[BoyWizard]

The thing is, it doesn't matter. As far as I know, nobody prices anything in Bitcoins, they price things in USD/AUD/<insert currency> and then convert that amount to Bitcoins for the transaction.

You might end up paying 1.00 BTC, or 0.6 BTC, but it still works out to the be same in USD/AUD/<currency> (numbers made up for example)

[SODaniel]

Though very hard swings in short time DOES hinder wide adoption as it can cause retailers to lose money while a transaction is 'en route'.

No one wants to use a currency that swings 20% in hours of trading. Hell, that's prob 4-5x the margin on a lot of computer hardware.

[Maxious]

BitPay, for example, absorbs the risk. https://bitpay.com/bitcoin-payment-gateway-api

> The net amount that BitPay merchants receive is equal to the gross amount (USD) of the order submitted, minus our fee.

> It does not matter how many bitcoins we collect, how long it takes to collect them, what we can sell them for, or how long it takes to sell them.

(not affiliated, just said the same thing last time this came up on HN)

[TillE]

I feel like I'm missing something, but I can't quite understand the advantage of Bitcoins in this kind of scenario.

Who's handling all the instant real money conversions, and why wouldn't they just transfer the real money between accounts directly rather than converting it?

[BoyWizard]

It's not that instant real-money transactions are happening, but if I owe you $5 USD, I can say "I'll pay you 0.1142BTC" and the value to you is the same (as others have said, as long as the exchange rate doesn't fluctuate too much)

[fletchowns]

Well it certainly matters for the people that are sitting on a bunch of bitcoins.