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OVERSTOCK CEO: Amazon Will Be Forced To Start Accepting Bitcoin

Joe WeisenthalJan 12, 2014, 22:07 IST

This past week, online retailer Overstock.com became the most mainstream retailer to start accepting Bitcoin. On Twitter, the company's CEO Patrick Byrne said the retailer saw $130K worth of Bitcoin orders on the first day.

Byrne went on CNN International to talk about his company's Bitcoin acceptance and made a couple points that are worth noting.

One is that the company immediately swaps out its Bitcoins back to US Dollars once the transaction is complete. Byrne says he's a Bitcoin believer, but until he has suppliers that accept Bitcoin, there's no reason to hold onto them. He'd also be interested in participating in a Bitcoin derivatives market at some point in the future to hedge against volatility.

He also said he believes Amazon will be forced to accept Bitcoin at some point, as he claims the market is growing at 30% per month and that the company would be foolish to cede that market to others.

Disclosure: Jeff Bezos is an investor in Business Insider through his personal investment company Bezos Expeditions.