Newegg adds Bitcoin support

Newegg announced early this morning that it had added Bitcoin support to its online consumer electronics marketplace.

With the announcement, Newegg has become the second high-tech online retailer to offer support for the digital currency, with the first one being TigerDirect.

Newegg’s Bitcoin support comes courtesy of the online electronics retailer’s partnership with BitPay, the Bitcoin payment processor that handles both WordPress and Zynga.

BitPay public relations executive Jan Jahosky shared Newegg’s press release announcing the Bitcoin support with CoinReport.

BitPay automatically liquidates the Bitcoins and sends cash to the merchant, making Bitcoin acceptance entirely seamless. BitPay handled about $100 million worth of traffic last year, up from $3 million the year before that, and is responsible for the Bitcoin Bowl.

The Bitcoin support announcement page on Newegg.com, also linked to in the tweet in which Newegg also announced Bitcoin support, includes a video enthusiastically pitching Bitcoin support to other companies, indicating an enthusiasm for Bitcoin’s adoption that goes beyond the simple “Bitcoin Bump.”

Newegg’s support is important because the company is the largest consumer retailer to offer Bitcoin support (its $2.7 billion in annual sales dwarfs Overstock.com’s $1.3 billion), and it’s one of the largest businesses to take the Bitcoin jump, along with Dish Network at $13.9 billion.

On the site, clicking the “Pay with Bitcoin” button allows users to pay directly from their wallet software, or summon a QR code to pay from a smartphone-based wallet. These wallets are only valid for fifteen minutes, and an email-confirmation will be provided following a successful Bitcoin transaction.

This is a major win for BitPay, and for the liquidity of Bitcoin at large. These moves keep Bitcoin in the public eye in a legitimate, useful role, which is important from a mass-psychology perspective. On a strictly economic level, each one of these small victories for Bitcoin adoption also make it more sustainable for consumers to own Bitcoin for the simple purpose of buying things, without any intent to speculate or any particular Bitcoin advocacy, which is very important if Bitcoin is going to get past the point where it’s new and shiny and weird and on to the point that it’s mundane and useful and you buy diapers and pay your electric bills with it.