UPDATED 12:22 EDT / APRIL 16 2013

NEWS

OKCupid Partners with Coinbase to Accept Bitcoin for Online Dating

With over 4 million active users (and 7 million registered), OKCupid is a very popular Internet dating site that includes those annoying quizzes that everyone seems to love so much—and now Coinbase has announced a partnership with the dating site to enable acceptance of Bitcoin.

This has been a big few months for the cryptocurrency with numerous businesses starting to see it as a viable exchange of value. This is even after last week when the currency reached a valuation high of $266 only to collapse below $100—currently Bitcoin value sits much lower near $70. Amid the sites that accept Bitcoin are Mega, Reddit, WordPress.com, and many others.

While currently bitcoin values run the gamut in volatility this has been seen as a problem for owners accepting the cryptocurrency, but payment processors such as Coinbase and BitPay help mitigate that by allowing near-immediate liquidity of exchange. OKCupid CEO Sam Yagan, explained as much of the company’s intent in an e-mail with Ars Technica.

“Our plan is to liquidate our holdings daily and turn them into US dollars,” Yagan said. “There’s an open question as to how much liquidity there is. I think there’s going to be a tremendous amount of volatility. One of the reasons why we want to be early in the mix is so we can learn.”

According to Yagan, very few users asked for Bitcoin to be accepted– “I can probably count them on two hands”—but he believes that getting in early is important for the company, not because of current audience, but because of the disruptive technological effect of bitcoins.

“There’s no question that these digital currencies are going to be the future,” he said in a quote on Forbes.com. “Whether it’s actually the form of Bitcoins or evolves into something else, we want to be out in front. We want to be the ones who have the experience. There’s a lot to learn.”

Bitcoin popularity still rising and with it the user pool increases

As more businesses sign on to take bitcoin it will continue to popularize the cryptocurrency for the public at large. OKCupid is an unexpected sign-on, shows that CEOs of extremely popular businesses see that the cryptocurrency has a real chance to become something significant in the economy. Yagan’s hands-off attitude about putting investment into the currency itself is exactly what might be expected from online merchants—citing the volatility—but since Bitcoin has a real chance to become a global currency it’s a good time to accept it.

Payment processors such as Coinbase are well positioned and suited for allowing merchants to come on board with little risk to themselves.


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