TigerDirect.com Now Accepts Bitcoin Payments

http://www.tigerdirect.com/bitcoin/

by peter123 • 13 years ago

213 161 13 years ago

elipsey• 13 years ago

...to prevent charge backs. Ever by anything from them? Ugh...

Eclyps• 13 years ago

I've always had wonderful service from TD. Haven't needed anything in the past year or so, but they always had competitive pricing and handled the my only RMA pretty painlessly...

jeffasinger• 13 years ago

Only time I bought anything from TigerDirect recently was a desktop. It arrived DoA (well videocard was), TigerDirect shipped a new one, and paid return shipping on dead one, at no cost to us.

dangrossman• 13 years ago

Ever by anything from them?

Yeah, a tower with an AMD K6-2 266MHz processor, 32MB of PC100 SDRAM, 6.4GB hard drive and a 56K modem. It was a great deal out of the print catalog they mailed to my parents' house every month. I guess that was a while back now.

cgore2• 13 years ago

I've had a few returns with them over the years and they all went well.

Karunamon5• 13 years ago

Another major retailer!

It's funny, all of the "Bitcoin is dead! Bitcoin solves a non-existent problem! Bitcoin.....etc" posters have vanished.

slg2• 13 years ago

Someone with a less favorable view on Bitcoin could easily point out that these retailers are not embracing Bitcoin. They are embracing payment services like BitPay and Coinbase. To TigerDirect this move isn't that different from deciding to accept payments from Paypal, Google Wallet, etc.

Karunamon5• 13 years ago

Perhaps, but this is a very necessary stepping stone to direct adoption of BTC. Even if Coinbase and the like are processing a majority of transactions, more users means less instability, which is probably the currency's single worst problem right now.

baddox9• 13 years ago

That's like saying that Amazon doesn't actually embrace the US dollar, they just embrace payment services like Visa and Mastercard.

logn• 13 years ago

There's no other way for this to progress though. This is step 1. Until you can supply all of your life needs via BTC and pay employees in it, then businesses are going to convert to USD. Once Intuit lets you convert BTC to USD for your tax returns, then the circle will be complete.

interstitial2• 13 years ago

Or it gets attention plain and simple. No further deep through required from management, that's all it's needed. I guess few here remember when announcing you were going to have a website got attention (see Ktel records http://www.nytimes.com/1998/11/23/business/market-place-it-s...)

natrius• 13 years ago

Bitcoin is a payment network and a currency. Retailers have not embraced Bitcoin the currency, but they have embraced Bitcoin the payment network. I think that still bodes well for Bitcoin the currency, but who cares? At the very least, we're witnessing first big shift in payment systems in fifty years. Rates will go down.

emilsedgh• 13 years ago

The path to 'Bitcoin as currency' crosses 'Bitcoin as medium exchange'.

Its that simple. Really.

smokeyj• 13 years ago

Now it's "Who cares, it's all for publicity".

Karunamon5• 13 years ago

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.

I think we're roundly into stage 2 now.

chaz• 13 years ago

Flooz had Barnes & Noble, J.Crew, Tower Records, Godiva, Sephora, Martha Stewart and Brookstone signed up as retailers, among others: http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Flooz.com+to+the+Rescue+for+th...

I own BTC, but I'm still wondering what's going to want me to spend it instead of my AmEx for my next purchase.

zanny3• 13 years ago

Retailers will have to provide discounts for using btc, but all the major CC companies have it in their contracts with businesses they must sell stuff the same price regardless of using a CC or not. It makes it hard for bitcoin to gain traction on its principle benefit - no / minimal fees.

at-fates-hands• 13 years ago

>>> I own BTC, but I'm still wondering what's going to want me to spend it instead of my AmEx for my next purchase.

This is one of the appeals of paper money and credit cards over bitcoins at the moment. You have all the tactile experiences with money and credit cards. With BTC, people can't grasp the algorithm or the fact you can print out the promissory note, but its not the same.

mrb5• 13 years ago

Flooz failed because it was centralized. But Bitcoin is, as you know, decentralized.

notatoad2• 13 years ago

Bitcoin solves a non-existent problem!

Did those posters ever exist? I certainly haven't seen them on Hacker News.

soup10• 13 years ago

That's because all their posts get downvoted.

I still don't think bitcoin is a good currency and will probably fail in the long term, but it has enough momentum at this point that there's no productive discussion to be had.

srdev10• 13 years ago

Seems to me that most peoples' points is that Bitcoin solves problems that most people do not have. I still haven't had any Bitcoin advocates explain to me why I should care. My credit card is vastly superior in pretty much every respect, and the decentralized nature of the network seems more like an albatross that makes it require vastly more resources than it needs (because I don't think central banking is bad). And yeah, no chargebacks is ok if you're a seller and can reasonably push risk off to the consumer without them shopping elsewhere. But I'm a buyer, so...

unreal37• 13 years ago

How about the fact that the banking system charges huge fees for the use of their networks and technology? Do you mind paying 4% more for all your purchases because the retailer has to take credit card fees into account? Do you mind paying $15 to send money to relatives overseas? Every time you want to transfer money from one place to another, it costs you way way way more than it actually costs because of marketing and profits.

This is disruptive technology. Credit card companies and international money transfer companies are panicking right now.

CamperBob23• 13 years ago

Seems to me that most peoples' points is that Bitcoin solves problems that most people do not have.

Everyone who has ever dealt with a bank has a problem that Bitcoin can solve, even if they don't realize it yet.

base698• 13 years ago

The Target hack a month back effected my wife. Paying with bitcoin would have removed the possibility of her account being compromised shifting the burden to the retailer. All kinds of possibilities are there to mitigate that risk: cold storage wallets, third party services. Some other accounting implication off the top of my head: create a new payment address for each day, month, or year and automatically reconcile an accounts based on wallet address.

I imagine banks and other bitcoin service venders will solve the charge back issue or 3rd party arbitrators will be common with this: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Contracts#Example_2:_Escrow_and_d...

mrb5• 13 years ago

Here is a problem that all people have: inflation. 4% in the US. 20% in Argentina. Etc. All this means your current life savings will have lost tremendous value decades from now when you will need them. Bitcoin, by being deflationary, solves this.

Another problem: my landlord and I are both Wells Fargo customers, but I can't even pay my rent electronically because WF arbitrarily limits electronic ("SurePay") payements to $2000/month. Instead we have to use plain old checks. This is an aberration for the 21st century... With Bitcoin, nobody dictates me I can only send $X/month.

How about the underbanked with no ability to receive payments from remote friends/family?

How about Chinese dissidents getting their financial accounts seized by an evil government?

And so on... Bitcoin can solve numerous societal and economic problems. Too often people are blind to them because we have always lived with these problems.

danudey2• 13 years ago

A company that sells mining hardware (AMD GPUs) accepting payments in bitcoin is a no-brainer. You save your customers the trouble of converting to USD to purchase, which makes the mine->purchase->mine cycle even more frictionless.

Even if I thought bitcoin was doomed to fail, I would do this in the short term to get more business from coin miners.

Helianthus• 13 years ago

We haven't vanished. We just don't care anymore--at least, not enough to rehash the same old tired arguments.

I still monitor Bitcoin news. Nothing surprising. Bitcoin is still a greedy rotten fruit, and only time will prove anyone wrong.

OverlordXenu• 13 years ago

Who says that? Most of the criticism is "Bitcoin is poorly designed, it fails at basic principles of Economics, it wastes tons of power, it continues to cause income inequality…"

Cryptocurrency is awesome. There just isn't a well-designed one yet that uses actual, sound economic principles instead of Austrian School ramblings.

AznHisoka• 13 years ago

Is it me or are all the "has-beens", or unrelevant companies accepting bitcoin nowadays?

We had Overstock, who has fallen from its high. We had App.net, who is struggling to be relevant. now TigerDirect.

When is Starbucks or Apple going to accept Bitcoin?

tetrep• 13 years ago

How is TigerDirect a "has-been"? They're a direct competitor to Newegg.

protomyth• 13 years ago

They are actually a tad bit easier to deal with than Newegg for purchase orders. They also have a pretty good group in customer service. We order a lot from them and cdwg.

Karunamon5• 13 years ago

Mm. The companies might have fallen from their high, but they're hardly irrelevant or dead. Overstock is advertised like crazy and has some pretty good deals to boot, Tiger competes directly with Newegg. App is a bit of an outlier there..

Starbucks or Apple? I'd assume the megacorps will take it up once the instability gets smoothed out a bit. Which is a problem of adoption, which means the faster the smaller fish like these adopt it, the faster the bigger ones will.

I predict Amazon will take BTC within the next 2-3 years.

BlackDeath32• 13 years ago

Tiger competes directly with Newegg

Interesting. The site designs always had me thinking they were two sides of the same coin.

zanny3• 13 years ago

I'd assume the megacorps will take it up once the instability gets smoothed out a bit.

Why would they care if they get paid through bitpay or coinbase in USD anyway? It doesn't actually matter the current exchange rate for btc because they get the same USD anyway.

geminitojanus6• 13 years ago

I predict Amazon will take BTC within the next 2-3 years.

I'm willing to bet a hundred doge this doesn't happen.

eudoxus2• 13 years ago

TigerDirect is a "has-been" company? Do you live under a rock?

clarkm• 13 years ago

Well, Google is working on integrating Bitcoin into Google Wallet. Do you consider them a "has-been" too?

XorNot3• 13 years ago

Google does a lot of things which it then happily drops. Google doing a thing is not really a reliable indicator of what Google thinks of it - the company as a whole is very freeform in its ideas process.

yen2232• 13 years ago

Google also worked on a novel way to collaborate with one another. Everyone can see how Google Wave has taken over the world!

ufmace• 13 years ago

It's a start. You don't go from a tiny handful of sites started by Bitcoin enthusiasts to being accepted on Apple.com and in Starbucks retail locations in a day. A year or so ago, we were pretty much at the tiny handful of sites stage. We're starting to get some fairly second-rate internet retailers now, who have no reason to be interested in Bitcoin aside from pure business potential. It's a good step. Widespread adoption of something so unprecedented, poorly-understood, and potentially disruptive isn't going to happen overnight.

baddox9• 13 years ago

Is that the next talking point for the Bitcoin opponents/skeptics? I guess once "no retailers accept Bitcoin" dried up, it's no surprise they found a new one.

colanderman4• 13 years ago

Don't worry, we've still got the "Bitcoin is inherently deflationary and incentivises hoarding" talking point.

return02• 13 years ago

Ebay or amazon would be more useful. I bet it won't be long , after all, since they won't use it as reserve, it's just extra convenience.

georgehotelling• 13 years ago

I suspect it will be a while for ebay, given that they own PayPal. Bitcoin directly competes with PayPal's business model.

ryaneager2• 13 years ago

I find it humorous that Tiger Direct and Newegg are promoting Bitcoin mining with GPUS. The returns from such cards are so small now its not even worth mentioning. Even with a high end GPU you are only making around $0.96 a week. With the card costing $440 it'll take 8 years to make your money back, assuming the difficulty won't increase. Which it will so there is no hope of making a profit.

1qaz2wsx3edc• 13 years ago

Yes, mining is tricky, risky business, too much so for my blood. But, I think some find ways to ROI.

But, you know, a merchant wouldn't stop selling pickaxes during a gold rush, just because the customer isn't profiting. I wouldn't expect online retailers too either.

BlackDeath32• 13 years ago

Did those merchants ever sell miners toothpicks?

eudoxus2• 13 years ago

Anyone who is mining with GPUs isnt mining Bitcoin, their mining the various other cryptocurrencies (known as altcoins) that use the scrypt hashing algorithm, Such Litecoin.

See here the profitability of scrypt based coins, hint: It's alot

http://www.coinwarz.com/cryptocurrency

fallinghawks• 13 years ago

There's a strong market for other cryptocurrencies, such as Dogecoin.

smtddr• 13 years ago

>The returns from such cards are so small now its not even worth mentioning.

Well, I dunno about mining BTC specifically but I got a co-worker making about 0.45 - 0.6 BTC a month on a 2 GPU rig from Newegg at $1200. He's using the middlecoin.com pool which rotate-mines different altcoins, converts to BTC and pays out. The rig is on track to paying for itself soon and apparently his electric bill didn't shoot to the moon.

ssmoot• 13 years ago

It's tricky finding a reliable pool so you can "set it and forget it" for sure.

It's an adventure:

  * First you need parts to build a system (and if you're ordering from Newegg good luck getting your "overnight" order in <5 business days).
  * Then you need to setup the software (hint: latest Ubuntu combined with latest Catalyst drivers is a world of frustration).
  * Then tune cgminer (which took me a few days between other obligations) which is somehow not a copy-paste job.
  * Then you spend a couple weeks fighting unreliable or hacked pools until you find something that works for you.

And reliability matters a lot if you're using the most common PPLNS payout pools since every round you're not mining at 100% sets you back.

I'd definitely recommend Proportional pools like middlecoin. The fees are higher (~+3% over PPLNS typically), but getting paid for 96% of your shares on something reliable is definitely preferable to 99% or even 100% of your shares, minus previous-round penalties (up to 20% or more?) on something unreliable.

Anyways, here's what I've done with the three R290's I bought back in December: http://middlecoin2.s3-website-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/report...

Thought peeps might be curious seeing it in concrete terms, and middlecoin's charts are the best IMO. Simple, everything you need, and nothing you don't.

Once I switched to middlecoin (with multipool as a backup) I've earned almost 0.5BTC in 2.5 weeks. And (very) surprisingly, I don't seem to be suffering all that much due to rising difficulty (the brunt of that hit a week or two before I had everything going I guess).

This doesn't include the balance I carry at multipool BTW, which I don't bother to do much with (Cryptsy: meh).

Still, I'm planning to sell the system for what I paid for it (~$1800) tonight. It's made me some money, and that's nice, but wondering when the right time to sell (because of rising difficulty) is weighs on you a bit. And I figured if I can get my money back, well, it's been nice, but yeah, best get out while the gettin' is good. Especially with the possibility of ASICs hitting in a few months (even if they aren't faster, if their hashes-per-watt figures lure in even bigger miners, that's going to hurt).

It's crazy to see cards I paid $409/each for (R290) go for up to 30% over what I paid a month or two before. I've never seen that happen in 20 years of messing with computers. I mean hell, I've never even got more than maybe 20 to 30% back of my initial purchase back on a PC before.

Aside: That's one reason I love Macs so much since switching ~7 years ago: I can upgrade to the latest iPad every year for $100 out of pocket, and even a 3 or 4 year old laptop like my two MacBook Air's will easily retain 50 to 60% of their value. Which makes the whole financial/cost arguments against Macs pretty bogus (and believe me, I used it often enough myself as a PC fan in a past life), but I've definitely spent far less in TCO on my Macs than I did on my PCs. You just have to bite the bullet and get over the buy-in hump. Used Macs hold their value even better though. You might easily find a decent deal on a used Mac, use it for a year, then sell it for more than you bought it for. I did with my first (G3 I think) Mac Mini.

ryaneager2• 13 years ago

I'm going to have to check that out, my current pool only does Bitcoin and the payouts have taken a dive recently.

jnbiche• 13 years ago

Yeah, the middlecoin.com boat has sailed, alas. Ask him how it's doing now with that pool.

The multicoin pools like Middlecoin are essentially arbitrageurs of the many crypto coins, and the more people that enter the market (and there are a lot coming in), the less opportunities there are for arbitrage. Now, you're best bet is probably to mine Dogecoin and hope that it reaches the potential that seems likely, since its coin supply will decline dramatically in less than a year.

notatoad2• 13 years ago

There are other reasons to buy graphics cards than just bitcoin mining. If you get $400 worth of enjoyment from the graphics card and $2 of revenue from mining, that's a profit.

geminitojanus6• 13 years ago

I find it humorous that Tiger Direct and Newegg are promoting Bitcoin mining with GPUS.

Why wouldn't they? They both sell GPUs and have a large backlog of them. Somebody who isn't knowledgeable enough about the topic and wants to get in on the latest fad is likely to see that ad and jump on it.

If I sold video cards for a living I'd be pushing them just as hard as I could too. "Bitcoin mining, OpenCL, desktop virtualization, they can do it all, come buy your video cards from me and not the other guy!"

sks• 13 years ago

Mining bitcoins may be non profitable, but I recovered my investment in less than 3 months of alt coin mining.

gigq2• 13 years ago

Nobody GPU mines for bitcoin anymore (ASICs killed that long ago). My 2 year old ATI card makes $4/day mining litecoin or even $8/day mining dogecoin. If you want bitcoin you simply send the alt currency to an exchange and trade for bitcoin.

ryangripp• 13 years ago

You're going to continue to see major eCommerce players offer bitcoin as a payment option. In the checkout flow it is best practice to offer as many payment options available because it increases the likelihood of a successful conversion.

Regardless of whether Andreesse's essay is correct regarding bitcoin two IR100 sites is a pretty big deal for bitcoin.

Benferhat• 13 years ago

> In the checkout flow it is best practice to offer as many payment options available because it increases the likelihood of a successful conversion.

Are you sure about that? Too many choices sometimes leads to no choice at all. [0]

[0] http://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_ch...

yarou• 13 years ago

Exactly. See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buridan%27s_Ass

andrewf• 13 years ago

Aren't these the guys that tried to sue Apple for a quick buck around the release of Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger?

Sorry TigerDirect, I swore off you then.

troymc• 13 years ago

If I understand trademark law correctly, a company must defend its trademarks or risk losing them. It wasn't about "a quick buck," it was about fulfilling the responsibilities of owning a trademark.

It's hardly fair to fault TigerDirect for doing what the law requires of them.

In this particular case, a judge had to make a judgement call about whether Apple's new "Tiger" OS trademark was an infringement on TigerDirect's trademark. It could have gone either way. That's why a judge was needed.

lvh2• 13 years ago

Interestingly, TigerDirect appears to be unreachable for me (from Europe):

Access Denied You don't have permission to access "http://www.tigerdirect.com/" on this server.

Reference #18.56bd7a5c.1390506110.4cf7baee

bulibuta• 13 years ago

Same here. What's up with that?

aet• 13 years ago

Even if they paid you in bitcoins I wouldn't deal with them. Terrible

lvh2• 13 years ago

I've confirmed that it works fine when I proxy through Chicago.

SquareWheel• 13 years ago

In case it's not clear, the quote was a part of the hyperlink and so this link is broken.

kolev4• 13 years ago

Accepting Bitcoin means having a Bitcoin wallet. Period! The more merchants like TigerDirect and Overstock "embrace" Bitcoin, the more bitcoins will be sold at the exchanges and the price will be dragged down further and further. It's funny that just about now hoarders start to realize how negative is this for their empty hope to wake up millionaires one day due to Bitcoin suddenly becoming $10K a piece.

fragsworth• 13 years ago

That's a pretty limited view of the price dynamics of bitcoin.

kolev4• 13 years ago

Maybe you haven't been following the discussions over at Reddit and Bitcoin Forums. Some idiots buy what they spent at Coinbase, which basically is costing them 1% + $0.15 + margin difference in hopes to keep bids and asks in balance. You're dealing with people with serious psychological disorders here!

skriticos2• 13 years ago

I don't get your logic. Liquidity doesn't change supply. It just makes exchange simpler. A set market price has to be found between the people who want to trade Bitcoins, which will very much be influenced by the supply.

Liquidity will help to lessen volatility (fluctuation), but the price point has to be decided by the people who want to own some Bitcoin (traders, spenders and savers). Savers will drive the price upward as long as they save, but that's ok, as long as not too many people decide to liquidate their Bitcoins at the same time. It's the same for lost Bitcoins, the value for the rest of them adjusts to the demand level based on supply.

kolev4• 13 years ago

I only said this drags the price down. In order for somebody to sell, there needs to be a buyer. My comment was that hoarders are in an internal conflict - they both want to spend it to drive adoption up and, yet, continue to hoard it as supply drives the price down decreasing the value of their stash.

wyager• 13 years ago

Someone has to buy the Bitcoin and spend it before it can be sold on an exchange. Nothing has changed in that regard; the part of the Bitcoin economy you are referring to is zero-sum.

kolev4• 13 years ago

Not necessarily. Most coins are hoarded (i.e. this is a way to make hoarders finally start to sell, i.e. increase supply) and miners get a lot of coins daily, which they need to sell to cover their high energy costs. Why in their right mind would people buy bitcoins (paying 1% + $0.15 with Coinbase and giving up on credit card cash back and miles) just to spend them?!

mrb5• 13 years ago

"The more merchants like TigerDirect and Overstock "embrace" Bitcoin, the more bitcoins will be sold at the exchanges"

False.

Case in point: the number of merchants accepting bitcoins has dramatically increased over the last year. Yet the exchange rate has increased. This is the case because interest/demand in bitcoin seems roughly proportional to the size of the Bitcoin economy (what you can do, where you can spend them). So the more merchants -> the more interest -> the higher the exchange rate.

yalogin• 13 years ago

Why did not NewEgg jump in yet? I was expecting them to be one of the first.

drcode• 13 years ago

I'm guessing they'd like to but adding new payment options to a website is a hassle (even when it's bitcoin)

gigq2• 13 years ago

Lost in the news that they accept bitcoin is the "Coming Soon" under Butterfly Labs hardware mentioned on that landing page. First I've heard of a mainstream electronics store selling ASIC mining hardware.

markdown• 13 years ago

Relevant post made in the last hour by Tony Hsieh in his Reddit IAmA:

    Q: Mr. Hsieh, Are there any plans for Zappos.com to accept bitcoin?

    A: we've been looking into the possibility but probably not anytime soon!

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1vzd35/i_am_tony_hsieh...

mikegreen• 13 years ago

The world has imploded and all I have are these bitcoins and bullets; I'll buy some shoes!

uniclaude• 13 years ago

I'm going to lose a few karma points for going meta, but I have to point this.

When the top comment to a positive bitcoin related news reads like textbook flame war material[1], I feel sad about the current state of HN.

We're supposed to discuss, not to pick sides and borderline troll people who are skeptical about some technology. This attitude is downright childish, and will only spawn very predictable and heated debates.

You bought or mined bitcoins and believe in them? That's good for you, I have some too, yay. Yet, I'm not starting flame wars and making fun of non-believers. This brings absolutely nothing. Moreover, it might show a negative image of the bitcoin community.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7109970

flycaliguy• 13 years ago

My long term plan to buy a bitcoin last year for $300 and buy a VR system with it in 5 years is going along smoothly.

vrikis• 13 years ago

As far as I can see, they aren't indicating what they are doing with their Bitcoin. Accepting Bitcoin is one thing, since as far as I know, all places accepting Bitcoin so far just convert it into their country's currency (e.g. $). Accepting Bitcoin and keeping Bitcoin for further trading is a-whole-nother story, and as far as I know, no one is doing that.

Still, great news for cryptocurrencies as there's now a bit more anonymity when buying online! :)

TigerDirect.com Now Accepts Bitcoin Payments

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