
Paypal has started banning accounts selling anything Bitcoin-related - scottcanoni
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=448847.0
======
citricsquid
This is incorrect. The CEO of PayPal David Marcus has already denied these
claims:

    
    
        To clarify: we have no policies against using PayPal to sell Bitcoin mining rigs. 
        We don't support any currency txn whether fiat or BTC for a host of regulatory 
        issues. But we treat BTC and any FX txn the same way. We're believers in 
        BTC though.
    

There was a communication error in January but it was retracted within hours:
[http://i.imgur.com/GMC0fsd.png](http://i.imgur.com/GMC0fsd.png)

[https://twitter.com/davidmarcus/status/422632561882316800](https://twitter.com/davidmarcus/status/422632561882316800)

[https://twitter.com/davidmarcus/status/422632849670299648](https://twitter.com/davidmarcus/status/422632849670299648)

~~~
sillysaurus2
Is the Bitcointalk poster lying, then? One of these two stories can't be true,
and the poster has no reason to lie... (Not that people on the internet need
one.)

~~~
citricsquid
I doubt they're lying, what they are doing is mislabelling their experience as
representative. Low level PayPal employees have previously made mistakes that
has resulted in people who are selling mining equipment finding their accounts
suspended, however these are misinterpretations of the rules by the lowest
level of PayPal employees. The David Marcus statement was in response to a
story (almost identical to the story of the bitcointalk poster) from a couple
of weeks ago.

[http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1v12p4/well_done_pa...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1v12p4/well_done_paypal_well_done_jerks/)

[http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1v3qhw/update_well_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1v3qhw/update_well_done_paypal_well_done_jerks/)

------
nwh
That was predictable, Bitcoin is a huge source of chargebacks and fraud. My
bank had issues with people stealing online banking credentials and using them
to buy Bitcoin, there's a bit of a blanket ban on that sort of service now I
think. It's a fairly common occurrence for sellers on localbitcoins too, I've
talked to sellers before who have been ripped off to the tune of thousands of
dollars due to similar situations.

~~~
laureny
> That was predictable, Bitcoin is a huge source of chargebacks and fraud.

It's also a potential huge competitor for PayPal.

~~~
nwh
I sincerely doubt it. PayPal is an escrow service, Bitcoin includes one in the
protocol but it's by no means the easy user protection PayPal provides.

~~~
jfoster
I'm not really well versed in Bitcoin, so I could be misunderstanding the
mechanics of it, but I think Bitcoin would be really good for PayPal.

As you suggest, they would continue to provide their service, but instead of
PayPal accounts being funded through Visa/MasterCard (X% txn fee) they could
be funded through Bitcoin (0% txn fee).

(disclosure: I currently own some eBay Inc stock)

~~~
coldtea
Getting something that costed you X% to 0% is not always prefferable. Even if
you're a business.

Sometimes you go for what most of your customers already know or want, or you
go for whats easier and handier, or you go for what is a known quantity and
wont have legal or other problems down the line, you go for what's less
volatile, etc etc.

The only reason a big company like PayPal would ever use something like
Bitcoin as it is today, is not to "take advantage of what it offers", but as a
"early adopter marketing ploy", to get some tons of free press and publicity
(while still relegating it safely to 1/10000 of their actual businesses).

~~~
jfoster
Completely agree that any involvement in BTC at the moment would be "early
adopter marketing" & on some of the other concerns established businesses
could have with fundamental shifts in their industry.

I don't think PayPal would go out of their way to push BTC. They're almost
certainly taking a "wait and see" approach. The primary thing I unsuccessfully
was trying to get across was that PayPal probably does not particularly fear
or seek to undermine Bitcoin. It's likely to be upside for them.

------
jliptzin
No surprise. My personal experience with paypal: Apparently I am permanently
banned for life because I refused to cover my "negative balance" that resulted
from a scammer buying my old laptop on ebay, claiming he never got it (despite
having proof of delivery), then somehow reversing the Paypal transaction just
by speaking to a representative. He used a brand new ebay account, mine was at
least 7 years old with 100% positive feedback. Have they resolved this issue
yet? I keep hearing similar stories from friends, who have obviously stopped
using ebay/paypal for this reason.

So Paypal customer support apparently just does whatever they want to do, at
the individual agent level.

~~~
hackerboos
This happened to me.

Sold a Blackberry on eBay and shipped with tracking. The seller claimed it
didn't work with their network and despite me listing it as 'no returns' sent
back a different (cheaper/older) Blackberry to me.

I told eBay and they told me to contact the police but not before returning
the money to the buyer and putting my account in the red.

I immediately removed all my bank and card details from Paypal and requested
my account be closed.

I waited a week and opened a new account using new card and bank details.
Thankfully they've never linked the 2.

~~~
dingaling
> and despite me listing it as 'no returns'

'No returns' in eBay World means 'the buyer keeps the item and receives a
refund' if the item is not as described / non-functional etc. Or even if the
buyer bought it in error.

It doesn't mean 'all sales are final', as many sellers appear to think.

------
jccooper
Amazing that the author has--and is keeping--$6k in PayPal. Even after they
threaten to ban and freeze him.

They're well-known for freezing accounts at a whim, and as a merchant I keep
nothing in PayPal longer than a day. I don't keep anything in there as a buyer
either; they're perfectly happy to fund purchases directly from a bank or CC
account. It's just plain safer if PP has as little of my money as possible.

~~~
nolok
And even if you don't worry much about paypal freezing funds on a whim, it
does not make any sense to me to let your money sleep there.

~~~
scottcanoni
Agreed, I see no reason to hold a balance on Paypal.

------
andyhmltn
There are calls on that forum to start 'boycotting' paypal as they have 'gone
too far.' The sad thing is: PayPal have been doing stuff like this for years.
I've had hundreds of GBP held by them for months for no reason. When I say no
reason: I mean that the agent that finally solved it for me admitted there
should be no reason this has happened.

------
kvanderd
Paypal is the worst way to process payments, no one should use them (use any
of the alternatives). Paypal will never support anything like Bitcoin unless
they absolutely have to because it involves "risk". I wish consumers weren't
so use to the easy checkout process, because they're terrible to develop with
and will stifle virtual currency adoption.

------
doubt_me
Even though they are able to keep money from these banned accounts its
probably just to get back from all the scammers involved

Check out number 4

[https://www.paypal.com/webapps/mpp/ua/acceptableuse-
full](https://www.paypal.com/webapps/mpp/ua/acceptableuse-full)

------
patrickg_zill
While I support the idea of Bitcoin (and have some Dogecoin), I do realize
that the central banks (note I did not say government) will act swiftly and
mercilessly to crush any true competition.

Look at what happened in the Worgl experiment -
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%C3%B6rgl](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%C3%B6rgl)
\- once the idea gained traction the central bank outright banned it, so that
other towns considering it, could not start up a competing currency.

Can Bitcoin be banned? Not without crushing the Internet; but if made illegal
(or just subject to very onerous reporting requirements) such that businesses
in the USA could not easily use it, it would stop Bitcoin's growth dead.

~~~
nhaehnle
The history of Wörgl is a bit debatable. There are some accounts that state
that their alternative currency quickly devolved to essentially circulating
within the city hall, because others became disillusioned about it, in
particular its loss of value.

The problem is: I cannot find the link to this article anymore, because
searches invariably turn up tons of positive articles that all use
suspiciously similar wording - kind of as if somebody with an agenda was
consciously working on copy&pasting similar texts all over the internet.

At its core, the idea underlying the Wörgl experiment is actually very simple
and most likely true: When a monetarily sovereign government isn't afraid of
spending, they can do good things.

You don't actually need an artificially value-losing currency for that, you
just need the political will for spending.

------
alexeisadeski3
Makes sense. Expansive anti money laundering laws in US are probably the
cause?

~~~
valar_m
Or, perhaps Paypal is a company whose interests aren't well served by the
availability of electronic money transfers with little or no transaction
costs.

~~~
lisp-and-seo
Now that's a conspiracy theory.

~~~
jellicle
Just as a general rule: positing that one individual entity is acting in its
own, legal, self-interest is not a "conspiracy theory". It may or may not be
correct, but it's not a wacky, crazy, tinfoil hat conspiracy theory.

~~~
lisp-and-seo
"wacky, crazy, tinfoil hat conspiracy theory" != "conspiracy theory" ;)

------
scottcanoni
They are banning the sale of non-physical items. So miners/hardware, even your
GPU :) is safe to sell. Basically if it can be shipped in a box, it's fine.

Vires in Numeris! Long live Bitcoin!

~~~
pnathan
> They are banning the sale of non-physical items

Can you link me to the seller policy? I have an app I'd like to sell ( _no_
bitcoin involved - except maybe taking it...maybe), and I've been wondering
about the seller policy, but couldn't find it.

~~~
dangrossman
There's no ban on selling non-physical items. They have a very small list of
prohibited services which includes currency exchange:

[https://www.paypal.com/webapps/mpp/ua/acceptableuse-
full](https://www.paypal.com/webapps/mpp/ua/acceptableuse-full)

~~~
scottcanoni
You are correct. By non-physical item, I could only think of a Bitcoin related
currency exchange for USD or any other fiat currency.

Unless, can you think of a Bitcoin related non-physical item that is NOT a
currency exchange?

~~~
timv
_Unless, can you think of a Bitcoin related non-physical item that is NOT a
currency exchange?_

An ebook about Bitcoin. (I would consider a digital download to be non-
physical)

~~~
scottcanoni
Good one timv. I wonder what Paypal would do with Bitcoin ebooks.

------
tomasien
Two things:

1\. I don't see how Bitcoin being sold on Paypal is competition to Paypal. Why
wouldn't Paypal love to be a place where people sell bitcoins down the road?
Bitcoin is a competitor to money, not to Paypal.

2\. I've talked to reps at Paypal who have told me transacting BTC using
Paypal or even in apps that use Paypal but transact money in other ways is
against their TOS.

------
lucasrp
Everytime some financial institution tries to promote fear by freezing
accounts, they show why bitcoin is so superior.

------
kolev
I lot of people violate PayPal terms of service and then they whine about it.
I've been using PayPal as a merchant since 2000, I've been getting nice emails
with advance notices when policies change. I wish others had such system in
place as well!

------
rqebmm
The obvious conspiracy here is that David Marcus asked that a bunch of bitcoin
related accounts get frozen, then bought a shitload of bitcoin as soon as it
tanked before eBay "hastily" declared they "believe in bitcoin"

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miw-sec-work
This doesn't make sense -- from Feb 11th 2014 ebay will be allowing Virtual
Currency to be sold in its own category.

This is eBay policy, so papal will have to fall in line.

~~~
jfoster
FYI - there are categories on eBay which have a format (Classifieds) whereby
the transaction is to be handled offline:
[http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/formats.html#classified](http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/formats.html#classified)

An example use-case is the Real Estate category.

------
StuartWalker
Interesting to see Paypal say they are believers.

~~~
kolev
The President is - he owns bitcoins, duh. He's either doing this for personal
benefits or he's just a wolf in sheep's clothing.

------
pearjuice
The more power to them. In 9 of the 10 cases Bitcoin is used for either
illegal or fraudulent cases.

~~~
ionwake
Hi - out of interest, where did you get this statistic from?

~~~
pearjuice
I pulled them straight out of my ass but it's unlikely I am wrong. Seeing how
there is basically no real reason to spend your bitcoin on legal activities
(1. because the price fluctuates too much and 2. because nothing valuable can
be bought with Bitcoin yet) the only reason why you would be spending this
coin is when you want to make semi-anonymous transactions in the illegal
circuit.

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interstitial
Oh, the humanity! The nerds and their hoarded pseudo-currencies trying to
fleece their IT-ignorant neighbors as payback for having to always fix their
PC! If the nerds can't find a Greater Fool to dump their pumps, what next?

