Opinion | Style Check: Big brands sign up for new Bitcoin-based e-fashion site Bitfash
A colleague recently sent me an e-mail that left me gaping at the screen. It was about a new e-commerce fashion website, Bitfash.com "Oh, another online shopping start-up," I thought. But there's a catch: all items are paid for with the internet currency bitcoin.
The company - which says it is based in China and Australia - is the first fashion e-retail initiative using the digital currency.
At first I was ready to dismiss this project as some sort of gimmick, but then I saw the retailers were two high-street powerhouses: Zara and Forever 21. They even have Mr Porter on board (the men's version of Net-A-Porter) which gives Bitfash access to more than 150 luxury and streetwear brands for men.
Although I have no desire to use bitcoin when my credit card and PayPal have sufficed for so long, I do wonder how powerful this idea is to prompt major retailers to sign up.
Indeed, there has been increasing interest in the invented currency. Much has been made of the peer-to-peer nature of bitcoin where the creation and transfer is based on an open-source model and not managed by any central authority. Digital geeks have been quick to hail this as a new democratic global monetary system, but the volatile exchange rates are a hurdle.
We see a big future for bitcoin as a global currency
"[It] is intended to be an evolutionary step change to the existing bitcoin services websites which are highly mechanical and iterative in their interaction with the user," says bitfash co-founder Keyur Kelkar in a release. "Our ethos is centred on streamlining [the] experience."