Bitcoin Forum

Hi guys,
do you sometimes exchange gift cards to BTC? Is it a popular way of getting crypto?
A lot of my friends get lazy gifs, mostly Amazon gift cards and each Christmas they sell these cards on some bulletin boards.
Do you have the same problem? How do you get rid of these cards? Do you prefer p2p services, or are you looking for a legit company willing to purchase any quantity?
We have just started a new app to help you with the latter!
Bitof.io lets you quickly convert Amazon UK gift cards into BTC and is super simple to use. It's also mobile friendly!

Now, I don't want this to look like spam, because it's not. I'm actually looking for sincere feedback regarding www.bitof.io.

• What do you think about the website?
• Is it intuitive enough?
• Do you think it's innovative?
• Do you think it's useful?
• Do you like it?
• How to advertise?

Thanks in advance :)

I like the idea of the website, and If it's fast, it's even better since It's sometimes very hard to find people to buy from or sell to when it comes to P2P platforms.

It's definitely useful, but If you want to have a stronger and bigger userbase, It might be a good idea to target U.S cards.

As for advertising, I'm not sure how profitable this business is for you and If you're willing to pay for making it more popular, but If you're interested in growing it, I would suggest start a signature campaign and participating in auctions for the forum ad slots.

It's super fast, the transaction usually takes less than 5 minutes ;) We just verify whether the code is legit and send BTC right away.
A forum ad might be a good idea, thanks!

The idea is not bad because a lot of people receive gift cards and dont know how to spend them. Also it is pretty hard to find a website that is going to exchange your giftcards even for money, so exchanging gift cards for bitcoin is even harder to find.
I have checked your website and i think it looks suspicious. Dont get me wrong, i like the fact that its simple and everyone can use it but there is no information about who owns the website, at least a facebook or twitter page. The only thing i can find is an email adress and thats all. I dont say that you are here to scam people but as you asked for an opinion i told you mine.

Sure thing, we're going to start Twitter and FB accounts probably tomorrow. We wanted to advertise there, but apparently it's against the rules  ??? The same for google ads.
We would also like to get some certification that makes the whole thing more believable, but the process has just started and we haven't decided on what to choose yet ;)

For grabbing cheap deals,i look for easy solutions to purchase item. Gift cards are cheap and it is affordable than paying directly to shopping site. There are dark assumptions about these cards and it is not recommended to believe blindly to every reseller. Anyway, nice idea for making things affordable!

Thanks for the feedback!

Look on the face of it, its a great idea.  I have seen dozens and dozens of posts on here and other sites with people asking to exchange gift cards for BTC.
The issue is your website whilst clean is very basic. Lack of contact details/information/ FAQ's - it just smells like a scam. I am sure you are trying to be a legit operation, but right now the scam klaxon is sounding.

10% mark up is reasonable although not amazing.

 I would probably look for alternatives than using you based on all the above.

The problem with bitcoin (and fiat) is that there are certain individuals looking to scam the community for a quick buck. A seller can sell the used voucher for btc and run away. Unless there is an escrow holding for a long time

The title of the thread is misleading I gues you want to promote your website so just go strength to that, I personally have never exchange gift card for bitcoin before how I carry out my gift card transactions is through p2p method and am OK with that. But I will give the website a try and after then will come back to leave my feedback.

I like this idea and do believe that this concept exists.
You would just need to be extra careful of scammers.
There are plenty of scammers with gift cards so throw in BTC and it gives the scammers another platform to scam.

I think the idea of ​​the web site is very nice. I have never heard anything like this before. I think you can be successful if you do a serious job. Good work.

I have checked the website and I was impressed by the User Interface the bitcof.io got there. I also noticed that it was very straight to its point and very friend UI. I can tell that the website is great and innovative. It will become very useful soon once the bitcoin is accepted more.
I like it and I think the best way to advertise this is to connect with the organizations that are focused on events, holidays from special to birthdays parties and so on.

No one's really mentioned (reputable) services that already exist based around this concept, so I'll throw in one competitor that you should be aware of: Purse.io. I've used and continue to use Purse all the time, and it uses a system very similar to the straight gift card -> BTC idea you've set up; you can visit them and check it out for yourself in detail, but essentially people post things they'd like to buy on Amazon and gift card holders buy it for them with their balances in exchange for a slightly marked down BTC price.

It has a solid user base, has a good reputation, and works well. If you want your idea to succeed, you're going to need to out-compete businesses like Purse in one of those areas, and that more than likely means one of many things: money. Is this an idea you're willing to heavily invest in to succeed?

PM me if you want to talk more about this. I wish you the best in the meantime.

I definitely agree with what OmegaStarScream said; USD/US Amazon gift cards and US gift cards in general are more common than those of other currencies by a mile, and I also only use and obtain USD gift cards.

This isn't really something you can fix right now, but I typically trade gift cards for BTC on sites like Paxful or Localbitcoins or other reputable places where I have some level of support in case I get scammed. I generally do not trust newer sites with my money, and this isn't an exception in my eyes. I usually also get better rates with a P2P trade, though it's always nice to sell to a site as long as it's convenient for me.

Also might be good to mention that you only accept physical gift cards since I notice you require a picture of the gift card being sold for BTC in the selling process. I usually buy digital gift codes, so this doesn't work for people like me and this should be mentioned on the homepage of the site if you choose to keep things like this rather than in the middle of the transfer process.

 @leowonderful
We are aware of purse.io, but our goal is to streamline the service even more and focus only on people who want to sell cards. We totally eliminate the need to p2p, so there is literally no room for scams. 100% security of our customers and speed are the main ideas.
Don't get me wrong the social aspect is cool, but it has many flaws. You need to find someone willing to cooperate and it takes time. You can get scammed. Even if the support is there to help you, it can still be troublesome. In case of bitof.io the deal is simple: you give us your gift cards, we give you btc and you can be completely sure it is going to happen FAST :)
Also, a simple service easier to understand for new users, while it is not so simple and stress-free to satrt using purse.io.
US cards will come later, it's not anything that cannot be fixed.

@bitcoin revo I'll pm you later, if you have any ideas or questions :)

10% is really not a bad rate, considering all the people on paxful want atleast a 25% markup, and usually only accept physical Amazon cards.

Which makes me wonder, how are you going to prevent fraudulent cards from cashing out etc..?
Seems like scammers will simply target you because of the speed and irreversibility you're offering. Could be just me being pessimistic again, but you should really keep that in mind.

EDIT:
They don't? where do they state this? - Also again, pictures could easily be faked/photoshopped. just saying.

As long as the code is valid, it can be physical or digital, we don't mind. Don't worry about us being scammed, we have our methods of making sure everything is legit ;)

How do you exactly expect people to blindly send you their gift cards? how is this different from a newbie asking for a non-collateral loan or a newbie selling some digital goods?

the good looking website does not change that fact that you are a newbie with an anonymous identity , trying to buy gift cards and want everyone else to go first !.

let me re-phrase your post.


Hello , I want to buy amazon gift card for 10% discount, send me a UK gift card , and i will send you 90% bitcoin in 5 minutes, and hey , no escrow.

i am really surprised by most comments above for not worrying about this being another" better looking" scam  ???

Everthing has to start somehow, we are working on making the service more believable (faq, social media, etc).

Mmm, I don't exchange gift cards to BTC because I don't search that kinds in other websites. The popular way of getting crypto is from the faucet ;D

Is that really amazon give a gift card that we can convert it into BTC? I never heard about that because I never use Amazon for shopping.

Ahh, I see that you want to help crypto user which have a gift cards from Amazon to exchange it in your website and you send the btc amount to them. I think it's a good idea but you need to convince them about the ease to convert to btc.


Maybe he should try to look at bitpay services which can help the customer to convert from fiat to btc. Yes, he should have escrow to make the customer believe that they are legit.

The question is how we could implement escrow? Do you know any ready to use solutions that could meet our needs? Remember that bitof.io is the buying party in these transactions, so how would our customers, who are virtually sellers, profit from it?

using escrow with gift cards is pretty much useless, you can simply deny that the seller sent a working code after you redeem it, and they can easily accuse you for redeeming a code that did not work in the first place, and then it will be hard for the escrow agent to know who is lying.


someone mentioned about you requesting an image of the card? , is the process of verifying the code done manually? if not then how are you going to automatically extract the code from say a poor quality image?

After uploading the code you are shown a transaction status screen with a timer and a link to this status, so you can come back to it. We don't send any emails etc, so the service can be anonymous.
If the code is illegible or invalid, you are presented appropriate information there. We can also show you a customized message, for example some people try to send us codes for Amazon DE and we inform them about their mistake there :)

I've wanted to contact you but it seems that you don't accept PM from noobs ^^
Can you please send me your discord via PM? would be awesome!

This does not answer the question, is the verification done manually by humans? is it guaranteed that only 5 mins are required for the transaction? if it's done manually what if you are not online? will the user wait for hours/days/weeks ?

there are many missing details here.

We're using an automated system with an OCR. If it has any problems with a picture, we can verify it manually.
@Flyingduck2K: I can't PM you because I'm a noob either ;)