Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Overstock.com: More Than $1 Million In Bitcoin Sales

Salt Lake City-based online retailer Overstock.com said this morning that it has sold over $1 million in Bitcoin, since it started accepting the electronic currency in January -- from over 4,300 Bitcoin customers. According to Overstock.com, the acceptance of Bitcoin has been a huge benefit to attracting new customers to the online retailer, with almost 60 percent of those users using Bitcoin on the site being new users to Overstock.com.

Bitcoin is an electronic currency which is not governed--or regulated--by any country, and bases it entire value entirely on a set of digital rules and cryptography. Overstock.com has been using startup Coinbase.com to immediately transact deals with Bitcoin, quickly converting those Bitcoins into actual dollars for its transactions. The currency has had a huge run in price and popularity over the last couple of years, although it saw a huge setback this week from the failure of a major Bitcoin exchange, Mt. Gox.

For its part, OVerstock.com's CEO, Patrick M. Byrne, said in a statement that "Bitcoin customers are good customers," hailing the fact that Bitcoin does not answer to a central governing authority.

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