
TigerDirect.com Now Accepts Bitcoin Payments - peter123
http://www.tigerdirect.com/bitcoin/
======
uniclaude
I'm going to lose a few karma points for going meta, but I have to point this.

When the top comment to a positive bitcoin related news reads like textbook
flame war material[1], I feel sad about the current state of HN.

We're supposed to discuss, not to pick sides and borderline troll people who
are skeptical about some technology. This attitude is downright childish, and
will only spawn very predictable and heated debates.

You bought or mined bitcoins and believe in them? That's good for you, I have
some too, yay. Yet, I'm not starting flame wars and making fun of non-
believers. This brings absolutely nothing. Moreover, it might show a negative
image of the bitcoin community.

[1]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7109970](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7109970)

------
ryaneager
I find it humorous that Tiger Direct and Newegg are promoting Bitcoin mining
with GPUS. The returns from such cards are so small now its not even worth
mentioning. Even with a high end GPU you are only making around $0.96 a week.
With the card costing $440 it'll take 8 years to make your money back,
assuming the difficulty won't increase. Which it will so there is no hope of
making a profit.

~~~
smtddr
_> >The returns from such cards are so small now its not even worth
mentioning._

Well, I dunno about mining BTC specifically but I got a co-worker making about
0.45 - 0.6 BTC a month on a 2 GPU rig from Newegg at $1200. He's using the
middlecoin.com pool which rotate-mines different altcoins, converts to BTC and
pays out. The rig is on track to paying for itself soon and apparently his
electric bill didn't shoot to the moon.

~~~
ssmoot
It's tricky finding a reliable pool so you can "set it and forget it" for
sure.

It's an adventure:

    
    
      * First you need parts to build a system (and if you're ordering from Newegg good luck getting your "overnight" order in <5 business days).
      * Then you need to setup the software (hint: latest Ubuntu combined with latest Catalyst drivers is a world of frustration).
      * Then tune cgminer (which took me a few days between other obligations) which is somehow not a copy-paste job.
      * Then you spend a couple weeks fighting unreliable or hacked pools until you find something that works for you.
    

And reliability matters a lot if you're using the most common PPLNS payout
pools since every round you're not mining at 100% sets you back.

I'd definitely recommend Proportional pools like middlecoin. The fees are
higher (~+3% over PPLNS typically), but getting paid for 96% of your shares on
something reliable is definitely preferable to 99% or even 100% of your
shares, minus previous-round penalties (up to 20% or more?) on something
unreliable.

Anyways, here's what I've done with the three R290's I bought back in
December: [http://middlecoin2.s3-website-us-
west-2.amazonaws.com/report...](http://middlecoin2.s3-website-us-
west-2.amazonaws.com/reports/1PJcbzM3rFiBHPJMcp93XkYmSgGpLMZAxG.html)

Thought peeps might be curious seeing it in concrete terms, and middlecoin's
charts are the best IMO. Simple, everything you need, and nothing you don't.

Once I switched to middlecoin (with multipool as a backup) I've earned almost
0.5BTC in 2.5 weeks. And (very) surprisingly, I don't seem to be suffering all
that much due to rising difficulty (the brunt of that hit a week or two before
I had everything going I guess).

This doesn't include the balance I carry at multipool BTW, which I don't
bother to do much with (Cryptsy: meh).

Still, I'm planning to sell the system for what I paid for it (~$1800)
tonight. It's made me some money, and that's nice, but wondering when the
right time to sell (because of rising difficulty) is weighs on you a bit. And
I figured if I can get my money back, well, it's been nice, but yeah, best get
out while the gettin' is good. Especially with the possibility of ASICs
hitting in a few months (even if they aren't faster, if their hashes-per-watt
figures lure in even bigger miners, that's going to hurt).

It's crazy to see cards I paid $409/each for (R290) go for up to 30% over what
I paid a month or two before. I've never seen that happen in 20 years of
messing with computers. I mean hell, I've never even got more than maybe 20 to
30% back of my initial purchase back on a PC before.

Aside: That's one reason I love Macs so much since switching ~7 years ago: I
can upgrade to the latest iPad every year for $100 out of pocket, and even a 3
or 4 year old laptop like my two MacBook Air's will easily retain 50 to 60% of
their value. Which makes the whole financial/cost arguments against Macs
pretty bogus (and believe me, I used it often enough myself as a PC fan in a
past life), but I've definitely spent far less in TCO on my Macs than I did on
my PCs. You just have to bite the bullet and get over the buy-in hump. Used
Macs hold their value even better though. You might easily find a decent deal
on a used Mac, use it for a year, then sell it for _more_ than you bought it
for. I did with my first (G3 I think) Mac Mini.

~~~
ryan-c
When I was GPU mining bitcoin in early 2011, I was also had to worry about
stuff like:

* modifying the GPU firmware to allow more extreme overclocking (I was able to run my 5850s at 945MHz - factory firmware capped them at 775MHz, default speed was 725MHz)

* figuring out how fast I could run them before the became unstable

* dealing with the heat

* convincing PG&E I wasn't growing weed (their billing system flagged my electricity usage)

* ensuring I could recover remotely even from the CPU locking up

* dealing with pools being DDoSed

* carefully planning which outlets things were plugged into so as not to blow the breakers

* ensuring all the miner software autostarted properly (one miner per gpu - multigpu miners weren't available yet)

and this was only 6 GPUs total.

------
Karunamon
Another major retailer!

It's funny, all of the "Bitcoin is dead! Bitcoin solves a non-existent
problem! Bitcoin.....etc" posters have vanished.

~~~
slg
Someone with a less favorable view on Bitcoin could easily point out that
these retailers are not embracing Bitcoin. They are embracing payment services
like BitPay and Coinbase. To TigerDirect this move isn't that different from
deciding to accept payments from Paypal, Google Wallet, etc.

~~~
baddox
That's like saying that Amazon doesn't actually embrace the US dollar, they
just embrace payment services like Visa and Mastercard.

~~~
slg
No, it isn't the same. Visa and Mastercard pay Amazon with USD. BitPay and
Coinbase do not pay TigerDirect in Bitcoin. Amazon is fine holding reserves of
USD. Retailers like TigerDirect and Overstock are not yet willing to hold
reserves of Bitcoin.

~~~
CodeCube
strictly speaking, you don't know this. I believe these services let you
choose what percentage you want to be paid in USD, and what percentage you
want to keep in bitcoin. So although they may choose to be paid entirely in
USD, they could also choose to keep some amount of bitcoin ... that's an
internal matter that they may or may not make public

~~~
danudey
From an accounting perspective, it makes little sense to keep BTC, since it's
so volatile. It's easier to account for your sales in USD and have a fixed
value than account for them in BTC, which fluctuates wildly.

~~~
maaku
Not if you spend bitcoin as part of your business (e.g. paying suppliers)

~~~
_wdh
Isn't that recursive? If it makes no sense for you to keep BTC because it's so
volatile then why would it make sense for your supplier?

------
kolev
Accepting Bitcoin means having a Bitcoin wallet. Period! The more merchants
like TigerDirect and Overstock "embrace" Bitcoin, the more bitcoins will be
sold at the exchanges and the price will be dragged down further and further.
It's funny that just about now hoarders start to realize how negative is this
for their empty hope to wake up millionaires one day due to Bitcoin suddenly
becoming $10K a piece.

~~~
skriticos2
I don't get your logic. Liquidity doesn't change supply. It just makes
exchange simpler. A set market price has to be found between the people who
want to trade Bitcoins, which will very much be influenced by the supply.

Liquidity will help to lessen volatility (fluctuation), but the price point
has to be decided by the people who want to own some Bitcoin (traders,
spenders and savers). Savers will drive the price upward as long as they save,
but that's ok, as long as not too many people decide to liquidate their
Bitcoins at the same time. It's the same for lost Bitcoins, the value for the
rest of them adjusts to the demand level based on supply.

~~~
kolev
I only said this drags the price down. In order for somebody to sell, there
needs to be a buyer. My comment was that hoarders are in an internal conflict
- they both want to spend it to drive adoption up and, yet, continue to hoard
it as supply drives the price down decreasing the value of their stash.

------
AznHisoka
Is it me or are all the "has-beens", or unrelevant companies accepting bitcoin
nowadays?

We had Overstock, who has fallen from its high. We had App.net, who is
struggling to be relevant. now TigerDirect.

When is Starbucks or Apple going to accept Bitcoin?

~~~
Karunamon
Mm. The companies might have fallen from their high, but they're hardly
irrelevant or dead. Overstock is advertised like crazy and has some pretty
good deals to boot, Tiger competes directly with Newegg. App is a bit of an
outlier there..

Starbucks or Apple? I'd assume the megacorps will take it up once the
instability gets smoothed out a bit. Which is a problem of adoption, which
means the faster the smaller fish like these adopt it, the faster the bigger
ones will.

I predict Amazon will take BTC within the next 2-3 years.

~~~
zanny
> I'd assume the megacorps will take it up once the instability gets smoothed
> out a bit.

Why would they care if they get paid through bitpay or coinbase in USD anyway?
It doesn't actually matter the current exchange rate for btc because they get
the same USD anyway.

~~~
nedwin
Someone has to handle that transaction - like Coinbase.

Part of their risk is that Coinbase, still an early stage company, isn't
reliable enough to process their volume. They could have issues with how they
process transactions, all kinds of things could come up.

Part of it is being risk-averse to BTC itself, part is being risk-averse to
early stage payment gateways.

------
ryangripp
You're going to continue to see major eCommerce players offer bitcoin as a
payment option. In the checkout flow it is best practice to offer as many
payment options available because it increases the likelihood of a successful
conversion.

Regardless of whether Andreesse's essay is correct regarding bitcoin two IR100
sites is a pretty big deal for bitcoin.

~~~
Benferhat
_> > In the checkout flow it is best practice to offer as many payment options
available because it increases the likelihood of a successful conversion._

Are you sure about that? Too many choices sometimes leads to no choice at all.
[0]

[0]
[http://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_ch...](http://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choice.html)

~~~
yarou
Exactly. See also:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buridan%27s_Ass](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buridan%27s_Ass)

------
gigq
Lost in the news that they accept bitcoin is the "Coming Soon" under Butterfly
Labs hardware mentioned on that landing page. First I've heard of a mainstream
electronics store selling ASIC mining hardware.

------
elipsey
...to prevent charge backs. Ever by anything from them? Ugh...

~~~
dangrossman
> Ever by anything from them?

Yeah, a tower with an AMD K6-2 266MHz processor, 32MB of PC100 SDRAM, 6.4GB
hard drive and a 56K modem. It was a great deal out of the print catalog they
mailed to my parents' house every month. I guess that was a while back now.

------
markdown
Relevant post made in the last hour by Tony Hsieh in his Reddit IAmA:

    
    
        Q: Mr. Hsieh, Are there any plans for Zappos.com to accept bitcoin?
    
        A: we've been looking into the possibility but probably not anytime soon!
    

[http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1vzd35/i_am_tony_hsieh...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1vzd35/i_am_tony_hsieh_ceo_of_zapposcom_author_of/cexa357)

~~~
mikegreen
The world has imploded and all I have are these bitcoins and bullets; I'll buy
some shoes!

------
vrikis
As far as I can see, they aren't indicating what they are doing with their
Bitcoin. Accepting Bitcoin is one thing, since as far as I know, all places
accepting Bitcoin so far just convert it into their country's currency (e.g.
$). Accepting Bitcoin and keeping Bitcoin for further trading is a-whole-
nother story, and as far as I know, no one is doing that.

Still, great news for cryptocurrencies as there's now a bit more anonymity
when buying online! :)

------
andrewf
Aren't these the guys that tried to sue Apple for a quick buck around the
release of Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger?

Sorry TigerDirect, I swore off you then.

~~~
troymc
If I understand trademark law correctly, a company must defend its trademarks
or risk losing them. It wasn't about "a quick buck," it was about fulfilling
the responsibilities of owning a trademark.

It's hardly fair to fault TigerDirect for doing what the law requires of them.

In this particular case, a judge had to make a judgement call about whether
Apple's new "Tiger" OS trademark was an infringement on TigerDirect's
trademark. It could have gone either way. That's why a judge was needed.

------
lvh
Interestingly, TigerDirect appears to be unreachable for me (from Europe):

Access Denied You don't have permission to access
"[http://www.tigerdirect.com/"](http://www.tigerdirect.com/") on this server.

Reference #18.56bd7a5c.1390506110.4cf7baee

~~~
bulibuta
Same here. What's up with that?

~~~
aet
Even if they paid you in bitcoins I wouldn't deal with them. Terrible

------
flycaliguy
My long term plan to buy a bitcoin last year for $300 and buy a VR system with
it in 5 years is going along smoothly.

------
yalogin
Why did not NewEgg jump in yet? I was expecting them to be one of the first.

~~~
drcode
I'm guessing they'd like to but adding new payment options to a website is a
hassle (even when it's bitcoin)

