“We introduced Bitcoin in 2014 because we wanted to support this ingenious payment concept.”

“We introduced Bitcoin in 2014 because we wanted to support this ingenious payment concept.”

time.Org has been accepting bitcoins for a good seven years – albeit with an interruption. An internal inspection of how it is to work with bitcoins as an online shop in Germany.

For many, Bitcoins are primarily a speculation object. The real application – as a means of payment – is approved, but exists more as a theory. In practice, PayPal, credit cards or EC cards run well enough, and who wants to spend their bitcoins if they could be worth more in the future?

Therefore, the experiences are often quite lean when it comes to how bitcoins work in online trading. So we have time at time.Org asked where to pay watches with Bitcoin since 2014, which makes the online shop a pioneer in this area. The managing director Göran Holst answered our questions.

“We introduced Bitcoin in 2014 because we wanted to support this ingenious payment concept,” says Göran. In particular, “in the light of the principle of data economy” he found it sensible “if a person does not have to provide any payment -related information when buying online.“This principle has also been laid down in the GDPR since 2018 – the personal data should be limited to the necessary level. No other electronic payment method comes as close as Bitcoin.

time.Org did not receive the bitcoins directly. Instead, the online shop commissioned the extremely popular payment service provider Bitpay at the time. This was able to convince numerous new shops in 2014 by offering the Bitcoins taken directly. “The purchase price at Bitpay was immediately converted into euros and credited into euros. Only then did we send the clock.”

However, BitPay hired the company in Germany in August 2019-an event that the Bitcoin Actions in Germany has made a heavy blow. The reason is still slightly puzzling, but presumably regulatory.

Göran reports: “As justification, this text was sent to us: ‘Bitpay strives to offer all its customers the best service. We regularly monitor regulations and laws to ensure compliance. Germany has publicly stated that crypto companies should apply for a license from 2020. We hired the company in Germany while we determine the need for German licenses.'”

Obviously, Bitpay fell victim to the otherwise internationally promised German legislation on crypto values. This legislation created regulatory clarity and made it relatively easy to use banks and other established financial institutions to use Bitcoin as a financial product under clear guidelines. This shows, for example, Bitbond’s success of winning financial institutions and FinTech startups for using cryptotoken, as well as the rise of crypto custodians such as Tangany. However, the companies, which Bitcoin used in the actual sense, remained on the route.

For time.Org that was initially demotivating. Since the sales with bitcoins had not necessarily been business, the online shop initially left the topic. It was only in January 2021 that he introduced Bitcoin as a payment option, “because of many inquiries from customers”. This time the company no longer worked with a payment provider, but did everything itself.

“Our software assigns a payment address to a customer so that we can assign the payment of the order,” Göran explains the concept. “Since our whole shop itself is programmed, integration was quite easy for us.”

Even if Goran himself is a supporter of Bitcoin and the underlying idea, and it is also easy to regret not keeping the coins taken since 2014, the company will now change it again immediately. “Holding the bitcoins in the company that made the sale could raise tax complications. We wanted to avoid them from the start. Therefore we change the Bitcoin in euros.”

The effort was still worth it. “Overall, the Bitcoin is much better received in 2021 than in 2018 and 2019 because it is also becoming more and more common in Germany. The share of sales is still low, but sales in Bitcoin are already three times as high as in 2019 in October.”

It is also interesting, especially in the luxury segment that Bitcoin users tend to buy more expensive products. “The average shopping cart at time.Org about all payment methods is approx. 320 euros, while at Bitcoin he is 900 euros. So significantly higher quality watches are bought than with euros. Watches from Oris, Sinn, Mido and Maurice Lacroix are particularly popular with Bitcoin buyers.”

Goran reports that pay bitcoiners exactly when they pay with the coins. “It is exciting that we only sell watches in Bitcoin with relatively high Bitcoinkurses. For example, at courses under 35.000 dollars/ BTC Hardly any watches in BTC. At 50.000 dollars or more, the Bitcoin holders then seem to want to reward themselves with a watch.”

Of course, one could now object that watches are also a speculation object. Especially when the Bitcoin price is high, many Bitcoin holders may swap a piece of Bitcoin for another investment, such as a watch. Nevertheless, it remains an acceptance in online trading-and the increasing demand shows that more and more people are willing to pay with bitcoins. Perhaps the spread in German online trading has got tailwind again this year, and maybe it just has to start in the luxury segment ..