Bitcoin Forum

I've been contacted by someone in another country (B) who wants a product from the country where I live (A). He would pay me in BTC to buy the product and ship it to him.

I want to make an estimation of the price of the product + price of shipping, add a deposit %, and divide by an estimation of Bitcoin price in A's currency, to know how much Bitcoin he should send to an escrow at first. Then I'd buy the product, ship it, and I'd take Bitcoin's price at the time of both events, to know how much it really costed. Then the escrow could send me the real price in BTC, and the difference back to the buyer in country B.

But the buyer insists there is no need for a deposit, that using an escrow is enough. The problem is I don't know the exact price of the shipping until I'm at the post office with the product already purchased ready to be sent, and we don't know what the price of Bitcoin in A's currency will be at the time of purchase. There could be a day or two between the time he sends Bitcoin to the escrow, and the time the product is bought.

If you are used to do this, what's the usual, safe way?

Never ever purchase a thing if the btc arent still being held by the escrow.If you do concern about international shipment then you can always
ask the courier or post office on how much it would be charged for that particular item into a specific destination.They can already give you out
the charges on just giving those details.Then you can total it up and adding up some % for overall charge in btc. Fluctuations in the time of transaction? Deal with it.

Well, if the product you want to buy is not that heavy, you can use and estimate what will be estimated cost of the product if it will be delivered on the logistics with their calculator on their website for overseas transfer, with the destination address and sending address, just add the amount of the escrow fees which is I'm sure is fixed.

Once its settled, then let the buyer send the total amount to the escrow, and let you buy the product then process the delivery to the buyer.

And if you're worried about the fluctuation of the btc price then so be it, it's normal and you should risk if you're accepting the payment as BTC.

Above suggestions are pretty good, if you have problem with the cost of courier. I think the best way is to ask them the MAX fee then told it to your business partner, if the cost will not reach the max fee then that surplus money will be given back to him or keep it with you with his permission and use it for future transactions.

Do not make a deal unless you make sure that all the payments "maximum values" have been deposited to the collateral so you can start making the deal.
With regard to price fluctuation, you can request that the transaction in stable coins and then pay the conversion fee to BTC.
The collateral can bear any excess costs to the second party and stable currencies will improve stability.

Does the post office have a phone number to contact? you can estimate the amount but if you think that you're doubtful with it, you should call them instead and verify on how much it would cost the shipping base on the information that you will transact with.

Take time and don't rush because one mistake and you'll either be shouldering the expenses which you shouldn't.

What the deposit for, by the way?

There must be an estimation cost for any products like per kilogram or anything which lets you know without need to bring the product to post office or any shipping company office.

Shipping cost is not the only problem for you, sometimes the products won't get approved by customs if its send by someone personal on particular country so you need to analyse the receiving country's laws as well before making an estimation because he might say that he didn't receive anything so asking for payback from escrow. If everything clear on the receiver's country then you could ask for $50 for shipment in total and return back if there is any left amount on that $50.

Imo the approval is less of a problem for them unless the product that he's buying for someone is something unusual like guns or other weapons. Without knowing the country of the receiver and size of the product it's hard to say that $50 could be enough for the shipping cost.

I'm guessing the deposit is for the currency exchange part(to speed up the process) since OP mentioned the possible delays could go up to a day and wanted to reduce the fluctuations as much as possible.

Ah, I see.. because he uses escrow, it takes days to get the Bitcoin.

It is not fair though if he isn't allowed to add this deposit to the total payment.

Anyway, the seller should be able to do a trick, like increase the estimation shipping cost or the actual price to replace the deposit.

Looks like that. I'm going to charge my own fee for my service, and I'll absorb unexpected shipping costs and Bitcoin price fluctuations.


Customs shouldn't be a problem. Product is legal. It's not heavy; it fits in a regular mail package. I think any possibility of surprised custom costs should be paid by the buyer and it should be agreed upon with the escrow.

I'm still at the stage of looking for an escrow now. Just saying.

^ If that is okay for him you can always charge the extra fees for the shipping fee. You need to understand first how bitcoin is volatile and it will move the price every now and then because of this fluctuation happen, this is not fixed to the dollar rate.

^ Finding a trusted escrow is the best move here to have safe in your Bitcoin transfer and both parties have a smooth deal. If I were you, I will choose the escrow service in the forum because they already held the worth of thousands of dollars in Bitcoin on their past clients and I think they will not ruin their reputation. But that is only my suggestion. Look at here the link of thread someone making escrow list, https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5047302.0.

Price of the Bitcoin is transparent and volatile in nature so we need to plan based on the market presence and value we see in the marketplace. Always plan for the best price which you see lowest for that week and sell out when you see the decent growth in the marketplace.
Mostly that profit is very low when we see it with low amount as the investment.

Do such kind of service only with trusted users. Whether it can be through the forum or out of the forum, if you are dealing with bitcoin then it is a must to make the fund transacted through a trusted escrow. Another thing I've dealt similar services through PayPal, I purchased and shipped the product to the address provided. He paid me for the product shipping, and additional $10 in terms of Bitcoin equivalent to the amount that I've spend in the form of PayPal. As the value is small and made the purchase for a trusted person we didn't went for an escrow.

i think escrow is not his concern but the price of the product . as we know that btc is a highly volatile kind of coin , we must make an agreement first to the buyer or the escrow about the total amount that we will be recieving or they buyer's amount that he will pay so that all transactions were clear and smooth  . in your case you use a paypal as medium of payment   . paypal is stabe so less hassel if itll be use on your side but people thesedays now prefer cryptos  .

I think , try to find a local courier, get there table or list of rates whether it is in just a plastic bag or in a box , it depends also in the amount of weight of the product, also it is more expensive since the origin and the recipient is in not the same country, add a little more amount to your calculation because the bitcoin market is not stable, and you may also calculate first USD and convert it in btc. Escrow is good but give him a reference rate also so that he would not be worried.

Actually there's a stable coin like usdt and tusd option to choose for if he likes  the convenience of using the crypto and he can select that to use in their transaction and for that he can lessen the fee with good transaction speed and I'm kinda little doubtful for PayPal since it has a dispute and also the fee is to high per transaction that's why it's not a good option for people who want to save from transaction fees.

Sometimes it can be easiest to add the clause like "$800 value equivalent in BTC in accordance with its value from the [previous day] as available on [website, can be coinmarketcap]".

If you have any personal and emergency issue to sell the Bitcoin for money e then you can do that at any time because apart from emergency time I will not suggest you to sell the Bitcoin without analysing the the price factors and future predictions.

So think for or the future value and play accordingly.

Never transact anything unless the money is received via escrow, the buyer looks really suspicious i mean why would he need to contact an individual if there are tons of services online that offers the same task you're doing and out of all people why did he only chose you to contact, cause according to your story it seems to me that he's just a random stranger that contacted you.

He saw my previous post (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5192611.msg52748800#msg52748800). He's looking for a local product and to buy it with BTC. I don't see any problem as long as a reputable escrow is used.

This is reaosnable and welcoming approach to take

You would need to strongly calculate few things before you start drop-shipping. What I can understand by reading your thread is that you are interested in starting a business of dropshipping with bitcoin as a payment method. In this case you should have the ability to convert bitcoins to your fiat currency as soon as you receive them in order to stop the constant price change with the change of price in bitcoins.

Once, you convert bitcoins in cash as soon as you receive them then you can buy the product you wish to re-ship and by calculating the escrow fees, shipping charge(by verifying it with the postal office) and every other such charge including the VAT tax if you are shipping outside nation boundary and then you can give an approximate estimate about the price to the buyer.

I think always do trading with respect to btc quantity only rather than reference it to fiat as it will become easy to trade and always use trustable escrow service. If you still wants to do trade with fiat in mind then send some extra btc and request the escrower to send it back when deal is completed.

I ever trade goods with altcoin as payment. First, you need to know how much the shipping cost, usually the post office have a website which you can estimate your shipping cost.
For the calculation I used fiat or USD rate on the transaction, then convert it to coin price, use seller fees to avoid the volatile price, I set 50% of total payment for seller fees, so the total payment = price product + shipping cost + seller fees (exclude escrow fees).

In my experienced, selling(if you are a merchant) goods in cryptocurrency as payment require extra funds to cover the volatile price.
Not all buyer agree with the seller fees.

You have to mutually agree on the price of bitcoin at time of escrow and not at the time of purchase. If the purchase is 2 -3 days later, who knows the bitcoin might dump/ pump to 500$ or more. These days bitcoin is not very stable and you cannot be sure what will be the price of bitcoins even after 24 hrs.

This deal sounds really like not that serious or true.. You shouldnt make such deal specially if they are offering like its too good to be true.

Yes, the goods should only be sold when the price is clear from both the parties. Ambiguity like this often cause the problem later and it should be avoided at all cost. OP case is a bit confusing one and i suggest him to first clear all the queries before making any deal.

This deal might have already been settled?

If not, I guess a transaction will be finalized first before funds and goods are actually sent. The full payable amount in BTC will be agreed before the buyer will send the full payment through a trusted escrow agreed by both parties. There may actually be no need for an advance.

I had proposed a price in BTC based on the best estimate of the cost of the product + cost of shipping + my own service fee, and I would have covered any unexpected variation. I had found an escrow and wrote an agreement in which the buyer would have covered the escrow fee, Bitcoin network transaction fees, and any custom tax in his country.

The buyer did not go forward with the deal after that point.

That deal sounds fair to me. But there must be a good reason for the other party to consider not proceeding.

Anyway, my response came a bit late.

Proceeding should not be and you want to deal any transaction you mean you have the escrow as set above and if you both guys online can be done in in few hours. If someone not escrow paid can we cancel that.

Escrow is actually a must these days. There are a lot of strangers asking for a lot of deals these days and I won't blame each of them as also some genuine peoples who might want to sell their products might take the hard efforts to contact each and every individual asking to buy their product.

This might be their marketing strategy but in this case, we should never trust those guys and always tend to use escrow services provided over here on this forum or maybe direct online escrow service platforms like escrow.com, etc in order to keep our funds safe and to deal trust worthily. Escrow would off course charge some fees but paying that fees is always better rather than getting scammed for the entire amount.