Autocoin Cars (buying cars with Bitcoin)

[FlyingPanda]

Anyone heard of Autocoin Cars? It’s a service which a few dealers are using as an intermediary in order that they can accept payments by Bitcoin.

This raises a few questions for me:

If a dealer wants to be paid in Bitcoin, why not take it directly?
If a punter has lots of Bitcoin, why not cash them in and use the cash?
How does Autocoin make any money? Presumably someone’s paying them a commission?

Admittedly this has only become interesting to me since my Bitcoin holdings have started increasing in value, but I have just noticed a few dealers stating ‘we now take Bitcoin’ but when you look closer it’s via Autocoin Cars.

[carbonblack]

FlyingPanda said:

If a dealer wants to be paid in Bitcoin, why not take it directly?
If a punter has lots of Bitcoin, why not cash them in and use the cash?
How does Autocoin make any money? Presumably someone’s paying them a commission?

Most dealers probably don’t want to learn how to accept bitcoin payments, for them it’s easier to just get the money off Autocoin or some other intermediary.

I don’t think I’d ever want to pay for a car with crypto - can you imagine the hassle if the dealer ‘lost access’ to their wallet or similar?

The people who want to spend bitcoin on cars without first converting it to cash are likely wanting to avoid paying capital gains tax, or the BTC is from semi or less legal sources.

It’s a lot easier to fly under the radar if you’re not cashing large sums out to your bank account and instead keep it on-chain.

If you are legit then there’s no real reason not to cash out to a bank account and negotiate a better deal. That isn’t to say everyone using a crypto intermediary isn’t legit - but I’d suspect a significant proportion are….