Overstock Generates "Between $68,000 and $120,000" in Crypto Weekly

During a recent address to the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C, Jonathan Johnson, the former chairman and current member of the board for Overstock, sought to emphasize that payments in the form of bitcoin comprise a steadily growing source of revenue for the company.

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Former Overstock Chair Detail’s Retailer’s Cryptocurrency Revenue

Jonathan Johnson, the former chairman of Overstock, one of the first major companies to accept bitcoin as a means of payment, has detailed the revenues generated by the company in the form of cryptocurrency payments whilst speaking to the Heritage Foundation.

“We have somewhere between $68,000 and $120,000 a week in cryptocurrency revenues; people buying sheets and toasters using bitcoin or Ethereum or other coins,” Mr. Johnson told the conservative think-tank.

Advantages of Accepting Crypto

Mr. Johnson sought to convince attendees of the advantages cryptocurrency offers to businesses over orthodox payments forms.

The Overstock board member stated: “We pay a processing fee for credit cards, and we employ about 40 people in our fraud department. That’s a cost of doing business with credit cards.”

“When we take cryptocurrency, we have a very small transaction fee with Coinbase, much smaller than our credit card processing fee, and we have no fraud prevention department. It’s like a cash transaction. For us, that is a much cheaper way of doing business,” Mr. Johnson added.

Crypto as Democratizing Force

The former Overstock chairman described cryptocurrency and distributed ledger technology as having a democratizing effect upon access to financial services and fundraising mechanisms.

Mr. Johnson stated “Today, so many of us can’t participate in the capital markets the way accredited investors or well-connected investors can. And those of us that are trying to raise money have a hard time crowdfunding or raising money in a democratized way.”

Despite praising the democratizing of fundraising processes through cryptocurrency, Mr. Johnson stated that Medici Ventures, Overstock’s investment firm of which he is president, “is not invested in a single ICO, in large part because the regulation around them is still very hazy.”

Mr. Johnson also expressed his belief that the cryptocurrency sector should operate without regulation, stating “We should not be regulating this technology. If there are uses of it that need regulation, maybe.”

Do you think that more retailers will begin accepting cryptocurrency payments? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!

Images courtesy of Shutterstock, Medici Ventures

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