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.

I've read cases that the buyer says he never bought that item (because of account being compromised or whatever) so he sends the received item back (while keeping the bitcoins of course). On some cases PayPal refunds the payment after confirming the package was sent back.
Seriously there's no way to make a charge back impossible. There could be some measures to reduce the risk but there's no bullet proof method.

So if there was a product that was shipped with a tracking number as part of a bitcoin purchase on ebay, then it fulfills Paypal's criteria and a chargebacks are no longer possible?

becasue of sacmmers, end of story.  and once you get scammed, you wont want to deal with btc anymore.  I think its a major problem that everyone is ignoring

So baiscally we sell a bitcoin and then ship a penny with a tracking number to prove to paypal we actually shipped something? Paypal doesn't give a rats ass about txids, so this seems like a good solution

It's often easy to make money selling Bitcoin on Ebay. What sellers do to fight chargebacks is ship a US Penny with a tracking number to the buyer. This will often discourage chargebacks and allow sellers to sell at twice or even three times the rate. People who buy Bitcoin on Ebay are really looking to purchase it with PayPal. Since Ebay and PayPal go together, it's basically the first place buyers will look. Any new buyer will think Ebay is convenient and easy PayPal conversion, so sellers are able to take advantage of this fact.

Not a "glitch", its just paypal being lazy and paypal favors the buyer much more than the seller. Same thing happens with eBay, its not just cryptocurrencies they are cracking down on, its just sellers.

Interesting, so it's just understood as a known glitch by Paypal and they've decided to take a passive stance on it?

There is in theory but PayPal almost always sides with the buyer no matter how much evidence there is.
It would be quite easy to see the messages where the buyer posts his BTC address and check the blockchain and confirm the coins were sent there. It's just that PayPal doesn't want to do that.

Is there no appeal process or consequence to the buyer for doing this?

PayPal can be charged back. So the person who buys BTC can send the PP payment, receive the bitcoin and charge back the PayPal so he can keep both.

On your first point, can you elaborate on what scams would cause a seller to pay out bitcoin and not receive payment?

I was also very curious about the bitcoin price on ebay, and similar to the gold/silver price, I think another factor is that the purchase can be made on credit.  That usually can't be done in normal channels.  For me, local silver/gold dealers do not accept credit.

sad thing is that as long as there is demand by newbies and others the ebay sellers will continue.
they make good profits selling way overpriced bitcoins to newbies. that's not going to stop.

Just some crook waiting for a noobs, that's it. Would never buy Bitcoins on eBay.

Yup. It's perceived trust and lacking the initiative to look deeper. The more time I spend on this planet, the more bizarre it seems how few people spend their time actually thinking things through.

I would never pay more than the market price and people who are really doing so are just so foolish (sorry if it offends anyone). I mean that if you can buy something for the same price, why pay higher? PayPal allows one to withdraw money via bank so buying a product for 20% more makes no sense. May be they trust Ebay and its products.

Is it really that much? I guess people who look on Ebay see people selling a bitcoin, remembering how it was at 1k (people only read the news about it, know nothing more about btc), and then they say "wow its a great deal its 400$" when its really worth 263$.

I guess it attracts mindless dabblers who can't be arsed to do any proper research. Once you get into KYC/AML stuff with the usual channels they'd probably switch off.

Ebay is an endless source of mystery. I've sold used items for 20% more than you'd pay for brand new after 10 seconds of googling. Foreign currency often goes for 20% more than you'd pay in the shittiest airport booth.

Some folks just don't expend the extra calories to investigate further.

60% more? Why would people buy it at such a high rate when bitcoins have no definite value? I thought that it may just be a 10-20% increase due to the fee. Better to use an exchange website which charges max 25% more.

I used to sell a bunch of stuff on ebay, I just never do it anymore. Being a seller is awful, seller protection is trash and the buyer protection is way too good. Just doesn't make sense to be a seller.

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Ok thank you.

There's a risk to get the eBay account suspended. Officially it's not allowed to sell crypto-currency on eBay.

I'm not sure about the PayPal account. I think so.

Is there a risk that sellers get their PayPal accounts supended when they sell Bitcoin via PayPal on Ebay?

a lot of scams on ebay, never buy more than 0.1 btc

eBay forces paypal which is reversable, they usually favor the buyer in disputes (I have been victim by paypal 3 times), and usually people buying btcs on paypal might not be smart enough to ACTUALLY check the price so they can score lots of profit off of attempting this.

I have to agree with this but imo ebay need to give way to a decentralized exchange without the extortion they call fee's, yes some fee must be paid but 10% of your sale to them and then you pay paypal their fee then you pay the tax man lol they are just leaches and when they are gone sooner the better. this could also explain why their price is high because the fee they must pay.

That's definitely a factor, but not the main one. Bitcoins are usually sold there at about 60% to 100% more than market price.

It may be because of the Ebay fees as mostly everything on Ebay is quoted above the market price. Gift cards and other products as well because of the high fee of Ebay. They charge about 10% depending on the product you are selling.

did you think it is very nice? I don't think so

lol even better is when peolle try to sell alt coins, why but 1 bitcoin when I could buy 5 litecoins

lol, are you kidding me? anyone buy bitcoins on ebay??? 

It's already almost happened https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=562440.340 but was a few dollars short.

some one most likely bought it from himself or a friend.
no one would pay that much for a single bitcoin. it's just ridiculous.

Indeed. This was discussed here:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/how-did-1-bitcoin-sell-for-10000-236067
The eBay listing is no longer published.

Don't know whether it's true or not, but I heard somewhere before that a Bitcoin was sold for $10k at eBay and payment was made via PayPal...
Can anybody confirm on this???

People who sell bitcoin on eBay know that only people who are new will buy from eBay. They are waiting to find one of those people to buy as they are usually unaware of exchanges and demand and supply.

Loads of stuff goes for more on Ebay than elsewhere. Casascius BTC coins often go for double or more what they fetch on here. I guess in the minds of the buyers it's somehow more 'legit'.

Paypal has earned a bad reputation and deserves a worthwhile competitor. I look forward to seeing them slowly fade away.

PayPal is stacked against us all. Consider that if BTC catches on they are out of business. They have no incentive whatsoever to help if a fraudulent bitcoin sale goes through. It's better for them to say "You shouldn't have used bitcoin".

Personally I think it would be so easy for PayPal to know for sure whether the seller really sent the coins or not to the buyer.
It would just need to ask the buyer to give a unique address to the seller, if there's balance there then they know for sure the seller delivered.

The fact is PayPal just doesn't want to. Probably because they see bitcoin as a competitor.

Ahh. I never knew paypal was so stacked against sellers. Crap.

Mainly because PayPal is reversible.

This causes 2 effects:

1) Sellers have to take a risk effects. For example if 25% of buyers scam the sellers then they have to increase the price more than 25%.
So if they sell $1,000 worth of bitcoin for $1,300 and they lose $250 on scams then they still profit.

2) Because of this very few people risk and sell for PayPal. This reduces supply and the price is increased out of speculation.
People who want to buy have fewer options and have to pay more for it.

they are waiting for newbie, fish that don't know about market data, also many use paypal there or others insecure methods

better to trade here, but use escrow

I hope I'm putting this in the right area, sorry if not.

I see tons of people selling bitcoins (partials) at 2x-3x normal going rates. Why is that?
Or better yet, why would anyone buy those??

Thanks.