

Ask HN: When Amazon.com will accept bitcoin? - felipelalli

I am asking it because I can see bitcoin articles almost everyday here in HN. I'm sure Amazon.com will accept bitcoin some day, but when?
======
itsprofitbaron
I’m not going into the _flaw_ that, I believe surrounds Bitcoin and its
algorithm (in particular that I believe Bitcoin isn’t acting like a currency
as its incentivising hoarders & due to that this will lead to a recession and
because the money supply does not expand it will evolve into a depression) but
rather the issue around Amazon adopting Bitcoin today.

First of all let’s put some perspective here – Bitcoin’s market cap has only
recently passed $1 Billion mark[1] whereas, Amazon comprises of 12-20% of
online sales (depending on where you look) which makes them the 15th largest
US Store.

One of the problems with Bitcoin is despite its low fees, transaction speed is
_much_ slower than you’re standard debit/credit card & considerably slower
than the 1-click card you already have on file with Amazon. Whilst you may not
consider this important, considering that Amazon is trying to get to same-day
delivery (especially as eBay already do this[2]) then having to wait for the
transaction to verify significantly affects shipping times & Amazon’s
intentions to do same-day delivery.

Likewise, going back into my earlier point about Bitcoin only recently
reaching the $1B market cap[1] no one really knows exactly how much “financial
bandwidth”[3] that the Bitcoin market can carry & and since Bitcoin is highly
volatile, if Amazon entered the market at this point it would add even more
volatility to the market which in turn makes it more difficult for vendors –
who value stability. Moreover, $1 Billion isn’t a significant amount of money
(you can argue otherwise but look at Global GDP etc) and Bitcoin is still
maturing which, means they still have to demonstrate resiliency to attacks
from organized-crime/hackers, spam transactions etc as well as, the fact that
it will be _high-risk both legally and financially_ for Amazon especially as,
Bitcoin will have a sudden large influx in market cap (after all it is really
volatile).

Additionally, Amazon are already looking at Virtual Currencies[4] which
suggests that they will probably be looking at them closer over the long-term.

[1] [http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/28/bitcoin-how-an-
unregulated-...](http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/28/bitcoin-how-an-unregulated-
decentralized-virtual-currency-just-became-a-billion-dollar-market/)

[2] <http://now.ebay.com>

[3] <http://financial-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Bandwidth>

[4]
[http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5d46a9fc-6fbc-11e2-956b-00144feab4...](http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5d46a9fc-6fbc-11e2-956b-00144feab49a.html)

~~~
felipelalli
So, in your opinion the main problems are: 1. transfer speed. 2. high
volatility. Is that right?

------
artificialidiot
1\. When USA government accepts bitcoin for taxes.

2\. When Amazon decides WoW gold is good enough too.

