I've seen loads of topics of people trying to sell things and saying I want x amount of dollars worth of BTC. Surely if someone is so keen on the idea of Bitcoin fiat shouldn't even be mentioned.
They should be prepared in certain instances to take a fiat loss for their beliefs.
it's not as simple as you think. bitcoin's price is always rising, so .02 btc is not the same today as it is tomorrow. plus, fiat is our point of reference, since bitcoins are denominated into decimals. it's hard to scale them.
That's true, but you should only reference to FIAT, not use it as primary value denominator.
So for instance, this laptop costs 1 BTC, equal to xxxUSD at time of writing, not the other way arround.
I'm really iritated by the fact that coindesk writes articles about companies and merchants accepting bitcoins and selling an item X for xxxUSD in bitcoin equivalent.
They should write it the other way arround. Only the fact that I don't have anything to do with USD and live in a EUR area.
If the merchant had to pay for the merchandise in terms of dollars then why would they sell it in terms of bitcoin. This would be a lot like saying that you will sell a $100 bill for .05 BTC regardless of the BTC/USD exchange rate. If the exchange rate gets low enough then many people will take up their offer because they would be getting a good deal, but if the exchange rate gets too high then no one would buy because they would essentially be getting ripped off.