Bitcoin Forum

I just wondered if anyone here had set up at a market and tried to sell Bitcoin to the public/tourists?

I think it's be a bit of advertising for Bitcoin for people that walk past and people may buy as novelty gift etc. (if done as fancy paper wallet).

I'm considering trying this in London, what do you guys think?

Do not do this kind of stuff, I understand you are enthusiastic about Bitcoins but this idea is not good at all. Firstly do you realize transactions take lots of time to happen. Secondly Bitcoin is not a good that you can sell on a stall, it's a currency. Bitcoins is supposed to be done anonymously not publicly, and it will have you in serious trouble as Bitcoin is not a recognised currency, secondly you do not have the licence or permission to indulge in this kind of activity. If you want to sell, you can do here but considering your Rank you will have to use a escrow. Or try out localbitoins, you could set up a stall to give knowledge on Bitcoins that's fine but definitely not what you trying to do.

I tried to do it using a McDonalds, well actually I was trying to buy rather than sell.

Didn't have any luck though.

I'd always be worried about being targetted. It only takes 1 nutter to follow you home after and mug you.  I reckon it works better if you can own a shop with an ATM, even if you are funding the ATM trades.

Sadly agree, too many complications in such endevour.
Hoewever, someone will probably try and then he could tell us how it went :P
That will be interesting stuff to read.
Good luck to whoever will try.

at least you will also launch a campaign, I think in london probably not many people know bitcoin, if indeed it is a pretty good idea would facilitate people london buy bitcoin, my advice you also need to provide an explanation of about bitcoin :)

i am not yet trying to do like what OP asked because i think it is not enough information for public/tourist about bitcoin and also there is many problem that i could face like, i should explain first what my purpose is, maybe i should explain the basic of bitcoin. i think ordinary people is too scared for new thing that they don't have much of informations so i think we need a time before we can sell bitcoin into public/tourists but i am sure we can see that in future. but if you are in london, maybe in your city, you can trying to sell your bitcoin into public because i think london is a big city with many people that will accept new thing especially in technology aspect so maybe you can start your own market.

I haven't tried to sell bitcoin in a market stall. It is not that common to be sold in a market stall. In future, situations might prevail to give us such an opportunity to sell bitcoin.

Any legal issues aside, I think the biggest problem selling to the uneducated masses in this way is that they are going to require a lot of support to understand what they should do with a paper wallet. And I don't think bitcoin is ready for these people yet.

The thing is even if you do this it highly unlikely there would be a bitcoin user among the tourists and that too who wants to buy BTC for you. Also If i was visiting London and i see someone selling BTC like this, I probably would care thinking someone is trying to scam as we all know BTC community is full of scammers.

Yes. Plus if someone is selling a paper wallet, can't they simply keep a copy and have access to the private key?

It seems that you have interest in bitcoins.
But don't let this interest turn to madness.
Selling bitcoins on stalls is not at all a good idea.
Firstly bitcoin is a currency so you should not sell it .
You should distribute it.
Bitcoin is not a physical currency ( it's not a coin)
Unlike physical currencies it is not so easy to distribute to a huge number of people.
Some of my transactions have taken even 10 hours to complete.
Also the government of your country might not allow you to do so!

Not practical because all those that will buy or sell to you at the end of the day will need a computer to load them into the blockchain somehow and the bad people can come up with fake paper keys that they will be selling that can create a bad name for Bitcoin.

Market stall? Good idea. Its a good chance also to introduce bitcoin to people. But you need to be on full time. And thats seems not practical to me. We have localbitcoins.com that can provide us customers. Or we can sell it online. You dont need to be on full time to sell bitcoin. Its saves us time.

This even if practical will be very difficult to achieve because just like other commodities Bitcoin is a virtually commodity which cannot be placed on physical stalls to display like gold so there's the need for s lot if explanation and verification of the paper wallet.

I don't think anyone has ever actually implemented that idea yet, but I have a feeling a fair amount of people have thought of doing something like that and seeing whether or not it would work in the way they want it to.

I don't know how effective the entire system would actually be and if you'd realistically make any money off of it considering the time investments, but it might be interesting to do once to see how it works.

Before doing this, better to do a survey if people knows about bitcoin, if they are interested if someone would sell it to them, stuffs like that, because selling it to a Market Stall might just get you in to nowhere, or ended up disappointed because no one bought even a 0.00001 bitcoin to you, because they prefer fiat more than bitcoin, since it is new to them. Also, selling it to the Market Stall is a lot of money, I mean you need to pay a fee every month on your place where your stall at in the mall because that is how it works.

But, let's say that you have already done a survey and it went successful, then take the opportunity to do it, because there is no victory without risking anything at all, but don't put all the eggs on one basket. :)

the idea of doing something like this with paper wallets is to spread the word about bitcoin not make people a wallet (private key on a paper) they can dump their money in!
and you do keep the private keys but explain how things are in the back size of the paper.

for example you put a couple of bucks in that paper wallet and on the back you explain how they can sweep the key and spend the coins using a bitcoin wallet, give links to bitcoin.org and the /choose-your-wallet page so they can download something like Electrum or others for their cell phone and spend those coins.
and for example if they didn't spend them in a month you use the private keys to spend it yourself.

No, this seems like an oversimplification.  If they don't understand how transactions or addresses or anything with Bitcoin actually work, they shouldn't bother owning it because it's not going anywhere for them.  It would probably be a lot of hassle for all parties involved because Bitcoin isn't cut out for being implemented into real life.  I didn't realise it existed until I found it online.

you'd spend your whole time answering incredibly dumb questions from people who don't understand anything, then you'd get stabbed and robbed by someone who does. it could be a fun experiment until then.

there was a physical store in london that sold bitcoin for a while. it seemed to be a short lived thing.

If you want to sell bitcoin on a stall because you are an enthusiast and this will be your way to promote cryptocurrency then it is perfectly fine.
But if you want to profit from this activity you need to test the waters first, and don't expect to raise substantial revenues. At least you don't need much money to 'build' a street stand.
The problem is that this might be potentially illegal, as you will be dealing with 'foreign' form of currency as working as unregistered currency exchange.

This sounds crazy, it won't sell so just abandon the idea. Just attempting to sell something intangible on the stalls of a store? wow! Then you must as well attempt to sell electricity on those stalls.

Yeah right? It would take a lot of explanation for you to persuade them to buy your bitcoin, and the worst thing that could happen in the end is that, they will not buy after you have introduced it to them, because their excuses are they would still prefer Fiat because bitcoin seems complicated for them, that is why, it is not a good idea right now, especially if you are going to sell it in a Market Stall.

I hadn't try something like that. I live in a small town where people heard about bitcoin only from my words and don't get the idea of bitcoin completely. I think I would just look wired selling bitcoin to people/tourists  directly.

I doubt its a trend that would grow tbh.  Bitcoin is a digital product its most likely people access it online with ease from their banks/paypal whatever.

I had a friend who opened and ran a shop selling "Top Trumps" type card when we'd just left school, I think they might have been Pokemon cards or something like that. He made quite a bit of money (for a 16 year old) for a while.

I would view a 'Bitcoin market stall' as something akin to this - Something of a novelty, collectable, a gift. Obviously not for real investors but for the person who has seen Bitcoin in the news and feels like they can spare a Tenner or so 'just for fun'.

I thought the best way to implement is to create varying size of fancy looking paper wallets of small denominations (with fairly high mark-up so price fluctuations don't affect the value of the paper wallet too much).


Of course aftercare for the customer would be a major part of it if they are asking further questions but then of course then maybe they will become return customers?

People like physical, people like tangible and people are more likely to buy something that is right in front of their face on a Saturday morning rather than a bank-transfer and 3 days wait away.

Is that the Azteco shop? Is it closed now then?

Interesting idea.

I think it might work if bitcoins were sold at a 1:1 ratio (or at a discount) with some effort made to educate people on what btc & crypto is.

But if someone tried to sell btc with a price markup, say 1 btc @ 120% of cost.

I don't know if that would work.

Also there is a chance stall sellers could be raided by police and have their btc/money confiscated.

If you want to promote and make suer people adopt BTC, you need to give away 2-5$'s of BTC to a few people of keep an open market contest where they can win real money which would be paid out in BTC. These could be a good way of letting people know about BTC. I dont think in an open market, just selling BTC would work very well. People might notice it but they will just go past it and it wont be eye catching enough.

Why bother trying to sell bitcoin in public for people that does not know anything about it and they don’t know its true value and its potential, you could easily sell bitcoin online for people that actually use it and know its value for a high price, you could find many people who would do so in localbitcoins.

I don't like the idea that you are planning with, why don't you try to make something which explain what is bitcoin to them. Well, I guess if you do that people might get be happy once you do it.

I like how enthusiastic you are about bitcoin. Unfortunately, this all seem complicated, if not risky to me. Let's forget about the possible legal issues for now. How are you going to get them to understand it? It's not a good and people would be skeptical in receiving this digital stuff. I doubt even handing out paper wallets would be enough. They'll probably just scratch their heads wondering how it could be money. Also if you're going to sell them bitcoins for the current value in fiat they could just say "why bother converting my money for a paper token?". Point is you'd be taking a lot of time explaining per customer. That's not a good business model. You want them in and our as quickly as possible, with their money in your hand if possible.

If you open up a shop the people who are interested in buying the coin can approach and you can educate them if they show any interest and you do not need to be skeptical about that.It is quite possible and bitcoin is a major news everywhere and most of the people are aware and heard about bitcoin ,they might not be using it but they could have heard about it,at least the younger generation could understand what it is.