Accepting Bitcoin good for collecting
Gazes
Posts: 2,315 ✭✭✭✭✭
I think it would make great sense for auction houses and dealers to accept bitcoin for payment. There is a ton of money people have made and why not make it easier for them to purchase coins with it. Further, some of the qualities that would draw a person to buy bitcoin also would attract them to rare coins (finite number, distrust of monetary policy, privacy, etc).
Obviously no one is forced to accept bitcoin but certainly it seems to be an obvious way to get some of that money into our hobby.
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There are already a lot of bullion transactions that occur with bitcoin. So I get where you are coming from.
I think holding and handling bitcoin mostly introduces new costs and risks. I have a hard time imagining it being a boom for business. Bitcoin holders should already have ways to convert their bitcoin to dollars, and that's likely what the auction house would be doing anyway.
IG: DeCourcyCoinsEbay: neilrobertson
"Numismatic categorizations, if left unconstrained, will increase spontaneously over time." -me
Those who have made a lot of money holding Bitcoin will have to consider the capital gains involved in the sale/transfer. That might be a big disincentive. Of course, that’s for the honest folk.
How do you tell your consignors you accepted a trade* consisting of Bitcoin for their consignments that might be “worth” substantially more or a mere pittance tomorrow? You don’t want to have unfunded liabilities on your books when dealing with consignor money or you end up like Shane/Kryptonitecomics and default on debt owed to your consignors.
I wouldn’t consign to any auction house that accepted Bitcoin or any other virtual “currency.”
*For accounting/IRS purposes Bitcoin is not treated as a legitimate currency. It is treat as chattel.
More and more businesses are accepting bitcoin. Whoever accepts it can make the exchange as riskless as they want. The recent sotheby's auction of the digital art for 70 million was paid with bitcoin (i do not think as a general rule sotheby's takes bitcoin for all transactions).
Bottom line is that if a business wants to accept bitcoin they can make it work. My point is bitcoin and rare coins are distant cousins. I think it could bring in new collectorsby accepting bitcoin. Very few win win propositions out there but this could be one.
As I have said in another post regarding cryptocurrencies:
Have none, want none, accept none.
Accepting Bitcoin is good for Bitcoin
m
Fellas, leave the tight pants to the ladies. If I can count the coins in your pockets you better use them to call a tailor. Stay thirsty my friends......
It would spike some high-end auctions IMO.
It will happen at some point in the future.
Harlan Berk has been accepting Bitcoin for several years now. Another collector bought a coin a bit quicker than me some years back and paid in Bitcoin... I was frustrated for losing out but if they'd have kept their bitcoin, it's a $12 million coin so I suppose I can't complain
(Not as bad as the $400 million pizza though)
A couple of counter arguments:
1. Transaction costs - you need to sell the bitcoin for it to be useful, otherwise...
2. Volatility - the giant swings in prices (10% in a day) make it ill-suited to any kind of commercial transaction.
This. 🤬
If they take a credit card it's all digital until the cash is in the bank for a fee of course. Bitcoin would be no different, converted instantly to cash for a fee of course.
I don't hate the idea of bitcoin or cryptos in general. But they are kind of in a funny place. People point to Bitcoin for it's gigantic run-up in price. But that is exactly what you DON'T want in a medium of exchange. You need stability.
In fact, if Bitcoin keeps running, there is a disincentive to spend it. Would you spend $100 in bitcoin to buy a Morgan $ when the bitcoin might be worth $200 next month and the Morgan $ might be worth $100.
The only way you want to spend bitcoin on the coin is if you think bitcoin is dropping, but then why does Heritage or Stack's want to accept it.
Currencies should be boring to be useful.
For those who dont want to anything to do with bitcoin---great. No one is forcing you to---this is an added option to maybe get people who believe in crypto currency to also get involved in rare coins.
As for other barriers raised, other businesses are figuring out ways to do business with bitcoin, certainly we can too.
Again, there are alot of people who have new found wealth due to bitcoin. Why not try to attract them instead of finding ways to keep the status quo
Credit cards have fees. That is true. That's why all my auction partners want me to use ACH or they often charge for the convenience of using the card.
There may be people with huge bitcoin gains that would like to spend some to diversify.
There may. But you know how general psychology goes for stocks, coins, art. When the price is going up, everyone wants it. When the price is going down, no one wants it. Look at gold lately. Few months ago people were clamoring for it at $1900 per ounce. It was under $1700 last week and the gold market was quiet.
Edit to add: That's why the Fed wants a little inflation. If there is inflation, people don't defer purchases because their dollar loses value while they wait.
How about if auction houses paid consignors in bitcoin? Good or bad?
Why not give the consigners the option at the payout date at a certain time?
Look for all you skeptics--- i know this asset is inefficient, has little actual utility, is very difficult to value and throws off no cash.......
Actually the above quote is what i found when i googled gold as in investment---not bitcoin.
Again, i have no idea what will happen to bitcoin but the connection to rare coins seems logical. Why let Telsa and Mastercard steal the thunder? Here is a chance for numismatics to open the door for more people while not closing it on anyone
From a consigning perspective I don’t care how the auction house accepts payment as long as I get paid in a timely manner. I think Heritage and Stacks have deeper pockets than Shane.
From an auction house perspective I’m sure they could probably figure out a way to accept BTC for payment with hedging and thus negating the big swings but I’ll leave that to them. If I was selling a coin privately I would not accept BTC with the $5000 intraday swings we now see.
Actually, I've always been opposed to the gold standard for the same reason. And gold, in modern times, has never been as volatile as bitcoin.
I don't hate bitcoin. But I won't start using it until (if?) it's value stabilizes.
Doesn't Apmex already take Bitcoin?
What is the benefit to attracting bitcoin users to coin collecting? People either collect coins or they don't regardless of their bitcoin interest.
Great transactions with oih82w8, JasonGaming, Moose1913.
I could ask what is the benefit of attracting bullion buyers to coin collecting? We know many collectors of coins started out by 1st having an interest in bullion (i know thats how i started). There are many articles comparing bitcoin to gold (it is also called digital gold). The characteristics that seem to draw a bullion buyer to rare coins arguably are also there for a bitcoin owner. Marketing the acceptance of bitcoin for rare coins may be the thing that gets someone interested in rare coins.
Its easy to simply throw road blocks up for every idea to attract new collectors to our hobby. This idea seems to me to be worthwhile especially since it will not impact any non bitcoin believers.
If I were in charge of the IRS I would be making cyrptocurrency profit tax evasion a major enforcement area. The IRS is watching and is probably watching closely.
True. There's hundreds of billions of cryptocurrency capital gains which means hundreds of billion in capital gains taxes.
The physical vs. digital nature of the two media really attract different type of people. Part of the attraction of bitcoin to adherents is that it is NOT traditional money.
I don't think you can convert bitcoin users to coin collecting just by accepting it. You either like coins or you don't. I don't think there's any negative to the hobby if dealers wanted to start accepting it. But I've never woken up one morning and said, hey I made $10,000 in my portfolio let's see if there's a new thing I could collect with it.
Almost all crypto trading is done with crypto derivatives, not with the actual crypto. These derivatives trade on public US exchanges, all of whom are required to report transactions to the IRS. People fail to realize that a very low percentage of crypto transactions actually involve the real thing.
The majority of crypto players never own the tulips they trade.
Gold has a world price entirely unaffected by accounting games between the Treasury and the Fed. - Jim Rickards
Correct. And further many smaller players are buying on paypal and robinhood. Any gains here will trigger tax reporting by paypal/robinhood.
Just read a column in the feb 2021 greysheet by Patrick Ian Perez where he too makes a case for Bitcoin possibly helping the coin market. Good to read about this from knowledgable forward thinking members of the coin community.
It is very different. Credit cards are still based on USD or other major currency which are more stable than Bitcoin. $1000 USD is going to be worth the same in roughly one week. $1000 BTC might be worth $1500, $500, or $0 based on whichever way the wind blows.
And that should stick out as a major red flag.
For every dollar lost with tulips the other party made a dollar. It's all about being on the right side of the trade at the right time. Volatility can be your friend, if you will only let it.
Gold has a world price entirely unaffected by accounting games between the Treasury and the Fed. - Jim Rickards
What crypto derivatives trade on public US exchanges? The SEC has not approved ETFs.
While ETFs of all kinds are generally derivatives of an underlying asset or group of assets, you can buy non ETF crypto derivatives (not the actual crypto, but a paper version of it) on Robinhood and Paypal, as well as a whole lot of exchanges that deal exclusively in cryptos
Gold has a world price entirely unaffected by accounting games between the Treasury and the Fed. - Jim Rickards
That's irrelevant to the issue of an exchange medium. There is NO advantage to having a highly volatile currency as it disrupts economic activity.
Derivatives ... perhaps they are something that does belong in the same sentence as "cryptocurrencies". Now guess what else belongs in that sentence.
Way too volatile.
Dave
Unless of course the physical coin
seller wants to accept the high risk crypto payment for the chance to get that high return.
The OP asks the question of whether or not accepting bitcoin for payment in addition to the national currency would be good for coin collecting. I don't believe anyone here has advocated replacing the dollar with bitcoin. There are however always advantages when a buyer has more than one payment option.
Gold has a world price entirely unaffected by accounting games between the Treasury and the Fed. - Jim Rickards
No, the reverse is actually true as its non-risk compared to risky cash. You can't reverse a crypto payment nor chargeback or cancel it. Plus, it adds further security, timeliness, etc. People are chasing a red herring with this volatility nonsense, amazing how its a non-issue for businesses like apmex, jmbullion, etc.
A billion dollar transaction occurred this weekend with like 0.0000005% fees(50bucks) safely/securely, no merchant fees either. Great to see so much information here, tells me my bitcoin has more room to grow and still early. Backend adoption is increasing and accelerating, lots of people using it unknowingly.
The current "cryptocurrency" craze reminds me of the period leading up to the economic collapse of 2008-9. People who pay attention to the fundamentals when investing are being derided by those who are now making huge profits from cryptocurrency speculation. The boys at the country club are now starting to become envious of the member who just pulled up to the clubhouse in his new Ferrari, paid for with cryptocurrency profits, while their own investments make a measly few percent per year, just enough for a lease payment on their Bimmer. They are being tempted to get into this new area of "investing" and some are being more than just tempteted ... they are going all in to win big. The sky is the limit. Only fools accept the measly returns that fundamentally sound investments make.
Where will it end? When will it end?
Volatility is not nonsense when it comes to an exchange medium. Or I guess you think that Weimar era hyperinflation wasn't a problem for Germany.
You can mitigate the volatility, of course, by immediately converting to dollars. But then your transaction is really a dollar transaction not a bitcoin transaction.
What's the difference between accepting bitcoin and liquidating it versus forcing the buyer to liquidate before payment? Only one thing: who pays the 0.5% fee.
There is zero fee, by the way, on an ACH which is how all auction companies prefer to get paid.
Sotheby's should accept Bitcoin for the Weitzman auction.
Buy the dip.
And yes, accepting bitcoin was an untold boon for us. We let them stack up and took them for payment time to time. Well, it used to be 6-10k. We had our "optional back burner payment method" 5x our wealth. We had also bought in again on some dips.
The gold, ammo and silver business with BTC is nice. The level of trust and professional references or bonding over doing good business is absolutely brilliant.
Anyway here's an example of a disinfo troll/shill. Replace the highlighted parts with "USD". There's a lot of propaganda like this; they bash Bitcoin with all the negative aspects of USD. It is the wildest thing. And people buy it and people repeat it. What a world.
Yes, you could replace Bitcoin with USD, although Bitcoin encryption uses far more energy than any other payment processing. That said, I think the point is that Bitcoin is not the government-free alternative that some suggest. While you could replace Bitcoin with USD, that doesn't make the insertion of Bitcoin incorrect.
And the scalability issue with the required infrastructure is real. The amount of electricity and raw computing power required for a single Bitcoin transaction is insane.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/12/bitcoins-insane-energy-consumption-explained/
Where it ends no one knows. But we do know that it began in 2008 on Wall St. and the Federal Reserve printing press.
Gold has a world price entirely unaffected by accounting games between the Treasury and the Fed. - Jim Rickards
It's funny that people complain about the FED printing press. Hasn't bitcoin created $1 trillion out of nothing at all?
The FED printing press churns out our "required for transactions" national currency - one that gets devalued with every new dollar printed. Dollar supply is very relevant to any discussion concerning economic stability or purchasing power.
The amount of bitcoin in existence or it's value have absolutely nothing to do with the purchasing power of a nation's fiat currency or the state of a nation's economy. All citizens depend on the value of their dollars because they are forced to use them. Matters of capital assets, such as bitcoin, affect only those who choose to use or invest in them.
You should stop thinking of cryptos as a replacement for the dollar. While some cryptos may be used in limited transactions (thus the name cryptocurrency) they are capital assets. If I trade gold for silver with you, we traded assets, not currencies. If I trade bitcoin for APMEX's silver we traded assets.
Gold has a world price entirely unaffected by accounting games between the Treasury and the Fed. - Jim Rickards
I'm not the one who thinks of cryptos as currency. It's the cryptos themselves that hype the currency aspect. If you want to label it a collectible, that's fine. But that is not how they are designed or marketed.
Your posts in this thread led me to believe that you consider it a currency.
I didn't say it was a collectible, I said it was a capital asset and when not being used in very limited financial transactions (as they were designed or marketed) they should be treated as and considered a capital asset.
Their volatility and sudden rise in price has nothing to do with why they were designed and how they are marketed. It has everything to do with their treatment/acceptance as a capital asset. The speculation that has driven them sky high has nothing to do with their role as a currency. The reason why bitcoin is worth more today than it was yesterday is because those who buy/hold it think it will worth more tomorrow.
Gold has a world price entirely unaffected by accounting games between the Treasury and the Fed. - Jim Rickards