
Buy a car with Bitcoins, save $5,000 - coinabul
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/09/bitcoin_friday_sale_event/
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tptacek
_Perhaps the most eyebrow-raising offer comes from Wikispeed, makers of a
custom, modular car that claims to be able to drive 100 miles on a single
gallon of gasoline. On Bitcoin Friday only, customers who purchase a Wikispeed
SGT01 with Bitcoins can get 20 per cent off the list price, a $5,000 discount.

As the November 9 sale got underway, your Reg reporter checked in with
Holmquist to see how it was going. "It's going fantastic so far!" came the
response. "We had so many hits this morning that I had to upgrade servers and
add some DDoS protection."_

So... did they sell anything?

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coinabul
Currently BitPay is having one it's highest volume days. Some merchants are
out of stock already. It's doing well.

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chc
I think he means "Did these WikiSpeed guys sell anything or did they just get
a lot of traffic?"

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coinabul
Ahh, I'll be able to tell you tomorrow!

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tptacek
Hey, 'witoldc, you appear to be hellbanned.

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guelo
My main problem with bitcoin is that there's no way to buy them. I've tried
using Dwolla and Bitinstant and other methods and so far have failed after
jumping through all kinds of hoops including entering bank info and uploading
pictures of IDs and utility bills to shady websites. And everyone wants their
4% transaction fees, so if you want to buy this $20k car you'll be paying
hundreds of dollars in fees. I don't understand how a new economy is supposed
to form around it if it's so hard to enter.

~~~
taligent
The new economy is not supposed to form around purchases as expensive as cars.

It is still optimised for micro-transactions where that 4% fee isn't a
significant cost.

~~~
epscylonb
It's actually not really optimised for micro transactions.

The popular gambling site satoshidice is responsible for the rapidly
increasing size of the blockchain, now around 3GB.

Bitcoin has two main utilities, firstly it is very hard to prevent a bitcoin
transaction from taking place, it can potentially be tracked after the fact if
you aren't careful though.

Secondly the fixed limit means that it should become a safe store of value,
assuming that bitcoin is successful in the longterm.

Bitcoin isn't really designed to scale up to VISA levels of transaction
processing, instead it is more suited to be used as a clearing house, to track
deposits and withdrawals.

~~~
oillio
Bitcoin can scale to VISA level transactions[1]. The software is still BETA,
the optimizations required for this scalability have not yet been implemented
(they are being actively worked on). The primary one is support for pruning
the block-chain. This will drastically reduce the current 3GB blockchain size.

You are right though, in it's basic form, Bitcoin will not work for micro-
transactions where you want to transfer a few cents a few times a second.
However, there are strategies [2] to support some forms of micro-payments.

[1] <https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability>

[2] <https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Contracts> (see example 7)

~~~
epscylonb
The pruning stuff looks great, at the moment the time it takes to download the
blockchain (and the disk space requirements to a lesser degree) is creating a
disincentive to run a full verifying node.

I suspect bitcoin blockchain transactions will never be very useful for micro
payments, because of the confirmation delay.

If you use bitcoin as a clearing house though, which means you aren't
broadcasting a blockchain transaction for every payment then micro
transactions could work very well.

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mahmud
Why is there a "donate" paypal button on a car maker's website?

~~~
olefoo
Because they're awesome; and KickStarter! Or something like that.

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olefoo
The problem with BitCoin at this stage in it's lifecycle is that there is a
real tension between its use as means of exchange, and its use as a store of
value; and too much hoarding will decrease the utility of BTC as a means of
exchange.

If the people behind this effort really want to get the BTC economy rolling,
they need to figure out some way for more people to _earn_ their way into it.
If you have a hoard of BTC, now is a good time to figure out a project that
you want to crowdsource; if you wait too long BTC will be worth nothing,
because everyone will be saving theirs for later...

~~~
coinabul
I agree entirely! Everyone is sitting on their hoards of Bitcoin and not
spending it. This is merely one attempt at a solution. One way for people to
earn BTC IS to sell things.

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icyfenix
"For those unfamiliar with American customs, Black Friday in the US refers to
the day after Thanksgiving Day, which is traditionally considered the first
day of the holiday shopping season. It's generally the busiest shopping day of
the year, resulting in huge profits for retailers – thus, putting them 'in the
black.'"

This is not why it's called Black Friday. It's called Black Friday originally
by the retail workers who had to man the stores that day. "Black" meaning bad
or dark, in this case, like "this is a black day", rather than any reference
to finance (or racism). Those who worked their way into the corporate
structure of many retailers, or graduated college and moved on in their
careers retained their floor-worker slang, and the term spread.

~~~
mahmud
Never heard of this theory. Black refers to ink color. Line items in red are
loses, black are break-even or profit. Black-friday is when retailer make so
much profit they get back in black.

Business type-writters had red and black ribbons.

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jeffcoat
Wikipedia presents both origin stories, but the accounting version (black ink)
does appear to be a 1980s back-formation trying to put a nicer spin on the
name.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Friday_(shopping)#Origin_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Friday_\(shopping\)#Origin_of_the_term)

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aricg
I think if that car was real, there would be a video of it running or
something.

~~~
sukuriant
me too, so I started perusing their website and found a link to their next
website, where I saw...

<http://main.wikispeed.softlaunch.352media.com/car>

Personally, I'm not liking the chassy and it looks a bit shaky for my
interests. That said, if everything is interchangeable, maybe I could get some
better suspension in there.

It's an interesting first design and I'd like to see where it goes. Surely
there's a way to design this to be more luxurious without sacrificing too much
in terms of performance.

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fallse7en
Is it just me or does that car look like it was printed with a 3D printer?

