As an actual vendor who accepts bitcoins, this fiasco is tremendous fun.

Cash doesn't bring the drama like bitcoins.

Thank you, I have read your suggestions with great interest. I particularly like your idea of offering a discount to existing customers if they pay with bitcoins.

I will keep you guys posted.  Also if anyone mentions bitcointalk when booking a delivery with btc. You will get 20% off (not in combination with any other discount offers)

It's a London based small removals and large item courier company, we will soon be operating a motorcycle courier service in the capital as well.  You can find us at eastlondonmanwithavan.com.  With all these big companies adopting bitcoins it seems a bit silly to spam my business on here amongst all the big announcements as we are quite a small operation.  But we began accepting bitcoins last year around April and I believe we are still the only business of it's type to accept BTC. So if anyone on here is buying furniture off eBay or ikea, or needs to move in the capital give us a call.

I guess the problem of how I would get people to buy bitcoins could be solved by pointing them in the direction of bittylicious.com and a blockchain.info wallet.  The type of people I most expect to actually follow through with buying btc to get the discount are going to be people that are already vaguely aware of bitcoin or have perhaps already got a bitcoin wallet with some dust and maybe would buy more btc just to get the discount.

Not really. I'm only willing to do this because I firmly believe that BTC will increase in value by a lot more than 20%

I guess that's possible. Is 20% discount too much?  I want to put a nice juicy discount so that people will go to the effort of getting BTC in order to save £20-£40. If more btc accepting businesses in London did this I think there would be more of a buzz and the reason for getting BTC would be the discounts.

In another thread it was said that btc users are generally young and male.  What the bitcoin economy needs is more women. From having had a few girlfriends in the past I know that nothing is more attractive to them than a tag with "20% off" written on it.

I run a business that accepts payment in bitcoins. And I've been trying to figure out a way to get more customers to pay me in bitcoins rather than cash. The kind of business I run, my customers are "the general public" not really that technologically literate. I have had a few who have paid with BTC but they are few and far between. What I want is for more of the "general public" types to start paying in BTC.

I'm going to start offering a 20% discount to people paying in bitcoins. So for instance you pay with pounds you pay £100 if you pay with bitcoins you pay £80 converted into bitcoins which is currently 0.205 btc.

I think if this option was offered to my customers it would encourage them to consider buying some bitcoin just to get the discount therefore increasing the number of new bitcoin users.

If a few more retailers started to do this it would help to increase the value of bitcoin as people realise bitcoin is perpetually worth 20% more than cash when you spend it.

Also if more people payed me in bitcoins it would mean more bitcoins for me!

Flawless plan?

If you want to innovate you can do it for free.  If you want donations you can link to your site where people can donate to you.  Adding a btc. Donation address to your sig is just vulgar.

Anyone with a btc address as a sig should be banned.

I think it's because bitcoin enables easy and convenient begging.  Before bitcoin you would have to put your paypal and that would be linked to you.

Add to this the anonymity of the internet and you get beggars and panhandlers.  In my opinion, any account that asks other members for donations or payment should have their account deleted and IP banned.   Mods should get on this.

Maybe a bitcoin lottery that supports good causes. It would generate some good publicity.

People choose their numbers, buy as many tickets as you like, then 30% of the money would go to support some good causes and the rest would go on the jackpot and some smaller payouts. If someone wins 1000btc that would be good publicity.  

Maybe the 30% could be distributed to African schoolchildren I dunno. I think the fundamental problem is that not enough people own BTC. And since the price rise that's only going to get worse. Big btc holders need to spend bitcoins and pay people in bitcoins especially pay people who don't own bitcoins yet.

Actually this guy has written some informed pieces about bitcoins including his article "10 places to spend bitcoins in the UK". Which featured my business. So he's got a fan for life in me.

Currently, option1 is on 48.2%. Need a clear majority in favour before I hand over to someone on day shift.

Bump.

Permissible answers are:   1) I use them regularly to buy goods/services.  And 3) I'm intrigued but don't know where to begin.

Matthew sparks has written an article about bitcoin,

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/10628946/Fewer-than-one-in-five-Britons-trust-Bitcoin.html

There is a poll at the bottom. Currently "I believe it's a fad" is winning

 

Hi. Long time lurker first time poster here.

I, like many other people use blockchain.info online wallet. So far I've had no problems, all transactions have been fine and it is a very convenient way to keep my BTC.  The reason I decided to use blockchain.info is that I've heard about people getting hacked, losing their computers, forgetting their private key etc. so I thought blockchain.info online wallet would have someone who's full time job it is to ensure the site is secure.

What I want to know is how safe is the online wallet at blockchain.info? I guess there is no legal guarantee that the bitcoins are safe but how trustworthy are the people behind it? What are we getting when we get a online wallet?

Hi, I am interested.  Tried to send you a pm but it wouldn't let me because I'm new.

Could you show me an example of your work? And provide a brief explanation of of the build, thanks.

Axewax


[edit] would you be capable of building something more complex for a bit more money?