Wow, really involved post. Thanks for this. It does seem entirely possible that overstock may have a bit of a "trading group" who work to maximize the value of their short term crypto currency accounts as a way to "hedge" against market volatility. I think it's hard to believe that they just leave the bitcoin sitting in their accounts.
Problem for people who pay in bitcoin (as you've outlined) is that there's is a huge opportunity cost element in having your $50.00 of bitcoin tied up during a refund process. And while I do think an acceptable solution is to return the value paid in bitcoin, the challenge here is, does overstock even have a reserve bitcoin account/pool to carry out these types of refunds? If they accept payment in BTC and sell it immediately to deleverage themselves (which is what I think they do) and you demand a refund in the same BTC amount as the market rises, then overstock loses money. So I really wonder what will happen? The accounting here gets really messy. And as you pointed out, I think how overstock handles BTC transactions/refund will be a really important training ground for mass payment adoption across all platforms.
Let's see what happens!
I'd be surprised if this was an internal written practice so they could make money on the float. But people will jump to conclusions if this becomes a common story.
Agreed. But it's probably a one off kind of thing. Just tin foil hatting a bit here, haha.