Bitcoin Forum

According to their site and their twitter page: "Coingig is going to be shutting down, we will process all remaining orders and make sure everyone is paid. We had a good run."

No explanation that I could find.  I was starting to take all my business there because they only charge a 5% fee rather than eBay/PayPals combined ~13%.  I wonder if they are worried about being charged with money laundering?

Wow, I wonder why? That's quite abrupt and disheartening. We need more of these marketplaces.

The only reason I could think of is if the owner was scared of being charged with money laundering.  If someone else was selling illegal goods on there but he was facilitating the BTC transfer, he could probably get in trouble.  Hopefully someone else will step up and maybe legitimize a BTC marketplace, maybe require an ID.  That might prevent people from trying to sell stolen goods, etc.

Sad indeed. I'm curious to the whole story of this--they were doing some great things for marketplace adoption.

There's https://cryptothrift.com/. They didn't allow illegal items and wouldn't even let you sell stuff like Cannabis seeds on there.

Did Coingig allow the sale of drugs? No wonder they are closing down.

No, I just said they wouldn't even let people sell seeds, so where'd you get that from?

Yes, confirmed on their site.

Need to get those servers rolling for cryptothrift.com (https://cryptothrift.com) as it's the only marketplace and auction site still standing

Never seen drugs on coingig, their mods were right on track actually!

Ah sorry misread, yes then it is interesting why the sudden closure, first bitmit now this.

Feathercoin have one too: https://feathercoinmarket.com/index.php

It's weird that these markets are closing down. There's potentially a lot of money to be made. I'd also rather use coins than pay ebay and PP's rapebastard fees.

There are so many regulations in a lot of countries in terms of escrow services. As long as Bitcoin is not officially a form of currency, it's still not illegal to hold it in escrow without holding a financial service license $30,000+/year.

But sadly, that won't be the case for too long...

What ever happened to bitmit? That went down a while back as well.

any idea what might be the reason behind the shutdown.

Is it because feds busted 2 Miami guys in connection to ML a couple of days ago.?
http://krebsonsecurity.com/2014/02/florida-targets-high-dollar-bitcoin-exchangers/

Quick question : Do you guys think sites like coingig come under AML laws eventhough bitcoin was being exchanged for goods / services.

It would be nice if Coingig told the community the reasons, I wanted to make a legal marketplace after bitmit closed, but seeing how neither them nor coingig are giving any reasons I am nervous now and think its not worth it

It's either legal issues or technical issues (stolen money, TX malleability etc). Or it's quite possible that running a website like this is too much effort, but I feel that in this situation they'd at least auction off the website to a new owner.

That would be nice if they did that.  I was starting to use it instead of eBay because of much more user friendly fees and no PayPal BS.  Oh well, maybe someone will create something better.

Sounds like additional incentive for ebay to start allowing its users to transact in crypto...  RIP Coingig

I'd rather use a different site for various reasons including not using PayPal and not having to pay their and ebay's rapebastard fees.

Rapebastard LOL

Nice choice of words there LOL

Haha  ;D. I think the word rapebastard is quite adequate here  :D.