Silk Road forums

Support => Feature requests => Topic started by: Proudhon on July 07, 2011, 01:36 am

Title: Silk Road Store Credit---- Solution to BTC price problem?
Post by: Proudhon on July 07, 2011, 01:36 am
So I had an idea I thought I would run buy you guys. Suppose The Silk Road staff sells credit to be used on silk road instead of BTC. A customer would buy this credit using Bitcoins at the current market value (plus any fees that staff desires/needs for this service.) The credit can be denominated in a more stable currency such as dollars/euro/pounds etc. Staff can then dump them into (for example) one big Mt.gox account and convert them into US dollars. The money can just sit there at a value pegged to the dollar instead of fluctuating wildly. The customer can then use the Silk Road credit to buy from vendors (with the normal escrow system already in place but with credit instead of BTC.)

Once the vendor get the credits they can cash it in at the new exchange rate, and get bitcoins back that are equivalent to the dollar value of the credit. This way It doesn't matter how much the value of bitcoin changes in the time it takes for the order to ship and the funds to be released----- the vendor will get a quantity of bitcoins equal to the price AT THE TIME OF CASH IN.

I suppose a probable drawback is that this may involve more attention/typing work for Staff.
However, I think that this can be offset by the fact that Silk Road can gain revenue buy selling Store Credit at a certain premium(easier to do more work if you are getting paid...). Also Staff could limit the sale of store credit to certain days of the week or whatever.

Also IDK what this would involve in terms of coding and how much of this process could be automated.
Any Ideas ladies and gentlemen? Pro's or Con's?
Title: Re: Silk Road Store Credit---- Solution to BTC price problem?
Post by: XMachina on July 07, 2011, 09:28 am
I've considered a similar idea..but it seems very complicated. Not that I'm nay saying. I just don't have any solutions to make it work.

For example...What happens when SR's funds get frozen? Well we know what happens.