The past week hasn’t been too dramatic for the Bitcoin community as the value vs. USD continues to fluctuate. After battering against $1,000 for a while, the price has fallen to hover between $800 and $900 for a while as new exchanges begin to open and the community pushes for adoption across the world. Just watching Coinmap as BTC accepting brick-and-mortar is up almost 600 locations since December.

This year so far, Overstock.com has started accepting Bitcoin early; there’s been some nostalgia about pizza for BTC looking at current delicious food for cryptocurrency and a very expensive pie from 2010; and Richard Garriott speaks highly of Bitcoin and the video game massively multiplayer industry.

Overstock.com starts accepting Bitcoin early!

In a surprise coup of undersell and overdeliver, Overstock.com has launched the availability of retail purchase for BTC early January instead of sometime in 2014 “within 6 months.”

Shortly after launching, Overstock’s CEO Patrick M. Byrne announced over $124,000 worth of Bitcoin sales in the first 24 hours.

After 21 hours on @overstock.com, we’ve had 780 #Bitcoin orders that accounted for $124,000 in sales. Wow!

— Patrick M. Byrne (@OverstockCEO) January 10, 2014

According to quotes gathered by Forbes, the quicker-than-normal delivery pivoted around a decision made by Byrne after numerous Bitcoin-related processors and services approached Overstock after his initial announcement. He then went to his team to see how quickly they could roll out a solution and gave it the go.

“On January 1st, our people said they could do it within 10 days if I gave them enough people,” says Byrne. “So we put a team of 40 people on it. We locked them in a room and slid pizzas under the door, and gave them hotel rooms when they needed them. The technique of swarming to form a team was incredibly efficient.”

In short, Overstock accepting BTC so soon was driven by the Bitcoin community and sheer popular interest.

“There’s clearly a huge community of people who support this. Our customer service lines are going nuts with people who appreciate this,” says Byrne. “The PR wasn’t the driving force here. I think there will be a few day lift from that. For us, the benefits are that we save on the transaction fee and we get to access that community. The community doesn’t have to keep their wealth and savings in financial institutions they don’t trust that might melt down.”

Pizza.be sells 2% of their pizzas for bitcoins

As part of a bigger story about Bitcoin’s adoption in Belgium, this little tidbit comes to us about a pizza parlor that delivers almost 2% of their pizza for bitcoins. The story appeared in Knack.be (in Dutch) and had some statistics that shows that there’s some interested in using the cryptocurrency to buy tasty cheese, sauce, and pepporoni.

“Of the 5,000 orders placed every day at Pizza.be there walk about 100 via bitcoin,” said spokeswoman Siska de Lombaerde in De Tijd (Dutch financial magazine, English: The Times). Although SiliconAngle has not been able to track down the De Tijd article, it is cited in the other Dutch article.

This brings to mind one of the first uses of bitcoins to purchase a pizza. Florida, 2010, programmer Laszlo Hanyecz bought two pizzas for 10,000 BTC. The cryptocurrency didn’t have much USD value at the time; but by the time that 2013 rolled around those two pizzas would now be worth over $8 million. Showing the amazing growth of the value of BTC.

While many might take this as a reason not to spend bitcoins; it’s easily argued that economically the very use of BTC to purchase pizza (way back in 2010) is another stepping stone to showing the cryptocurrency as a powerful exchange-of-value for buying goods. The greater the frequency of its use as currency, the less volatile the currency will become; leading to more popularity and greater adoption.

Bitcoin and gaming: Richard Garriott chats Bitcoin on Twitter

Richard Garriott is a huge innovator in the world of massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) being the producer of Ultima Online (1997) and the luminary behind Shrould of the Avatar (release October 2014). He is a leader well-known in the MMO scene and known as Lord British.

So when he got into a conversation with @LetsTalkBitcoin on Twitter, it’s worth the time of the Bitcoin community to follow along.

@RichardGarriott Which major MMO do you think will be the first to implement #Bitcoin and what do you think this means for #RMT? :) #Welcome

— Lets Talk Bitcoin! (@LetsTalkBitcoin) January 9, 2014

@LetsTalkBitcoin I think we ALL will! While I’d like to be 1st others are ahead on the path.

— Richard Garriott (@RichardGarriott) January 9, 2014

@RichardGarriott Whats the timeframe for the first major #Bitcoin adoption in the #MMO space? Major Hurdles? Zyngas integration was smooth

— Lets Talk Bitcoin! (@LetsTalkBitcoin) January 9, 2014

@LetsTalkBitcoin There will be no integration problems for MMO’s either. Real BTC proof will be when I can easily spend at physical shops.

— Richard Garriott (@RichardGarriott) January 9, 2014

Bitcoin is well suited as a microtransaction currency for MMO and multiplayer gaming. Already we’ve seen big shops that run casual MMO games such as Bigpoint Games and Zynga Online begin accepting Bitcoin—so other outfits that run more immersive or even more hardcore games might not be too far behind.

With this conversation in play, we might even be able to predict that Shroud of the Avatar might accept bitcoins.