You are absolutely right and I appreciate this post because your examples quantify this very intuitive claim. Seeing the numbers drives this point home so much better than hearing "decrease merchant costs" as a tagline.

I want to follow up onan issue that's already being raised in this thread: "So what, why do I care as a consumer?"

A little econ 101 will explain why a consumer would care that a merchants costs are, on average 5% lower. The most obvious way to increase market share is to charge less than your competition. Now...Duh, but this is really important to understanding the absolute basics of market forces. In this case, people will acquire and use bitcoins if the basket of goods they want at the stores accepting bitcoin are substantially less than the same basket of goods at the stores that don't. By reducing price, you are increasing market share in a competitive market.

Now, as the only merchant accepting bitcoin, it would be tempting to want to pocket my extra five percent profit each month. But now my competitive advantage IS the ability to charge lower prices. And merchants that operate on already razor thin margins want to increase sales volume as much as possible to maximize profit. So the one merchant that accepts bitcoin should have lower prices than the competition, which is one (passive) way to increase consumer adoption. But honestly if the savings are a possible 10% then I predict rewards programs (buy 10 coffees with BTC and your 11 is free) will be offered by merchants because just by the consumers paying with btc instead of credit cards. This gives them the ability to make more for themselves and charge less to the consumer, which will in turn create higher market share, more consumers, and greater profits.

tl;d consumers have financial incentives to pay in btc just like merchants have in accepting btc.