Bitcoin Forum

So sometimes I post that I am a local trader of bitcoin in my area on craigslist. So far I have had one bite on this.

Also I search on bitcoin for things to purchase, and always when I sell stuff on craigslist I list that I accept bitcoin.

Do others use craigslist with bitcoin?

I haven't sold anything on craigslist before, but at least one local bitcoiner advertises $/BTC services locally on craigslist. I periodically search craigslist for 'bitcoin' and 'btc' to see what the uptake is. Several US metro areas have a 'willing to buy amd gpus' posting that seems like its the same person and is related to bitcoins.

-bgc

This is a good way to both make use of, and raise awareness of bitcoin. It doesn't cost anything to add that one sentence to your ad.

I have seen one guy in my area accept BTC on craigslist.


I thought briefly that it would be a good idea to offer something very cheap and put in the ad that you only accept Bitcoin. But then drop the ad after enough people have figured out how to use Bitcoin.


Kinda wrong but it would get exposure.

http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Acraigslist.org+bitcoin

I do, but my payment methods (spelled out, as opposed to these (http://btcticker.appspot.com)) and a bunch of other info are on a separate page, to keep the tl;dr factor of the ads themselves down.

ETA: I now have 'Bitcoin' in my ads, as I found out my credit card processor was bought by PayPal and it went to hell.

I use craigslist to sell things on occasion, and when I do I usually list that I'm willing to take up to $X of the cost in bitcoins.

No bites on the bitcoins yet.

Craigslist is a pain in the ass. You list something and if someone is not happy they can report the post and the post gets deleted! IT IS BULLSHIT.

And yet it is practically unusable if you are just browsing, with all the spam and miscategorized shit that takes an infinite amount of flags to be removed, if ever.

It's free, and doesn't demand you use Paypal. *shrug*

someone should do this just for lolz

"wtf is bitcoin, i have cash! i pay cash! ok?"

"no, only bitcoin"

http://static.fjcdn.com/comments/So+much+...+WANT+_543074485c32b7dace46b9457e85c7e9.jpg

I've had success selling bitcoin locally by advertising on Craigslist. It's a great supplement to services like http://TradeYourBitcoin.com, http://localbitcoins.com, and http://btcnearme.com.

Technically eBay doesn't demand it, just that you accept reversible payment methods. It'll still keep selecting PayPal every time you create or edit a listing, you just have to deselect it. In my case I selected credit/debit instead.

Craigslist is not popular in Quebec but I do it all the time on kijiji.ca. I add mention that I also accept to be paid in Bitcoin.

Kijiji in the rest of Canada, too. I add a sentence stating that I gladly accept bitcoins, and offer a discount for bitcoin payments. This is a sensible way to popularize and legitimize Bitcoin.

So a relevant necro, does anyone have any ideas on how to make craigslist ads where people can pay for the item without a complicated checkout?

While most everyone in bitcoindom may have a mobile wallet with QR scanning, we might all not have a standalone QR scanner app that we can use to open URLs. I thought it was weird when QR codes started appearing on bus and other ads years ago, when all mobile devices didn't have a QR scanner installed by default. And from what I can tell, they still aren't universal.

If this wasn't the case, then each ad could have a QR encoded of https://blockchain.info/payment_request?address=1blahblahblah&amount=0&amount_local=5 to have it float to local fiat. However, that may be too complicated for most. The bitcoin URI standard only allows a bitcoin variable currently, not a fiat value that all wallets can recognize and convert based on whatever market's (or average) ticker_last.

I don't think there's any resource right now where you can take your Electrum master public key and have a bunch of addresses' QRs generated for as many items as you have for sale (including each item's price and title encoded).

craiglist is so old fashioned, no hope for bitcoin there

What's wrong with it? People still buy and sell stuff in free ads. Good place to get a bargain.

Remember to ask for the cash before you make the Bitcoin transaction. A month ago the was a guy who did just that and after he made the transaction, the buyer the walked away with his money and there seller couldn't prove anything.

True a user can also add also accepting Bitcoin to whatever they are selling on Craiglist without causing to much headache.
If someone bites its awesome if not well some people might go what the heck is a Bitcoin and learn about it :)

But that risk exists for most Craigslist transactions. I mean if they forced the scammer to stay until the cops came it'll be easy to prove. Fiat or not, theft of property is still theft.

You put yourself at big risk of recieving counterfeit or dirty money when you do this.

if you can explain about Craigslist is that?? it sounds very new to me. whether the name of a place, product or service. I do not laugh with the innocence of this.. lol

I never use Craigslist with Bitcoin.

I don't and I sell a lot on CL.

Just not worth the effort at this point and so many people think that crypto is scammy I think offereing to accept payment in Bitcoin would lower sales drastically for me.

Here you go:

http://www.craigslist.org/about/sites

I often search bitcoin on craigslist but what I find is insane prices of miners. People selling miners for exactly what they paid 5+ months ago. Or sometimes someone selling btc for 30% above preev. To date I have not found anything that I didn't laugh at.

Well, yeah but they are using the Butterfly Labs Sales Theory; "There's a new one born every day!"

Some people will sell their own goods/services on craigslist that they would usually sell for fiat but also offer the option of accepting bitcoin.

Very nice.

Bitcoin or tech in general is not big in the area I live in. I had an ad up for a miner and it got reported? Contacted CL and they said it would be fine to post again (sold it on ebay instead). There were a couple responses to the ad from people in my area.

I'll be selling a window AC and offering a discount if paid in bitcoin, I've considered offering bitcoin as a payment option for one of my rentals but wouldn't expect a good response.

If you negotiate with the sellers appropriately and point out the fact that they have received a certain amount of revenue then they would likely charge you a more appropriate price if you are in the market for a miner.

Craigslist is more for the non-tech savvy portion of the population.

The savvy guys and dolls make out real well though.

I made a craigslist ad to buy/sell btc locally and surprisingly enough out of the 30 days the ad was listed I had 2 clients who wanted to pay cash for some BTC.

I think this a relevant necro. I see things for sale on craigslist.org for BTC, but it is in no way easy or safe to do transactions in this manner in the current c-list environment. Have you tried coinslists.org or coinslist.info or coinslists.com...nevermind, those are not up...yet. What you are looking for is coming soon to a device near you.

Easy, no. Just a matter of coding.

Safe, yes. You don't pay BTC until you have the item in front of you and the seller confirms their address and doesn't let you leave with it until confirming receipt of BTC.

As long as you treat bitcoin as you would treat cash in a CL transaction then bitcoin would be great for CL. The issue is that there are so many scams on CL that people ask to send the bitcoin prior to meeting which is the same as wiring funds to the seller - I shouldn't have to explain further

It's going to be a very long time before Bitcoin becomes an acceptable method of funding on CL, which is why I don't bother with it.

Fiat works just fine.

If someone does not have the excess fiat to purchase bitcoin but has excess stuff that they don't need then craigslist can be a great tool to use to try to get some bitcoin and deal locally

For real? I know that you are smooth trader. I've lurked and learned. Seriously though; you got a buyer on craigslist for 100BTC? Recently? Someone handed you $60someoddthousand for 100BTC off craigslist? I follow most of what you post and would like to know more about this.

I would say that this kind of post (on Craigslist) should be approached with extreme caution. You should really never deal in that large of amounts with a stranger.

I haven't seen anyone in my area (well both areas that I reside in) post anything involving bitcoin, however lately I've been getting phone calls from someone who either knows me from here, or elsewhere about a coin he's starting. I don't know if it was something someone posted on craigslist or some kind of activity trail leading to me. It's kind of scary they even got my phone number in the first place.

Anyways, I doubt this backwards town that I live in would even know what BTCitcoin even was let alone know how to trade for goods and services or whatever. Maybe back home but not here.

yeah that sounds spotty.. i don't want to give that info out to strangers, could get robbed/kidnapped. it's like putting a target on your back.

Yeah I noticed that a lot on localbitcoins (just now I looked and people in my area DO deal with them, surprise!) that people are really looking out for themselves, wanting to meet in lighted areas in the day etc just so they don't get robbed or whatever out of their bitcoin. It's some serious business it seems.

Did you bother to look at the date? 100btc back then was not nearly as much as 100 btc today. This thread was just necroed.

Haha. Even hooker on Craigslist Bangkok now accepting Bitcoin http://imgur.com/7zJ4RsH

Now I know this is the currency of the future.  ;)

BitCoin is still a pretty new idea for most of the general public. It might be a good idea to provide resources / information for people, so they can learn more about it!

I would recommend providing links to CNBC and CBS and other reputable sources.

Craigslist is really designed for smaller trades (I would say less then $1,000) anything above that would probably be too dangerous to be dealing with someone you don't know.

Oh, no.

I sell cars on CL all the time.

Once sold a Rolls-Royce on CL for over USD $20K with no problems.

I have used craigslist to sell furniture, electronics, and cars. I have sold two cars in under an hour. The amount of people buying from there is crazy! I would think that it would work well for local BTC meetups

Cars might be the exception to this rule as there are generally paper trails for both the buyer and seller if something were to go wrong, and if the buyer's check bounced for example then you could simply report the car as being stolen (as it would be).

For things like jewelry, sports tickets, or other valuables it would be much more risky as these types of things are much harder to trace. 

I have bad luck with craigslist, I always get a the people who never show up for anything and I end up wasting a day waiting for them.

I work by appointment only.

No show, no call, no deal.

Imagine the uncomfortable silence waiting for the transaction to be confirmed. ;D

I've had some pretty bad experiences of Craiglist like this too. There are no obligations to complete the transactions, so there are too many douchebags that abuse this. If they don't show up, what you can do is contact them again for 50%, their eyes will light up. Plan to meet up in a public place, once they show up and wonder where you are, ignore it  :D

You could probably prevent things like this from happening by confirming before you leave to meet them that they still plan on meeting and that they agree that your previously agreed upon price is fair. If they respond and agree with you then you will cut down on these kinds of problems.

Craigslist really is a roll the dice, i've sold computers cars etc on there and you really have to be careful. I guess you have to be attuned to how the person is acting about the trade. I personally would never sell bitcoin on craigslist

I think selling bitcoin on craigslist would be a great way to get more people to use and adopt bitcoin.

What I would be afraid of is selling large amounts (like thousands of dollars worth) as there would be a greater incentive for the buyer to try to rob me.

If you have read anything smoothie post; you know that he is savvy. (Craigslist + Bitcoin) - Escrow = High risk. I'm really curious as to how one goes about this. I do not doubt that what smoothie says is true, but it takes balls of steel to do this on craigslist. I stopped selling on localbitcoins due to people getting arrested on trumped up charges. I'm looking to move away from exchanges and the like, and am very interested in the process used to do this safely and securely. Enlighten us smoothie.

The spam one gets from craigslist is enough of a deterrent for me to stay away unless I'm having or looking for a fire sale.

i've been burned from craigslist once.. bought an android phone, and all worked well.. except the usb port was fucked up and i couldn't charge. now i have to use a qi/wireless charger.

Yeah a lot of spam from there, and the other problem is taking an ad down but it actually not being "down" until weeks later so if you've sold an item it's still listed. It's ridiculous, I got a phone call not a couple weeks ago about a phone I listed probably half a year ago. Of course I don't have that phone.

Never had that problem

Some guy probably just saved the info and was checking back.

I do that myself sometimes.

The amount of spam that you receive when you post something on craigslist is insane. They should really almost have some kind of capsha that would prevent spam.

Ah thanks for giving me an idea mines been acting up a bit as well so I should consider a wireless charger.
Probably wouldn't use Craigslist though unless it was really close or I couldn't find it anywhere else kind of a gamble on what you find there.

Disable email replies, put in phone #.


Google cache?

LOL!  I thought people offering to pay by check was just an urban legend.  Like when people are trying to negotiate the price down and say, "I have cash".  I tell them "Good, because that's the only way you're getting this car"

I always note that I accept bitcoin in my ads.  The only bite I ever got was some guy asking me what else I had to sell for bitcoin, "party favors?"  That was last year.

I've also noticed a direct relationship in my area of the amount of ads mentioning bitcoin to media hype (online and others) right now it's pretty quiet around me.

Couple things to reduce spam: 

List in the ad that any responses that you get MUST include a phone number, otherwise they will be ignored.  Any serious buyer won't have a problem with this.  It's not hard to delete emails.  Plus I get to control when the phone conversation takes place.

FLAG ADS!

I flag for : keywords that do not specifically relate 1:1 with the ad, no price listed or wrong price ($1), multiple ads

I don't think that a lot of people would feel comfortable handing over $10k+ to a stranger in exchange for a car.

Pretty soon there will be people accepting BTC in the "casual encounters" section of craigslist...lol

No. Bitcoin is too traceable for low end prostitution.

High end, they are usually smart enough to have a way to clean it between accepting it and spending it, but you don't find high end on craigslist - and they will only want cash because cash is anonymous.

Perhaps a single use address that goes to an exchange right away and gets changed
But probably cash will still remain king in the causal area lol.

Yeah, I am assuming that high-end and craigslist are probably like oxymorons when it comes to escorts

It is not difficult to mix even small amounts of bitcoin. The min on shared coin and bitmixer are both 0.01BTC and with small amounts like this their coins would be the hardest to trace.

Those people go to Carsense

Sorry but you do not know what you are talking about.

I have sold many cars for USD $10K and up and have always dealt exclusively in cash.

uhh, so have I.  I think you meant to quote hollowframe

I have sold "several" Bitcoins from a contact I made on Craigslist.

oops

;)

Is anybody actually buying bitcoin through craiglist? Or is it mainly for selling goods for bitcoin?

Yes. No.

Now if the hookers on Craig's List would accept bitcoin then all would be right in the world.

I'd suspect they use it for electronics like mining equipment or even just normal everyday stuff.

There is almost nothing worse than Craigslist.
Maybe waiting in line at the DMV or getting a root canal.

I try to avoid that site like I avoid women with adams apples

If we could customarily do post "we accept bitcoin" to pages where we sell, it might encourage people to also use bitcoin. and will also inform those who haven't yet heard of bitcoin.  ;D