The merchant services space hasn't quite taken off the way "the community"1 anticipated. Despite the mass-adoption-via-merchant-adoption expectations of some folks, it turns out that spending Bitcoin doesn't send the price "to the moon" but rather ironically depresses the price as merchants cash out their coins to cover operating costs.2 I know right, who could have predicted ?!
Needless to say, several Sillycon Valley start-ups thought they could legitimately make a business out coffee shop transactions if only they marketed hard enough – as if Bitcoin were some kind of cancer research programme that needed "moar awareness" – and they therefore set out on capturing the euphoria of "the community" with the intent of bottling it for profit. As time marches on, these firms are finding themselves increasingly strapped for cash3 as their businesses have been wholly dependent on Bitcoin price speculation ever since they reduced their transactions fees to 0%, and lo and behold, Bitcoin isn't turning out to be about "the community" after all.
After laying off 9 employees in January 2015, the latest signal that all is not well in Sillycon Valley's, and specifically BitPay's, la-la-land is that, despite a 3-year contract to sponsor the "Bitcoin" St. Petersburg Bowl,4 the agreement seems to have been unwound after a single season. As of this writing, the "Bitcoin" part of the sporting event's title has been removed from both the logo and sponsor page as seen on their website.
It would seem that even printing presses run out of steam eventually.
Those who talk about Bitcoin, eg. Reddit. These folks are, of course, in no way part of Bitcoin. ↩
This is quite the opposite of how fiat works, wherein the economy really does suffer if the velocity of money slows down. Bitcoin, on the other hand, rewards those who can delay gratification. Beautiful, isn't it ? ↩
This will come as a surprise to exactly no one who stayed awake in class and was therefore aware of Mircea Popescu's short on BitPay, Coinbase, etc. as part of the DERP offerings. ↩
Won last year by NC State, 34-27, over UCF. ↩
Ahhh shiiiiiiiii.
It could also be that the recent news, that only reinforced the popular image of "currency of drugs and crime", made the Bowl organizers rather uncomfortable with having Bitcoin as a sponsor.
I tend to find this hard to believe because American football at the professional and college levels is already rather associated with crime and drugs.