Bitcoin Forum

SITE CLOSED
http://bitcoinhop.com/

This looks very nice. Well done!

i love the 0 fees :). hope my oil will sell :)

congratulations! buyer protection is really the feature that biddingpond was missing.

Very nice looking site, you should make a copy that uses dollars and paypal/dwollla/new exchages and I bet ebay will buy you out in 2 years.

I can give users the ability to use any exchange method. But the problem is, if a buyer pays with dwolla, the seller would have to have a dwolla account to accept. So the site would end up being part bitcoin-only items, dwolla-only items, and paypal-only items, etc. Ill think about it though. Let me know if you have any ideas on combining them because Im open to anything.

I tried to edit my profile/personal information and I keep getting an error "The "Phone" field cannot be empty" when there is no phone field to be seen and all fields are filled in. I don't see a "contact admin" button anywhere or I would have pushed it.

Sorry about that... its fixed now. Phone number is not required.

If you find any other bugs let me know. Ill add a support contact page in the next few days.

Thank you to everyone who posted an item so far!!!

Really like this site look and idea a lot, did you hand code this?  I think you might get into a little trouble with ebay sometime as some of the  logos look similar.  You might change Buy It Now to Immediate Buy for example.

Thank you.

The site is based off of the same framework that BiddingPond uses. I didnt like the default templates so I decided to design and code my own (similar to ebay). Some of the features are hand coded, some came with the framework. And there are a few features Im working on that I havent implemented yet.

And about Buy It Now - it is now "Buy Now". I might change it to something else in the future. I just wanted to get something up quickly.

Good job with the design and layout. I don't know why, but most Bitcoin related website have poorly design and unusable interfaces. Yours is up there at the top.

Still getting the phone number bug, this time in the registration page...

Getting same bug.  DOH.

Me too. I cannot register because of that.

Oops... when I fixed the phone problem on the Edit Profile page, I accidentally messed up the phone on the Registration page.

Its fixed now on both pages.

spleeder - Thanks!

What's protecting the seller from the buyer claiming they never received the item?  It's super hard to mediate on auctions hopefully you are successful in figuring out a good way.

There are 2 things to try to prevent that. Online tracking info and feedback. The site is new so no one has feedback, but feedback will be useful in the future. And then online tracking will tell you if the item has been shipped or not. Its not perfect but its safer than a lot of other bitcoin exchanges available online.

Hey, i think your site is great, and I know that you left off for the moment some features like categories, because they are not useful yet.

But I would add the option to browse based on your location (i'm in Europe).

Also, and this is a new feature compared to ebay, I would add the possibility to ASK FOR what you want: instead of searching for sth to buy, sellers could search for buyers to sell. This could dynamize transactions and attract more people to your web, and potentially to Bitcoin economy. It would be much better than the buying (http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?board=25.0) forum because you have a user rating system integrated.

Nice ideas

Ill get the location option up in the next 1-3 days, and Ill get the wanted section up in within 5-7 days.

Wow.  Honestly.  Is it the design?  Is it the structure? 

It just really works well, and the pages are actually pleasurable to look at. 

What changes did you introduce?

Tried to create a listing, can't get past the preview step. It says "This Auction has Ended" or something similar, shows the picture and that is it.

Same here.. Worked really hard on my auction :(

Fixed. Sorry about that!

Really nice site, I hope to be working with this man on a future project.

Thanks

Is there any benefit to making the address to send payments to a "per auction" address instead of one address for all things bitcoinhop?

If there aren't fees, how do you make money with the site?

Wow, it's like you stole my idea, made it 5x better, and implemented it before I even got the resources to make a site like this. Great job!

There will be fees in the future. But there will never be fees for listing, uploading images, adding a reserve, or buy it now. There will only be small fees, like 0.02 bitcoins, for items which are sold and also fees for featured items.

Im working on this, it should be updated soon.

@toast - thank you!

How does the buyer protection work?

For instance, there's an iPad 2 up for sale right now with a min-bid of 5btc. At the current exchange rate, that's a really cheap iPad 2. If the auction closes and the exchange rate doesn't fluctuate enough for that person to make as much of a profit as they were probably hoping, what's their incentive to follow through?

Is it simply an escrow mechanism so they won't receive my btc until I approve it, or something else?

(I'm very tempted to start bidding on the serious items, but I don't want to get scammed and this sort of thing is prone to that.)

If the buyer claims he never received the item and the seller doesnt have proof of shipment (tracking number, delivery confirmation) then the bitcoins are returned to the buyer.

You'll have other problems. What if somebody ships something else that wasn't bought? A scam buyer could claim product was defective, get their money back. A scam seller could just show tracking# and claim legit goods sent. This is probably eBay's and Paypal's biggest problem, when I worked for them ages ago that was their most frequent complaint.. seems every cellphone dealer was shipping used/scratched and claiming new

Also problem with escrow is you sell your Ipad when the value is 23BTC per USD, then it drops down to 14BTC by the time you get escrow and you gave it away

Not to shit on your site because BTC auctions sites are FTW.. but if I was an evil competitor I could buy somebody else's stuff under different accounts and then claim all sorts of bullshit against them like received not as described ect. to ruin their rating. Another eBay tactic usually used by rival guitar sellers on each other. Should get a contingency plan in case you receive legal threats for 'defamation' from some crazy seller who got a bad rating as well

registered for this site and it looks awesome.

Well, I bid and won a tshirt, yippee.

Now I'm just waiting for the status to change from unpaid to paid since I paid this morning and it has like 20 confirmations now. Is the "status" of payments handled manually?

@zer0 - I understand. I might have to add a terms and conditions checkbox on the signup page.

You can ignore that. That section is for the seller to confirm he received the payment (which is not even relevant). Im going to replace that very soon with the actual payment status.

But your payment has been received.

hey yesterday,

It would be real nice if you could somehow verify a new user's reviews through their ebay user account. In other words, someone could see what the seller's reviews were on ebay at the time he signed up for BitcoinHop. Their ebay username and reviews are public info but it's that communication through ebay you need to be able to do in order to confirm that it really is them. Not sure how you could legally get around that. Could some how do it to just kick start your site and when ebay frowns upon it, then you could stop doing it and hopefully by then you will be established with your users having a good number of reviews.

Just my 2 cents.

We really need a huge ebay and amazon bitcoin like sites going for the bitcoin. At least to help balance out the illegal drugs selling and stuff. That way the feds can't blame the bitcoin for being used just for drugs.

That and I really like to get out of the US dollar... :)

Thats a great idea! Ill add that to the list of stuff Im working on.

Could just simply have users signing up for your site, be able to list their ebay username and just leave it up to the people wanting to buy their products, go verify them on ebay. Next to their reviews on BitcoinHop you could have a link that goes right to their user account on eBay. Here again, don't know if ebay could do anything against you for doing that though.

Just a second thought.

Thanks for the fast response, yesterday.

Guess we'll see if my tshirt ships. ;)

Someone asked for an option to see items which ship to your country. I just made this the default setting. So now by default (when logged in), you will only see items being sold in your country and items which are shipped worldwide to your country. There will also be a button to see all items from all countries.

hi yesterday,

now that one of my auctions has a bid, i can say i love the site! I would like to request the addition of modern console video games (eg, add Playstation 3, Xbox 360, Wii, etc.) to the Gaming category.

It would also be useful to have a category for gift cards.

I tried to send these requests in through the site, but when I go to the "Contact us" page I can't send a message. All I see are the "Message" box and the box to enter the code in. When I press Send Message I get this error:

The operation could not be performed because one or more error(s) occurred.

Please resubmit the form after making the following changes:

The "Email Address" field cannot be empty
The "Email Address" field must contain a valid email address

I've tried this with a couple browsers (firefox, ie) and don't see the Email Address field on either of them. I just tried it on my mobile phone too and even there I just see the Message and code box.

- Contact page fixed

Im going to update the categories once I finish a few other important things

I love the site... it gives a chance for a fairly new bitcoin user to get involved.  However, I sent an email, and perhaps a bit of policy explanation would help.  If you want to click buy it now, what is the exact process?  Do you give us an address to send it to?  If so how long is there to send it?

If you click Buy Now, you will be sent an email with a bitcoin address to send the bitcoins to. Once your bitcoins are confirmed, the seller is automatically notified by email to ship your item.

Congrats on your new site. Just wanted to tell you how awesome it is and I really appreciate seeing innovation like this coming from the community. Thank you!

Have you thought about putting in some Affiliate ads, might earn a few xtra pennies for you.
There are loads of affiliate sites out there.

Also if you use an ad rotator, you can rotate Banners,.

Tradedoubler offer ad rotaion facilities.

what happens if the buyer claims the product was broken or the box shipped was empty?
Does the seller not get his money?

This will be handled on a case by case basis. There is no perfect solution.

I might put up ads in the future to help cover costs. Is tradedoubler better than Google Adsense?

NM it appears to have fixed :)

It's a pitty there's not "wanted" section.

google adsense is better ;)

This is still coming soon.

Right now Im working on a few other things like a FAQ.

A "Wanted" section will be added this Friday. Ebay Feedback integration for sellers (and buyers) will be added Saturday or Sunday.

I have mixed feelings about the auction house.  I'd love for it to work, but right now there are just too few eyes seeing what's for sale -- so some items that would sell easily on eBay won't get a bid at bitcoinhop.

Another problem is the instability of the value of a bitcoin.  It's hard to put down a price knowing that the amount I'll receive in USD could be greater than or less than the value of the item I am selling.

Second problem is my biggest concern right now :) for example right now im holding the shipment of one product which sold for 1 BTC, problem is i have to wait tell mtgox open again and see effects so i can a little safer.

another point is that your site hold the coins another few days which prevent me for example on getting a less risky estimate of the value.

The votality of the bitcoins value realy demotivates me :(

If you have rare or unique items, it would probably be better to sell on ebay. But if you have computers or electronics then you will get a lot of bids.

That's because bitcoin is very new. Within a year or two, the value of 1 bitcoin will probably be more stable.

This is to prevent fraud. But once you sell a certain amount of items successfully, you can become a trusted seller and receive bitcoins right after the buyer pays.

i know that this is a feature and probably is a good feature also :), i was just saying that with the value of the bitcoin keep changing on such a fast pace, it make it even harder to make decisions :).

I think in the future if I post additional auctions at the site, I'll only post them with Saturday/Sunday ending dates -- for the psychological advantage of a low exchange rate.

For example, if the Friday rate is $25/coin and the Sunday rate is $15/coin the buyer may be willing to spend more coins on Sunday -- thinking that they're not spending as much because of the exchange rate difference.

I am hoping that people are honest with receiving their winnings.  I sell cards for the collectible card game Magic the Gathering...  I just use a regular first-class envelope -- it would cost several times more in shipping to get a tracking number.

At least with international orders I'd have the customs form stamped from the post office as evidence that the item was sent...

I agree that this is a nuisance from our side as sellers...  ...but I find it reasonable because as a buyer it helps assure them that they will get their money back if an auction isn't delivered.

What happens If I purchase something on your site, send the BTC, and never receive my package? Whats the policy, can the people selling stuff take my BTC or is it still like a trust based kinda thing, I haven't been ripped off yet, so I have on reason to think that would happen, that's one reason why I love the bitcoin community!

We'll I have a lot of trust in the Bitcoin community, and I've never been ripped off! Its just a community of smart and honestly people, stupid people "thieves, ect" are not intelligent enough to understand the value of a Bitcoin anyway.

Emphasis is ours.  We felt the same way. The core Bitcoin community is very honest, others, not so honest. Do be careful of scammers.  They can very quickly ruin your Bitcoin experience.

One of my buyers has sent the payment to the bitcoin address provided by you guys, and it's been over 12 hours. It's still unconfirmed on my side.

Very good auction site, exactly what I was looking for!
I just sold something there, so it gets my stamp of approval :-)

I sold something and mailed it off a week ago...  ...I just hope the buyer (who should have received it by now) goes to the site and marks it as having been received...  ...otherwise I'm out my merchandise and out my bitcoin payment.

(I didn't bother sending it with tracking because that would have ended up costing more for shipping than the item itself.)

jakea1011 - problem solved  :)

You can contact the buyer and ask him to leave feedback. If he doesn't respond or leave feedback in 3 days, I will send you the payment.

Thanks.  I did send them a message earlier this evening asking if they had received their merchandise yet.  Hopefully they have.  :)

My customer is wondering how they send the Bitcoins to me, after you have received it?

Site was hacked and will not be returning online.

If you were awaiting a payment, please send an email to bitcoinhop@gmail.com with details about your account/item.

This stinks.  Sorry, sir.

How long until we expect to get our Bitcoins? I have 4 bitcoins waiting.