WALUTA WIRTUALNA BITCOIN Z PERSPEKTYWY OFERENTÓW INTERNETOWYCH – ANALIZA WSTĘPNA

This paper concerns a problem of the usage of virtual currency Bitcoin in e-commerce and donations for non-profit organizations. The aim of the work is to determine the characteristics of the legal businesses accepting Bitcoin, applied methods of acceptance and the share of Bitcoin in the total value of sales. Empirical results are based on the survey study, which included 111 online vendors from 35 countries. The obtained results allowed to determine the range of acceptance of Bitcoin worldwide and to recognize vendors, including such factors as business profile, location, industry, geographical coverage and the scale of its operations. The results proved that payment integrators played a very important role in the processing of Bitcoin payments. At the same time, however, there was observed a little interest from customers for using Bitcoin for payments.