Overstock, the first major retailer to accept bitcoin, made headlines again this week announcing that they plan to begin offering employee bonuses in bitcoin instead of cash.
Judd Bagley, an Overstock representative, told Mashable that the company is brainstorming how exactly they can offer bitcoin bonuses by the end of the year, and that employees who decide to take a bitcoin bonus instead of cash will receive a premium.
In a separate interview, Bagley told CoinDesk, “The first step will be to offer to pay employees their annual bonuses in bitcoin. Those will be paid out during the first quarter of 2015. Participation will be incentivized by adding a small premium to the bonus for those who opt to receive it in bitcoin. Depending on how that works out and is received, we will look at making regular payroll checks available in bitcoin.”
Overstock generated $1 million in bitcoin sales in its first two months of accepting the virtual currency, and Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne recently announced that by late May, they processed a total of $1.6 million in bitcoin sales.
Bagley told Mashable that as of recently, Overstock reached $2 million in bitcoin sales, and bitcoin currently accounts for about .25% of the average day’s sales. Overstock saw revenues of $673.7 million in the first half of 2014.
“We experienced an initial surge, there was a lot of excitement,” Bagley said. “It settled into something a little more predictable.”
What item did bitcoiners purchase the most from Overstock? Sheets, followed by headphones, cases and holders, cables and tools, AV cables, and mattresses. The top bitcoin sales adjusted for population came from New Hampshire followed by Utah and Washington.
In another announcement made earlier this week by Overstock, Bryne told Russia Today that the company will allow payments from global customers within the next month to six weeks.
Overstock also announced earlier this week that they are extremely interested in using Bitcoin technology like the blockchain public ledger to manage, issue and trade company stock in a decentralized fashion free from control of any third parties such as Wall Street or a government.
In June, Overstock pledged to donate 3 percent of its bitcoin profits to advocacy organizations that promote bitcoin.
Overstock’s interest in Bitcoin and its underlying technology not only comes from a desire to save money on transaction fees, but also from its CEO’s political outlook.
Bryn said in an interview with The Blaze’s Glenn Beck:
“The history of this country can be told as a history of two competing power centers: Wall Street and Washington,” Byrne said in an interview with Beck last week. “What’s happened in recent decades is, Wall Street has gotten Washington under its thumb. That’s where republics go to die. We’re becoming an oligarchy.”
Bryn added that he believes that the Federal Reserve is like a tumor in America that must be cut out and never replaced with anything.
If Bitcoin adoption increases to the point where it is the default internet currency, one thing for certain is that it would be a huge chunk of the Federal Reserve tumor removed.
