Have you amassed a wealth of Bitcoins, perhaps through some lucky winnings in your local Bitcoin casino? There's a new place to spend them — all-around Bitcoin guru Roger Ver has just launched his new venture, the creatively-named Bitcoin Store. The Bitcoin Store focuses on consumer electronics and electronic gadgets across a pretty wide range of categories. It doesn't look like it has the newest or most cutting-edge stock, but there is still a good variety of products available, particularly for the DIY crowd. There are some mainstream options as well, such as Sony's excellent NEX-7 camera and the Asus Zenbook UX31A.
Spreading the Bitcoin gospel one sale at a time
This is hardly the first online retailer to accept Bitcoins, but the Bitcoin Store is hoping to undercut the competition and keep prices lower than other Bitcoin stores. According to Bitcoin Magazine, the store is slightly undercutting retailers like Amazon and NewEgg. Ver says that the Bitcoin Store is able to do so thanks to the fact that it avoids expenses like credit card fees; it also has a partnership with what Ver says is "the world's largest wholesale technology distributor." The Bitcoin Store hopes to be more than just a low-cost electronics outlet, however — head of marketing Jon Holmquist told IEEE that "the point of the site is to show both consumers and business owners that using Bitcoin can drastically lower the cost of providing products." Ver and Holmquist are hoping that its competitors take notice of any success they have with Bitcoin in an effort to spread the budding digital currency around. "Ideally what we want this site to do is to force Amazon, Newegg, Buy.com, to start accepting Bitcoin," said Holmquist. "If they do that, our job is done."
Update: Jon Holmquist, The Bitcoin Store's marketing director, just responded to a few questions we had about the new store. He let us know that Ingram Micro is the site's supplier — he called it "the largest electronics supplier in North America" and noted that "all of the large electronics sites use them." He also noted that part of The Bitcoin Store's competitive advantage is that CEO Roger Ver has gotten his store into the higest pricing tier for Ingram Micro. "This means that for the first time a Bitcoin company is getting products at the same price as other more conventional retailers, and it really showcases how much cheaper it is to pay with Bitcoin," Holmquist said. Pricing on the site changes automatically based on Bitcoin's current value. Interestingly, Holmquist also told us that Ver is keeping all of the Bitcoins from sales, rather than cashing them in. "He believes that Bitcoin will continue to rise, so why cash out?" Holmquist said.
Adrianne Jeffries contributed to this report.