At last you appreciate that the rising value of bitcoin is a stumbling block in its adoption as a currency. Naturally, you exaggerate the effect. Given that the average price of bitcoins doubles every 4 months, the debt in question would more likely be $300 and not $600.
I went to bitcoincharts.com and looked at the value 60 days ago; it was less than $200. I don't appreciate accusations of dishonesty.
Of course this is a problem only if the debt is priced in bitcoins. If the debt is priced in USD and one of the payment options is bitcoin at whatever the exchange rate is at the time then this scenario wouldn't exist.
In that case Bitcoin isn't being used as a currency, you're just using the bitcoin network as a USD payment system because it doesn't really matter what the purchasing power of Bitcoin is. Since you're going to convert them at the other end since you're working in USD, you might as well just get paid in USD.
Adding bitcoin as a payment option can only be an advantage for a business just as accepting credit card payments is. Unless you are still harping on about bitcoin exchanges, any extra cost would be minimal and certainly far less for the business than EFTPOS payments.
Exchanging them is still an issue because, AFAIK, nobody is obliged to take anything but legal tender in the settlement of a debt. At least where I live.
From an article from the BBC about card charges
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-23431543 :-
"
On average, debit card transactions cost the retailer 9p each, or about 0.2% of the bill." - credit cards are to be limited to 0.3%, but debit cards are already used for 3 times as many purchases in the UK and that ratio is increasing. Your experience in Oz may be different.
If you look at the transactions rolling past on the blockchain site, you'll see most have fees between 0.0001 BTC and 0.001 BTC (5-50p), so the cost of each transaction is comparable to a debit card transaction.
I suppose we could argue that fee is being pushed to the buyer, and that is an incentive for the seller, but the overall outcome is the same. Sellers will receive buyer spend minus any fees, because now the buyer effectively has less to spend.
I'm curious as to how refunds might work, would each employee need access to the store's wallet? Perhaps network security would need to be improved for most stores because I'm guessing you can't use a paper wallet in a busy shop. There's how to deal with confirmations and potential double-spend, which I hear is probably not a huge issue for small purchases, but still an issue. I'm sure there will be some kind of software services that one could buy to solve or mitigate these things.
The shops know you have legal tender, and they don't actually save much by taking Bitcoins. Unless a Bitcoin type system were to be tacked onto existing banking
If you are referring to tax evasion then it is harder with bitcoin than with the banking system but easier than with just cash where under-reporting is a serious problem. (You can at least track bitcoin transactions through the blockchain).
Recently when I bought a used vehicle from a car yard, the dealer wanted to be paid in cash. He then offered to put a lower price on the transfer forms to "save me some stamp duty on the sale". There is no shortage of tradespeople who are willing to give discounts for cash in order to keep some of their business off the books.
I was thinking of tax evasion. I was thinking that when Bitcoin's place in the economy is being considered, things like that will come up. An alternative banking system with less oversight will undoubtedly make some people a little uncomfortable.
Why would you feel bad for anybody who bought bitcoins on Oct 24 or Nov 10? Their holdings are worth a lot more now than then.