Bitcoin Forum

Auction giant eBay wants to know how you feel about Bitcoin.

An undated post on eBay’s Deals blog titled “What’s the Deal with Bitcoins Anyway” featured a two-minute video encapsulating many of the pros and cons of the virtual currency.

Read more here:
http://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/2013/09/06/customers-to-decide-if-ebay-should-adopt-bitcoin/

Will they adopt it?

Good news, Im sure they will

I have been hearing rumors of this for a while, very good news. I sincerely hope they begin to accept it.

It would be more interesting if they actually had a way for customers to provide input. A good sign nonetheless.

They'd be dumb not to. BTC FTW

would be really good for bitcoin if ebay would adopt it!

dont they own paypal? or paypal owns them???

They will not. They already own Paypal, why should they use something they cannot control>?

Do they control the USD?

Bitcoin is also a currency like any other. PayPal is a way to transfer currency. Put one and one together...

Here is a link to the blog post and video: http://deals.ebay.com/blog/whats-the-deal-with-bitcoins-anyway/

Looks promising to see something like this on their official blog.

But PP provided something to the USD it didn't originally have.  BTC is already essentially complete in whatever PP could add.

Will PP charge higher than usual BTC transaction fee for their service?

My paypal account has heen frozen forever. I hope they adobt bitcoin so I can use ebay again. Most sellers will most likely want to only use paypal because it is easier to convert into fiat. Anyways this is great news!

I dunno, maybe I'm missing something, but they ask a question and there is no way to comment on the blog?

the site looks really amateurish to me... is this really the official blog?

Even those credit card and other online payment companies would adopt bitcoin, since that will greatly simplify their international transactions (today they provide two different currency convertion process in international payment, means they do have some cost when it comes to foreign exchange), and that will greatly reduce the traffic burden on the bitcoin network

I hope so, makes it alot easier to place international orders.

this could be the highest push for bitcoin so far.

Where do you see that eBay wants/plans/thinks or just imagines to implement bitcoins?

eBay has a business model based on fees (with paypal).
If they implement bitcoins, they will take 5% fees on each transactions, and it won't be cheaper to pay with bitcoins or usd, so what would be the point?

Yeah, who cares if one of the largest online marketplaces in the world accepts bitcoin?

[/sarcasm]

Could anyone add subtitles for this video? Or just correct english text?

yes, maybe its not cheaper but it would be a huge push for bitcoin.

More choice for Bitcoin customers buying from on-line marketplaces. It would also add perceived legitimacy to Bitmit, in an indirect way, and so would help stimulate the competition in the sector.

Probably crash bitcoin, it can't handle the transactions per second.  Blockchain would grow to unusable size.  We will all be using quarkcoins.

PayPal could easily forego the $.35 fee and simply charge only the 2.9% fee right after they purchase BitPay for $(x)M.

Well pro bitcoin get through the myths of it being a ponzi scheme etc and we are that much closer to mainstream acceptance.

ebay own paypal.

i tried to sell some btc on ebay, but they pulled my auction because they dont allow dont delivery.

If this is legit, then this is great news for Bitcoin

doubt it. how would they refund people their money if they don't control it ;)
plus they cant freeze your bitcoin wallet.
thats their 2 favourite past times ruined already!

someone said this is not official ebay video and I believe them.

If Ebay ever adopts or even officially allows bitcoin as a payment method, it would most likely only be as BTC-denominated payments through Paypal (owned by Ebay and not surprisingly also considering bitcoin).

There's no way they'll *ever* allow an irreversible form of payment like direct buyer-seller bitcoin transactions. Paying in BTC through Paypal would add the layer of "buyer protection" (and 2-3% fees). Anything else would undermine their revenue model.

Ebay does have an officially recommended (http://pages.ebay.com/help/pay/escrow.html) escrow service (mainly for big-ticket items). For small purchases, the fee is (https://escrow.com/support/fee-calculator.aspx) 3.25% or $25; whichever is greater.

I sent a paper letter to escrow.com (https://www.escrow.com/) two years ago explaining Bitcoin and mentioning how m-n transactions can simplify the escrow process.

It is possible that somebody looked into it further without getting back to me.

For these big companies its the timing on when they will get in, you never know how quick things could change on them if they are to slow to act, a online company like ebay could make the switch fairly quickly while say a very large department store chain could take longer.

doubt it. they make too much money on paypal...

Whatever the outcome of the ideas given here, I suppose that right now, anyone selling something on Ebay can just add at the end of his product's description that he'll gladly accept BTC as payment.