Bitcoin recently received a boost of confidence as Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne said his company would be the first major US retailer to accept the virtual currency. It won’t happen anytime soon, however, as they won’t be set up to process Bitcoin transactions until sometime in the second half of 2014.
In an interview with the Financial Times (via CNN), Byrne said they think there is going to be a market in Bitcoin and they want to get in front of it. A healthy monetary system isn’t based off an upside pyramid or the whim of a government official. He believes Bitcoin should hold its value better than the dollar due to the fact that it is mathematically constrained (only a limited number can ever be created) and it can’t be manipulated by government authorities.
When they start accepting the currency, they will bank it in the event that other coins are increasing in popularity. If other coins fail to gain momentum, Overstock would instead just transfer Bitcoins to dollars on a daily basis, Byrne noted.
Overstock will join a number of other retailers in accepting Bitcoin including Humble Bundle, Namecheap and OKCupid, just to name a few. Overstock of course would be the largest retailer to do so with forecasted total revenue of $1.3 billion in 2013. The move could prompt others like Amazon to do the same – that is, if they can beat everyone to the punch.
