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Entropia the first MMO to accept Bitcoin?

A very cool article on Forbes detailing how the Bitcoin implementation went down for Overstock.

Byrne, who launched Overstock in 1999 to sell surplus and returned merchandise, has been following Bitcoin for over a year. As a dogged libertarian who fell in love with computation theory while studying philosophy at Stanford, Bitcoin “was like my dream come true.” He was initially worried about Bitcoin being in a legal grey zone, but was reassured by the Senate hearings in November.

“When I was saying we’d be accepting Bitcoin within 6 months, I thought that would be it,” he says. But Bitcoin money processors began approaching the company, wanting to partner with it and telling the company it could get Bitcoin going sooner. Coinbase beat out its competitors by promising to fly talent to Salt Lake City to help Overstock get their payment platform up and running. Coinbase takes the Bitcoin and pays out Overstock the USD equivalent. Afraid that he had tipped his hand by telling the press about the company’s Bitcoin plans, Byrne decided to make it happen as soon as possible.

“On January 1st, our people said they could do it within 10 days if I gave them enough people,” says Byrne. “So we put a team of 40 people on it. We locked them in a room and slid pizzas under the door, and gave them hotel rooms when they needed them. The technique of swarming to form a team was incredibly efficient.”

The team was mainly engineers, but also included “customer care, graphic artists, a lawyer, the tax man, and our returns guy,” says Byrne. They knocked it out in less than 10 days.

(As for returns, the company won’t initially be sending people Bitcoin or dollars when they send an item back; instead they’ll get in-store credit. “Later, we’ll send dollars or Bitcoin back,” says Byrne.)

“There’s clearly a huge community of people who support this. Our customer service lines are going nuts with people who appreciate this,” says Byrne. “The PR wasn’t the driving force here. I think there will be a few day lift from that. For us, the benefits are that we save on the transaction fee and we get to access that community. The community doesn’t have to keep their wealth and savings in financial institutions they don’t trust that might melt down.”
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Link to full article:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/01/09/overstock-bitcoin/
 
I think the us gov has thier eye on bit coin, why would we want to tie in with that?

IF some heroin seller from silk road, moves his bitcoins into EU, then withdraw into cash. how will that look for EU? I belive there is a reason EU is not "mainstream" and those reasons would be null and void if teamed up with bitcoin.

all the talk about how governments cant stop it is foolish, governments cant stop torrents either. however the US government launched a raid on foreign soil, confiscated computer equipment and arrested the operators. There were no local laws broken however the arrests were made anyway "as a gift from Ukraine gov to the united states"

http://torrentfreak.com/demonoid-busted-as-a-gift-to-the-united-states-government-120806/

My point is if they want to shut it down, or at least seriously fuck with the operators. they can, they will and there aint shit anybody can (will) do about it.

Why get in bed with bitcoin who is already on the usgov radar? its just a matter of time imo before the raids start happening. they may not be able to shut down everyone. but I don't want to see them targeting MA.

The risk outweighs any reward imo.

I am sure bitcoin fans dont agree. however gun owners fully support the right to own guns yet its still a bad idea to clean your guns in front of the police station.

we know bitcoin is already at this very moment under investigation and monitoring from us gob, that's enough reason to stay away.:wise:

just my 2cents.

BTW I was a bit coin user before SR bust. and it was nice at the time to be able to mail order some coke, but I dont see it as good to tie in with EU.

Besides we can already deposit with bitcoins, by selling the coin and depositing with paypal.
 
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@Farmer Smurf

Guess you got to post same time I did. Please read that Forbes article I've posted earlier, especially this bolded part here:

Byrne, who launched Overstock in 1999 to sell surplus and returned merchandise, has been following Bitcoin for over a year. As a dogged libertarian who fell in love with computation theory while studying philosophy at Stanford, Bitcoin “was like my dream come true.” He was initially worried about Bitcoin being in a legal grey zone, but was reassured by the Senate hearings in November.

“When I was saying we’d be accepting Bitcoin within 6 months, I thought that would be it,” he says. But Bitcoin money processors began approaching the company, wanting to partner with it and telling the company it could get Bitcoin going sooner.
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Overstock CEO is talking about these US Senate hearings
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/11/21/heres-how-bitcoin-charmed-washington/

You are a bit unaware of these recent developments I'd say.

Some interesting highlights from the Washington Post article about the US Senate hearings in November:

The pair of Bitcoin hearings held this week by Senate committees could have been a disaster for the Bitcoin community. After all, Bitcoin first came to mainstream attention in 2011 when Gawker reported on Silk Road, an anonymous online marketplace that allowed users to purchase a wide variety of illegal drugs with Bitcoin. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) denounced the site and suggested that Bitcoin was "an online form of money laundering." A few months ago, it would have been easy to imagine the first congressional hearings on Bitcoin being a prelude to a federal crackdown on the decentralized financial network.

But that's not what happened. Instead, the hearings were lovefests. All three Obama administration officials who testified this week stressed that Bitcoin has legitimate uses and argued that no new regulations were needed to police illicit uses of the network. Most of the other witnesses echoed those sentiments.

That wasn't a coincidence. The cordial atmosphere of this week's hearings was the culmination of months of careful diplomacy by Bitcoin advocates. Since the spring, leaders of the Bitcoin community and sympathetic policy advocates have been engaging with federal regulators, lawmakers and other influential figures inside the beltway. The result: a near-unanimous consensus that the federal government needs to be careful to avoid hampering the growth of the world's first completely decentralized payment network.
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I am aware, and I choose to distance myself from bitcoin.

senate may have said whatever, but usgov has a longer track record than MA of saying one thing and doing another, and for one branch to have no idea of what another branch is doing.
 
Farmer Smurf said:
I am aware, and I choose to distance myself from bitcoin.

senate may have said whatever, but usgov has a longer track record than MA of saying one thing and doing another, and for one branch to have no idea of what another branch is doing.
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I think you should lay off the weed and please take that as a friendly advice. Doesn't help with the paranoia. :better:
 
Mikass said:
I think you should lay off the weed and please take that as a friendly advice. Doesn't help with the paranoia. :better:
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ok, wonder if anyone told the guys at demonopid that. after all they were in a country where they were actually following the laws. so they had nothing to fear right? just paranoia.

Anyway. Im not here to debate it I may very well have a fringe view of the issue.

but if you want some tinfoil hat shit peep this.
one thing that strikes me as interesting is most of the pro bitcoin stuff I read on the net (even just in this thread) seem to have an agenda, or want to push how good bitcoin is, almost like a cult guy trying to recruit, or a amway salesman or something. Its never simple like "bitcoins are good". its always an avalanche of "pitch and proof". Sometimes with a tad of "you must be stupid if you dont realize how good this is".

now that could be because it really is the best thing since sliced bread, and the probitcoin guys cant help but scream it from the rooftops. or it could be really really good PR spin, the kind your users start sniping for you. arguably the kind EU could use more of.

Either way I have put in my thoughts about this issue, since I don't think id like to see EU get hurt by accident.

I didn't share my thoughts because I need to be converted :)

as for your remark about my meds causing paranoia, i would argue it doesn't cause that all, its a simple stereotype given to us by the hippy generation. However its hard to argue this point, when they all, are really out to get you.
 
Farmer Smurf said:
but if you want some tinfoil hat shit peep this.
one thing that strikes me as interesting is most of the pro bitcoin stuff I read on the net (even just in this thread) seem to have an agenda...
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Ok so what do you think this agenda might be? Some previous poster said something about Bitcoin being created by aliens. :holyshit:
 
Mikass said:
Ok so what do you think this agenda might be? Some previous poster said something about Bitcoin being created by aliens. :holyshit:
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nah not here to debate it. you have your opinion, I mine. they are different and that's cool.
but if you really really think he was talking about actual aliens, and not just making a point that its artificially created by some techno magic. then perhaps you need some of what im :smoke:
 
Mikass said:
Ok so what do you think this agenda might be? Some previous poster said something about Bitcoin being created by aliens. :holyshit:
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All ur money r belong to us!! :wtg:
 
Farmer Smurf said:
nah not here to debate it. you have your opinion, I mine. they are different and that's cool.
but if you really really think he was talking about actual aliens, and not just making a point that its artificially created by some techno magic. then perhaps you need some of what im :smoke:
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Not really sure what techno magic means. Quick search revealed these results http://powerlisting.wikia.com/wiki/Technomagic
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technomage




But as fun as this off-topic might be, point of the thread is very simple one.

Some big European companies like Bigpoint and Takeaway as well as Wordpress, Reddit, Zynga, Overstock that need no introduction are already accepting Bitcoin via payment processors like Coinbase, Bitpay or BIPS that instantly convert Bitcoins into USD or EUROs, so that the merchants actually receive normal fiat currency payments.

Question is what will be first important MMO to accept Bitcoin? The race is on. Richard Garriot thinks there are MMOs going for it though no announcement has been made yet. Even the first MMO that makes the announcement that will accept Bitcoin stands to gain quite a lot of free publicity. Implementation can happen few months down the road but the announcement itself is important.

Interesting interview answering most of the questions asked in this thread. Discusses US Senate hearings, Bitcoin wallets, payment processors, valuation, volatility, where Bitcoin is heading and what happens behind the scenes. Trace Mayer is a very cool guy, one of the silent mastermind financial geniuses out there.

 
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+1 Mikaas.

I don't know why people who don't like something, they are more likely to attribute that something to something morally bad, against the law and always try to defame it with comparable actions that lead to that conclusion. I think this is psychological to lie to themselves and others and feel good about their decision to not pursue it further. Like Mr. Byrne from Overstock said, when asked by the journalist: "what do you about bitcoin being used to money launder and doing unlawful things?" and he responded: "I think that you can do that with fiat money as well and has been done long before and people are still doing it now."

Now, i ask what about the other people that really believe in it and want to use it as it is fiat money today, meaning that because inflation and economic crysis, we do know now that money is not tied anymore to all goods and services created. Just use it as the new wallet to wallet 2.0, respecting the law like before.

To me it looks like future happening right now.
 
DannyDZ said:
+1 Mikaas.

I don't know why people who don't like something, they are more likely to attribute that something to something morally bad, against the law and always try to defame it with comparable actions that lead to that conclusion. I think this is psychological to lie to themselves and others and feel good about their decision to not pursue it further. Like Mr. Byrne from Overstock said, when asked by the journalist: "what do you about bitcoin being used to money launder and doing unlawful things?" and he responded: "I think that you can do that with fiat money as well and has been done long before and people are still doing it now."

Now, i ask what about the other people that really believe in it and want to use it as it is fiat money today, meaning that because inflation and economic crysis, we do know now that money is not tied anymore to all goods and services created. Just use it as the new wallet to wallet 2.0, respecting the law like before.

To me it looks like future happening right now.
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If people want to use it fine with me, let them do it. It an interesting concept, but I'm against some of the hype and it's important for normal people to understand the risk with the system. I my opinion is not for normal people to use, it's mostly for tech geeks who likes fun tech solutions. Maybe I have changed my mind five years in the future, but for now I can't see the huge benefits for the customers with the concept, only the problems.
 
Some of you seem seriously confused. Possibly because you've 'invested' in BTC and over-defend it at every mention of it? Cause there's been several cases showing it's not safe to use (yet). Even if your confusion comes from elsewhere, publicity is not something Entropia needs at a cost. Any player in EU could attract several more, but not if they are confused to think they can all make money in EU. If your deposited/looted/earned peds are no longer safe (even if that is just a feeling and not a certainty, whether because of the use of bitcoins or other), it's already gameover, everyone will be withdrawing what they can to the point of MindArk being unable to return any money.
 
billairboy said:
If people want to use it fine with me, let them do it. It an interesting concept, but I'm against some of the hype and it's important for normal people to understand the risk with the system. I my opinion is not for normal people to use, it's mostly for tech geeks who likes fun tech solutions. Maybe I have changed my mind five years in the future, but for now I can't see the huge benefits for the customers with the concept, only the problems.
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I know it's highly volatile and is just backed by people believing in it, but so it is a loaf of bread that if someone wants to sell it for 1 million dollars and someone else wants pay that for it. No one can stop this from happening (loaf of bread example), even a 1-5-10 million dollars painting or "entropia ped"?

Another example might be the economy of Entropia, where people instead of selling a product for more that what is paid(hunted, mined or crafted to be looted) for, the economy dies.

I don't know how far off i'm from the discussion, but i think you get what i'm saying.
 
DannyDZ said:
I know it's highly volatile and is just backed by people believing in it, but so it is a loaf of bread that if someone wants to sell it for 1 million dollars and someone else wants pay that for it. No one can stop this from happening (loaf of bread example), even a 1-5-10 million dollars painting or "entropia ped"?

Another example might be the economy of Entropia, where people instead of selling a product for more that what is paid(hunted, mined or crafted to be looted) for, the economy dies.

I don't know how far off i'm from the discussion, but i think you get what i'm saying.
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Well, I'm not talking about stopping it, I just don't understand why people should start using it in the first place with the risk and complicated system coming with it, even if it is a clever system.
 
billairboy said:
Well, I'm not talking about stopping it, I just don't understand why people should start using it in the first place with the risk and complicated system coming with it, even if it is a clever system.
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The point still stand,crypto currencies , especially Bitcoin which is currently viable for merchants due to the safe system in place, open entropia to a huge extra market possible.
New depositors, free advertising, a way to produce growth.
That's all what this thread is about, and is irrelevant to current players, or people that are not familiar with it.
It is not a fairy tale that people use bitcoin, and want to use them.
 
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DannyDZ said:
+1 Mikaas.

I don't know why people who don't like something, they are more likely to attribute that something to something morally bad, against the law and always try to defame it with comparable actions that lead to that conclusion. I think this is psychological to lie to themselves and others and feel good about their decision to not pursue it further. Like Mr. Byrne from Overstock said, when asked by the journalist: "what do you about bitcoin being used to money launder and doing unlawful things?" and he responded: "I think that you can do that with fiat money as well and has been done long before and people are still doing it now."

Now, i ask what about the other people that really believe in it and want to use it as it is fiat money today, meaning that because inflation and economic crysis, we do know now that money is not tied anymore to all goods and services created. Just use it as the new wallet to wallet 2.0, respecting the law like before.

To me it looks like future happening right now.
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I remember the early days of the internet. I was one of the "early adopters". Bought a 9kb modem and a shared dial-up account with 2 of my friends at the time back in high school. Found a whole new world out there with dozens of sources of information. I even printed lots of stuff as it was much easier to read and brought some of it to school to use as source material for various tasks. I remember how dismissive people were saying stuff like "Oh, it's from <the internet> so it's not reliable. Internet is shady and not censored/protected and information flows freely there so can't be reliable." Those very people that bitched about it then are heavy internet users now. There were so many detractors back in the day, even Nobel Prize winners like Paul Krugman who said internet was just a fad that won't last.
The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in “Metcalfe’s law”–which states that the number of potential connections in a network is proportional to the square of the number of participants–becomes apparent: most people have nothing to say to each other! By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s.
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http://web.archive.org/web/19980610100009/www.redherring.com/mag/issue55/economics.html

There were many idiotic but highly appreciated and praised articles like this one back in the day http://www.newsweek.com/clifford-stoll-why-web-wont-be-nirvana-185306

After two decades online, I'm perplexed. It's not that I haven't had a gas of a good time on the Internet. I've met great people and even caught a hacker or two. But today, I'm uneasy about this most trendy and oversold community. Visionaries see a future of telecommuting workers, interactive libraries and multimedia classrooms. They speak of electronic town meetings and virtual communities. Commerce and business will shift from offices and malls to networks and modems. And the freedom of digital networks will make government more democratic.

Baloney. Do our computer pundits lack all common sense? The truth in no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works.

Consider today's online world. The Usenet, a worldwide bulletin board, allows anyone to post messages across the nation. Your word gets out, leapfrogging editors and publishers. Every voice can be heard cheaply and instantly. The result? Every voice is heard. The cacophany more closely resembles citizens band radio, complete with handles, harrasment, and anonymous threats. When most everyone shouts, few listen. How about electronic publishing? Try reading a book on disc. At best, it's an unpleasant chore: the myopic glow of a clunky computer replaces the friendly pages of a book. And you can't tote that laptop to the beach. Yet Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we'll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Intenet. Uh, sure.

Then there's cyberbusiness. We're promised instant catalog shopping—just point and click for great deals. We'll order airline tickets over the network, make restaurant reservations and negotiate sales contracts. Stores will become obselete. So how come my local mall does more business in an afternoon than the entire Internet handles in a month? Even if there were a trustworthy way to send money over the Internet—which there isn't—the network is missing a most essential ingredient of capitalism: salespeople.
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Fast forward to present day; all these statements were proven false and people who made those claims are now biting their tongue. Of course was all fine and dandy to be among the sheeple and part of the crowd that trash talked it because everyone was doing it. People didn't want to be left alone defending it. Better be wrong with the crowd than be right and alone as some would say. Monkey see monkey do.
 
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xXSqUaLLXx said:
The point still stand,crypto currencies , especially Bitcoin which is currently viable for merchants due to the safe system in place, open entropia to a huge extra market possible.
New depositors, free advertising, a way to produce growth.
That's all what this thread is about, and is irrelevant to current players, or people that are not familiar with it.
It is not a fairy tale that people use bitcoin, and want to use them.
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"Huge extra market"? What? I mean, pretty much everyone that are using Bitcoin probably already can deposit with an ordinary bank card or other solutions. So "extra market" are does who can't deposit with other solutions, and those can't be many.

But I agree, free marking is always nice, so why not allowing depositing with Bitcoin, if they secure it so MA don't takes any financial risk and additional cost, it's just an other payment method, nothing that should effect EU in the bigger picture. But the cost of adding the bitcoin method probably are bigger than the benefit today.
 
billairboy said:
"Huge extra market"? What? I mean, pretty much everyone that are using Bitcoin probably already can deposit with an ordinary bank card or other solutions. So "extra market" are does who can't deposit with other solutions, and those can't be many.

But I agree, free marking is always nice, so why not allowing depositing with Bitcoin, if they secure it so MA don't takes any financial risk and additional cost, it's just an other payment method, nothing that should effect EU in the bigger picture. But the cost of adding the bitcoin method probably are bigger than the benefit today.
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Then why did Overstock say that most of their $130 000 in Bitcoin sales in the first day came from completely new customers? Sure, to give support to the system but also because it's bringing in a new market of Bitcoin users. Watch the video posted in this thread about it. The CEO himself says Amazon and other similar companies would be crazy not to follow suit as there is a new market there that they would just be giving to Overstock if they didn't join in allowing Bitcoin sales.
 
xXSqUaLLXx said:
The point still stand,crypto currencies , especially Bitcoin which is currently viable for merchants due to the safe system in place, open entropia to a huge extra market possible.
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what extra market? the existing market of [everyone in the world interested in MMO] is larger than [everyone in the world with Bitcoins and interested in MMO]. you and Mikass are seriously overreaching, banging a drum that will turn off just as many who will be suspicious. what in it for you, eh, invested lots in Bitcoin? making daft comparisons to the internet doesn't help the case, for every success you can find a failure, normally more than one. i recall people used to be evangelical like this about Entropia... look where it is now, not what was expected 5 years ago, its at best treading water and possibly in a slow death spiral. Bitcoin could be back to $14 by the end of 2014, theres not a good reason for it not to. in other words calm down.
 
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billairboy said:
"Huge extra market"? What? I mean, pretty much everyone that are using Bitcoin probably already can deposit with an ordinary bank card or other solutions. So "extra market" are does who can't deposit with other solutions, and those can't be many.

But I agree, free marking is always nice, so why not allowing depositing with Bitcoin, if they secure it so MA don't takes any financial risk and additional cost, it's just an other payment method, nothing that should effect EU in the bigger picture. But the cost of adding the bitcoin method probably are bigger than the benefit today.
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I think you are underestimating the fact that if MindArk was to accept it, then make a good press release.
with the past of entropia and its model, it will attract people.

remember what entropia is, a rce model, a virtual money tied to USD used to buy and sell anything ingame.
If you can't imagine the impact it can do right now, it is your opinion, obiously it is not mine.

Who are bitcoins spender ?
the same people who uses USD, who likes to gamble, who want to diversify their assets instead of keeping all eggs in one box, basically who want to do anything they can do with USD.
People who wants to invest, people who sit on crypto currencies mines because they are early adopters and have a lot wealth to spend up that they want to invest, and diversify their assets.

It is already happening now, with no difference against using USD.

Poker, casino, even some 3D games use bitcoin model.
No difference whatsoever apart of missing the exposure boat when it will just be normal that everyone use bitcoin when it comes to eu , and by then, entropia will not gain much from it for sure, apart if they are in the first waves.
 
Larkin said:
Then why did Overstock say that most of their $130 000 in Bitcoin sales in the first day came from completely new customers?
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they havent. they've said they had x amount of revenue in bitcoin and thats it. what they havent said is if the total revenue is changed, or how much the bitcoin makes of total daily revenue (actually i think they might i recal a number of 4% soewhere), or what the revenue is on day two or three. i'd be far more interested to know what the total bitcoin sales for the first month was and if it affected total revenues. not a press release promotion.
 
@aridash

You can play the role of the sarcastic infatuated sourpuss. It's fine by me. Doesn't change the facts one bit.

In one day Overstock sold $130k worth of goods and most of those sales came from customers they've never reached before. Second day after accepting Bitcoin, the guy was on CNN talking about it, so publicity factor is also very important.

How many payment options no one really cares about did Mindark introduce over the years? I think there are quite a few people don't really use, that brought them close to zero extra publicity. Want me to go over them?
 
aridash said:
they havent. they've said they had x amount of revenue in bitcoin and thats it. what they havent said is if the total revenue is changed, or how much the bitcoin makes of total daily revenue (actually i think they might i recal a number of 4% soewhere), or what the revenue is on day two or three. i'd be far more interested to know what the total bitcoin sales for the first month was and if it affected total revenues. not a press release promotion.
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You're wrong :)

overstock_ceo.jpg
 
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