Topic: GBSB - a new way to GET and SPEND bitcoins - page 2. (Read 4488 times)

We will explore 2 options:
1. We determine the price at the time Buyer initiates transaction. Spenders fund account with let's say 100% price in BTC, which gives him some room to handle volatility. If BTC prices drop significantly, then his account is no longer sufficiently funded, and his order will be removed from order book.
2. Price is set at the time Spender placed the order, and the Buyer can always refuse to accept the order if the price of BTC has shifted enough to make it too unfavorable.
In either case, we would like the site to operate in such a way that a majority of orders can be expected to be filled within a day. Additionally, I've been thinking of lately of how we still rely on mtgox price as the "value" of bitcoin when their daily volumes are often 10-20k. The bitcoin economy has outgrown this and we as a community should look into better ways to determine the value of bitcoin.

In both examples you gave, bank account info are required. Unless you trust coinbase with your bank account password, to verify account ownership takes several days. It also suffers from the 10btc/day limit. Credit card cannot be used to purchase, and GBSB can potentially be anonymous by using store bought gift cards. In any case, you will never have to trust us with your personal info, as we will never require you to provide it to us.
I'd say from the bitcoin buyer's perspective, this service is more comparable to bitinstant. With major differences being 1. Rate of exchange is known prior to transaction, 2. Longer wait, 3. Do not depend on other exchanges. 4. Never have to leave the house.

I'm not sure what you mean by middleman. There are 3 parties involved in these exchanges. GBSB, Spender, and Buyer. If you mean GBSB=middleman, then yes, there's always counter party risk when using any bitcoin service. Products cannot be sent to anyone besides Spender's input address and still have a valid tracking #. If GBSB is shut down, we still retain all contact info and bitcoin withdraw addresses to refund users.

What do you mean by safety?
We will be a registered LLC, so no. Customers' anonymity will be preserved however.

Yes because they are buying the items themselves and abusing Amazon Prime. This services leverages the wishlist functionality, which doesn't require us to conduct any business with Amazon. With that said, yes we are consulting lawyers and will do everything to avoid any cease and desists from Amazon.

No returns is current policy. I agree there will be many ground rules and procedures for Spenders(which will be well documented), and hopefully that the discount incentive is enough for them to overcome that. The process will be designed to be much simpler for the Buyer. There will always be ways to game any system, and we can only learn and update as we go. Eventually, we want to develop into a more open exchange that allows users to set their own rules, pick their own escrows, and take full responsibility of their own actions.

Very interesting idea. I buy a lot on Amazon with Amazon Prime, and I've been a professional seller on Amazon for several years (I hope to have a Bitcoin product available with Amazon Prime in a few weeks).

I'm not sure if I totally get it, but here are a bunch of questions I have about the longterm plan (answer only if you feel like it, or simply use it as food for thought):

How will the BTC price of the transaction be established? With BTC being so volatile, this seems tricky, and possibly one of the participants may not get the deal they were looking for.

Who do you believe wants to pay a 5% premium to get bitcoins? Seems there are very established/trusted ways to buy BTC for much less, and it's really not much work to sign up for say Coinbase or CampBX (just to name a couple). Do you believe there's a benefit of getting BTC through your service that I'm not seeing?

Seems everyone who participates is at some risk, since a middleman could grab bitcoin, get product sent to friends, and take off (I'm not saying you would do that, but seems you could do that). Or a middleman could get shut down, mid-transaction. Do you have a plan to assure participants of safety? Will you and your business be anonymous?

Have you consulted with a lawyer? Seems many sites that helped people use coin for Amazon have come and gone, I figure there must be good reason.

Do you have a plan in place for when a buyer wants to return a product (say it's defective, or just crappy, or whatever)? Or are all transactions final? Seems you'll have to lay out a ton of ground rules, and I can't help but think people will figure out ways to game this in some way.

As a paranoid worst-case-scenario thinker, you can see I came up with a lot of concerns. I think I would really want to understand all this and feel good about it before even evaluating if it made sense. But perhaps I'm missing some benefits, perhaps for people with different circumstances than my own.

You said it. It is essentially a distributed btc market place. Just so happens that Amazon makes it really easy, especially for new bitcoin users. It makes a good start on 1. Optimize work flow and 2. Get users used to the idea of exchanging goods for BTC. So happens that current conditions allow turning USD->Goods at a premium a reasonable request. With reward cc's like Amazon's card, the premium will be very competitive with other services. https://www.chase.com/online/Credit-Cards/amazon-earn-points.htm

Quick preview: https://i.imgur.com/D0mvKvk.png

Hope to start with ~10 testers next week.
Spenders: post your wishlist here or in PM, prime eligible items only please
Buyers: please have Prime

I am usually available on IRC in the usual bitcoin channels if you'd like to chat.

This is really big.

Everyone wants to pay less (5%) of items they buy, or for any other bills.
People who wants bitcoin also ready to pay more (5% - 10%).

This is not just amazon specific business opportunity.
This can be implemented in every country.

You point out many of the same things I've considered.
Prime accounts are abused when buying from shared wishlists.

Definitely looking for several amazon junkies to test from the Spender side. The price of items hopefully in the range of $25-$50 during testing.

Quite cool...I had this idea a while back and wondered why nobody was doing it.

Interesting enough, BitSpend got blocked from buying from Amazon for doing a pass through from Bitcoin to Amazon purchases.

This may be a good solution having it more decentralized.

You could easily do what BitSpend does in a p2p way like this for all websites. Just cut the profit with the buyers.

I would help test but I do not have a prime account. And I cannot think of anything I need on Amazon very soon.

No reason why not to expand to as many countries/services that has a similar wish list function. But first things first and that's to work out the kinks for .com

Are you limiting this to amazon.com or do you also want to operate on amazon.de and amazon.co.uk?

Definitely. Watch this thread as I'll be posting invite codes here.

This is a cool idea. So you can finally buy Bitcoins with a credit card!

I have an amazon prime account and would like to participate in the test. Let me know if you are still looking for testers.

No you'd pay for both items, which is $155, and you'd get that much in BTC. There's no way to pay for $150 when buying $155 on amazon.

To start, we'll just match something close. It would be difficult to find an exact match down to the cent in any scenario.

In terms of how to get a large buy order filled with many small ones, I think user feedback will help us eventually decide.
Different ways include:
1. Just list the highest valued wishlist available and force buyer to create several buy orders. (Currently what we have in mind)
2. Give buyer a list of spend orders to choose from (privacy might be an issue if a buyer can browse many spenders wishlists without committing to buy anything)
3. Match a buy order up with multiple spend orders (may be problematic in case of disputes)

Appreciate the questions you guys are asking as it allows me to rehash these things.

What if there's no exact match, which I'm assuming would make up the bulk of the order list.  For example:

I want to acquire $150 worth of BTC.

Spender X wants an item that's $45, Spender Y wants an item that's $100, and Spender Z wants an item that's $55.

Would the system:

Accept Spender Y's transaction, shipping him the item but leaving me with only $100 of the BTC I wanted to purchase, or;

Accept Spender X and Y's transactions, shipping the items but leaving me with only $145 BTC, or;

Accept Spender Y and Z transactions, shipping the items but now leaving a $5 BTC debt on my account?

That makes sense, and I see where it could potentially drive BTC adoption in these "deal" communities. Looking forward to testing!

Haven't seen any obvious violations.
Fraud (chargeback) is handled by Amazon, not us. From the spender's perspective, the item will be in his possession long before any chargebacks occur. That doesn't mean we will be completely negligent and allow rampant stolen cc usage. We will enforce some verification process, feedback, and optional verification for better rates.

Have you looked into any possible violations of Amazon's Terms and Conditions? The idea you have is pretty brilliant, and I look forward to when you start rolling out to other countries (Australia)!

What about chargebacks?

We are just beta testing with prime only, as it helps speed/smooth things up. We will expand to other services and countries.

The other main reason for prime, is because for the buyer side, we want to target those who want the most painless acquisition channel. The goal is for the buyer to spend no more than 10-15 minutes on this site, use credit card, and receive his coins in 2-3 days. That cannot be done as of now.

Why do buyers need Amazon Prime? That automatically prevents non-Americans (like myself and many others) from using this service.

I wouldn't say necessary but,
1. getting bitcoins is quite a bit of work
2. Getting it usually has some fee associated
3. Things should be cheaper in bitcoin since no cc fees and fraud to deal with
4. It would being more people into bitcoin.
    a. For example, people who came in during the bubble and since left, can use their gox account to acquire bitcoins at a 0.6% fee, and spend it at amazon for a net 4.4% discount.
    b. Slickdeals users often go out of their way to get the best deal possible. Hot deal posts often often say "oh btw, use x service for a 3% extra cash back." Now they can say, "oh btw, save 5% if you pay in bitcoin." Furthermore, this deal went front page few days ago. SD is a diverse community and definitely there are those who thinks something is wrong with fiat. People here might also be interested: http://slickdeals.net/f/6066316-5x-2013-1oz-Silver-Eagles-for-134-shipped-via-eBay-26-per-coin? 

Regardless, these fees are adjustable so we'd just adjust them according to supply and demand of either side.