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On the heels of Overstock.com, the Sacramento Kings, two Las Vegas casino establishments and the popular online poker room Americas Cardroom each now embracing the anonymous digital currency bitcoin, other major retailers are about to follow suit.
Already, 21,000 merchants are using Coinbase to accept Bitcoin from customers, Overstock being one of them.
And Overstock's success with bitcoin in a very short period of time is likely to have other retailers taking notice.
Since announcing its acceptance of Bitcoin on Jan. 9, the retailer has received nearly 3,000 orders in Bitcoin, with a total value of more than $600,000. Most of the nearly 3,000 Bitcoin spenders were first-time Overstock customers.
TigerDirect, which also began accepting bitcoin transactions recently, disclosed similar results.
Visa Inc. Chief Executive Officer Charlie Scharf this week confirmed the leading credit card network is keeping a close eye on developments in the world of bitcoin.
"While Visa will continue to pay attention to developments surrounding Bitcoin, we feel very comfortable with the business that we have here,” Scharf said.
Within the first 24 hours of the company's announcement, it processed more than $250,000 in bitcoin payments.
The online gambling community has been somewhat resistant about embracing bitcoin until now. Gamblers are looking for anonymity and more options when it comes to payment transactions with online betting sites, making this community the perfect demographic for bitcoin.
At press time 12:45 pm EDT January 30, 2014, the average price of bitcoin across most exchanges was $825.
- Aaron Goldstein, Gambling911.com
