6 Fact-Based Reasons Bitcoin Should be Accepted by Every Ecommerce Seller
I recently wrote a blog post on my website exploring why it makes sense for ecommerce merchants to accept Bitcoin, even if they do not buy into all of the other things that come with Bitcoin. Here is a quick rundown of those reasons:
Consumers spent $3.51 billion buying products with Bitcoin over the Square platform in Q1 2021, a massive increase from just a few years earlier. It is clear not all consumers practice "HODLing" and instead spend their Bitcoin freely. (data from CoinGecko and Square)
The currency has an extremely high rate of deflation due to its ever shrinking volume, low amount in circulation due to HODLers, and increasing difficulty to unlock more of the currency by so called miners. $100 in Bitcoin in 2011 is worth over $1 million in 2021. Some anticiapte a similar jump between 2021 and 2031.
Publicly traded companies like MicroStrategy and Tesla are using Bitcoin as a highly liquid asset to keep on their books in case they need to raise cash quickly for business needs or an aquisition. This works better than Treasurys because Bitcoin often increases in value over periods of time meaning it could be worth more when liquidated than what was originally placed on the books.
Bitcoin acceptance can be used as a marketing, SEO, and PR device to help a brand improve in various areas with consumers. Especially if that brand needs SEO help, sells tech products/services, or seeks to sell to a younger, financially savvy audience. Bitcoin tends to gain media attention from specialized outlets, tech outlets, and even mass media around the globe. The attention and links this media provides can help improve the rankings, sales, and brand awareness of an ecommerce merchant almost over night.
Bitcoiners love being talked to directly by brands and they pay attention, magnify your message, and hype up brands that align with them. The passionate fan base can help move stock prices, increase sales, or simply provide a larger online audience to recieve marketing messaging.
Finally Bitcoin offers a whole new, though thoroughly underdeveloped, way of offering discounts and deals to users. Since the currency has a high deflation rate some merchants might even be willing to accept a lower price for a product (relative to thier fiat currency) in order to gain more Bitcoin and hold or sell it at a far higher value.
Many ecommerce stores need SEO help to gain more customers. When looking for the right agency or consultant I would recommend finding one that specializes or has a lot of experience with your CMS or shopping cart solution instead of those that offer more generic ecommerce SEO services. That means you should find a Shopify SEO, WooCommerce SEO, etc... that can help your store drive more traffic and sales organically.
Accepting Bitcoin might be part of their strategy, but it will likely only play a small part. A great SEO will focus on your products, product categories, internal linking, inbound links, and talk to you about content marketing programs such as data visualizations, blog posts, and other things you can do to gain media and consumer attention.