

Show HN: Bitroad – Sell anything online for Bitcoin - zachlatta
https://github.com/zachlatta/bitroad

======
switz
> "Safely, and anonymously"

 _http_ ://bitroad.io

~~~
zachlatta
It's currently hosted on Heroku, but will be moved to our own servers once
we've ironed out a few other things. Once it's on our servers, we'll implement
https.

~~~
nezza-_-
So you're lying right now? :)

~~~
zachlatta
Not necessarily. Bitroad was created to allow kids without bank accounts to
sell what they make online. From a parent's perspective, it's safe and
anonymous - the child doesn't need to give out any personal information to use
it.

------
zachlatta
Bitroad was created in under 7 hours for the Virtual Piggy 2013 hackathon
([http://www.oink.com/hackathon](http://www.oink.com/hackathon)). If you run
into errors while checking out, it means that I've exceeded my daily limit
with BitPay. I'd love to know what the community thinks of it!

Link to the main live site: [http://bitroad.io](http://bitroad.io)

~~~
illegalsmile
Will this provide similar functionality to silk road? I've been looking for
silk road type software/frontend for a legal user community to sell items.

------
brighton36
IMHO - This is a similar project, albeit with more features, and much better
code coverage on the tests:
[https://github.com/brighton36/CoinPost](https://github.com/brighton36/CoinPost)

Though, I am the author, so I get that I'm a bit biased ;)

~~~
zachlatta
Looks neat! Apologies for the hackathon code, there will eventually be a fully
rewrite done ;-)!

------
baby
I've always wondered why there is no eBay for bitcoins. The problem with
bitcoin is that the only way to get them is to buy them with USD. What if you
could buy bitcoins with objects? Like you would do with USD on websites like
eBay.

I even bought the address www.btcharbor.com but never had time to start the
project.

~~~
lukifer
I acquired my (very small) BTC stash via selling stuff on the eBay clone
BitMit; it was starting to get traction before the site owners decided to shut
down / sell (its fate is still uncertain).

There are two others, CryptoThrift and CoinGig, but their transaction volume
is still relatively low. It's a gaping hole in the market right now (and
that's considering that eBay itself has been begging for a disruption for
years).

~~~
victoro
How did BitMit overcome the problem of trust between buyer and seller? E.g.
somebody sends bitcoin to a wallet and never gets the product they wanted. Did
they offer some kind of escrow service or was everything based on reputation
and buyer/seller reviews?

~~~
lukifer
BitMit acted as an escrow themselves. I never caught wind of any disputes, so
I don't know how they were handled. And they also had reputation and reviews
as well.

------
Jsarokin
Great stuff guys, this is awesome!

Seems like you have a nice handle on the 'selling for bitcoin' space. I'd love
to chat and see if we can join forces in some way (I'm the founder of
SellSimple.com).

Hit me up on twitter or via my blog if interested :)

\- J

~~~
zachlatta
Feel free to shoot me an email. It's in my profile.

~~~
Jsarokin
Awesome, will shoot you something by tonight :)

------
whackedspinach
Is it possible to use Bitcoin or a bitcoin-like system to create listings in a
decentralized manner? Maybe with Namecoin?

I worry that these types of sites centralize the marketplace in one easy-to-
attack location.

------
aristidesfl
[http://bitroad.io/listings/28](http://bitroad.io/listings/28)

Buy it now!

~~~
solox3
I am selling "This Image", the file they told me to upload, but never shows
up. [http://bitroad.io/listings/32](http://bitroad.io/listings/32)

~~~
solox3
Oh. The file that you upload is the thing you are selling.

------
benjamincburns
Maybe I'm blind, but is there any way to browse a list of listings? Also just
a heads up, but the background image on the landing page took about 8 seconds
to load on my machine. It's beautiful, but you might want to either re-encode
it with more lossy compression, or just nix it altogether.

~~~
zachlatta
There isn't presently a way to browse listings, although it's definitely on
the feature list. The original idea for user interaction was the following:

    
    
        1. User goes to website
        2. User creates a listing
        3. User shares link to listing on other sites
    

It wasn't originally intended as a marketplace, but we're thinking about
turning it into one. By the way, thanks for the tip regarding the image.
Fixing it now.

~~~
benjamincburns
So presently you're not proxying the transactions and collecting a commission?

~~~
zachlatta
We're proxying the transactions and collecting a 10% commission that goes to a
Bitcoin-accepting charitable organization. The current organization we're
donating to is the Bitcoin Foundation.

------
king_magic
Under Create Listing, you can set a negative price - at least in Safari.
Didn't try to actually create a listing though.

~~~
zachlatta
There should be validations preventing that. Please file a bug if you're able
to get around them.

~~~
king_magic
Will do - just seems odd from a UI point of view - that's all :)

(looking forward to seeing where this goes!)

~~~
zachlatta
Thanks! We definitely should add some Javascript validations too :-)

------
glomph
Holy animated gif batman! Maybe link to a video instead?

------
hosh
So, Bitcoins isn't about anonymity. I don't know why people keep being
enamored about this. There are far better things to do with Bitcoins than
anonymity.

I'm glad someone wrote this and open-sourced it though. There are a lot of
interesting things you can do with this web app when you throw away the notion
of anonymity. Thanks for writing it.

