Bitcoin Forum

Could Ebay, strategically, invest massively buying BTC prior announcing adoption of it and earn millions with it so that it would justify letting go of paypal?
How much is Paypal worth and how could Ebay come up with such a speculative move?

umm....who are they going to buy bitcoin from?   :-\

I'll sell it to them for 1 trillion dollars.

Yeah right. I do agree with your bottom-line though that there is some insider trading to be made.
Who knows, maybe some folks at wordpress bought a lot of coins anticipating their announcement.

Sure they could...it would be a bold move and it's a stretch to think they would do something like that, but it could work.  And it's not just them.  The US gov't could probably pay off a good part of the national debt with a similar strategy (imagine what would happen to the price if they announced that they we're going to treat Bitcoin as a public utility and help protect the integrity of the system).  There are probably a few European countries that could improve their fiscal situation with such a move too.

eBay could sell PayPal at a lost like they did with Skype when they sold it Gavin's cousin, Marc Andreessen, for $2M USD.

I've mentioned before that any notable (or their account--with permission) could amass bitcoins, then announces to their minions why they love Bitcoin, and when the price rises they purchase the most costliest ticket item available (house, car, plane) where the seller accepts Bitcoin. This way it wouldn't be on them if the price falls due to so many coins being cashed out, thereby protecting their brand. The notable then sells the asset for fiat. If time properly, he/she could double their investment.

The timing is perfect to conduct such a act, liquidating at 2.5X and nobody gets burned. Oprah still comes to mind to pull this off. Let's say it's a million dollars. After the act, she can even give the mil away, thereby even making her brand stronger, but in reality, it's a mil she would have given anyway, but this time it's not out of her direct pocket. A mill she gets to spend on herself, and nobody is the wiser.

~Bruno K~

No, ebay could not as they own paypal and would hurt themselves as they loose paypal profits as BTC replaced p 

Other companies could do this very strategy though.  Imagine if Newegg or Amazon bought $1m bitcoins on the QT then made the announcement.  Amazon could even offer to pay affiliates with bitcoin.  The price would shoot up and the company would make money as well as having a new payment method. 

Funny, I had a similar thought today although not for eBay.  A small country could buy up a portion of the float, announce they support it, and not only make money through appreciation, but they would attract all the bitcoin businesses. 

Paypal and ebay are two heads of the same monster. Bitcoins will do to paypal what voip did to long distance rates.

The bay will not be embracing the seeds of their own demise anytime soon.

The key would to get eBay sellers to start accepting Bitcoins.  If they started to accept them, then buyers would look into it.  There would be a ripple affect.  If enough people started to use them it would simply catch on.  Finding a way to tie in bitcoin web of trust would co a long way to increasing the viability for sellers to adopt it.  I could see other sites like GunBroker adopting it.  Any site that PayPal refuses to work with should adopt it. 

Its about bringing awareness to the users.  Find the forums where they lurk and start to sell them on the idea. 

Since I got into Bitcoins I have always presented the option of using Bitcoins to pay.  recently I had a customer pay me that way. 

While the bay allows you to accept non-paypal payment methods you are only allowed to use those that meet certain regulations. That means credit card merchent gateways that do identity checks and such. They forbid Western Union because you can send money without ID by using a password instead and it cannot be taken back.

The bay depends on their ability to have complete control at a whim if the money goes to the seller or back to the buyer.

Considering ebay has Net Revenues (that's fees and whatnot) of about $14 billion over the last 12 months I don't think they have much interest in F*ing things up in order to score a few million in crazy speculative ideas.

The amount they could buy up quietly and sell as quickly as possible would be ridiculously small in their league. I doubt they could even pay one of their top executive salaries with any gain.

But just to be safe I think I'll hold onto my BTC.

Paypal is ebay's main growth engine now, there's no way they are giving that up.

I can't even begin to understand how eBay fucked up Skype integration so badly. eBay and Skype would work so perfectly together, I mean it has always been a dream for me, both as an ebay buyer and seller, to have an IM tool that is integrated into the eBay system. I mean imagine how cool would it be, to see a seller is online on skype, right from the eBay's item page. Then with one click, I could be chatting with the seller about the item. The whole thing was an incomprehensible level of FAIL.

Does anyone already asked Ebay to accept bitcoin?

Good luck with that.  Back when eBay first got off the ground, you could take checks or money orders for payment.  Now, their terms of service forbid it...this has apparently been the case for over four years (http://www.webpronews.com/ebay-terminates-checks-and-money-orders-2008-09) now. They'll only allow PayPal (or some other services whose terms are similar to PayPal's) or credit cards with your own merchant account.  As the article notes, eBay makes no vig on cash-equivalent/check/money-order payments, and they wouldn't on Bitcoin payments either.

Yep, sellers are not allowed to accept alternative payments, or risk having your eBay account banned. I'm not even sure how this is legal, this screams monopoly (using a monopoly in one industry to gain market share in another industry). I'm not sure why eBay haven't been successfully sued regarding this practice.

If you mention that you accept bitcoin in your auction they will remove your listing and give you a warning. If you do it again they will ban you.

Bitcoin is going to ruin payment processors like paypal. It is not bad for auction sites but it is bad for ebay because of the way they side with the buyer in the vast majority of disputes. They need the ability to reverse payments or their business model fails.

Uncertain.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/230887097848

That's a test auction though...

eBay has no motivation to use bitcoin, they make money in fees per paypal transaction, cha-ching!

Right, so only sell your stuff in test auctions for BTC. They show up in the main search results.

Ah, I see what you mean.