economic advice because for every
altruistic financial scheme, there have been a hundred scams, but I don't know
if Bitcoin has the potential to be useful if we experience hyperinflation.

~~~
rayiner
I actually like the concept of alternative currencies. But bitcoin really does
suck. It's not just an alternative currency. It's an alternative currency with
a built-in retarded fiscal policy.

~~~
clicks
Would you like to enlighten us by explaining a little more all the ways
exactly in which it is 'retarded'?

~~~
rayiner
Inherently deflationary currencies are retarded. See Paul Krugman on deflation
([http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/02/why-is-
deflation...](http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/02/why-is-deflation-
bad/)) and the gold standard
([http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/golden-
instabili...](http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/golden-
instability)).

Moreover, there is a strong argument that deflationary currencies are morally
wrong because of their effect on generational wealth inequality. In a society
with a deflationary currency, nearly all wealth will be held by older people,
simply because they got there first.

You don't even have to look very far to see what a society with deflationary
currency would look like. There is a market that has many of the same
properties as a deflationary currency, and that's real estate in places like
SF and NYC. In Manhattan, there are a ton of older people who purchased real
estate in say the UWS in the 1980's and 1990's. Property values have
skyrocketed since then, to levels that these people never could have afforded
at the time they bought their property. Their kids, now the same age/of the
same relative financial standing as they were when they bought the property,
are totally priced out of the market.

~~~
euroclydon
Doesn't your example of NYC real estate undermine the point you've made about
inflationary monitory policy not rewarding those who _got there first_? That
happened without deflationary currency -- surely it's impossible eradicate
rewards for being first.

~~~
rayiner
My point isn't that NY real estate is the result of deflationary currency. My
point is that its an example of what happens when assets appreciate without
investment, like currency does in a deflationary system. The old people just
end up owning all the wealth, in a very dramatic way.

------
mseebach
This is not in any meaningful sense "paying for pizza with bitcoins" anymore
that hauling your TV to a pawnshop, they buying pizza with the proceed is
"paying for pizza with TVs" - it seems to exchange bitcoins for USD, then it
buys a pizza for you with the USD.

From the narrow perspective of a BTC-miner, yes, it's relevant, but for
subscribers to the lofty goals of a central-bank-independent/anonymous
currency it's pointless.

~~~
redthrowaway
It works for the very small set of people who have bitcoins they haven't
bought with a traditional currency. This is bigger than the set of miners, but
not by much.

~~~
jerguismi
> This is bigger than the set of miners, but not by much.

From bitcoincharts.com quickly estimating that the volume in exchanges was 2
million BTC. Bitcoins produced by mining = 3600*30 = 108000 BTC. Unless the
speculators are constantly buying from each other, I would say that there are
people earning bitcoins in the bitcoin economy, and the amount of those people
vastly outnumbers the miners.

But I doubt that they care that much about the pizza service...

~~~
Nursie
"Unless the speculators are constantly buying from each other,"

I would wager that yes, that does account for quite a large volume of the
daily exchange volumes.

~~~
MacsHeadroom
You would wager wrong, depending on how you define "large." The total exchange
volume of all exchanges is only about 93k BTC per day.
<http://bitcoinwatch.com/>

The daily transaction volume, with change transactions removed, averages
around 400k BTC per day.

So speculator trade is less than 1/4 of all Bitcoin transactions.

Fun fact: SilkRoad is less than 3% of daily Bitcoin transaction volume

75% of trades are commercial in nature. There are thousands of vendors dealing
in BTC- hundreds of which deal in it exclusively. Some are even among the most
popular web sites in the world.

~~~
Nursie
25% of the daily volume (100K out of 400K) is pretty huge if you ask me, yes.

How much is money-laundering? How much is people just moving stuff around for
the hell of it? Of what's left how much is online gambling (an economic
activity but not necessarily a 'good' one)?

These things would be very hard to tell I would have thought.

------
crdoconnor
Fed #1: Look, we've got all of these transaction details for people who have
bought and sold marijuana. How do we chase them down, though?

Fed #2: Well, 1) we'd need to give the stoners something they love dearly. 2)
that thing would need to come attached to their address.

------
SlipperySlope
Has any other bitcoin news media event happened in the last few hours? Not the
pizza deal because that is somewhat old news - but this HN post? The price
jumped up from 24.5 to 25.5 and I don't see any other trigger!

Back in 2011, I learned about bitcoin mining from HN and solved two blocks
myself with a CPU miner. Those coins are worth several thousands of USD today.
Thank you HN ...

~~~
owendbybest
One theory is the increase in online gambling sites who use bitcoin. Gamblers
are buying it up.

~~~
logn
I don't think there's any truth to this theory. As far as poker, they're
mostly all poorly designed and have no traffic. Maybe a straight-up casino
site would be better where you don't need people to play against and you don't
care about user interface. But I think the whole "drugs, gambling, hookers"
element of BTC is just FUD.

However, I think a ton of people are gambling on bitcoin itself. I've read
that many investors say they've tried their hand at bitcoin. It makes sense.
The market dynamics can't be much different than forex and are probably a fun
experiment. But for serious traders I doubt they could wage big enough bets on
BTC without driving up or down prices on themselves.

------
axusgrad
A few years ago, someone bought a pizza for 10000 Bitcoins.
<https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=137.0>

~~~
gst
For that amount of Bitcoins you can buy a house nowadays.

------
SlipperySlope
Bitcoin has the potential to disrupt current payment processing. The main
advantage to merchants is fraud reduction. Bitcoin transactions cannot
subsequently be reversed by the customer once received by the merchant.

Additionally, bitcoin transactions have lower transaction fees than credit
cards, wire transfers, cash couriers, and so forth.

No wonder that more startups are developing bitcoin applications.

~~~
icebraining
On the other hand, the main disadvantage for _consumers_ is fraud increase,
for the same reason.

~~~
SlipperySlope
Agreed, but this factor is reduced for in-person purchases from brick and
mortar merchants. Additionally, many online web sites feature merchant
reliability scores, e.g. Amazon.

Recent US legislation will make credit card processing fees more visible to
consumers, with the consequence that low cost payment processors such as
bitcoin will be even more competitive.

------
redthrowaway
This would be far more impressive if Domino's now accepted bitcoin. As it is,
it's just a very expensive exchange service.

~~~
RaphiePS
I wonder if there's a generalized solution to this issue; that is, the
inability to pay for most things using Bitcoin.

If I remember correctly, Visa will let you create a "virtual" credit card so
you can shop online without giving out your actual information.

I bet a "bridge" between the Bitcoin and credit card systems could make a
_lot_ of money. Does anyone know if this is feasible?

~~~
wmf
[http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/22/3260584/bitinstant-
bitcoin...](http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/22/3260584/bitinstant-bitcoin-
debit-card-official)

I would bet that this either never comes to market or it ends up being just as
inconvenient to use as the existing exchanges.

------
sams99
Bitcoins can be used to purchase marijuana, Bitcoins can be used to buy
Dominos Pizza ... coincidence ... I don't think so.

~~~
TDL
US dollars can be used to purchase marijuana, US dollars can be used to buy
Dominos Pizza. Coincidence? Yes, BTC & USD are both mediums of exchange and
mediums of exchange are used to buy goods & services with.

------
majmun
there will be order pizza API in future

if( dateTime.Now == friday ) { orderPizza(pizzaType, pizzaSize); }

~~~
benparsons
For interest, this has already been around:
[http://hackedgadgets.com/2008/06/09/order-dominos-pizza-
via-...](http://hackedgadgets.com/2008/06/09/order-dominos-pizza-via-command-
line/)

------
mercurialshark
Bitcoin mining can pay for sustenance (in theory). The future is here and it
is delicious!

~~~
dan1234
Can it also cover the electricity used in mining?

~~~
GhotiFish
One thing to note about those calculations is that, if you're using electric
heating, the energy you used to mine would of being used to heat your home. So
it's not so much of a cost.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Product idea: electric heater that generates heat by mining bitcoins.

------
jauer
"However, it’s unlikely that the customer would be able to actually track the
order through Domino’s online order tool."

Actually, so long as they have your phone number for delivery issues/to give
the driver directions you can track any Domino's order by phone number on
their web site (<https://order.dominos.com/en/pages/tracker/#/track/order/>).
Last time I looked they were passing json around or something and it was easy
to scrape.

------
bfwi
The exchange rate between USD and BTC is quite volatile. Either they have to
constantly change the bitcoin price, or your pizzas will frequently get quite
a bit cheaper or more expensive.

~~~
nwh
I imagine stores counter that by setting the price in USD on the server side,
and then using an API to convert it into bitcoin on each page view. Problem
solved.

~~~
bfwi
So they constantly change the price then, albeit automatically.

~~~
Drakim
Wouldn't this be an issue any business that offers prices in more than one
currency experience?

~~~
bfwi
Bitcoin is unusually volatile. The exchange rate of eg. USD to EUR is much
more stable.

~~~
MacsHeadroom
Much more stable, yes. But it still fluctuates as much as 4% on a daily basis.

------
ravenp
Doesn't that defeat the purpose of anonymity? With coins being hard to get in
the first place and a large fee, I can't see anyone using this.

~~~
btilly
Bitcoin is a currency. The point of it is to buy things.

Because it is based on encryption, it can provide both hiding of who you are,
and strong proof of who you are. But it is cool that it can also supply you
with pizza.

~~~
edanm
Completely inappropriate comment for HN, but the sentence:

"Because it is based on encryption, it can provide both hiding of who you are,
and strong proof of who you are. But it is cool that it can also supply you
with pizza."

Seriously made me laugh out loud. You just made my day :)

------
TBCM
Great, pizza! The more things we can buy with this virtual currency, the
better! If you'd like to start using Bitcoins check out
<http://thebitcoinmaster.blogspot.com>

------
mongol
How is an income of Bitcoins taxed?

~~~
hooo
Would you only be taxed when converting it back to $$?

~~~
MacsHeadroom
<https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Tax_compliance>

------
return0
I wonder how dominos lawyers will feel about their brand name being used in
connection with bitcoins, which so far are useful mostly for illegal trades.

------
camus
you can now convert your drug money into pizzas , neat!

~~~
crdoconnor
Even neater, the feds can now convert your transaction trail used to sell
drugs into a physical address.

~~~
SilasX
"I'm sorry, I don't know why someone mailed me a box of drugs. Could have been
anyone that placed the order. Want to arrest me for this? Great, looking
forward to next week when you'll be arresting your entire HQ for receiving
drugs from Silk Road."

[Note: You don't actually say that, rather, your attorney argues the above
with reference to the rules of evidence and burden of proof; and asserts that
receiving a box of drugs in the mail is insufficient proof by itself that you
ordered it, and the only other evidence is that a series of jumbled characters
paid for it.]

~~~
crdoconnor
Um, the police already know all of this. If they use this information, they
are not just going to rock up to court with (purportedly) your public
transaction history and a subpoena showing that you got a pizza delivered
using bitcoins and get a conviction.

They're going to use it to get a warrant to search your house.

And yeah, this trawler like approach will not catch everybody. But it could
score a lot of convictions very quickly.

