When Overstock.com became the first major U.S. retailer to accept bitcoins in January 2014, it didn't require much of a business rethink. When a customer pays Overstock in bitcoins, the company simply trades them for dollars at the point of sale.
But now Overstock is planning a deeper integration of Bitcoin into its business operations in an effort to help drive broad consumer adoption of the cryptocurrency. The company's director of communications, Judd Bagley, announced these plans in an interview last week with the Digital Currency Council:
We're preparing…additional motivations for customers to use Bitcoin. For example, there will soon be Bitcoin-only sales and discounts for purchases made with Bitcoin…Our suppliers need to get set up to accept Bitcoin. Getting that to happen will require a combination of education and incentives, possibly in the form of faster payment or increasing what we pay them by a few basis points. The same also applies to paying our employees in Bitcoin.
The CEO of Overstock is Patrick Byrne, an outspoken libertarian and cryptocurrency enthusiast, who's also working on a project to decentralized stock trading using blockchain technology.
Reason's Nick Gillespie recently sat down with Byrne at the 2015 New Hampshire Liberty Forum for a wide-ranging interview about Bitcoin, net neutrality, Warren Buffett, school choice, and more. Watch the interview below:
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