Bitcoin Forum

Is it just like PayPal? Do they freeze accounts?

They are nothing like Paypal. Paypal is a evil company. I have yet to hear of any issues with Dwolla.

What makes Paypal so evil? I'm just curious where all this hate is coming from since I've never had problems and haven't heard much about the problems that happen.

They can and will limit your account for no reason. They hold payments for 14 days, and in most peoples cases, pertinently limit your account and hold your money for 180 days!

As a seller, the fact that ANY type of complaint from a buyer reverses the money transfer from you and "locks" it for up to 21 days during mediation is a crock of [insert favorite smelly object here].  It then places the burden of proof on the seller to defend themselves while their product is still in the hands of the buyer.

Also, they will pick sides on controversial account holders regardless if that person broke no laws (as other posters have stated for any reason at any time).

Also, their fees are near extortion levels.  Dwolla charges $0.25. Period.  If they're able to make money off that, imagine what paypal is doing with 2.9%.

any business that freezes customer's money is not a business I deal with

Dwolla is just a bit slow in terms of their transfers showing up. Other than that they're a solid company.

Is there a general rule for how long it takes for bank-dwolla transfers to take? I'm curious, I just signed up with them.

(1) They caved in to Sen. Lieberman and pulled the plug on Wikileaks so that Americans cannot easily support a publisher of free speech.

(2) They withhold funds and terminate accounts capriciously.

(3) They are a special interest that is likely to feel threatened by a strong bitcoin economy. When/if politicians start looking for ways to shut down bitcoin you will almost certainly be able to trace some of the money back to PayPal. (owned by Ebay).

For me the general rule is that your Dwolla transfer will go through shortly after the bitcoin market rebounds and you can no longer take advantage of a good opportunity. :) 

(But I think it actually depends on your physical bank more than anything else)

Heh. Precisely. Thanks for the tip.

Dwolla seems to be a good service but they are really REALLY slow.

I deposited money on the 7th and it did not arrive until the 13th.  Plus it takes days to verify an account, and they don't work on weekends, which is kind of outrageous.

so on average it takes a week

Branching off the bank account -> dwolla question, my money has been taken out of my bank account but it's not in my dwolla account yet?  How long might it be in transit? I have no access to the money cause it appears to be just floating somewhere in limbo.

That's only 6 days, what's the big dealo?

You know it would be cool if Dwolla had the option of rush processing to get your transfer done faster but for a higher fee (maybe $1 instead of $0.25) that would be neat.

The only way to do it would be by extending a line of credit, and that causes a whole bunch of other issues.

Today is day 3 (business days), hopefully my deposit will be in my Dwolla tomorrow... they said it takes 3 days.

I'm still having trouble even getting the initial setup to work out...

We're actually in development of a new site that will make transfers into BTC instant, you can read more about it here.
http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=16472.0

Uhhhhhh.

No thanks, I'd rather wait 6 days with Dwolla.

Enjoy waiting 6 days while the price rises.

When you start a sale, it is sold at the price at that time, 6 days it the Dwolla processing time.

Even if I used your service, sure I can get the money instantly, but the price would still rise over 6 days. It doesn't make a difference which one I use, so I'd rather go with a well established service like Dwolla as opposed to some random small service ran by some guy in a basement.

The price if BTC changes every second. When you use Dwolla to fund your MtGox account, all your doing is funding it with USD which takes 5-7 days.
If today the price is $18 for 1 BTC, in 6 days it could be $25, or $15...your running the chance. Once your funds are avail, at that point you buy BTC at the current price.

Our service which is in development, does something a little different.
We keep very high reserves within the major exchanges i.e mtgox and tradehill.
Once you place a transaction (LibertyReserve- Confirmed, Paypal and others are Pending), we INSTANTLY credit your MtGox account with USD so you could buy it at the current price.

I know your new here, but do you understand the difference?

Dwolla seems like a pretty good deal.

Indeed. Where else can you make a $4,999 transaction for only $0.25 in fees.

It appears to take from one to three business days after the funds have been pulled from your bank account before they show as available with Dwolla. 


This is not Dwolla sitting on your money, this is how the Federal Reserve's ACH banking network operates.
  - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Dwolla#Timeline

Down the road, Dwolla hopes to sign up banks and credit unions to use FiSync -- which creates a shorter path:
 - http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/25/dwollas-fisync-lets-you-instantly-access-cash-eliminates-ach-wait-times-for-banks

Heres some inside information. When Fisync is setup, if you open a bank account with a bank that uses it you can make same day transfers from mt.gox to your bank, using dwolla.

Well almost sameday, It depends on how fast mt.gox sends funds to dwolla. 

I think he is only interested in selling BTC.
Which is why he pointed out there would be no difference which market he uses.

ah. now it makes sense lol

I wish there was a better way than Dwolla....  Took my last transfer 8 days to clear =(

Just to be fair, I don't think your problem is with Dwolla, right?  In other words if you had funds in your Dwolla account and you sent it to Mt. Gox, it would be there in minutes, right?

Thus ... your problem is likely with the payment network that Dwolla uses to transfer funds from your bank.  It is the Federal Reserve's ACH network.  They set it up to work this way back in the early 1970s.

As far as the 8 days, ... that won't likely repeat either, correct?   You only needed to do the first-time verification transaction once.   Now that your bank account is linked, you can add funds and they'll be in Dwolla in three business days.  From there the money travels to Mt. Gox within minutes.

It's just three business days for you from here on out.

How about the original direction, funding a transfer to Mt. Gox from my FiSync enabled bank?  Does that go same-day?

.

I don't hate Paypal: the're no different than the rest.  The problem I've had with them, is that when they first got rolling with eBay and such, they were happy to be linked to any website...but after they got big, they started making moral judgements, and pulled the plug on websites they didn't approve of...like, say, opiophile.org.  They wanted to be the internet bank, and kind of became that, but once they got a monopoly, they started making puritanical judgement calls. 

Most of the competition--except for google pay--is pretty small time....hopefully bitcoin, and it's related enterprises will change all that...hell, I think it'll continue to bring down the whole notion of nation/states, which, along with the internet in general, is certainly taking us down that path...where we end up will be interesting to see...

Paypal just has very strict rules and compliance and BitInstant is working with them at this point to be able to fund mtgox accounts.
Will keep you guys posted!

Darn You Dwolla, taking my money and not posting it in the time you stated.  Blast them.  Seriously!!! ARGGGGG!!!! >:(

If that is what happened, that is rare.   What date were the funds withdrawn from your bank?  And when you look into your account with Dwolla, does the current status still show "pending"?

What is the count of *business days* that have passed since the bank withdrawal occurred?

no problems with dwolla so far

The only problem is how far off the estimate is for funds clearing. The rest is pretty quick and sensible.

This would be useful to give free options.  Make a purchase and if bitcoins rise relative to USD then I got them at the earlier, lower price.  If bitcoins fall in value (or if the rise doesn't exceed the inevitable comission), then repudiate the transaction and I haven't lost anything.

There is a reason people wait for funding to clear.

Dwolla withdrawal only took me one day to get into my bank account.
4 hours from MTGOX to Dwolla