Topic: I'm selling through PayPal! - page 2. (Read 6806 times)

I've just set up a new desing ^_^

Weheww, what a ride that was. Finally back up to $6.

I've changed my price policy. At this moment the price is 6.38 USD <--> 1 BTC and limits are much, much higher 

Damn, I got a simpsons reference slightly wrong.  This will not stand.  *updates address*

Hello Dean! It's good to find you here (BTW, a whois does not reveal any information about you!). I love you address' details:
1234 Fake St.

Be careful, cops are arriving at your door
http://www.donotcompare.com/fakest.png


I laughed a lot with that comment xD But in the rest of the thread we see that everyone who ordered coins are satisfied, their only complaint was the price ^_^
And, how do you deal with scammers? Is Google Checkout the solution to all our problems? Too bad that it's only available to US and UK merchants.

First of all, thanks for your proposals!
You propose to ask the user for a webpage with his paypal name and email. Am I right? For example, if my client's Paypal account is "myusername" and his email is "[email protected]", I would ask the user for a domain like http://www.myusernamemymailmyserver.tk, and then I ask the user to make the purchase from that site web?
If you meant that, I see two serious drawbacks:

 1- If the Paypal's user didn't have a webpage (which happens in most cases), the scammer can set a website and then it would be the actual owner who would be considered as the stealer.

 2- For most legit users the process of setting up a website and then making POST requests from is far too messy to finish the purchases.

I've been reading your previous posts in this forum, and since your donations Bitcoin address in your signature and in BitCoin Beastie is the same I guess that you are the owner. So I think that in exceptional cases I can accept any other proof of identity and provide a working "fake phone number" and a PIN. But for those cases I would prefer the user to contact me directly.


I wish I could negotiate a lower price, but I cannot afford to lose more money. The minimum price I set is just to break even. Oh Gosh, who would think that housin... sorry, Bitcoin prices would stop going up? ^_^ I've been selling slightly below market prices when I was testing the backend, but now that it seems to work my only chance is to wait prices to go up or to invest the coins somewhere else.

In the meanwhile I encourage you to buy at btcnow.net (or at least while his prices are lower than mines ). I bought my first coin with him and the service was excellent. In fact, I decided to start my service when btcnow.net stopped working.

Hmm, looks like a good idea to me.

Heck, I was about to buy until I saw your prices were practically double the market price.

PM me and I will purchase for a negotiated price.

No scammer here btw, US citizen. Can be called, contacted at my edu address, etc.

Would you consider a non-privatized domain register coinciding with the paypal name and email a form of cyber identity. Or do you suppose a would be account hacker could easily go through the steps to both get a website in the stolen accounts name (or if the web has already been established just cite it) and convince the BTC seller his identity? A paypal account from an email address via the non privet site would either mean the user is legit or they also has access to the stolen account users webhost.

If the webpage is established and not an obvious flybynight it would increase trust but not by much....

Any other thoughts on possible cyber identification to verify a paypal accounts owner.

Hey :-)  Ya, I read this forum (and run btcnow.net) but have been stuck in the damn newbies forum while everyone talks about my services.  Pretty annoying :-)   By the way, with some whois magic, you can find pretty much everything about me that you could ever want to know.   I finally stopped trying to go through google to deal with my checkout suspension bullshit, and fixed it my own way, so btcnow.net came back online last night.

Why can't people just hit me up on reddit, where I have plenty of karma and can easily respond to questions :-)

   - DEAN

Thanks for the tip! But I am not so sure that Paypal likes very much the fact that a single user had more than one account. For testing puporses I have been using the Paypal's sandbox, which emulates *quite* well Paypal's production environment.

The method you proposed will perfectly work, but if I understood well, it would be vulnerable to scammers. Nowadays is very easy to create fake email accounts, and so a fraudulent client could ask the invoice, pay it with a stolen Paypal account (not long ago there was a list of thousands of Paypal accounts and its passwords made public, and thus I assume that everyone can find it with a simple Google search) and run away with the bitcoins. And nothing would prevent him to use another email account five minutes later.
I would prefer not to ask for the mobile phone number, but that (a) ensures that the user is the owner, or at least has physical access to the device and (b) sending it along with the invoice prevents a scammer to use a stolen account.

The management of chargebacks is not a trivial issue. Those of you how haven't asked for a PIN yet won't have notice that in the second screen it says "IMPORTANT NOTE: The phone number you entered will be shown in Paypal's receipt. Think twice before proceeding if you are not the owner of the account. Your phone number will NEVER be shown in the Hall of Fame.".

Thanks! The first time I read your post I read "Nice looking ". But then I assumed that my design sucks

That's correct.
OK, I catch it! I had to set a minimum price, the price I payed for the coins at the moment I bought them. Now that the market is down I have two choices, to stop selling until it rises again or to sell at a minimum price. I've decided to keep the service and let you decide. Considering that the owner of btcnow.net used to sell at $18 (who, by the way, seems to have problems with Google checkout. I'd like to contact him, but I cannot see a single email address in the whole site, maybe he reads this forum ) there might be users interested in instant BTC.

Very relevant point! Actually I have been thinking on a system like the one you propose, but finally I decided to go on with the number-of-purchases limit. In order to explain my reasons let's consider the types of fraud I deal with:

 1) People whose Paypal account OR credit card has been stolen
    - That can be addressed by sending the mobile phone number with the invoice. In such way Paypal will have access to a working phone number to start the  investigation.
    - In addition, the limit of 24 hours after each purchase will allow the real owner of the account to realize that it has been hacked when the damage is still minimal.

2) Fraudulent users using their real names, credit card and Paypal account.
   - They can work on a reputation by doing honest transactions. Even if the limit is increased with the quantity purchased, they will try to scam me when it is reached (it doesn't really matter if he had to spend 100€ or 10€ to reach it). But since there is an absolute limit, when raising the chargeback the scammer will have to explain some points:
      -> Why does he say that he is not in the Hall of Fame when this list is public and both the address and the amount are written in the Paypal invoice?
      -> The fact that he has done several satisfactory transactions (in order to reach the limit) gives poor credibility to his version.

So, in short. The scammer will have to argue for some long time, with probability of losing and the certainty of not making business with me anymore and all that to win...10 BTC?


Thanks again for your time considering my service! According to some posts in this thead there are users who have already purchased Bitcoins and seem happy with the service So don't hesitate to try it!

PP login page in english -- works
day limit depends on number of purchases -- works
(btw: secure hole: do 10 purchases for 0.01, get max  limit - buy all - withdraw money. Maybe, limit should be % of  all prev purchases, like 120%).

dynamic price - no ( )
mtgox: 6.55
donotcompare: 10

Nice:) Looking forward to see more:D

I think I missed something here.  Currently 1 Unit costs $10. Is one unit equal to 1 BTC.  If so you're more than $3 more expensive than the current market.  Just curious if I got that right.

Kudos on the wording of your service. An interesting way to look at the digital currency. The privilege of having your number / name saved in a community ledger.

The intention of my post however is to ask if you have an alternate way of confirmation besides PIN by cell phone. I for one do not use of them sorts of location tracking machines.

Do you allow for one on one communication and trading on that level?
Example: Buyer sends email to sales@yourdomain, seller sends paypal invoice with "hall of fame" or what have you. Buyer pays invoice and seller sends BTC.
I suppose that method removes some of the anonymity of the system but that's the price you pay.

I dig the paranoia around the whole paypal charge back Nonsense.
Do you think selling entries into the HOF ledger could be used to dispute a charge back?
(imho you should pretty up your site a bit, throw some illustrations or pictures in there)

Keep on Keeping on!

Much respect to you for initiating this venture. I hope you can recieve as much ideas and feedback as you need to make it work.

A quick tip of my own: You can have 2 Paypal accounts of your own.. so long as one is personal and the other is premium or higher (the point is, both can be free). This may be useful for your further testing purposes.

Keep up the excellent work. Keep above the scammers at all times. Hope to buy some BTC from you when its out of Beta.

I appreciate your observations on this business model. Actually I don't think it is a lose/lose situation. If my model is duplicated, it means that it works. We could also argue that anyone can duplicate the model of MtGox, or Facebook, or... yes, they can, and they do, and they all coexist in the market. Thanks for wishing me luck (I think I'll need it  )

By the way, I've just added more coins, which will allow me to accept more people in the Hall of Fame. Happy purchases!

Oh yeah, I also wanted to mention that scammers could easily point to this thread and show that you did promise to sell them bitcoins and didn't deliver.  Just something to think about

Yeah I actually considered doing something similar to this.  The thing is you're kind of in a lose/lose situation.  If paypal doesn't accept your premise, your account is frozen.  If they do accept your premise than you've just created a model for anyone to duplicate.  That being said.  Nothing ventured, nothing gained.  Good Luck

That's a rational remark, but consider the following:

1) Bitcoin is not a currency (or at least it's matter of dispute).

2)I am not selling Bitcoins, I am selling a position in a Hall of Fame. The fact that belonging to this Hall of Fame implies that Bitcoins had been sent does not make that I am selling Bitcoins. This is not a retoric recourse to bypass Paypal's policies. On the contrary, it clearly states the service I am offering and what the client is paying for. Since the block chain and all the Bitcoin's formalities cannot serve as evidence for Paypal, I have to give a similar service, both easy to explain to newcomers and equally secure for experienced clients.

3) Someone could cite that Coinpal used to sell Bitcoins and now its account is frozen (or even closed). But my service is not the same. Consider the following example:
Instead of belonging to a "Hall of Fame" imagine that I'm selling "pixels" in a "Hall of Fame" (people pay for some pixels in a "privileged" space). Does it sound familiar? It was the Million Dollar Homepage, which Paypal used to accept.

With that I mean that what will happen is not clear, but I have ways to get scammers away and to prove that my service complies with Paypal terms of service. Anyway, the worst that can happen to you as clients is to receive an error message like "This merchant's account is no longer available", so take advantage while it is online, I'll handle the rest 

I hate to be a wet blanket, but you do know that selling BTC through PayPal violates their acceptable use policy https://cms.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/?cmd=_render-content&content_ID=ua/AcceptableUse_full. See Sec. 3(f) prohibiting currency exchanges. Although not everyone feels that BTC meets the definition of currency, PayPal feels that it's close enough to violate their policy.

Thanks for your comments!

Indeed, much easier. Now the backend deals with 00, +, +00 and any other combination (and of course with the current format). Thanks for the advice!  


Good point. While I wait for the new Bitcoins to arrive I'm going to start a HowTo, in order to explain how the fact of being in the "Hall of Fame" implies that the Bitcoins have been sent.

In the meanwhile I encourage you to make your first purchases in order to increase your day-limit. At this moment here is how the purchase limit is increased (I did not make it public in the webpage since it might be adjusted depending on its effectivity to prevent fraud):
nº purchases // Max Bitcoins per 24 hours
1 // 0.1 BTC
2 // 1 BTC
4 // 1.5 BTC
6 // 2.0 BTC
8 // 3.0 BTC
10 // 5.0 BTC
>10 // 10 BTC

One of the advantages of selling BTC with Paypal is that the user does not need to trust the seller. If things go wrong, he can request a chargeback and have his money back. Anyway, if you have any problem with the delivery of Bitcoins (for example, an exceptional delay that makes you feel unconfortable) please contact me (to my email or publicly in this forum) before complaining to Paypal. It will be solved much faster and I prefer not to bother Paypal with honest chargebacks.

I am also working on the reverse service (i.e. sending a Paypal donation to whoever sends BTC to a particular address), but I am having a hard time trying to automate the entire process, and in addition it will require trust on the side of the user. This service would allow spending BTC wherever Paypal is accepted, and will encourage newcomers to use Bitcoin. If you are interested in such a service tell me and I'll work harder on it