Czech-o-Slovak "Amazon" Accepts BTC And you Can Buy Tesla Car Now Too, Is Amazon Next?
A month ago Czech-o-Slovak online retailer called Alza started accepting Bitcoin as a means of payment. This was pretty huge as they are the biggest online retailer in Czech Republic and Slovakia. They sell all sorts of electronics, accesoies, etc. and they are one of the most sucessful e-shops in this region so this was pretty huge.
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What did it involve?
First of all, they implemented BTC ATMs into their venues where you can change local currency to BTC (Euro and Czech Koruna) or the other way around. And that's pretty much it. That's all they had to do from consumers' perspective. Now you can pay with BTC for all their products, in person and online.
Fun fact, The BTC ATM is from a local BTC ATM maker which is also second largest in the world.
After introducng BTC acceptance, there appeared a new section in the e-Shop dubbed "For Mining", a whole section that lists components suitable for mining crypto-currencies. Clearly, they want to captrure the hype, they are smart.
And also, now you can buy a Tesla car from them, too. Which you will get instantly and you can of course pay with BTC.
How is it going for them so far?
They already made few millions of transactions in BTC within a month and they say that this was one of the best decissions they ever made as it increased their revenue, too, making it also faster to process payments and brought lots of foreign customers. Apparently 52 % of the transactions were made by foreign customers.
I think this is huge as it can lead other retailers to start accepting BTC. @essra posted today about a petition he found to make Amazon accept BTC and LTC. Well, this can be an extra persuasive point as it clearly helped Alza.
Already BTC and crypto-currencies and whole crypto-scene is pretty significant in Czech Republic but with this it pushes it more into the eyes of a regular customer as everyone uses Alza here, even your average grandma. This will surely make cryptocurrencies even more popular here. So what would happen if a giant like Amazon started to accept BTC?
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That's awesome man! It's only a matter of time until it's everywhere. Wonder how this will work out if BTC splits though.
Yeah, especially if price drops let's say 600 USD for a week or two. Then all the media here would be bashing them and saying how "We told you so in this article how Crypto currencies are evil, here's the proof, Alza will suffer, MUAHAHAHAH". They will use slightly different wording but it would be pretty close to that TBH :).
The thing is though they can always ask the local crypto-anarchists for some help with something like that :). And they probably already have contacts with them because of the local ATM.
Hahah yeah pretty much lol. I kinda hope that happens - then I'll definitely be in buy mode on BTC.
Probably many people will talk shit about Bitcoin for a few months if this happens, but then probably Dash would take over. Actually I believe Dash will overcome Bitcoin in the long run since they are better structured and have lots of cool features that Bitcoin doesn't have - appart from the fact that it will never split due to its governance.
And I am hoping Monero will take over and then all the government fails :). Anonimity is important for me :).
Though I have to say I don't know too much about Dash yet. I just saw some marketing hype videos.
Dash has a feature that can make it completely anonymous as well. Definitely check out more vids. However my favourite characteristic is that it's much more decentralized than Bitcoin so miners don't have so much control. With their governance they were able to increase the block size in just a couple of weeks without much trouble. Now compare that to the issues Bitcoin has with scaling.
I believe anonimity is important, but scalability and a descentrilized and organized governance is much more important in my opinion.
Oh, nice. If there's anonimity I'll have to look more into it as then it will also compete with XMR which so far is the one I support the most.
Thank you for the info, without you I'd pobably never learn about it :).
You're welcome!
Wow, this shop looks awesome with the Bitcoin ATM and cute character in the GUI.
"they say that this was one of the best decissions they ever made" --- > I am sure it was as the price of Bitcoin has kept going up, so as long as they keeping some profits in BTC they doing exceptionally well for themselves and their company. A bold move that paid off to anyone that embraced it this year.
The Green character is their mascott, he is in every damn advertisement and has a pretty "screachy" voice. Not everyone loves him anymore as there is an advert with him all the time :). But everyone knows him :).
Oh yeah, what I'd do I'd pay for the product, etc by converting to "cash" straight away and for the "books" and then keep the profit in BTC. Maybe at least for a month and then selling it to reduce the risk.
There is also a Caffee here where you can only pay with BTC.
There are basically two ways of dealing with business in BTC. Straight conversion or "waiting".
Ok. hehe. In South Africa, we don't have too many mascots driving us crazy, luckily.
I would do the same as you with the BTC if I was that CEO , perhaps that is their plan and why they are so happy about using it and promote it so hard! :D
Yeah :). Plus it drives people from foreign countries to them, too :).
I bet you already want to buy that Tesla from them :P. Or a USB cable ... All the same :D.
Yes very true, Though I would not part so quickly with my Bitcoin. :D
This is awesome. Hopefully more and more commerces start using Bitcoin. It's amazing that cryptocurrencies are being so accepted to the point that they are unstoppable now.
Yeah, right now you can already survive using only BTC and probably even others so basically we will be going to the MOOn soon :D.
Amazon and Alibaba need to get into the gamr. It can help proplr understand that cryptocurrencies are real money.
Yeah, once you are able to buy something with "Magic Internet Money" then you start believing in Magic, too :).
I tried to explain it to somebody yesterday and she called it magic money. So yes it would help many people see it as a real currency.
In which country are you?
I think Technical people get this first, for the rest, it's still a technology and magic money.
Though the thing is, our "money" we use now are pretty magic, too. Even more magical.... They just appear and dissapear from under bankers' or politicians' sleeves. Quite some magicians :)
I am American and between my friends I would be the technical guy.
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