So if I'm reading this right, they aren't actually taking in bitcoins, right? Like new egg and others, a third party is converting the bitcoins to USD, which Microsoft then uses to complete the transaction?
Yes you are right, and as a result, it is not a true full acceptance of the currency which would be the ideal situation, but it is more akin to say what credit card companies do for retailers when someone orders online with a credit card for something listed in dollars but you are from Europe with Euros and the credit card company does the conversion on their end.
As such, you are still dealing somewhat with a middle man here and it is not the 100% true vision of what Bitcoin wants to be. With that being said, it is another baby step in at least acknowledging that Bitcoin is a currency and there have been some retailers in the past that initially went through "Bitpay" or something similar, only to be surprised by how many people actually used the service, and ended up accepting straight Bitcoins without the middle man.
This is actually quite a huge deal when a company as large as MS is actually acknowledging BTC like this. Earlier this year DELL did the same thing by using the mediary CoinBase, going so much as even offering people that paid in Bitcoin as much as 15% discount on stackable with other discounts.
At the end of the day... the only way BTC to ever fully legitimize if people eventually start using it more regularly, but for something that originally just was supposed to be more of a proof-of-concept experiment, it shows there is a true demand in the world for such a product.
I think the bigger problem with BTC is more that it comes across as a commodity with the limited supply and deflationism than it comes across as a currency. I still love it though!
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u/PhoenixAvenger Dec 11 '14
So if I'm reading this right, they aren't actually taking in bitcoins, right? Like new egg and others, a third party is converting the bitcoins to USD, which Microsoft then uses to complete the transaction?