Topic: Why Bitcoins are so expensive on Ebay? (Read 5828 times)

To answer your question on why people need bitcoin so badly, is the same reason people will pay %20 - %40 at times on LBC and other websites. There are many gamblers who lose and in frustration need to obtain Bitcoin as soon as possible to fill their problem. People also may need to pay a loan off and can't wait a week for Bitcoin to arrive from their exchange. Other people may not like the invasive information many exchanges require, which results in those users paying high markups to obtain their Bitcoin.

In regards to the main topic, a seller of Bitcoin on ebay will lose 12.5% of their total sale due to fees. Right off the bat, a seller is going to automatically markup bitcoin 12.5%, and then on top of that, add anywhere from 30-40%. If someone does 10 trades, and 3 people attempt chargebacks, that extra 30-40% per trade would still allow the seller to atleast break even or make a little bit of profit at the end of it.

Who could possibly need bitcoins so badly that they'd pay more than market rate, other than drug addicts and pedophiles?  I mean, who could possibly need anonymity that badly?  Speculators, too, maybe, but stupid ones if so.  Then again, just reading some of the comments on this board, idiots abound around here.

This topic can go on and on, but there really is something uniquely different about Ebay and Paypal. Ebay actually does have a digital goods policy and allows for digital goods to be sold as long as it follows their criteria of where you're placing the ad. There is no mention of not being able to sell Bitcoin, and if you read carefully, Ebay's policy on Digital Goods actually seems very good for Bitcoin sellers. With this being said, both of these companies will have a Bitcoin platform through Braintree within the year.

Now we get to Paypal, they do not have a Digital Goods policy, so now you are dealing with two companies using one system. The chargeback is going to go through Paypal, and when you provide Paypal with information you're gonna say... "Hey! I followed Ebay's terms and conditions, the trade was done through ebay, and my ad was posted according to how Ebay wanted it. The seller agreed to ebays terms and conditions, as well as my policies before playing the order". Paypal is simply going to say, "we do not have a policy for seller protection on digital goods". Only thing you can do from there is basically call Ebay as they are honestly going to be the ones to fight for you in this circumstance. All I know, is that by reading both Paypal and Ebay's terms and conditions, I am suprised people sell more directly through paypal than they do on ebay.

Well I know some friends that know I use bitcoin but they don't use it or follow it. Some of them are pretty dumb and probably would buy this AND THEN ask me what to do with the bitcoin and how to use it and all that. Especially a small amount.

I totally agree but if you're about to lay out a substantial amount of your money on something as complex as BTC then you should be doing your homework.

If you can't even summon the will to type 'bitcoin price' into another part of the internet then there wasn't any hope for you in the first place.

The average user won't probably know where to check and what exchanges are there and how it all works. It was wrong to call them scammers, but they are taking advantage of the limited knowledge of newbies.

It's not scamming when the correct quantity is up there and it's delivered. What buyers end up paying is their lookout. You can find out the going rate within 2 seconds of googling.

I'm not saying it's moral but I've limited sympathy for buyers who are that lazy or uninformed.

If I did not know at all about bitcoin and when browsing ebay saw a bitcoin, I would think "oh bitcoin costs like thousand dollars, this is a good deal" and then pick it up. I bet that this has happened multiple times before and some scammers got HUGE profits from this.

Noobs who don't know anything about crypto are lured in. Believe it or not, people still buy them even with prices that are at x5 exchange rate xD

Yup, eBay is technically flees market. If a seller manages to find a newbies and rip them off by charging a price way over the market price, it is what is. A lesson.

Yeah, paypal is rotten vehicle to sell crypto currencies, my paypal account got taken for thousands of pounds when some buyers of Dogecoin, Litecoin and Darkcoin did chargebacks claiming they had never received the coins.

I disputed the transactions, providing whole list of emails and blockchain evidence, paypal just paid them out anyway. These where split up into small transactions and clearly nobody is going to order more coins when they not received the previous coins. It appears to be a corporate policy at Paypal, it seems they have a deliberate policy to facilitate criminal activity against anybody selling crypto currencies through their payment vehicle.   

All of buyers where in Italy as well. Should have guessed it was group of friends doing the scam via paypal

just as me

They are either preying on foolish people who are unaware of the correct price range of a bitcoin or perhaps the sellers know that buyers are willing to pay a premium price in order to avoid exchange services.

Same stance as the public and internet, everyone thought it wouldn't catch on and it finally did, but if people invested in it when it would be small then they would be rich> If paypal embraces it they will do a lot better

Yeah they seem to be taking the same stance as Blockbuster when online streaming/Netflix came along.  I would think that Paypal could make a lot of money in supporting Bitcoin transactions.

Every person should be well informed before doing everything, in every field, not only bitcoin. Nobody's fault, as you said, that's not going to stop. Same thing for ASICs, they are really overpriced on ebay.

I called them many times to complain and they say they do provide refunds if its a real good, but not for digital goods. They allow you to deal with this but they don't provide ANY support for it. Bitcoin is direct competition to paypal except paypal knows bitcoin is better.

That is exactly what happened to me.  Luckily through persistance (and the scammer running and hiding and deleting his email addresses) I got my money back.  But most of the time paypal will jsut take their cut, and tell you your out of luck

Weird.  Do you think it's because paypal sees bitcoin as competition and doesn't want to be an avenue for bitcoin transactions?


It seems like they're allowing the transactions to happen, and profiting from them, but then not providing support if the buyer deals in bad faith?  If they don't deal, then they shouldn't support the listing in the first place.

look at paypals terms of service.  they dont deal in "digital goods" and dont want you using their service to deal in them either.  they also dont want bootlegged software, movies, etc being sold using paypal.