
Tinkercoin Will Sell You $20 in Bitcoin, But Only Once - trevorcreech
http://www.coindesk.com/tinkercoin-sell-20-bitcoin-only-once/
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sync
Well, after entering all of my information (billing address + facebook + email
confirmation + credit card details) I am presented with:
[http://monosnap.com/image/Q8brXxtQsTJEkReseHlSyNolOgf2TX](http://monosnap.com/image/Q8brXxtQsTJEkReseHlSyNolOgf2TX)

"call_us_maybe"

Now filled with regret.

~~~
roboneal
(See Edit) Count me in the "me too" category. Pretty sketchy process. I've
revoked their permission to my Facebook account and pray my cc info is not
being sold on the Russian black market. Edit: Trevor at TinkerCoin cleared up
the issue and the BTC are in my Coinbase wallet. So Kudos to them.

~~~
reso
Completely understand your frustration. We have to keep a very high bar
because of the possibility of credit card fraud, and sometimes we have false
negatives. Sorry for the confusion!

~~~
downandout
Have you implemented Mastercard Securecode/Verified by Visa? These offer you
protection against chargebacks for "cardholder unauthorized" chargebacks,
which account for roughly 60% of all chargebacks in card-not-present
transactions.

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baddox
> “There’s almost no future in which selling $20 of bitcoins to someone will
> label you as any kind of significant money transfer businesses,” said
> MacLeod, explaining how he expects to fly under the regulators’ radar in
> both the US and Canada with his service.

I hope he's not naive enough to genuinely believe that.

~~~
reso
Yeah, I might end up eating my words. The quote was taken a little bit out of
context, what I was trying to convey was that amounts this small are very
unlikely to need the intense KYC/AML checks that full-featured Bitcoin
exchange are required to do.

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ck2
Oh they are headed for trouble, you cannot avoid regulation that way.

You can get a stack of $20 one-use debit cards and you can get a CC generator
from some banks for your card to use for a one-time purchase online.

One could automate buying thousands if they had the time and money.

~~~
paulgb
How do you get around the phone verification step? Burner phones aren't _that_
cheap.

~~~
ceejayoz
Twilio or Google Voice numbers, maybe?

~~~
acjohnson55
Those can be detected. Facebook rules them out of its phone verification
process, for instance.

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meraku
"Tinkercoin will receive the following info: your public profile, friend list,
email address, work history, status updates, education history, hometown and
current city."

No thanks.

~~~
rsync
... then why is it ok for facebook to have all of that same information ?

~~~
meraku
As justinreeves said, I choose to give that information to Facebook. It's
absurd having to share all of this information to Tinkercoin so they can
supposedly verify my identity to allow me to purchase $20 worth of BTC,
without any indication of how they're going to use all this valuable
information about me.

Stopped using Facebook auth a long time ago for this very reason and revoked
access to all apps except those that I trust. There's no reason to share my
entire Facebook account with everyone out there, and if that's the only way I
can use their service, then I just won't use it. No big deal.

~~~
reso
Your concern about facebook login is totally justified. If you check out the
verification processes used by bitcoin exchanges and brokers, you'll find that
they collect far more sensitive data than anything Tinkercoin touches.

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marcbarbosa
The money transmission license aren't necessary for firms dealing less than
1000 USD per person per day, as the article says, and they are offering only
20 dollars one time ever.

To me it's just an attempt to create a large database with people interested
in bitcoin (with their credit cards).

TryBTC.com introduces bitcoin to new users more effectively.

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acjohnson55
Cool idea, but I'm experiencing cognitive dissonance. The great promise of
Bitcoin to the regular consumer is supposed to be transactions without the
surcharges of financial institutions and privacy, yet here we have a service
that takes a large cut even after their money processor takes its cut, and
requires you to sign up through an organization hardly known for its privacy
(Facebook).

I don't mean to beat on Tinkercoin, because I think it sounds like a totally
decent way to....well....tinker with coins, but I am critical of the overall
hubris behind Bitcoin.

~~~
jjmardlin
I can't speak for Tinker, but they are friends of mine.

As I understand it, their intent is to help people get their first bitcoins
really easily. Most services require that you scan and upload a lot of
documents. This is quick and painless.

~~~
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
How is it really easy when you need a Facebook account?

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eli
No offense, but if you're an American adult without a Facebook account, you're
the outlier.

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rksprst
Why is FB login required? I was going to purchase, but don't want to link my
FB profile.

~~~
reso
Totally understandable. We're planning to add other login options soon.

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gus_massa
> _However, there’s also another facet: customers have to sign up for an
> account, which means that the firm will have their email address,
> potentially turning the business into a large bitcoin-focused list-building
> operation._

Do I need to create an account to do a one in a life time purchase? The data
for the account are only c.c. number and email? Or they include full name,
birthday, address, password and recovery question, parents name, pets name,
...?

~~~
Dosenpfand
You can login only via Facebook and it requests the following information:
public profile, friend list, e-mail address, employer, status messages,
education, hometown, place of residence;

~~~
saraid216
This is going from amusing-scam to transparent-scam really quickly.

~~~
wmf
I don't see any evidence of a scam; Dwolla uses similar social background
checks. I think what we're seeing here is the difference between fraud
detection and fraud prevention where they can't afford to be wrong.

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michaelhoffman
Given the difficulties people have in converting Bitcoins to dollars, a more
useful service would be one that converts Bitcoin to $20, but only once.

~~~
jnbiche
Who is having difficulties converting Bitcoins to dollars? Have you personally
had difficulty, or are you just repeating hearsay?

I ask because I've been in Bitcoin since 2011 and I've _never_ had trouble
converting Bitcoins back to USD. Right now, I'm not happy about the wire fees
I'm paying (and may switch exchanges), but it's as easy as pie to get the
money.

~~~
michaelhoffman
Here's the story I was thinking about:

[http://buttcoin.org/easy](http://buttcoin.org/easy)

Is there a service that makes the process of turning BTC into USD as easy as
Tinkercoin claims to for USD to BTC?

~~~
jnbiche
If you're looking for an instant way to change BTC to USD online, you probably
won't find that (at least I have my doubts that such a service can exist
legitimately). And I have my doubts that Tinkercoin will be around for long,
unfortunately (because of scammers). There's simply an impedance mismatch
between Bitcoin and the legacy banking system.

As such, you will be hard pressed to find a way to "instantly" sign up and
transfer BTC to USD, if that's what you're asking. But once you've gotten
approved at a respectable exchange like Bitstamp, getting USD in your bank
account is as easy as exchanging the Bitcoins at your desired rate, filling in
your desired amount of USD to transfer, and clicking submit.

Because of the slowness of the legacy wire transfer system, you then have to
wait a couple of days before the transfer shows up at your account. But it's
an extremely simple process, just like transferring money from your online
bank account (but not as easy or fast as sending Bitcoins!).

Note that you do need to submit your ID and some additional information the
first time you transfer funds, to get approved. If your exchange isn't doing
that, then they're not complying with KYC and they're vulnerable to being shut
down.

~~~
amscanne
I don't think it's reasonable to refer to the entire banking system (incl.
wire transfers, etc.) as "legacy".

It's like referring to BTC as legacy crypto currency, because now we have
dogecoin.

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apf
I got the same "call us" error. Sent an e-mail about 1.2 hours ago. Gareth
replied that he's working on it, so just waiting. It wasn't clear or not if my
credit card was charged, Gareth assured me it hadn't been. Will update this if
transaction is successful.

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awalton
Ah, so _this_ is what the Bitcoin burglars have up their sleeves. Sell the
bitcoins for pennies on the dollar in trade for clean identity information.

They're really going to clean up.

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650REDHAIR
How is this sustainable? I wonder what they have planned next.

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nathancahill
Does anyone else think their logo looks like Simple's?

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IntentionTech
Has anyone told Carly Rae Jepsen about this? #callmemabey

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Aardwolf
Do they accept European credit cards?

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z3bra
Facebook? how 'bout no?

