In what ways is COIN different from SMBIT and PBP?
 

It's in Chinese.  The first three ideograms are "Bitcoin". (That is about as far as my Chinese gets.)

Intriguing post
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=569769.msg7962243#msg7962243

What were you doing in my mother's grave?

It depends on the country and epoch, no?

Maiden or married name?

One more, about the new "international" Chinese exchanges:

Caleb Chen, Cryptocoins News, 21/07/2014
Chinese Bitcoin Exchanges BTC China And OKCoin Start Accepting USD
http://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/news/chinese-bitcoin-exchanges-btc-china-okcoin-start-accepting-usd/2014/07/21

There is also BitVC, created by Huobi and also based in Hong Kong https://www.bitvc.com/

The BitVC page says "volume: 12296 BTC".  If that is is for the last 24 hours, then, added to ~12 kBTC of "old Huobi" for today gives ~25 kBTC/day -- nos spectacular, but not extremely low either. 

Some articles about the state of Chinese bitcoin exchanges, based on the Hong Kong conference last month:

Danny Lee, South China Morning Post, 2014-06-24
Bitcoin exchanges have struggled to survive on mainland
http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1539601/bitcoin-firm-boss-says-ordinary-people-should-not-invest-digital

Euronews, 2014-06-26
Bitcoin struggles in China, but boosters insist it has a bright future
http://www.euronews.com/2014/06/26/bitcoin-struggles-in-china-but-boosters-insist-it-has-a-bright-future/

Conor Brennan, Inline, 2014-06-25
Virtual currency prospers in Asia: Will China follow?
http://inlinepolicy.com/2014/virtual-currency-prospers-in-asia-will-china-follow/
[ Note:  Xu Nuojin is not "General Secretary" of the PBoC, but only Deputy Secretary of the Survey and Statistics Dept of the PBoC. ]

Hm, what would be those reasons?  For tax evasion?  It would be quite risky, since Bitpay knows how much the vendor received, and even a traditional audit of his books by the IRS could easily reveal the evasion.

By the way, I am aware that this discussion is old and my observations have been made by others before.  However, there still seem to be people who expect the price to rise whenever such news come out, or claiming that the route USD-->BTC-->USD-->Goods saves money compared USD-->Goods.
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It is school vacations here now. (And what is the point of posting in this thread only to insult Chinese traders, bankers, governments, academics, whatever?) 

I woudl think that a trader who tries to understand what actualy moves the market has some advantage over one who just draws lines on charts...

You can pay Dell with bank transfer (they say "if you are ordering by phone or email", I don't know why not also when ordering via website too).   

But you are missing the point, it seems.  The question was whether merchants "accepting bitcoin" through Coinbase or BitPay are creating demand for bitcoin in the market (and thus contributing to raise the price); or, conversely, they increasing the supply (and thus lowering the price).

For people who have USD and no BTC, the bitcoin payment option offers no significant advantage over payment by direct USD bank transfer, since they would have to pay bank fees (and more) anyway.  Therefore those  "merchant adoptions" are not likely to motivate people to buy BTC.

On the other hand, those options are advantageous to people who own old coins, that were bought below market, because they provide a way to take their profits that saves some fees compared to selling the BTC at an exchange and then spending the USD.

I noted that the bitcoin option could be interesting for international payments.  However, Coinbase and Bitpay generally do not work across borders (not in the case of Dell, for example), so the point above remains.

But, have you checked how expensive is to rent a magical unicorn these days?   

The ATM is another layer between you and the banks.  Namely, the cash is deposited into the ATM company's bank account, and transfered to the bank account of some exchange in order to buy moer bitcoins.  The fee of that BT is included in the ATM fee.

Granted that there need not be any BT for localbitcoin transactions that are paid in cash; but  that requires meeting the BTC seller in person, which is not the most convenient thing in the world.  (I read an amusing tale of such a transaction, somewhere on this forum, that took several hours and ended with the buyer feeling obliged to help the seller load some heavy furniture onto a truck.)

Mining and donations would fall into the cases of "have BTC", rather than "have USD".


Well, indeed Dell is offering a discount for BTC purchases, but:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/dell/10980089/Dell-jumps-on-the-Bitcoin-bandwagon.html
I wonder how much Dell overcharges for Alienware computers?   (I tried comparing prices in the catalogs below, but could not find comparable configurations.)

Dell catalog:
http://outlet.us.dell.com/ARBOnlineSales/Online/InventorySearch.aspx?c=us&cs=22&l=en&s=dfh&brandid=2201&fid=4450

Alienware catalog:
http://www.dell.com/us/p/alienware-17/pd.aspx

In general, payment from USD in your bank to USD in the merchant's bank via bitcoin cannot be cheaper than paying directly in USD, since the latter is just one BT, the former is two BTs and other stuff in the middle. The bitcoin path may seem to be cheaper only because the second BT is hidden in the Coinbase fee, and the first BT is paid beforehand and thus does not feel like it is part of the payment.

See why I would rather not buy bitcoin?  Exposure to the stuff ruins one's vision so that even the simplest stupid question becomes utterly incomprehensible, even if repeated in boldface -- if the answer turns out to be inconvenient. 

Thank you!  The answer did not have to be that detailed; the important point is that  turning USD into bitcoin requires a bank transfer (BT) of some sort. (Out of curiosity, are there exchanges that accept credit card?).

So, for a domestic internet purchase, the best payment method is as follows:

(1) If you have USD, and the merchant accepts USD, you just send USD to the merchant:
  USD in your bank  >--[BT]--> USD in merchant's bank

(2)  If you have BTC, and the store really accepts BTC, you send them the coins with a blockchain transaction (TX):
  BTC in your wallet >--[TX]--> BTC in merchant's wallet

(3) If you have BTC, and the store accepts only USD, but has a Coinbase (or Bitpay) account, you send the coins through Coinbase:
    BTC in your wallet >--[TX]--> BTC in Coinbase wallet  >--[**]--> USD in Coinbase's bank >--[BT]-->  USD in merchant's bank

(4)  If you have BTC, and the store accepts only USD, and the store does not have a Coinbase/Bitpay account, you must sell the BTC yourself:
   BTC in your wallet >--[TX]--> BTC in Bitstamp's wallet  >--[**]--> USD in Bitstamp's bank >--[BT]--> USD in your bank >--[BT]-->  USD in merchant's bank

(5) Finally, if you have USD, and the store accepts only BTC, you should look for another store.  There is a good chance that the merchant is either a fanatical bitcoiner who believes that ideological purity is more important than profit and client satisfaction, and threfore may go bankrupt before filling your order; or is a scammer who thinks (naively, perhaps) that he has better chances of evading justice by taking your bitcoins instead of your dollars.  (Examples abound of both.)

The ">--[**]-->" in (3) and (4) above stands for "sell the BTC for USD on some exchange".  That is the point when the day traders who buy bitcoins today get to pay the bills of the old bitcoiners who are spending the coins that they bought before November.

By the way, it is not quite correct to say that "Dell gets the bitcoins, and may decide to sell them".  Rather, Dell may opt to receive the entire payment in USD from Coinbase, or to keep some fraction in BTC in their Coinbase account, which they may latter sell or withdraw.  In either case, it is Coinbase, not Dell, that sells the bitcoins that are not kept.

And there is no indication in Dell's website that they intend to keep any of the bitcoins.  On the contrary, there are indications that they leave the handling of bitcoin entirely to Coinbase.  For one thing, if you pay the wrong bitcoin amount, Coinbase will reject the payment and refund you by returning the bitcoins to your Coinbase account; but if you return defective merchandise, Dell will send you the refund in USD, no matter how you paid for it.

For purchasing goods overseas, going through BTC could be an interesting alternative even if you have USD rather than BTC, since it would replace one international bank transfer by two domestic ones plus exchange fees.  However, it seems that Dell and many other merchants do not accept "bitcoin payment" (that is, national money via Coinbase or Bitpay) for overseas purchases; and the higher risk of loss in transport makes credit cards more interesting in that case.  As for paying hotel bills and such whlie traveling overseas, prepaid debit cards still seem to be the cheapest and more convenient option.

So, that would explain why the price does not rise on such "good news": not because of "damn sheep" and "stupid weak hands", but because those news are irrelevant to most people -- except  for Coinbase and BitPay, and for the bitcoiners who wish to unload some old cheap coins.

One cannot pretend to be naive any more in this forum? Geez...

Yesterday (Sunday Jul/21 UTC) Huobi's volume was only ~8.2 kBTC, their lowest daily volume since Nov/03 (just before the laas bubble, when they had been open for only 2 months).

OKCoin's volume was only ~12.8 kBTC.  That is only a trifle higher than Feb/04 and Feb/05 (in the New Year holiday week) and than Jan/02 (when they started to again accept deposits by bank).

Maybe most of their their big traders have moved to the respective offshore exchanges (BitVC and OKCoin.com)? 

AMT (and BFL) could shut up their critics by posting their full order book on their website: just one line for each order, with Order number, Date payment received, Date unit was shipped.  If enough customers confirm their respective entries, everybody would trust the list.

Why don't they do that?  When information is denied, clients and prospective clients are entitled to assume the worst.

One of the things that make me skeptic of Technical Analysis (TA) is their general reliance on high and low points to determine trends and such.

Highs and lows are very noisy statistics, that may depend on a single decision by a single trader.  So much so, that even for exchanges that track each other very closely  (like Huobi and OKCoin), trend lines that connect highs or lows may be very different depending on which chart one uses -- even increasing/converging on one chart, while decreasing/diverging in the other.

Basic statistics says that the weighted mean a much more reliable parameter than high, low, open, or close; and a weighted least-squares-fitted line is much better than a line connecting any of those points.  To quantify the size of deviations from the mean or the fitted line, the standard deviation is much better than the high-low difference.

Congratulations, you are already stepping onto the answer to my question, you just have to look at it.  Right between "agree then" and "All party's". 

Yes you called the question stupid, and no you did not understand it. If "you pay USD go USD to BTC to buy", as the poster suggested, how do you send USD to Coinbase/exchange/Bitpay/whatever?