Share this article
Overstock Pledges 3% of Bitcoin Profits to Promote Cryptocurrencies
The e-retailer will donate some profits from bitcoin sales to advocacy organisations, and plans to make bitcoin payments international.
Updated Sep 11, 2021, 10:54 a.m. Published Jun 24, 2014, 11:26 a.m.
US online retailer Overstock has pledged to donate 3% of profits generated through bitcoin sales to advocacy organisations that promote digital currencies.
Patrick Byrne
STORY CONTINUES BELOW
Don't miss another story.Subscribe to the Crypto Daybook Americas Newsletter today. See all newsletters
, the company's CEO, made the announcement at the Bitcoin in the Beltway conference, held in Washington DC over the weekend.
Overstock later told CoinDesk that the decision to donate a portion of its bitcoin sales revenue is “a new one” and that it is still “working out the details”.
Notably, however, the Overstock spokesperson indicated that revenue donated by the company will not go solely toward bitcoin advocacy:
“Any revenue from bitcoin sales that Overstock.com donates will go to support the adoption of cryptocurrencies in general, not necessarily bitcoin in particular.”
“Whatever happens, an official announcement won’t be made until September,” the spokesperson concluded.
Sales without frontiers
Byrne also used the conference as an opportunity to announce that his company plans to expand its bitcoin programme to international users. This will enable bitcoin payments from shoppers in virtually any country worldwide, with a September deadline also slated for completion of the new feature.
He further discussed Overstock’s overall experience with bitcoin, saying the customer response to its decision to start accepting bitcoin payments had been good so far.
The company now expects bitcoin sales to account for about $10m of its revenue over the first year – double the original forecast of $5m. As of late March, however, Byrne was optimistic Overstock's year-end bitcoin totals could reach as high as $20m.
The Utah-based company passed the $1m mark in early March and, by late May, bitcoin sales accounted for $1.6m of Overstock’s revenue.
Big spenders
Byrne explained that more than 4,300 customers had decided to use bitcoin since Overstock incorporated it as a payment method. On average, these users spent more than non-bitcoin users per transaction, and an estimated 60% of bitcoin-toting buyers were completely new to Overstock.
Overstock is also one of few bitcoin friendly merchants that maintains bitcoin holdings of its own. The company keeps 10% of its bitcoin income and Byrne says he personally holds several million dollars in bitcoin.
On top of that, the company says it is open to paying its employees in bitcoin.
More For You
What to know:
- As of October 2025, GoPlus has generated $4.7M in total revenue across its product lines. The GoPlus App is the primary revenue driver, contributing $2.5M (approx. 53%), followed by the SafeToken Protocol at $1.7M.
- GoPlus Intelligence's Token Security API averaged 717 million monthly calls year-to-date in 2025 , with a peak of nearly 1 billion calls in February 2025. Total blockchain-level requests, including transaction simulations, averaged an additional 350 million per month.
- Since its January 2025 launch , the $GPS token has registered over $5B in total spot volume and $10B in derivatives volume in 2025. Monthly spot volume peaked in March 2025 at over $1.1B , while derivatives volume peaked the same month at over $4B.
More For You
Zcash Floats Dynamic Fee Plan to Ensure Users Won’t Be Priced Out
ZEC zoomed 12% amid the fee discussion, beating gains across all major tokens.
What to know:
- A new proposal by Shielded Labs suggests a dynamic fee market for Zcash to address rising transaction costs and network congestion.
- The proposed system uses a median fee per action observed over the prior 50 blocks, with a priority lane for high-demand periods.
- The changes aim to maintain Zcash's privacy features while avoiding complex protocol redesigns.
Top Stories
