boomsmee wrote:You consider taking bitcoins?
ray49 wrote:I'd buy with bitcoins. I used them on other sites. They are truly anonymous and involve much smaller fees on either end compared to any other processor.
OK. The main issue with bitcoins is the added complexity in processing the transactions. There are a few problems that would need to be overcome before bitcoins became a viable option:
1: We would need a way to cash them out into USD and into the Hypno Enterprises bank account as quickly as is reasonably possible. We can't be in the business of holding onto piles of bitcoins. Small businesses live and breathe on Net30 terms and the hosting provider, payfile authors, etc don't accept bitcoin.
2: We'd need to modify the payment system to accept bitcoins. This is fine except that the time involved may well value at more than the value of clearable bitcoin transactions. A major videogame developer recently ran into this problem where the number of users using bitcoins were so low that it cost them more than it made them.
3: Conversion rates. Obviously the value of bitcoin floats against the dollar. When a credit card transaction is made, there is a guarantee made by the banks when foreign currencies are in use that we'll get that amount minus the card processing fees. With bitcoin, there's no protection from volatility. This ties back into point #1, we would need to clear transactions fairly quickly (within 24 hours) to mitigate the risk of the value of bitcoin rapidly changing.
As a side note, bitcoins are not truly anonymous. The blockchain contains a complete transaction register that can be publicly audited.
If someone had any suggestions on how to overcome these issues, I think it would be a viable option for people looking to make purchases with a certain amount of partial anonymity.
The key here is that WMM absolutely cannot be holding piles of bitcoins for extended periods of time. They should be able to be cashed out (preferably automatically) as quickly as possible... certainly within 24 hours.