What would it take for a major player in the the field of eCommerce to accept this? Let's say an Amazon.com, Newegg, etc. Any guesses to what would happen to the value of BTC?
I think Amazon accepting BTC right now would be a disaster, the value of BTC would have to shoot up very fast and high, and the resulting instability would look awful and then Amazon would be forced to remove support for BTC making a massive PR problem for BTC.
Dont you think there would be an initial sort of violent (I could use a better word there) revaluation which would quickly settle down in to something stable? I suppose a bit like initial trading of a new businesses on the stock exchange, perhaps?
My, granted ignorant, assumption is that BTC would keep revaluating each time a big organisation adopted it, but that "reaction" would smooth out as more and more organisations adopted it and its value settled.
So, yes, initial pain, but surely all interested would know and accept that in advance. As usual, early adopters accept the pain as it were. But early adopters in general are up for that for the thrill, if you like, of being there at the beginning. A bit like people who buy Tesla cars. They know its not perfect and that there will be some pain, but they love it anyway.
I think Bitcoin has a future as a transfer medium. Person A converts their money into BTC and sends it to Person B, who immediately converts it back into "real" money. As long as the conversions are close enough together, the actual value of the bitcoins doesn't matter.
Sure, some hardcore users will continue to hoard and speculate. But in my opinion, the real value of Bitcoin is as a secure, anonymous, digital means to send money.
I wonder what the anonymity implications would be if that usecase became predominant, especially if one exchange wins out. Correlating purchase of n BTC and conversion of n BTC to real currency could reveal who was paying whom.
They could offer bitcoin acceptance for their Amazon Marketplace merchants. This would be a small step that offloads the risk to only those merchants that opt-in. This would make Amazon acceptance gradual and a much lower risk proposition.
Amazon has enough problems with various governments related how to pay their taxes. I think supporting a dubious currency like Bitcoin is last in their priority list.