Italian luxury brand Gucci – which specializes in fashion and leather goods – is allowing customers to pay for items with digital currencies like bitcoin and Shiba Inu, a popular spinoff of meme cryptocurrency Dogecoin. The company says its customers have been showing heavy demand for crypto in recent years, and thus executives want to adhere to their needs and wants.
Gucci Will Begin Accepting Crypto Payments for Luxury Items
The move is pushing the goals of bitcoin and its digital counterparts closer to being achieved. What many people likely forget is that while bitcoin and many of its crypto cousins have taken on either speculative or even hedge-like statuses in recent years, many of them were initially designed to serve as payment tools. They were built to push checks, credit cards, and fiat currencies to the side, but this has been a relatively slow journey given the volatility that continues to drag them down.
It is extremely hard to understand when bitcoin and its crypto family will go up or down when it comes to their prices. Many stores and companies have been reluctant to say “yes” when it comes to accepting crypto payments for this reason, and to a degree, we can’t blame them.
Consider the following scenario: someone walks into a store and buys $50 worth of merchandise with bitcoin. For one reason or another, the store doesn’t trade the BTC into fiat right away and about 24 hours go by. From there, the price of BTC goes down and that $50 becomes $40. The customer gets to keep everything he or she bought, but the store has lost money in the end. Is this a fair situation? Not everyone thinks so.
That’s what makes enterprises like Gucci so important. They understand the initial purposes of bitcoin and digital currencies and are trying to transform them into usable tools that everyday people can benefit from.
The first Gucci stores set to accept crypto payments will be in New York, Los Angeles, and Miami. This is the start of a pilot program that if successful, could expand to all Gucci stores in North America. Fuad Fatullaev – founder and CEO of We Way – explained in an interview:
The news of Gucci announcing its acceptance of cryptocurrencies as payments later this month means there will be a growing demand for crypto-to-fiat conversion, as Gucci will be ultimately accepting fiat funds. This means banks and other payment services will be viewing crypto-to-fiat services as a new dimension of financial services. It will consequently allow such service providers to expand their clientele… It will also show a larger audience, especially in North America, that cryptocurrencies can be actual everyday payment means.
A Huge Step Forward
Alexander Mamasidikov – co-founder of mobile digital bank Mine Plex – also stated:
Gucci’s crypto adoption is a huge step forward for the broader crypto market.
Source: https://www.livebitcoinnews.com/luxury-brand-gucci-says-yes-to-btc-payments/