Bitcoin Forum

Before you go ahead and sue someone, I suggest you learn how to write adequate English paragraphs.  Paperwork is crucial in legalwork.

Came in with genuine interest in what was about to be discussed.

Leaving with no additional information.  Before you go ahead and sue someone, I suggest you learn how to write adequate English paragraphs.  Paperwork is crucial in legalwork.

 ;)

As a lawyer let me suggest (this is not legal advice) to be careful what you write on here as it might come up in the lawsuit. Good luck!

Isnt that why legal teams are paid to write the story for people mpattison?

TerraHasher, thank you for biting back!! Go you, and good luck :)

TL;DR summary:  

PayPal has been putting holds on my accounts and preventing me from accessing my own funds because I am selling miners.  I think Paypal is doing this because they regard bitcoin as competition.

I am suing Paypal.

This will be very interesting to watch.  Please keep us updated, TerraHasher!   

Here's a nicely paragraphed summary (http://www.butttrader.com/bitcoin-vs-paypal.html)  ;) with perspective.   

Sooooo conflicted. On the one hand, I want PayPal to pay for their BS, but on the other, I don't want them to improve, so that Bitcoin continues to be a much better option  :P

Something seems...fishy about this whole story. I've never heard of Paypal having anything against bitcoins, especially the actual hardware used because it's just computer hardware.

There must be something else in that mess of a wall you're not telling people.

I agree something is fishy with this story. It's not just paypal that does this, all merchant accounts have high risk departments that hold customers money for a certain amount of time. Paypal is just one of the worst because so many of their customers are joe smo's who have no merchant processing backgrounds and deal in high risk/high chargeback businesses (like selling used equipment, and in a notoriously chargeback friendly btc field)

Best of luck to the OP suing paypal though, seriously. Good to see someone really fighting. Hope that works out well for you. IMHO, I don't think this will go anywhere, at all.

Does anyone know the BB code for making a paragraph? I have tried 3 times now to fix the post but when i save it it still comes out the same and the HTML p code wont work as i expected. Sorry again for the run on. Me and SMF are not getting along this morning.

It makes sense to me that Paypal is at odds with Bitcoin, therefore have decided to use these tactics. It's believable, to me.

No, there are plenty of stories about Paypal freezing accounts or taking down auctions when it comes to Bitcoin.

Good work OP, good luck with the claim!

PayPal transactions are reversible. VERY reversible - like 60 days after the transaction, I think. That is one of the big advantages of the system, from a consumer standpoint.

BitCoin, on the other hand, is probably the least reversible currency available (and is touted as one of the big advantages of the system). It's not even reversible with a court order, like eGold, which is disallowed on PayPal.

If a PayPal balance was easily transferable to other currencies, especially in a non-reversible way, it would make PayPal much more attractive to crooks, because after scamming people, they would just immediately transfer the money out of PayPal (to eGold or BitCoin), way before PayPal could react and reverse the transaction. If left uncontrolled, this would eventually destroy the biggest advantage of PayPal, which is perceived consumer safety.

As Conor Lynch points out, PayPal does have other safeguards in place against money laundering schemes, such as a rolling 60-day hold on all transactions,  percentage-based holds reserved for handling elevated fraud rates, and other measures. But these measures are probably NOT fun and games for PayPal to implement, since they cost both a lot of manual labour, and annoys merchants. A lot of honest merchants get caught in the crossfire of these measures, which then (with righteous fury) describe their experiences on the Internet. As such, it makes sense to eliminate anything that makes the PayPal system attractive for fraudsters in the first place, and currency exchanges (again, this is not a ban against BitCoin in particular, which is most definitely a currency exchange) was probably high on that list. This might also not be PayPal's policy alone - VISA and MasterCard might not be super-happy about currency exchanges either.

The above problem does not exist with virtual goods (such as Facebook credits) because you cannot exchange it for another currency, such as dollars or euros, and is therefore not suitable for the money laundering scheme described above.

Why does that make sense? Paypal has nothing to gain from being against bitcoins. Paypal is not a form of currency. Bitcoins in no way threatens their profits and business model, and bitcoins is not competing against them in any way.

My guess is OP did something else to piss them off and they had no choice. I mean, if you are doing a million dollars worth of sales like you said, then all they stand to do is benefit from your service. So you most likely did something wrong you aren't telling us.

I fucking hate paypal but I dont see any case here.

Once more people start using Bitcoin for their transactions, Paypall will do less business. Less business means less profit.

Antitrust?  They'll let you sell Dell computers, but not BFL computers.

Yes, but nothing Paypal does is going to have a negative impact on Bitcoin adoption.  They have two choices: entice customers to do business with them, or drive them away.  

It makes sense because Paypal's business is based on processing transactions. Once more people start using Bitcoin for their transactions, Paypall will do less business. Less business means less profit. Do you see the connection?

I'm not sure if I believe this story because you say your attorney was incredulous that you recorded a phone call. In most states, it is totally legal to record a call, as long as at least one party (you in this case) is aware it is being recorded.

If your attorney doesn't know that, he is a horribly attorney or else this story just isn't true.

Does anyone know the BB code for making a paragraph? I have tried 3 times now to fix the post but when i save it it still comes out the same and the HTML p code wont work as i expected. Sorry again for the run on. Me and SMF are not getting along this morning.

It makes sense because Paypal's business is based on processing transactions. Once more people start using Bitcoin for their transactions, Paypall will do less business. Less business means less profit. Do you see the connection?

I think the OP said he got the paypal rep to admit on a recorded phone call it was because of bitcoin. I just don't think a lawsuit will be won because of some low level rep saying something like this, and some of other parts of the story seem like there's some holes in it. What I really meant before was that Paypal holds large sums of money from people for a variety of reasons all the time - and they've been doing this long before bitcoin even existed. It's built into their TOS.

IMHO anything "bitcoin" related is high risk to paypal right now, the OP sold a lot of equipment and then when on the phone, talked about bitcoin. It raised even more red flags I'm sure. A lot of people got ripped off selling coins through paypal, and paypal is just protecting it's interests and it's customers by holding money for a certain amount of time to ensure lower risk/chargebacks.  Trust me I'm not pro-paypal, just experienced in the hassles of selling in a high risk industry. It's the standard which many of you know.

No I don't. Paypals business is based on secure, safe transactions.  

Despite what everyone here will tell you, paypal isn't doing this because of profits. They're doing it to help combat fraud, which to me sounds 100% understandable. It says right in their policy you can't sell bitcoin miners or bitcoins, yet OP did anyways which is why they froze and put holds on his accounts.

Combat fraud?
I guess you missed the "HIT GOLD" section, and besides he is selling computers (miners) not bitcoins.

Before i go into too much detail, You read the title right. after 2 weeks, petitioning the SEC, FTC, IC3, NW3C, DOJ, and a hand full of state senators and other congress people for support.

I finally got a judge to allow me to file a lawsuit against PayPal, and after complying with the judges request that we send a letter of intent to sue them this week and giving them 2 weeks to reply or resolve the issues. We will be allowed to file a 4 MILLION dollar lawsuit against paypal, and the better news, although we cannot go class action, you still may be able to get in on the action too.

Now a little bit of the back story:

My wife and i both have been long time paypal users, in fact we have done close to 1 million dollars in sales through paypal in the past year alone. I cannot even begin to calculate how much in total over the 7-8 years we have used paypal. We have sold on ebay, sold on craigslist, sold on pretty much everywhere, and sold pretty much anything electronic for years. Never had a problem at all, and thats where bitcoin come in.

I started mining bitcoin a LONG time ago, near the beginning, and have rolled many a coin. In October when Bitcoin was at an all time high, i start doing some numbers, and seeing all these companies selling hardware for bitcoin, figured, well what the hell. i got a ton of it, and if i never use it its really worth nothing at all, so i order hundreds of USB miners, hundreds of blades, hundreds of anything i could confirm legit and take to ebay to join the club of "your and idiot and your going to pay me $695 for a V2 blade" sellers. its almost criminal how many i sold. I sold USB miners, the ever famous 200 GH/s avalon clone miners from china, you name it, i sold it if it was hardware. Never a complaint that resulted in a charge back, in fact the few complaints i got from buyers were pretty legit and dead hardware related, not only did they get their money back, but got a new miner as well. its good for business, and good for bitcoin.

In early december, now selling mainly only bitcoin hardware, out of nowhere i get a limitation on my paypal account. they want documents uploaded, photo ID, proof of address, invoices, what have you. most of it all stuff i had submitted already in the past. at the time they had held hostage, $33,600 3 days of going the rounds with paypal and the limit is raised.

My wife and i promptly transfer the funds out of the bank. Having a bad gut feeling, i contacted my legal team since i have had them on retainer for years and never used them much, and they tell me to just start keeping a record of everything, every phone call, every e-mail, the name of everyone i spoke with, every voicemail paypal left, pretty much everything. so i did, good thing too, the day after, surprise, they put a limit on our account again. right after 8 auctions closed and we had $71,000 and change in the account. same crap, we need ID, blah blah, so i call them, documenting everything, telling them that we already did this just a few days prior.

They get rude, start stumbling around when i keep drilling them as to why again when we already did, the supervisor puts me on hold for about 20 minutes, then comes back on the line and says " There has been a recent increase in activity from your account blah blah we need to wait for delivery conformation" now mind you, our account activity has greatly decreased as we have focused strictly on ebay, and only on bitcoin items. None the less, i document everything, 2 days later delivery confirmation is sent from the USPS tracking numbers.

The funds are released from Ebay, but still limits on the paypal account. So i grab the pen and paper to start taking notes, and call paypal. after going from customer service rep, to supervisor, to specialist, to team lead, then finally to manager over the course of 1 hour 30 minutes with nobody giving me any real information. I HIT GOLD, the manager states, your selling bitcoin. i politely reply, "no sir, i am not, that is against paypals rules, i am selling specialized hardware which is like a computer but designed for one purpose, and that is hashing on a SHA-256 encrypted network", He replies back, well its all the same and bitcoin is direct competition with paypals business model therefore we do not condone, anything bitcoin related. and wouldnt ya know it, smartphones have cool little apps that record phone calls, which i always do so i can take notes later on after the call for the lawsuit i was planning to file.

The next morning i called my lawyer and told him about it. at first he says "you did what? recorded them without their permission?" i said no, they were the ones who told me the call could be recorded or monitored, and i just wanted to make sure it was recorded right. He says, hold on one second please, switches lines, and calls paypals customer service number then 3 ways the call. not even 20 seconds into the call when it is getting ready to switch to a representative, presto there is the call recording disclosure.

Instantly he begins to laugh, and says, well ok, record them all then and we can transcribe them. Needless to say it took a few days and a few dozen threatening phone calls, but we got the funds un frozen. I figured, well that was fun, but back to business. here comes the kicker, 7 hours later i have only 2 auctions close for a total of $8,300 in total.

i print the labels, stop at UPS in the morning and drop off the miners, and before i could even get home. whamo account limitations again. i think to myself. you have to be kidding me, a company cannot suck this bad and still be in business. So i look at what they want this time, and all it says is check e-mail for additional required documentation. so i check our e-mail, and there is nothing at all. so back to the phone. again from CS rep, to sup, to lead to manager over the course of about an hour this time. then put on hold for 43 minutes, and the guy only check in once saying its going to be a few more minutes.

Then a lady ( real bitch of a woman ) gets on the phone and says "my name is blah blah, from the paypal high risk assessment department, we need invoices from your suppliers before we can release the funds, i tell her, "listen lady, we sent an invoice to you already last week for 10 times more machines than we have sold so far dont play that game with me" she then puts me on hold, and says oh, well there was a charge back on your account which needs to be settled before we can lift the hold. mind you i am sitting in front of the computer looking at my screen, not only do we have thousands in the account, but we have NEVER in years of selling had a charge back, and surely not any showing on our account now. So i ask, ok, who, where, when? we have thousands in our account, so unless everyone did a charge back at once, there is no way we are negative, i am looking at my balance now !!!! She says ok we will look into it and give you a call tomorrow. although not satisfied, i was tired, so i hung up. funny thing, 5 minutes later i refresh the page and the account is not limited an more.

This brings us to last week, we made it an entire week and 4 whole smooth transactions through ebay/paypal, not a problem, i had actually thanked my lawyer that monday for his help, and said, hope i dont need you again any time soon. That afternoon we had a few more auctions close. and same scenario, i leave UPS drive the 5 blocks home and in that time, our account gets limited, only of course after i send the merchandise. This time no prevail. $54,600usd frozen as of 12/30, dozens of calls, dozens of BS reasons why they did it, and no resolution option, it says check email for required documentation. By wednesday afternoon my legal team says O.K. this is where we step in, a company cannot hold peoples money hostage because they dont like bitcoin.

And the battle begins, their paralegals transcribe every phone call, copy every e-mail print every screen shot, copy hundreds of complaints from srew-paypal.com and paypal sucks.com. The start blasting it everywhere, writing senators, congress people, filing complaints with the DOJ, the FTC, the IC3, the NW3C everybody pretty much, at the same time the file a petition with the court for a ruling on letting us Sue them in court. The next day the court throws it out.

Then friday comes, and my lawyer calls and says " you have 20 minutes, we need to be at the courthouse" i didnt know what to think, they really didnt either. we get there and this sweet little old lady takes us to a room behind the courtroom and the judge was there. he pulls out a folder from his desk drawer about 3 inches thick it is filled with sheets of paper, and little pick pieces of paper, he then turns his phone around and it is flashing the number 34 on it, as in 34 voice mails. He says "you sure know how to ruin a mans weekend, i dont know who you talked to, but i want to see all of you in my courtroom on monday morning and i will rule on your petition.

For a minute, i really thought i was going to be in some trouble. The lawyers said this is either going to be really bad, or really good, imagine how my weekend was spent this weekend. This morning we arrive 30 minutes early at the court house and the room had like 15 people in it. The judge comes in, sits down, and says " Send them a letter of intent to sue, request that they reply within 2 weeks, if they do not resolve the issue, or reply, i will see this case in my courtroom" !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Guess whos going to sue paypal. :) letter of intent gets sent in the morning via US certified mail. Paypal starts to bully bitcoin AND BITCOIN BITES BACK

Now, how does this affect you? well in a lot of ways. 1: if we win, paypal could lose their right to accept credit cards, and face it, what is paypal without credit cards? 2: what is bitcoin without paypal? simple EVERYTHING  in terms of funds transfer and commerce. and finally....

3: have you been wronged by paypal yourself? do you have a well documented history of being held hostage by paypal? Well, we now have a pretty good process for you to get revenge, and i am going to start a website that tells you how to do it whether we win or lose in court. In the mean time remember these steps because documentation is everything.

1: take screen shots, make sure your clock is showing the date and time in the picture. anything they put on the resolution center page

2: always print EVERY email. get a folder, a real paper folder, print them and file them, sorted by date.

3: ALWAYS record every phone call, even if your state wont let you use it in court. it is not illegal to transcribe a call. so record it, then get a free software that does text to speech and let it transcribe the call for you. once done PRINT IT and save it. Record the time of the call and the date.

4: If you have to deal in fiat for the time being try and avoid paypal.

5: be sure and keep all your interactions filed neatly, sooner or later you are going to need to file a formal complaint with SEVERAL agencies, authorities, regulatory bodies, and eventually draft a letter of intent to sue.

And there you have it, Hopefully paypal gets everything they deserve in court. How dare they start commiting white collar crimes against people who are "associated with bitcoin"

[/b]

and bitcoin is going to win

Go for it, just expect them to close your account give you a pittance and a NDA and forbid you from ever doing business with them again.

/sued paypal many years ago and won.

Good luck, they ruined my booming business too. I was at the peak of my sales and they limited me as well several times.

Combat fraud?
I guess you missed the "HIT GOLD" section, and besides he is selling computers (miners) not bitcoins.

Why does that make sense? Paypal has nothing to gain from being against bitcoins. Paypal is not a form of currency. Bitcoins in no way threatens their profits and business model, and bitcoins is not competing against them in any way.

My guess is OP did something else to piss them off and they had no choice. I mean, if you are doing a million dollars worth of sales like you said, then all they stand to do is benefit from your service. So you most likely did something wrong you aren't telling us.

Paypal, and consequently eBay, is very much at odds with Bitcoin as a merchant payment.  Specifically, they are at odds with Bitpay (http://www.butttrader.com/bitcoin-vs-paypal.html) and other Bitcoin payment processors. 

Besides eBay being impacted because they own Paypal, until they accept Bitcoins, then people will have have a reason to switch to auctions that do.  On the other hand, if they do accept Bitcoins, then it erodes their Paypal business. 

Aw I didn't know Bitmit shutdown.

Ok, sorry guys, i didnt expect this much of a response and as much as i want to read each and every one of your posts, my current day to days are keeping me pretty tied down.

Of the few posts i browsed through i did some some very wrong information, some very far out there accusations, and some people who either got lost in the run on paragraph glitch, or didnt read the whole post so i am going to make a few things clear.

1: We have had a paypal business account for a decade now, linked to our business bank accounts, and the account is registered with our EIN not my social security number

2: California is a two party consent law state. meaning both parties must agree to having a phone call recorded. My lawyers did not think that paypal gave that consent when they first found out i recorded the calls. It was only when they heard the recording giving that consent to EVERYONE in which it became legal and admissible in court.

3: Paypal on NUMEROUS occasions admitted that the ONLY reason they were freezing the account was because i sold bitcoin hardware.

4: We have had not a single chargback or issue this entire calender year ( 2013 ) which warranted freezing the assets

5: The reason paypal WILL lose their right to process credit cards if i win is because a major part of the lawsuit is based on cardholder agreements. By processing credit cards paypal has agreed to adhere to the rules, regulations, and laws pertaining to the issuing company of the card. In which they are violating by seizing cardholder funds without warrant or court order. This has nothing to do with the fact that they are my funds once transferred to a bank. By law, until a transaction takes place in which a buyer receives goods and a seller receives funds, the funds belong to the buyer or card holder. Seizing those funds as a payment processor without warrant or order is a crime. Had all the merchandise been shipped to customers this would have been a different story. This part of what is going on has nothing to do with myself directly, this is a result of the FTC and SEC as paypal holds those monies in a money market account.

6: paypal does not make a profit. yes they charge you fees, but they have yet to develop a business model which has profit. With the amount of charg backs and delinquent negative accounts held on paypal, they have operated in the red since inception. They are barley 10 years old, maybe a little more, still a new company by every aspect, and they are still floating on borrowed capital ( ebay capital )

7: Nothing in paypals agreement states you cannot sell bitcoin mining hardware. For that matter it dosnt specifically say you cannot sell bitcoin either, but with legal interpretation it can be considered a currency no matter if the Fed admits it or not. A bitcoin miner is just a highly specialized computer. Trust me, my lawyers are not chumps, nor idiots. The only reason i hired them in the first place is because they have won 90% of their cases against major corporations like Lockheed Martin, Disney, Wal-Mart, Etc. as a matter of fact even their associates have to have a degree from Harvard ( they dont legally say that, it just seems to be the case as everyone there came from Harvard )

I am sure there was a lot more that i missed, but i haven't much time tonight.

To all of you, (hundreds of messages) who have messaged me. I feel your pain, i am there right now as you can see. Rather than reply to each of you one at a time which would take weeks. I will be starting a thread to help all of you out as a group. I am just one man who happened to get luck with a few well written letters from some very important people that convinced a judge to let me take them to court. Your chance of replicating that are slim to none. I am not here to give you false hopes, those are just the facts. From experience i can tell you that as a GROUP, collectively with thousands of pages of documented communications and hundreds of complaints filed with regulatory bodies simultaneously you would all again as a GROUP increase your chances of success.

Trust me, thousands of people have tried to get paypal in a court room. just google it. you can count the number of people who pulled it off on one hand.

I will post a link to my Hold paypal accountable thread once i have it written. It will take me a few days so please hang tight. Hopefully i dont suffer from paragraph tofu on that post as well.

Thank you all for your support. Our letter of intent was mailed today, and now we just wait. i will keep you all as in the loop as time permits. For those of you who want to get in on a group action against paypal please see the original post. SAVE, DOCUMENT, PRINT, AND RECORD EVERYTHING (check your local law before you record, some states do not allow it no matter what without court order)

Maybe ebay bought it and killed it.

I didn't read it all (sorry), but I'm interested:

Is there a BTC address for the legal fund? I and am sure many other BTC supports would be interested in donating.

Please post an address for donations.

Add me to the suit.  Paypal froze my account with $26,000 from selling on hand day-1 KNC Jupiters in it because someone reported that I was selling bitcoin.  No appeal.  Frozen solid.  I was told there were chargebacks, but not allowed into my account to see what those chargebacks were.  Money will be frozen for another 4 months.  (After 6 months they will decide how much of my money they will allow me to haveback.)

Please PM me for contact info - I absolutely want to be a participant in this lawsuit.  

Paypal has given me a lot of grief when it comes to bitcoin related sales.  They made false claims about my account, held my funds for no valid reason, and when I submitted the documentation and waited (3 months later) still they apparently failed to review my documents.

I have evidence that Paypal has ignored my submissions.

After being on hold for about an hour and discussing the situation and trying to resolve the issue, they got upset and "bitchcoins" came up, I said "I'm sorry?" and then the guy goes off on another subject.

I'm sure he doesn't care, because these people probably did chargebacks after he sold bitcoin on ebay.

Of course, it was totally stupid to sell coin on ebay, and accept payment by paypal.

Amen to that by the way, i gave my lawyers 200 BTC back August for retainer, come October one of them (jokingly) proposed to me. Why do my own dirty work when people will do it for bitcoin. all i had to do was follow their instructions.

Doesn't Paypal state in their user agreement that all disputes must be handled through "arbitration" and that by agreeing to the user agreement you revoke your right to sue them in a court of law?

Good luck, it's hard to win a case against a big corporation. Corporations like Paypal own the US government.

Update:

Today is the day the letter of intent was set to be delivered, so i should know within the next 12 hours, and the 2 week clock should start ticking. i will post the minute i get confirmation. Thats all i have at this Time


On another note, Can we please keep from all the off topic discussion, This is not a debate thread on what you can and cannot sell on ebay, this is not a thread for you to come and beg for donations because you got scammed. This IS a thread where people can keep updated on the progress of a pending lawsuit, and share their experiences with paypal themselves.

I am a VERY laid back and chill individual, but at the same time i dont find it fair that someone has to wollow through 5 pages that are one third filled with garbage and off topic posts about things that do not even pertain to paypal just to find the latest update. I hate being confrontational so lets please just keep it on topic, i dont want to have to be that guy who goes running to the moderators, and would rather just stop keeping everyone updated than have to fight with people taking the thread off topic. Please be respectful of your fellow forum readers.

TerraHasher, I've been a big supporter of your casue, helping you get the word out by bringing a lot of traffic to your thread.  Now I see one of my posts get deleted as off-topic?  Yes, technically, it wasn't within your narrow scope of discussing the day-to-day legal proceedings.  But, it was very much on topic in that it was supporting your notion that Paypal considers Bitcoin a competitive threat, which, as I understand it, is an important point in your case.  Am I right?  

This should be an open forum.  Yes, it's an imperfect world.  I haven't been happy having to ready 7 pages to keep up, with some off topic stuff in it.  But, removing posts because they don't fit a very narrow scope of the OP despite being on-topic in the minds of many of us is very anti-open discussion.  Moderation should be reserved for removing flames and spam.  Clearly off topic discussion should, if possible, be moved, with deletion as a last resort.  

I had someone say negative things about me on a comment on one of my blog posts.  Did I delete it?  No, I responded intelligently.  
  
Can I suggest you create a thread clearly begun with the narrow purpose of documenting the day to day proceedings, and leave this thread, where you detail the case, open to discussion by those who want to discuss the merits of the case?

Yes they do, and thats why we needed a judge to rule that he would hear the case in open court. On the principal that this is not a small claims case as it is WELL over $5,000, and furthermore as this case has criminal actions.

The reason Paypal binds that arbitration is because they know that a lot of what they do is Illegal and if it ends up in a court room ( which is very very very very rare ) they just try and buy the prosecution off with a minimal stipens and slap them with an NDA. The difference here being, we are not just seeking compensatory and punitive damages. I do not have a "buy me off" value and will NOT be signing and NDA unless paypal is FULLY held accountable for their criminal actions.

This isnt about money, anybody who knows me personally knows that the bitcoin i hold is more than enough to live off for 4 lifetimes. Even if this entire lawsuit goes array, i have decided personally that here and now is the time paypal starts having to play by the rules, and if needed i will still continue to lead a massive movement against paypals criminal actions. Just in the bitcoin community alone i have been contacted by WELL over 1,500 people now who have almost the same experience with paypal.

Its the same principal as doctor assisted suicide. Killing another human being is a crime, just because they sign a piece of paper agreeing "hey, its ok to kill me now, i want to die" does not make it legal as many courts have ruled hundreds of times. Its the same with paypal. 70 % of their standard business practice is illegal by charge of the FTC, SEC and several other regulatory bodies. Just because you check a box saying you agree to let them treat you with disregard to the law, does not make it legal.

Thus far paypal has been able to buy off anyone who challenges them, but most people who challenge them are opposing over a few thousand dollars, so when paypal says "fine heres your money, but you sign this NDA first" people just take it as they know they have not the financial means to continue to peruse paypal. I on the other hand have a great legal team who actually to this point have refused to take any more money from me, and even if it gets to the point i need to pay, i can go toe to toe with paypal for a VERY long time as a result of all the wonderful life changes bitcoin has brought me.

paypal after all has not made a profit a single year in business yet, and the only thing keeping them afloat is ebays seller fees.

For the rest of you who want to repeat the same post over and over:

I am well aware paypal is probably following this thread with a fine tooth comb. But with that, they are also aware that i have thousands of people who want to take action too, and even though we cannot combine lawsuits into class action, they are aware that i am not going to stop and that even if i lose thousands of people from the bitcoin community alone are going to have someone to help them, and lead them into their own actions as a group. Not to mention how many people will stand up against paypals illegal actions once they know there is a group leading a charge against them that are not part of bitcoin.

In summary: The crime that has been allowed to continue for a decade now will stop here, and it will stop now. WE WILL TAKE A STAND even if i lose. you can silence one or two, but you cannot silence the masses.

The reason Paypal binds that arbitration is because they know that a lot of what they do is Illegal and if it ends up in a court room ( which is very very very very rare ) they just try and buy the prosecution off with a minimal stipens and slap them with an NDA. The difference here being, we are not just seeking compensatory and punitive damages. I do not have a "buy me off" value and will NOT be signing and NDA unless paypal is FULLY held accountable for their criminal actions.

This isnt about money, anybody who knows me personally knows that the bitcoin i hold is more than enough to live off for 4 lifetimes. Even if this entire lawsuit goes array, i have decided personally that here and now is the time paypal starts having to play by the rules, and if needed i will still continue to lead a massive movement against paypals criminal actions. Just in the bitcoin community alone i have been contacted by WELL over 1,500 people now who have almost the same experience with paypal.

Giant run-on paragraph, TL;DR, attention-deficit is such a gyft

Paypal is full of BS, those clowns almost ruined our business. They automatically process chargebacks without investigation, customers order an item we deliver, customer claims item not received even with full tracking info and paypal just charge us without even looking at the tracking info. I hope they fall hard.
We have a new site just for bitcoins and it couldn't have been better.

TL; DR:  He's suing Paypal for blocking ASIC miners.

You can record what ever you want.  You just won't be able to use it in a court of law in some jurisdictions, thus the suggestion to record all calls and create transcripts of the calls in those states where two party consent is required.

What about all the people who use paypal everyday just fine? 

What about all the people who use paypal everyday just fine?  

Hello all, and thank you for your support again, for personal reasons ( a very high intolerance to children who think that they have the world all figure out and can never be wrong as demonstrated here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=406850.0 ) I have decided to leave Bitcointalk.org and stick to a forum that i use that is not so over run with trolls, and morons. Not saying that any of you on this thread are any of that, but outside of this thread it seems every single thread on this forum has the typical childish nonsense and you cant make or even read a topic without it. So i am throwing in the towel with it here. again nothing personal, i am just too old to have tolerance for such ignorance.

I am not going to leave all of you hanging none the less, as i have made many great friends through this forum over my short month or two here. so i am going to continue updating on this matter over at this link: https://www.bitcoinforum.com/bitcoin-discussion/bitcoin-vs-paypal-and-paypal-is-getting-sued/

Again, its nothing personal against any single individual... Well maybe a few, but i am just too old to have tolerance for the kid stuff.

So it is with a humble farewell that i end with my final goodbye. Thanks to all of you for your support thus far, it was really nice to know i wasn't alone in being done wrong by paypal.

Hey guys, thanks for the support, I wasnt really looking for donations. The minute someone starts seeking money for something a conversation usually turns from being productive into a whole other conversations about "scam, rippoff, blah blah, troll some more etc." Im sure you get the idea. I will post an address for now for people who want to send donations for whatever, but i do have to re-state, as of now, the legal team is not charging me anything so donations would be more on principal than anything. Also if posting a donation address starts to take this thread off topic and in another direction, please understand that i will take down the address. I do not want this to turn into one of "those" threads.

Again, thank you all for your support, we are patiently awaiting confirmation from the post office that the letter has been delivered and signed for. I will be sure and update you all once that happens as that is when the 2 weeks to take action clock begins.

(also on a side note, i had one of our buyers get scared and back out on a Round 1 batch 2 ( march delivery) BA x-3 machine because of paypal freezing their funds as well for sending us payment through paypal. If anyone is interested i can contact BA and see if they will allow an address transfer or something if you want to buy it. Just message me)

Donation address: 1A8anGihV3pvHeuhqzGsAjt2S71WY2qea4

two week

Loads of bollocks about your fight with paypal just to advertise your own forum.
Your trust really says all.
And you want to win with paypal, when kids made u quit this forum?

Good job, in my eyes u just prove what a looser you are.

Oh yeah, we forgot about those 7 people. ummmmmm. well their day is coming i'm sure. Nobody gets away from paypal scott free unless they dont use their account or never sell anything.

Hey guys, thanks for the support, I wasnt really looking for donations. The minute someone starts seeking money for something a conversation usually turns from being productive into a whole other conversations about "scam, rippoff, blah blah, troll some more etc." Im sure you get the idea. I will post an address for now for people who want to send donations for whatever, but i do have to re-state, as of now, the legal team is not charging me anything so donations would be more on principal than anything. Also if posting a donation address starts to take this thread off topic and in another direction, please understand that i will take down the address. I do not want this to turn into one of "those" threads.

Again, thank you all for your support, we are patiently awaiting confirmation from the post office that the letter has been delivered and signed for. I will be sure and update you all once that happens as that is when the 2 weeks to take action clock begins.


Donation address: 1A8anGihV3pvHeuhqzGsAjt2S71WY2qea4

Thank you for the affirmation that i was making the right choice by leaving this forum, i almost felt bad for a minute. as you can clearly see above I DID NOT WANT TO DO ANY DONATION, and knowing the mentality of the kids on here knew exactly what was going to happen. Furthermore, i DO NOT OWN the other forum, i am just a moderator there, and as for the rest, it has nothing to do with emotions, its tolerance. I have a rather explosive personality and i have found it best just to stay away from people with childish mentalities who are in a fight for digital validation of their pathetic lives. With that, i bid you all farewell, and leave with a thank you to all of those who were true spporters.

Thank you for the affirmation that i was making the right choice by leaving this forum, i almost felt bad for a minute. as you can clearly see above I DID NOT WANT TO DO ANY DONATION, and knowing the mentality of the kids on here knew exactly what was going to happen. Furthermore, i DO NOT OWN the other forum, i am just a moderator there, and as for the rest, it has nothing to do with emotions, its tolerance. I have a rather explosive personality and i have found it best just to stay away from people with childish mentalities who are in a fight for digital validation of their pathetic lives. With that, i bid you all farewell, and leave with a thank you to all of those who were true spporters.

jaequery (http://bitkoins.com/discussion/61062/can-bitcoin-save-my-familys-christmas/p1) is most likely a "donation" scammer.
And she asks for donations to an address controlled by Terrahasher:
https://i.imgur.com/gbTCgWe.jpg

Also, Terrahasher:
- claims to be calm, but gets pissed as soon as he's busted
- claims to own 80k+ bitcoins and has a donation address in signature ;D
- claims he's never been scammed, and still posts interesting screenshot with lots of useful data (could it be on purpose ?  ::))
- claims he has been in bitcoin world for 5 years and still thinks people actually type in each character of their bitcoin addresses when asking for donations (and thus can make typos...)

Kudos to shawshankinmate37927 for busting this guy.
100% scammer in my book.

I'm not sure.  You bring up some excellent points.  But I honestly don't think its a scam.  He said he doesn't need donations and even admitted his attorney is taking anything up front.  I think this actually happened. 

Best thing to do is wait a couple of weeks and see if this gets a case number. 

Hello all, and thank you for your support again, for personal reasons ( a very high intolerance to children who think that they have the world all figure out and can never be wrong as demonstrated here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=406850.0 ) I have decided to leave Bitcointalk.org and stick to a forum that i use that is not so over run with trolls, and morons.

Well that is proof positive he is lying. Attorneys pressing a case pro bono for a guy claims he is worth 80 mil?

No such attorneys on the planet but it was a good story I guess.

Not sure what the angle is, don't really care. Maybe just delusional pathological. 

Is this OP?

http://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/2014/01/10/ebay-merchant-sue-paypal-anti-bitcoin-policies/

Well they quoted him so it's definitely OP!  But it still doesn't make it legit until we see a case number or docket number.

Lol at articles getting so desperate they will take news right out of forums... even if it's not confirmed

It's fucking sad...and increasingly the case with all journalism in general, particularly in the USA.

Anyone can write some racist/sexist/intolerant bullshit on an Applebee's receipt and post it on reddit.
Next thing you know, Good Morning America presents it as fact without, you know, knowing all of the fucking facts.

It's fucking sad...and increasingly the case with all journalism in general, particularly in the USA.

Anyone can write some racist/sexist/intolerant bullshit on an Applebee's receipt and post it on reddit.
Next thing you know, Good Morning America presents it as fact without, you know, knowing all of the fucking facts.

and as i read it only provided a donation address after a few people asked for it, and for that matter not a single penny was donated to that address as i can see unless i am looking it up wrong.

Awww, deleted?  ::)

Sorry i'm new to this, what was deleted? Are you talking about the post on reddit? i think it got removed for begging after reading through the comments. Which makes it seem even more fishey that someone is able to publish an article claiming to be the original.

???????? is there something i am missing here ???????? My BTC ? what? can someone please translate for me?

TL;DR summary:  

PayPal has been putting holds on my accounts and preventing me from accessing my own funds because I am selling miners.  I think Paypal is doing this because they regard bitcoin as competition.

I am suing Paypal.

Sorry i'm new to this, what was deleted? Are you talking about the post on reddit? i think it got removed for begging after reading through the comments. Which makes it seem even more fishey that someone is able to publish an article claiming to be the original.

Hey guys, thanks for the support, I wasnt really looking for donations. The minute someone starts seeking money for something a conversation usually turns from being productive into a whole other conversations about "scam, rippoff, blah blah, troll some more etc." Im sure you get the idea. I will post an address for now for people who want to send donations for whatever, but i do have to re-state, as of now, the legal team is not charging me anything so donations would be more on principal than anything. Also if posting a donation address starts to take this thread off topic and in another direction, please understand that i will take down the address. I do not want this to turn into one of "those" threads.

Again, thank you all for your support, we are patiently awaiting confirmation from the post office that the letter has been delivered and signed for. I will be sure and update you all once that happens as that is when the 2 weeks to take action clock begins.

(also on a side note, i had one of our buyers get scared and back out on a Round 1 batch 2 ( march delivery) BA x-3 machine because of paypal freezing their funds as well for sending us payment through paypal. If anyone is interested i can contact BA and see if they will allow an address transfer or something if you want to buy it. Just message me)

Donation address: 1A8anGihV3pvHeuhqzGsAjt2S71WY2qea4

Um, your a little off on the address there mate, its back on like page 4 or 5.   Hence the reason i was questioning the troll's posts from the other thread. Never mind, i dont really care, i was just stating an observation in the first place. Just seems a lot of people jumped to conclusions a little too soon. as a matter of fact it seems the OP hit the nail right on the head, dosn't look like it took more than two days for the scam, ripoff, trolling stuff to start.

Um, your a little off on the address there mate, its back on like page 4 or 5.   Hence the reason i was questioning the troll's posts from the other thread. Never mind, i dont really care, i was just stating an observation in the first place. Just seems a lot of people jumped to conclusions a little too soon. as a matter of fact it seems the OP hit the nail right on the head, dosn't look like it took more than two days for the scam, ripoff, trolling stuff to start.

Sorry I just had to split the huge wall into parts.

Your story sounded like what happened to me with PayPal. But I didn't sue. I wished I did now.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=406850.msg4415870#msg4415870

Look for the first one (13cJy...) on google and come back.
Again, credits to shawshankinmate37927.

If the OP is not legit, I must admit to have been taken in.

We were all blinded by the excitement of Paypal getting their due reward I think! ;)

The Observer = TerraHasher

I'm 100% sure.

I like paypal  :-\ It works just fine for me

Don't tempt fate... once you've seen the dark side of Paypal you reassess the idea of having them as part of your life.

We were all blinded by the excitement of Paypal getting their due reward I think! ;)

I made a post hours before he was revealed as a scam wishing him the best of luck.  Strong judge of character I am. ::)

I dont think that he was "revealed" a scam, i think it was just people accusing him of being a scam so dont feel too bad i'm still following it myself on that other site. So i must be the worst judge of character in history. Of course according to the guy half way up the page. I am him so maybe its not so bad. ROFLMAO

well since you refuted it up there and came back down here to refute it again... and even invoked the bold "roflmao"... I would have to put my money on you are indeed a sock puppet.

OP is a scammer anyone who reads the thread will figure that out. Don't feel bad if you got taken, there was no obvious angle from the get go, just a pathological liar doing what pathological liars do. Can't distrust everybody all the time, though it may help in bitcoin world to start there and work backwards.

Later terrahasher/Observer/Lady-who-doth-protest-too-much...

You know your IP address is visible to the mods, right? Just a heads up.

I'm assume you are talking to me, and i fail to see what that has to do with anything? If you are trying to imply that my IP is the same as the OP then your way out on a limb which is soon to break. But i applaud your conspiracy theory mentality.

“Conspiracy theory is the ultimate refuge of the powerless. If you cannot change your own life, it must be that some greater force controls the world.”

- Roger Cohen

I'm assume you are talking to me

Hey Terrobserverhasher,

I've grown accustomed to trolls and scammers over the years, dime a dozen online for sure. But I wonder what the point is. You're obviously a pretty smart guy, why not join the ranks of the non-trolls and do something productive/constructive with your life? In the end nobody is going to give a shit, whether you hoodwinked a bunch of strangers or not, you aren't going to make a decent living hustling people in the long run, all you are doing is finding some temporary fix for your ego and that isn't going to solve any of your problems aside from make you feel better until you have to do it all over again.

Ditch the self-induced mindfuck, grow up and learn to be a man. Do something worth remembering, be a decent human being and make the world a better place.

(I'm henceforth placing you on my ignore list, so no need to respond),