
BitcoinStore Launch - Cheaper In Bitcoin - enmaku
http://codinginmysleep.com/bitcoinstore-com-launch-cheaper-in-bitcoin/
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JWhiteaker
It's called BitcoinStore, but the prices are only shown in USD. I expect it
will show the conversion on the checkout page, but at first glance the concept
feels like just a marketing gimmick.

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mtgx
I agree, the price should not be shown in dollars, otherwise I feel it kind of
defeats the purpose. But this could be the beginning of something great.
Bitcoin needs a real economy behind it to sustain itself and to become a lot
less susceptible to speculators.

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jerguismi
I don't see point displaying the bitcoin price, instead they should post what
their conversion rate is. Still like to compare the prices with other USD
rates.

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JWhiteaker
I'm not saying they shouldn't show the dollar value, I just expect them to at
least show the bitcoin price next to it with a name like BitcoinStore.

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ojiikun
While they may offer a discount for using BTC, their prices start off much
higher than the competition.

Clicking around in the section for LCD monitors, all the name-brand models
were 50-80% more expensive than on the likes of newegg and amazon.

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BitcoinStore
Products vary in pricing. We don't undercut them on every product, but the
fact that we're able to undercut them severely on a good percentage of our
products is amazing!

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mikeash
The lack of chargeback risk is no doubt great for the merchant, but I wouldn't
consider buying from such a place unless it had built up an extremely good
reputation, not only for honesty in terms of shipping what I paid for, but
also in resolving problems.

Credit cards give me a lot of protection and I wouldn't want to shop online
without that.

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Ives
It's unfortunate that shipping to european countries is on average about 4x
the cost of the product. For example: a kensington-like cable is 25$ but
shipping is $110. Similarly, for a 200$ screen, shipping is $300.

So while it's nice that international shipping is available, it's not very
practical unless you have very deep bitcoin pockets.

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lucb1e
Yeah, $110 shipping for a freaking five-gram USB WiFi dongle. And I see that
the minimum order is $1000 during their beta :/

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BitcoinStore
Both the minimum order and extra international shipping costs will go away as
we move forward. They were unfortunate hurdles we had to place in order to get
the site public on schedule.

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rdl
I'm curious what licit, low volume, etc. products actually would make sense to
sell in Bitcoin vs. something else.

The best thing I can come up with is online-delivered services from non-US
(and ideally, non-developed financial system) countries, to other non-
developed-financial-system countries. Like, a guy in Zimbabwe who wants to
provide an online service to someone from PNG. Which is really a stretch to
imagine.

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BitcoinStore
The advantage to using Bitcoin is that there are no payment processing fees.
What we're able to cut with BitcoinStore is that 1-10% fee that Visa, PayPal,
et al. charge especially when dealing with products that have a high
chargeback risks. So the products that sell best when using Bitcoin have high
chargeback risks associated with them.

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srdev
How do you fill the gap for me, the consumer, of not having chargebacks
available? Chargebacks are a net plus for me.

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ewillbefull
This is usually filled by escrow services which I'm not sure this website has
implemented. Even Silk Road has implemented this, so it's a deal-breaker for
me.

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r2DEYdly
Silk Road has implemented this because it is a market between sellers and
buyers. BitcoinStore is a company selling stuff, having escrow would have no
point at all.

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mikeash
How does the fact that it's a company instead of an individual change the
picture at all? In both cases, escrow serves the same purpose: to safeguard
against getting ripped off.

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rdl
Assuming bitcoinstore hasn't ripped off their previous N customers, I'm fairly
confident being purchaser N+1, especially if my transaction isn't "special" in
any way.

They would have a lot to lose by ripping off customers, vs. a random seller on
silkroad, so I'd feel comfortable up to a few thousand dollars.

I think I've actually bought something from Memorydealers before. I'm not sure
of the relationship between bitcoinstore and Memorydealers. If they're the
same entity, then I'd be fine up to $100k or so -- it's a real business.

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mikeash
That makes escrow less likely to be useful, but the chance doesn't go to zero,
so it hardly has "no point at all".

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rdl
Escrow has its own risk and cost. The hilarious thing with previous online
currencies (E-Gold, OSGold, Pecunix, ...) was that the escrow providers
themselves were often the weak link.

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mikeash
Well sure, but it's still useful, just not something you might automatically
want.

My credit card issuer effectively acts as an escrow agent, and I love that
fact when ordering from companies. It has saved me more than once, too.

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shell0x
The BitcoinStore URL is <http://www.bitcoinstore.com> , but I get an error
when accessing it:

There has been an error processing your request

Exception printing is disabled by default for security reasons.

Error log record number: 1226234019337

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enmaku
Momentary glitch, it's back up now.

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dpatrick86
Very cool! BitcoinStore.com's sidebar hover animation is totally weird on
Chrome though... like it's stacking them. It could totally benefit from
.stop(true, true) on that hover event before it executes said animation.

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jhales
um... the first thing I looked at: [http://www.bitcoinstore.com/hp-
folio-13-b2a32ut-13-3-quot-le...](http://www.bitcoinstore.com/hp-
folio-13-b2a32ut-13-3-quot-led-ultrabook-intel-core-i5-i5-2467m-1-6ghz.html)

vs. the first google hit: [http://www.amazon.com/HP-Folio-B2A32UT-13-3-Inch-
Ultrabook/d...](http://www.amazon.com/HP-Folio-B2A32UT-13-3-Inch-
Ultrabook/dp/B006VCOW5U)

It would be nice if there were some concrete examples advertised of
newegg/amazon etc. being undercut.

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nirvana
This is very interesting, and I hope it is a success.

Since the government can't shut down bitcoins by stealing them (how they ended
the last attempt at a sound currency- the FBI perpetrated a heist where they
stole $8M in Platinum, Gold and Silver).... they will have to take more direct
methods, like passing a law, or calling this "money laundering".

If they don't, then things like this will proliferate, and the only power the
government has to back its currency is violence.

But employing violence here may be too much for people to accept. ...who am I
kidding. Like I said the FBI stole $8M from an american vault and americans
don't care, the ones who even know about it believe it was justified because
the FBI gave a press release branding the people "terrorists" who "sought to
undermine the US Dollar".

Oh, undermining the dollar, it sounds so scary when you put it that way.

Everyone should read The Creature from Jekyll Island by Griffen. It's a
monetary history of the USA. The federal reserve was not created by accident,
the boom-bust cycle they've perpetrated (eg: 2008 crisis for example) is not
by accident either.

I won't say they'll use violence against bitcoin-- they're still using
propaganda and that hasn't failed yet... or bitcoin might unravel itself.

But if this store is a success, it can't be allowed to stand, or there will be
others and the entire system will unravel, eventually.

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taligent
You know what all you delusional conspiracy theorists keep forgetting. That
roughly the same financial system model in the US exists in many other
countries. So does that mean that there is a mini-conspiracy in each country
or is it between countries ?

Anyway this whole government is scared of Bitcoin is ridiculous. They know,
just like everyone else does, that Bitcoin is nothing but a modern day pyramid
scheme that disproportionally rewards early participants and relies on new
entrants to prop the whole deck of cards up.

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john78
There's nothing theoretical about what's he's suggesting.

You'd be referring to BIS.org, the central banker's bank, which was setup in
1930 for reparation payments to Germany. The bank was almost dissolved in 1944
after allegations it facilitated Nazi Germany's looting of other countries
assets. Two of its directors were convicted at the Nuremberg trials and one
owned the bank used by the Gestapo. But the modern father of economics, John
Maynard Keynes, was a prominent voice against its dissolution.

I believe the very existence of the bank was denied publicly for years. Today
they have assets around $400 billion and are immune from any jurisdiction
(based in Basel, Switzerland). There is nothing American about the Federal
Reserve system nor its international counterpart, the BIS. It's an oligarchy
and extremely corrupt. The reports of the BIS have numbers like "$147
trillion" referring to currency swaps etc. It's a fascinating look at how
international banking works, all of which is public now.

As for the Liberty Dollar, it existed for around 8-years and had letters from
the Treasury, Secret Service and others attesting to its legality. As soon as
Liberty Dollar made millions of dollars in Ron Paul coins, they were indicted
and their customer's property was seized. However, the Liberty Dollar's
marketing plans for the promotion of their alternative currency were deceptive
and likely illegal.

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Rastafarian
Aha John, good thing this is a new account as it's gonna be silent banned in a
few hours ;-)

