Bitcoin Forum

I just opened a new service, CoinPal (http://coinpal.ndrix.com), for buying bitcoins with PayPal.  The site is currently in beta testing, so purchases must be between 10 and 20 BTC.  Once my current stock of bitcoins is exhausted, the beta closes.  The site will tell you when that's happened.  There's a YouTube video walking through a complete order (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmPg4V-YE0k).

To reduce the likelihood of fraud, you must have a verified PayPal account and provide a phone number during PayPal checkout.  Trade volumes are limited to 20 BTC per payer per week (for now).  Both US and International PayPal accounts are accepted.

I've combed the forum for suggestions on avoiding PayPal fraud and implemented as much as I could.  If you spot any fraud vulnerabilities in the current design, I'd love to hear about them.  Fraud can't be eliminated, but hopefully I can reduce the risk enough to keep the service available.

Well, it's good you presented it as a beta.  Because I've failed passing through the first step twice.  With two different browsers :  Arora and uzbl.

In what way did it fail?  I didn't see anything unusual in the server logs.  Did you get the "Please come back later" message?

Thanks for the report.  I was able to reproduce the problem in Arora.  It's fixed now.  Let me know if it persists for you.

If you are using verified accounts you might want to also use paypal mass pay. Its a bit cheaper than standard paypal transactions as well as less prone to rorting. This is because its not reliant on credit cards. It uses the money already in your account.

The problem is the credit card companies.

Nope.  I tries to load during half a sec, and then it stops without changing anything in the page.

I'm using Arora 0.10.2 with libQT 4.6.3 on Debian Sid.

One thing you might run into is paypal sending you a threatening letter about trademark violation in that you are a payment processor and you have "Pal" in your name. Especially since you are using paypal to process your transactions - they could say you might give the impression Paypal condones the use of their trademarks by third parties.
There is a reason there is not a proliferation of "Pal" sites out there accepting payment. These companies are pretty vicious in protecting their name recognition. They have to take action to protect their shareholders.

Might be easier to change your name now then later on when you are established.

Im not saying I support the existence of these things .

nice service
bad the fees are ...

It works for me with Arora 0.10.1 and QT 4.6.0 on OS X 10.6.  I don't have access to a Debian machine with X, so I can't test it further than that.  Maybe try with Firefox or Chrome, which should be available on Linux.

I've had a few more successful orders come through, so it appears not to be a problem generally.

There were a couple questions about the exchange rate, so I've updated the site's Prices (http://coinpal.ndrix.com/page/prices) page to make it clearer that I use the lowest ask price on Mt. Gox as the exchange rate.

All paid transactions this weekend were successful, so I've added more bitcoins to extend the beta.  I also applied for PayPal's micropayments rate which should reduce PayPal fees for these transactions.  Once that's done, I'll update the site and post here.


I plan to accept mass pay in the future.  With a maximum fee of $1 and many fewer chargebacks, I think it's a great way to buy bitcoins.  Thanks for the suggestion.

The word "international" is not a synonym for non-USA. International means cross-border.

A payment can be international, but an account cannot be. For example, when a US American buys a bitcoin from a Chilean, the transaction is international but that does not make the US American's account international.

US Americans are the only people who make this mistake, and frankly, it's only one of the myriad ways they make themselves look stupid. So, in the interest of protecting your image, I suggest you correct the terminology on your site.

More important than that, I don't expect you will be able to succeed in this endeavor. Unfortunately soft money spoils hard money and the internet reaches out to millions of immoral people who relish a chance to steal. Paypal account verification will not protect you from chargeback liars and phished accounts. Observe what happened to Mt Gox in November.

You might be new to currency exchange and unfamiliar with the risks. Aside form being robbed by liars or having your funds frozen by Paypal for month or years, other dangers await your being noticed.

I suggest you look into the cases of the US based digital currency exchangers who have been defrauded out of their business, robbed by the owners of the US government, accused and convicted on trumped up charges, in prison, in hiding, or in exile.

The banksters stole the US government and now direct the many federal police agencies. They strenuously resist privately issued money because it spoils their carefully crafted illusion of monopoly. They use the tacit agreement created by their target's use of their property, the fiat money, as legal basis for directing the pwnd police against their rivals, no matter how small they might be. Paypal is not a digital currency, it is a payment processor carrying the property of the issuing governments. Paypal is therefore under the thumb of those who defrauded the citizens out of their democracies.

Currently the best ways to get into Bitcoin are to either trade product or service in the market, or to trade fiat for Liberty Reserve to take to Mt Gox. Forget using soft fiat, such as credit cards or Paypal. Use only non-reversible vectors for transmission of fiat.

Thanks for the suggestion.  I'll change the wording when I promote the next bug fixes


I appreciate your concern and willingness to warn me of the danger.  I'm aware of the risks I'm taking on.  I'm probably just arrogant, but believe I can succeed where others have failed :-)  Time will tell.

mndrix, kudos to you, man!

Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success. - Dale Carnegie

I would like to see you succeed but years of bad experiences have made me very skeptical of any currency trades using soft money.

Your Paypal account is tied to a bank account and your gov issued ID, your real name, you home addresss and all your other contact vectors are on file for the pwnd police forces to access at any time.

You cash out a gaming winner and you have commited a felony in USA. But I expect you will get broken by the fraudsters before then.

BTW, the owners of the US gov are known to organize fraud and dos attacks and other crimes when that is easier than lying in court. You are facing a very dirty enemy.  This is why I don't think you know the risks.

Make us a list of all the US based digital currency exchangers.

I have to agree with nanaimogold. Accepting PayPal for Bitcoin is a very bad idea.

It is just a matter of time before you are scammed into oblivion.

I wish I had better news for you, but I've seen it happen way too many times. :(

The Madhatter

I fixed a bug when submitting the initial order form which caused some browsers to download a gzipped file instead of displaying the proper HTML page with pricing details.  Thanks to hacim for help testing a few relevant fixes.  If any of you were prevented from ordering because of this bug, give it a try again.

Just putting a quick testimonial out there - worked fine for the transaction I made.  Hoping it doesn't get hit by scammers, would be a shame to lose such an easy-to-use exchange. 

The beta is closed for a couple days.  A steady stream of orders yesterday bought all my coins just in time for me to leave town.  When I get back later this week, I'll restock and try to keep the service up as permanently as possible.  The site is still up for browsing, you just won't be able to place orders.

It's nice to see someone step up and run an experiment like this.  Regardless of whether or not it ultimately succeeds, I believe it will provide valuable information.   Others will be able to learn from the inevitable bureaucratic and fraudster attacks.   

It will also be very interesting to see what if any legal precedents are set with regards to paypal-to-bitcoin businesses meeting the legal definition of a money handling service.   Will bitcoin be classified as "money" or "currency" or whatever the feds need to call it so they now have an excuse neuter the threat with regulation?

Thanks mndrix, let me know when you're back and if you get some new inventory, I'd love to try it out.

The service is open for business again.  PayPal approved me for their micropayments fee structure which amounts to a 26% decrease in PayPal fees on a 20 BTC order.

I made a few adjustments to fraud detection.  If things continue working well for the next week or so, I'll increase the maximum order limit.

cool! :)

best be very careful with that.

Bravo..... on having the courage to keep trying.    :)

Wishing you Success.

( I just now added you to http://bitcoincard.com )

Hey, mndrix
I want to thank you for making my first USD to BTC transaction a breeze  :D

As a total newb, and as someone who gets a little put-off by the charts and graphs and puzzling exchange-rate numbers that are sometimes thrown in people's faces upon visiting some other sites ... I totally appreciate what you're doing.

I just fixed a bug with email addresses using capital letters.  If you got an error message about email addresses not matching when placing an order, it should work now.

This has turned out to be much more popular than I anticipated.  I'm restocking coins as fast as I can, but it looks like I'll run out again this weekend.  Could be mid-week before I have a substantial inventory again.  Eventually I'll implement dynamic pricing to keep supply and demand in balance, until then it could be on again, off again.  Thanks for all the feedback.

Just to confirm that I successfully purchased 20BTC on CoinPal.

Good luck with that.

works great. thanks.

Coins sold out last night.  I'm working on a deal that should get me coins to reopen later today.  I'll post here when I'm open again.

I also fixed a bug in my volume limit calculations which caused some people to be told they had exceeded their weekly volume limit when they actually hadn't.  That bug is fixed now.

Thanks for the feedback and patience during the beta.

Open again with about 3x the inventory.  Thanks to morpheus for the pleasant MTGUSD trade.  I should have about 10x the inventory by the end of the week.  Hopefully that can meet demand for a little while.

A few people have asked me about the volume limits.  I'll raise them when I can.  Selling 200 BTC spread across 10 customers gives 10 people a taste of Bitcoin which is probably better for the community.  It also reduces fraud likelihood and gives me more data points for my fraud prediction model.

Just a heads-up, in case you weren't already aware ... IRS 6050W:



https://cms.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/marketingweb?cmd=_render-content&content_ID=marketing_us/IRS6050W (https://cms.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/marketingweb?cmd=_render-content&content_ID=marketing_us/IRS6050W)

i.e., PayPal will be reporting the gross revenues you received on a 1099-K sent to you and to the IRS.

http://federalregister.gov/a/2010-20200 (http://federalregister.gov/a/2010-20200)
http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-news/reg-139255-08.pdf (http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-news/reg-139255-08.pdf)

First CoinPal transaction (and first forum post) a resounding success. Thanks mndrix

This is why we need a Bitcoin-for-Cash dealer on every corner of every village, every town, every city, in every country.   Email me to list yourself as a Bitcoin-for-Cash contact in your own town.... on http://bitcoinbuy.com     Every one of us should be a volunteer bitcoin-for-cash person wherever you live.....  Contact me to get listed.  My email is:  email@bitcoinme.com

The problem with that is some people have very little bitcoins.

That's why we need it, so people can buy more of them.

I suppose I'd be up for that here in Manchester, CT, but all I'd be doing is reselling from Bitcoin Gateway. Why wouldn't potential buyers just go to my Bitcoin Gateway in the first place?

Using bitcoin means your bitcoin dealer can be on the other side of the world. It brings people together from everywhere and breaks down barriers.

I've increased CoinPal (http://coinpal.ndrix.com) purchase limits to 40 BTC per week.  Past customers who hit the old limit can immediately place orders up to the new limit.

Depending on typical order size and future BTC exchange rates, I may change my PayPal account back to the standard fee structure.  The standard fee structure gives lower fees for payments over $11.90 (http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=.05%2B.05x+%3D+.30+%2B+.029x).  I'll post here if/when that happens.

I anticipate current order limits staying in place until the end of February or March.  That gives the initial transactions enough time to mature past the PayPal dispute deadline (45 days) and to approach the credit card chargeback deadline (~90 days).  Which gives me better data for my fraud prediction model. I'd rather go slowly and keep the service open than rush to a hasty demise.

i wouldn't hurry too much to raise the limits. you'll get plenty of volume due to high number of customers, while keeping fraud risk from any individual account low.

you have a great service there, i'd hate to see it go bust due to one or two large frauds.

Set the maximum purchase to $11.90 to make it profitable on the micropayment fees.

Bruce--Thanks so much for making bitcoinme.com.  That's a site I can actually send people to and expect them to be attracted to bitcoin without needing a degree in math, as opposed to the comparatively noob-unfriendly bitcoin.org!  I've been wanting to do a big pitch for it to my social network contacts, but I've been waiting for the images to start working again so it looks proper professional.  Any idea when that might be?  Is it something I could send you some donations towards?  I'd love to have that be a reliable place I can just send people when they ask me what bitcoin is.

Sincerely,
eMansipater

As some have requested, I've added a rudimentary API (http://coinpal.ndrix.com/page/api) (I hesitate to even call it that).  It lets you pre-populate a CoinPal order form with a bitcoin address and an optional amount.  It also lets you show a recipient name instead of the full Bitcoin receiving address.

For example: donate 10 BTC to the EFF (http://coinpal.ndrix.com/?addr=1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt&to=Electronic+Frontier+Foundation&amt=10).  Of course, there's no authentication on who the Bitcoin address really belongs to, so you can also donate to The Human Fund (http://coinpal.ndrix.com/?to=The%20Human%20Fund&addr=18ExgbBUDPHyuUepNFC95e6u6JdV2gnDcV) on my behalf

I'm worried that "CoinPal" will get sued by "PayPal" for trademark violation.  I've heard so many nasty stories about companies like "Facebook" suing any social networking site with "Face" or "Book" in the url.  And I remember the Liberty Dollar was ultimately taken down under the pretense that it violated the US trademark on "Dollar"...

I haven't been able to find specific information about PayPal having a trademark on *Pal, but enough people have expressed concern, that I'm going to change the name.  Any suggestions?

I'm leaning toward Copal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copal), which portmanteau-ishly suggests what the service does, is an existing word so it can't be trademarked and goes well with the name Cowalla (the planned name for a future Dwolla->BTC service).

There used to be a service called Gunpal.

I dont think they ever got sued by paypal so we might be wrong about this.

I suppose you could always approach paypal and ask about it. If they dont respond or send a form letter you will have the out that you told them but they ignored it.

i might suggest to stay away from 'pal' completely. how about something nice and generic, like 'bitcoinsource' :)
then you can use the same site for paypal, dwolla, $anything else.

+1

I like bitcoinmeter but someone already owns it.... ;)

That doesn't seem wise.  Planning ahead is one of the great abilities us humans have.  We should use it to anticipate potential problems so we can avoid them.

Agree with you. You may be forced to pay damage fees bo PayPal if they enforce it.

Pay Pal will sue for profits, which have likely already been spent.

CoinBuddy? CoinChum? :)

But changing the name is such a minor thing that it might as well be done to be on the safe side.  It will have little impact on the operation and traffic of the site, whereas in your example if Mt Gox had chosen not to accept PayPal, that would have been a severe change in the operation of the site.  Here, it's just a name.  Perspective is key.

As for the name itself, Nanotube's suggestion of Bitcoin Source sounds good to me.

The bigger and more established a business and/or trade name is, the more painful it usually is to change. 

If the above premise is true, and the coinpal name is more or less guaranteed to draw legal fire from Paypal down the road, it would stand to reason that the earlier a name change "course correction" is made, the better. 

Thank you all for your thoughts on the CoinPal name.  As suggested above, I've contacted PayPal for clarification on their trademark policy.  Until I get official notice, I'll retain the current name in the spirit of avoiding premature optimization.

A few more people have contacted me about increasing volume limits for specific buyers.  I'm testing a feature which could increase limits for buyers who provide sufficient proof that they are the rightful owners of the associated PayPal accounts.  I agree with nanotube and am in no hurry to increase the limits if it has any risk of shutting down the service because of fraud.  Aside from my one beta tester on this identity verification feature, no one else is likely to get a higher limit until at least March.

I know it's too early but here's a feature request: Sending micropayments to PayPal users using BitCoin.

Good idea.  Something similar is on the drawing board.  It'd work roughly like this:

• user populates a form with a PayPal address and preferred currency
• CoinPal responds with a new Bitcoin address
• Any Bitcoins sent to that address are automatically converted into a PayPal payment to the associated PayPal address

The PayPal payment would use Mass Pay so the fee would be 2% but never exceed $1.  That's the lowest PayPal fee I know of for automated transactions and it should work decently for microtransactions.

Yes, this is an additional benefit for all of us who pay very high fees when sending. I can't wait to use it. :D

Though, I, for instance, would use it to send money to arbitrary addresses, therefore, instead of generating a new address for each transaction, being able to deposit directly to CoinPal and taking it from there would suit me most. However, the way you plan to implement it obviously addresses the majority use case, so I'll just hope it will be implemented in the far future.

EDIT: I just realized that a payment option via a service like MyBitcoin is almost the same in effect.  :)

Thanks for this great service.

The scammers have arrived.  CoinPal will be closed for the next few days while I analyze a batch of fraudulent orders from this weekend and make any necessary changes to the site.  Any financial losses were well within expected ranges, so this is actually good news for CoinPal.  It's hard to build fraud-prevention measures without experiencing some fraud.

I am saddened to hear that. My condolences, but I agree with your conclusion and positive attitude.

+1
Not that it will change much right now, but it would be good to develop such practice.

I honestly hope you defeat these douchebags

For those who are curious, here's a sample of addresses to which bitcoins were sent based on fraudulent PayPal payments.  It'd be a fun project to see where the "dirty" coins go.  Presumably, they're laundered rapidly:

• 1FH274XRPhbiiSnT6hJXaqHnJwvWtsgWDU
• 16WRE4GjnwEv35ZAvJ87MKQV86GJxyDips
• 19ppPM6Vu4DNPbqtvDT5fUvKB1MwmQu7aB
• 1CqRu4kwsTB7MgT9t25qt8eSDnRDVxpZL3

I won't publish the full list.

You got that many scammers? I expected just a few. I wish we could at least find one or two of them and teach them a lesson.

I don't think tracing the coins will be relevant, they could have just sold them on mtgox or somewhere to someone who didn't have a clue where they originated from. :/

At least anyone saying bitcoin is not anonymous enough can try to prove it.

I don't think all of those scammers would be smart enough to go through Tor or i2p - perhaps they just cracked someone's password for their email and used their paypal account (which, knowing some people's level of security awareness, had identical password to the email account password).

On a side note, it's just pathetic that they are ruining the good service for the sake of 40 BTC. Gordon Gekko would laugh hard. :)

It is pathetic, but they didn't ruin the service, as mndrix said he was expecting and is going to learn from it. There will be a better service in the end.

Yeah, what I meant was they're causing some (hopefully minor) hassle.

You think someone willing to commit credit card fraud/identity theft to buy Bitcoins isn't familiar with Tor or i2p?? That's being a bit naive imo

You're probably right there... I would just love to be able to catch at least one of these f*ckers.

The service is open again for those few beta testers with privately increased purchase limits.  Our current inventory is reserved for them, so anyone else will see the out of stock page when placing an order.

PayPal finished switching my account back to the standard fee structure.  That reduces PayPal fees by 10% on a 40 BTC order.  The savings are higher for larger orders.

I'm still working on fraud-related changes to the site as time permits.  It may still be a few days until the site's open to the public again.

Could I get in on this as well? I've only got a couple bucks so it'd be a small order but I'd like to build some trust so I can use the service later  ;D (when I finally acquire some monies)

Was this your scammer?
  http://www.zoklet.net/bbs/showthread.php?p=2441858

Scary stuff.

Fascinating.  I don't know if he was involved, but it seems this sort of thing is far more common than I had imagined.  Thanks for sharing.

CoinPal is open to everyone again for the next hour.  If you've been waiting to buy some Bitcoins with PayPal now's your chance.  I'm about half-way done with anti-fraud changes I want to make to the site and thought it was a good point to open up again for a little while.

The test is going well so far.  I'll leave it open until the coins run out.  That'll probably happen later tonight or tomorrow morning, depending on order sizes.

I love this service. So much easier than any other way to get BTC.

Suggestion: Have three-tiers of purchasing

Lowest level: Can only purchase a very small number of BTC, using your current structure.

Middle level: Can purchase more once you send them a letter containing a password to their confirmed paypal address. For the cost of a stamp, you can prove that a paypal account is not stolen. This could even be automated using a mailing service like l-mail.com (http://l-mail.com)

Highest level: Can purchase large quantities of bitcoins, which are "shipped" to the confirmed address using a password inside a USPS padded envelope (with additional padding to make it is just large enough to qualify for a tracking number). Shipping with a tracking number qualifies the shipper for seller protection in case of fraud. People sell gold all the time using Paypal, so I would imagine that selling BTC should be possible too. Note that you have to get signature verification on shipments worth more than $250.

The biggest risk is that fraud will occur on the highest-level tier, and PayPal will investigate and decide that you are breaking their user agreement somehow and shut you down.

You might be able to get additional protection by doing more of your communication through paypal (for instance, if the buyer gives you their bitcoin address through paypal, you could then prove that you transferred the bitcoins to the address they provided). However, that would rely on the support folks at PayPal not being lazy and incompetent, which may not be a good bet based on some things I have read.

Since you are building a reputation for honesty, you could probably also offer to buy bitcoins using paypal, making it easier for people to sell them as well.

I was saving this idea for possibly using it myself someday, but I decided to give it away to whoever wants it. Hopefully this information won't push up the value of bitcoins too quickly, since I haven't finished buying the ones I want yet. If anyone benefits from this idea, feel free (but not obligated) to tip me here: 19hMEAaRMbEhfSkeU4GT8mgSuyR4t4M6TH

Thanks.


Thanks for the suggestions.  I have one beta tester testing an address verification system similar to what you suggest for the middle level.  If testing goes well, this will be available more widely.  I'll definitely consider implementing something like the highest level.

Brief update: this weekend's tests went well.  They turned up a couple bugs in my new code which I've fixed.  I'll keep working on anti-fraud measures so I can open to the public again.  Thanks for your patience.

Are you suggesting people would email their paypal password to the coinpal maintainer? I doubt you'd find anyone willing to do this.

The suggestion was for the seller to mail a password to the buyer who would then communicate it to the seller to receive the bitcoins. That was fairly clear, don't see how you missed that.

The reason for mailing something is to get seller protection from paypal, as well as ensure that the paypal account hasn't been hijacked.

So I believe he means that rudimentary form of communication of old, back from when fog prevented efficient communication using smoke signals, or background noise degraded the quality of whistle based conversations... I think they call it "snail mail", probably because it leaves a trail of goo or something :)

And once again my attempt at sarcasm goes completely unnoticed... I really suck at this! :)

This forum account was not created for anonymity, nor was the corresponding freenode IRC nick, "knotwork".

WHOIS knotwork.com and WHOIS knotwork.net are also not intended to be anonymity tools.

Until I develop a means for hosting to pay for itself neither of these domains are actually hosted. I registered them through, and keep them at, networksolutions mainly because it seemed to be the direct descendant of the original NIC and I figured if it actually is CIA NSA etc crony then at least maybe it inherits classic U.S. freedom of speech traditions as well as the military backing of the U.S. Marine Corp.

The PayPal address I use for making money purposes is at a subdomain of knotwork.com thus does not actually work for email, but PayPal, happily, does still allow it to work for PayPal transactions.

I might have some e-gold rotting (storage fees) in an e-gold account if it hasn't already rotted to nothing but PayPal balances might rot faster due to inflation so this thread came to my attention in the process of wondering whether I might be better off moving my seldom used PayPal balance(s) over to BitCoin. So figured I might as well at least start toward such a potential future by introducing myself.

-MarkM-

Bitcoin values have shot up since I posted these ideas. I wonder if speculators are betting that ease of buying bitcoins through coinpal is going to result in lots more people trying to buy them. What have I DONE??

I'm taking credit for the jump, whether or not I had anything to do with it :)

I finished some more changes, so CoinPal (http://coinpal.ndrix.com) is open to the public again.  I'll try to keep it stocked and open for the next couple days.  Please let me know if you encounter any problems.

If you see the "out of stock" message, try back after 1500 UTC, which is usually when I replenish the server's bitcoins.

mndrix: a suggestion for you
you should also offer to buy bitcoin in exchange for paypal.
no risk for you, plus way to refill your bitcoin stock.

there has been some talk on #bitcoin-otc about demand for ability to sell bitcoins at a fixed price without having to deal with forex trading on the markets.

Thanks for the suggestion.  I'm definitely interested in implementing a service along those lines. It'd be a perfect complement to CoinPal.

Incidentally, all this anti-fraud effort on CoinPal has reminded me how important Bitcoin is.  I can't imagine how many thousands of hours of productive effort is currently wasted on fraud prevention for credit card and PayPal payments.

The server ran out of coins on Sunday, but I've restocked now.  I'll try to keep it stocked all week.  I'm away from the computer on Sundays and since anti-fraud changes are still in early testing, I'm hesitant to carry large inventories when I'm away. Hopefully this restriction will only last a couple more weeks.

I just fixed a bug on CoinPal (http://coinpal.ndrix.com) which caused some customers to see an error about a "malformed email address" during PayPal checkout. If you got this message, you might have better luck now.

Hi, i'm just placed my first order on your website, and also have a suggestion on the API:

Could you please make a field with description (like, Order ID), and hit (from your server) a shop URL with the customer's chosen details (I understand not everyone is willing to share their email) and that ID, to make automated purchases possible?

Oh, wait, I could (and should) issue new BC address for every transaction. That would fix it.
But I'll post it anyway, in case somebody has the same idea...

This is one of my favorite Bitcoin tricks.  I'll update the API page to mention it since others may have the same use case.  Thanks for the suggestion and the purchase.

Once again I kept Bitcoin inventory low on Sunday when I was away.  The server has plenty more Bitcoins now.  If you were unable to place an order this weekend, you can place one now.

I ordered 40 btc 4 hours ago and nothing so far.....

You can check if transaction was done, putting your receiving address here :
http://blockexplorer.com

Responded with details by PM

I just spent 20 minutes on the phone with PayPal's anti-fraud department.  They were fully aware what Bitcoin is and essentially, they're fine with CoinPal operating as long as I keep fraud levels low.  They're OK with me increasing the purchase limits if I ever feel comfortable doing so.  Overall, the tone of the conversation was very positive.  They offered suggestions for reporting fraud to them and for lowering my PayPal fees.

They requested that I not explicitly show the PayPal fees during the order process.  To comply, I'll change that during the next couple days.

By the way, I have made very good experiences with Paypal lately as well. Their customer service was immaculate.

I sure hope you do it. I've been trying to figure out how I can withdraw money to my country if I sold them through mtgox. After registering an account there and at Liberty Reserve and then realizing I would need at least one more middle man, I gave up. I would sell them noticeably lower than market price to you if I could get the money directly to my PP account. Because you run this as a business it would also be a lot easier to trust you, so I would have no problems sending the Bitcoins before receiving the money.

Just used your service for my first purchase of bitcoins. Despite having my order manually reviewed and having to go through some additional steps the entire order was resolved in around 10 to 15 minutes and went very smoothly. Great service will certainly use your service again in the future. Wish you continued success!

I started coding this a few days ago, but the current surge in Bitcoin interest has kept me really busy with CoinPal orders.  I'll continue working on the project this week, as time permits.

I just tried CoinPal for my first non-faucet bitcoins, and I can confirm it worked well, and very speedily (if you have a verified Paypal account). Thanks very much for setting up this service, mndrix. I hope it works out for you.

I have one major security complaint about the service, which I think you could easily fix: Once I have typed my Bitcoin address in on the first screen, it is never displayed back to me. For starters, this means I have no way to verify that the account I have typed (which I am paying real money for) is actually an account under my control.

There is a real security problem here: a man in the middle could intercept my initial request and have the funds redirected to his account, without me being able to before purchase. First, there is no SSL (HTTPS) connection, so a man in the middle attack is possible. While using SSL would help, certificates are expensive and I'm not saying you need to get one. Just that in its absence, we have to assume someone is able to view and modify the HTTP traffic as it goes between my browser and ndrix.com. Now consider this scenario:

1. At http://coinpal.ndrix.com/, I enter my email address, amount and Bitcoin address.
2. A hacker intercepts the HTTP request, and modifies the bitcoin_address field to contain his address instead of mine. He leaves my email address and BTC amount as they are, and forwards the modified request on to ndrix.com.
3. On your server, this creates a new unique ID "534fxxxx", with my email address, my requested amount, and the hacker's Bitcoin address.
4. I am redirected to http://coinpal.ndrix.com/confirm/534fxxxx, which displays the requested number of BTC and conversion rate. I click "Continue" and am redirected to http://coinpal.ndrix.com/email_verify_instructions.
4. On your server, this creates another new unique ID "285xxxx" (I'm not sure what the second unique ID is, but neither contain my Bitcoin address).
5. I receive an email titled "CoinPal email verification (order 534fxxxx)" telling me to click the link "http://coinpal.ndrix.com/continue_order/2855xxxx". It contains both of the unique IDs for this transaction, but no Bitcoin address.
6. I click through to http://coinpal.ndrix.com/continue_order/2855xxxx, which tells me the number of BTC I am about to purchase and how much it will cost. I click "Buy Now".
7. I am redirected to Paypal (now on a secure connection) and asked to log in to Paypal. My order summary includes the number of BTC I am buying and the cost in USD. It also includes the first unique ID, "Item number: 534fxxxx". Nowhere does it say which Bitcoin address the funds are going to. I log in to Paypal and click "Pay now". The funds are removed from my Paypal account.
8. After the order is confirmed, CoinPal credits the hacker's Bitcoin account!.

(Note: This did not happen to me, it is just a hypothetical scenario. Ironically, the post-payment email I received did include my Bitcoin account.)

So there is a common theme here: The bitcoin address is never displayed throughout the process. Were it displayed, I could check in the final step that I am indeed transferring bitcoin to an account under my control. The address should be displayed in all of the following places:

• On the http://coinpal.ndrix.com/confirm/534fxxxx page
• In the confirmation email
• On the http://coinpal.ndrix.com/continue_order/2855xxxx page
• In the Paypal description (I haven't sold through Paypal before, but I gather you can load arbitrary text into the item description?)

The email and the Paypal description are the critical ones. For either the confirm or continue_order pages on your site, the hacker could keep up his spoofing, and relay back to me the address I entered, even though on the server it is planning to send the coin to his address. Therefore, these two pages should simply display the address, and not prompt the user to verify it (as it is untrustworthy). However, it will be much harder for the hacker to spoof the email (if he does, you will send one too, and I'll know something is up), and impossible to spoof the Paypal description, given that it is under heavy SSL. Therefore, both the email AND the Paypal description should not only display the Bitcoin address, but actively encourage the user to verify that this is the same address he requested. When I am about to click "Pay now", I should be able to do a final check.

I would be (and was) wary of using this system without the address at least appearing in the Paypal item description.

Some further feedback:

• There is nowhere on the site that says that I am paying in US dollars, until I get through to Paypal. You should prefix all the "$" signs with "US".
• The confirmation email contains the text "If you did not place an order with CoinPal, it's likely that your PayPal and email accounts have been hacked. Check PayPal for unauthorized transactions and change passwords promptly." I don't follow this logic. Anybody who knows my email address could have typed it into the order page and caused me to receive that email. It isn't a security risk, as it wasn't triggered from my Paypal account. There should be no problem unless I actually go through with it. So the message should read "If you did not place an order with CoinPal, you should ignore this email." (Unless there is some other cause for alarm?)
• I am a bit confused as to why the transaction has two separate IDs. What is the purpose of having both the 534fxxxx and the 2855xxxx IDs?

I hope you can use this feedback to improve this great service.

<shameless plug>
If you only need a few BTC I am selling them on my website (http://dylanw.dyndns.tv:8331/lvbx/) with no email verification or convenience fees.
</shameless plug>

Thanks for the detailed feedback.  I'll see about showing the Bitcoin address on the PayPal checkout page.  I agree that it's useful information to see there.



Good point.  I'll change this shortly.


Past experience shows that someone unexpectedly receiving a verification email almost certainly has her PayPal account stolen.  This particular wording has caught two fraudulent transactions so far.  Considering those benefits, I'll probably leave the wording as is.


If both URLs have the same ID, an attacker wouldn't need to receive the verification email since he could just copy and paste the first ID into the second URL.  This email verification step has stopped a couple more fraudulent transactions.

Thanks again for the excellent feedback.

I just fixed a bug which caused some first time customers to be told they had exceeded their weekly purchase limit even though they had never placed an order before.  Sorry for the trouble.

I just did a purchase.  I have noscript running under firefox and I had to allow your site or receive a cross site scripting error.  

My coins were deposited quickly (3 mins).  After 25 mins I had 5/unconfirmed.

After 30 mins it was 7/confirmed.

Thanks!

I'll look into it.  Thanks for the report.


You're welcome

Wow. Could you publish a fraud statistics at some point?

I have been told by security people at two large banks that the fraud percent for Visa is as high as 7.5-9%, do you get roughly the same numbers?

Fair enough. I guess there's no incentive to send it to someone else's email address anyway. I suppose the attack vector here is if you have compromised someone's PayPal, you need to request an email for their address, and then perhaps (somehow) read the email as it comes through -- maybe you have also compromised their Gmail or are MITMing them at a coffee shop.

Of course! Silly of me not to realise that earlier.

No problem. Yours seems to be the only automated service doing this (for small transactions). I think it's a valuable service so I want to make sure I can trust it (from a security point of view). You seem to have considered a lot of things.

Would there be a benefit to use two factor authentication such as sending an sms to the account holders phone with a login code ?

Someone might hack your  email but it would be unusual if they also stole your phone....

o

Note that they would have to simultaneously break into both your email and Paypal account. Just receiving the confirmation email doesn't let you steal money, because they can't log into your Paypal to complete the transaction.

There are thousands of online sellers who use Paypal, via an email confirmation. Selling Bitcoins is no different than selling anything else. It's perfectly secure the way it is (email and Paypal verification) without requiring a mobile phone confirmation. (Except for the man-in-the-middle problem I outlined above.)

So far the fraud rate is about 4%.  However, the first sale is only 47 days old, so there are still 133 days before I know for sure if that payment was good.  That long time lag is the most troublesome part of accepting PayPal payments.

And people complain about waiting 30 minutes for a few confirmation blocks  ;)

I think it would help.  On risky orders, I manually send SMS verifications or call the customer on the phone.  That's caught a couple fraudulent transactions.  I have code in place to do automated phone verifications for risky orders, but haven't yet decided whether it's worth the cost, so I do them manually for now.

Great -- I just bought some more and I can confirm that CoinPal now displays the receiving address in the PayPal confirmation screen. Thanks, mndrix. That puts all of my security concerns to rest.

If you can only accept Paypal transactions as "Mass payment", they are not reversable.
And fee is only $1 max. But Paypal account must be funded, no credit card transaction allowed.

Thanks for the suggestion.  I've considered MassPay as a way of reducing the PayPal fees and shortening my chargeback risk timeline (from 180 days for credit cards to 45 days for PayPal).  Can you provide a link to PayPal documentation about MassPay not being reversible?  I've heard that before, but never found an official statement about it.  I suspect it's not true because scammers would then just use Mass Pay to transfer funds from stolen accounts to freshly-minted PayPal accounts where they could spend the money at their liesure.

Over the weekend, someone discovered a clever timing attack to circumvent the volume limits.  For the next couple days, while I patch the vulnerability, only beta testers can purchase coins.  I've also restocked the server's coin inventory, so beta testers who couldn't get coins yesterday can get them now.

I'll post to this thread once the site is open to the public again

You are absolutely right, there is no such official statement.
Only more difficult to open a dispute, but no protection on stolen accounts.

I've fixed the timing attack weakness, so the service is open to the public again.

The CoinPal "opposite" service (called CoinCard (http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3874.0)) is now available.  It lets you sell Bitcoins for automatic PayPal payments.  The fee is 3% for payments under $50 and $1 + 1% for payments $50 or higher.

Today I bought my first Bitcoins and I got them through CoinPal. Just to say that the purchasing process was quite simple and despite the need to verify my transaction, I received my Bitcoins within an hour. Based upon my first experience, I can completely recommend CoinPal.
 ;D

This is just a heads up that CoinPal might be broken at the moment. I just tried to place an order and PayPal told me that there was a problem with the sellers email address that meant the transaction could not be processed.

Given mndrixs performance so far I'm sure this will be resolved shortly.

This problem should be resolved now.  [mike], thanks for the report.

For other users who may encounter this problem: this particular error intermittently affects only a few individual orders and for various reasons I've chosen to resolve the problem manually.  If you encounter the error, PM me your PayPal email address and I'll take care of the problem as soon as I can.  Sorry the inconvenience of the manual process.

Yes, the problem is fully resolved. It's a shame PayPal seems to be flaky but as expected mndrix provided exemplary customer service. He even added me to the beta testers list!

CoinPal is great and I look forward to doing business with Hendrix Solutions a lot more in future.

I just ran into the same problem about 90 minutes ago.  i tried using the link i received in email a while later, and got a message that my order had expired.  Upon attempt to re-order i received a message that i exceeded my weekly limit...

?help

thank you

-tom

Great service, I've used it several times already. Today was my first large purchase of 40 BTC. Is the weekly limitation of 40 BTC still enforced?

Thanks.  Yes, the 40 BTC limit is still enforced.  Once I have a better handle on fraud levels, I plan to increase the limit for returning customers.  It may be another month before that happens though.

I'm now getting an invalid bitcoin address message. I've not seen this before.

The bitcoin daemon on my server crashed causing the BTC address verification to fail.  I've restarted the daemon and test orders appear to be working fine.

The bitcoin daemon hung again.  CoinPal is closed until I can figure out what's going on

CoinPal is open again.

I wasn't able to pinpoint the bitcoind problem, but I did upgrade to 0.3.20.01, so we'll see if that fixes it.

Good work on CoinCard. I have been wondering for awhile how to get coins out of the Bitcoin system without doing a mass trade on MtGox. I just wrote up a blog post (http://mattblr.tumblr.com/post/3686935855/how-to-order-a-pizza-with-bitcoin) about CoinCard (but I haven't yet tried it myself).

The Domino's "proof of concept" was a good idea. Any idea whether Domino's gift cards work outside the United States? (Actually, given that last week I went to a Domino's store with one of their own vouchers and they told me it was invalid and I had to pay full price, I'm unlikely to try CoinCard on them. But I might try the PayPal approach.)

They are US only, excluding Hawaii and Alaska.

Thanks for the write-up.  doublec's response is spot on about Domino's gift card validity.

For anyone who tried to buy coins through CoinPal yesterday, I've restocked my inventory.  I added a bunch more coins on Saturday night, but it still wasn't enough to see us through Sunday's purchases.

PayPal approved me for one of their merchant rates.  I've passed the full savings through to buyers by decreasing CoinPal fees 0.4 percentage points.

I've also finished some analysis on past fraud rates and patterns.  As a result, I've increased purchase limits for customers 14 and 45 days after their first successful order.  This is a calculated risk and I may reverse this decision as more data comes in.  You can read details about the new limits (http://coinpal.ndrix.com/page/limits).

Good deal! You can count on my orders increasing by around 0.4%   ;D

CoinPal was down for a couple hours while I upgraded the server.  It's back now

bitcoind crashed last night.  I've restarted it and the site is taking orders again.  If you placed an order before the crash and didn't get your coins, hang tight.  I'll send them shortly.  Sorry for the trouble

Did you get a core dump? It might be useful. There must be a memory corruption or race in there. Maybe time t break out Valgrind.

Not sure it'd be wise to post bitcoin coredumps online publicly, as it seems likely there might be private keys in them. This may not be obvious to everyone.

Sorry, I should have said "hung" rather than "crashed".  The daemon process was still alive and the debug log showed it was still involved in peer exchange, but it wouldn't respond to RPC calls.  This has happened enough, I'll post what I know in the developer channel.

Unfortunately c3f140033c531e9c5eae920c16fe2ecc80faa1a2 in bitcoin.git catches SIGSEGV, which means no more core dumps :/

CoinPal now offers increased purchase limits (http://coinpal.ndrix.com/page/prices) for buyers with good OTC ratings (ranging from 10 to 120 BTC per week).  More details are available at the bottom of the purchase limits page.  Of course, people can still use CoinPal without knowing anything about PGP or OTC.

PayPal reduced my fees again.  I'm passing on those savings, so customers should save about $0.10 in fees on a typical order.  This is probably the last fee reduction PayPal will give me for a while.  I'm still considering ways to reduce the 3% fee that I keep for myself.  Unfortunately, fraud rates have eaten most of that 3% so far.  Hopefully as I improve fraud detection mechanisms, I'll be able to do it.

I've also recalculated the fee range that I show on the Prices page.  Because of PayPal's fixed $0.30 processing fee per order, it's possible for some small orders paid with non-US PayPal accounts to reach  a 10% effective fee.

I'm planning to sell Bitcoins for Dwolla (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Dwolla) starting sometime this summer.  The fees will be substantially lower since they only charge $0.25 per transaction.  Of course, this will only help US customers.

This is great!  For newcomers to the OTC web of trust, would it be possible to earn a few trust points through repeated purchasing?  I know I've used CoinPal relatively often since its inception, so as my initial purchases pass the maximum time for chargebacks that ought to be worth a point or two, no?

Definitely.  Eventually, this will be automated.  Until then, link your GPG account to your CoinPal account (as mentioned above).  Then PM me on IRC asking that I rate you for CoinPal orders

Cool, will do.

I had another wave of fraudulent orders last night.  CoinPal is down for maintenance until I can make some more anti-fraud adjustments.  Hopefully I'll be able to reopen later tonight.

CoinCard is still operating as normal

Ugh. That stinks. How bad was it?

Remember my idea about using a physical letter to a physical address? All you need is to hook into a service like L-Mail and send the buyer a verification code to their mailing address, and you can have strong proof that the account isn't stolen.

I also think you should automate your SMS verification so you can run that before a new buyer places their first order.

I probably won't know the full extent for another couple weeks.  It's bad enough that I need to make some reasonable changes, but not bad enough to quit yet :)


Thank you for the ongoing suggestions. I've been testing both of these techniques for the last couple months.  I don't yet have enough data to expand them to all purchases yet.

Anyone still looking to buy bitcoin with Paypal while mndrix's service is down can use my service: http://bitcoinmorpheus.tumblr.com/

I wasn't able to finish all the changes today.  I'll try and reopen the site for trusted buyers (those with a purchase limit over 40 BTC per week) tomorrow morning.  Until then, I can vouch for morpheus' service.  I've purchased from him before with excellent results.

mndrix, in my opinion your service is vital to the expansion of this community. I recently come back to Bitcoins after about a year out of touch and only stayed here because I was able to purchase some Bitcoins via CoinPal. I am sure morpheus' service is a viable option, but instantanious transactions is what today's public is expecting

One idea I had was - you could limit number of transactions/time period. I know you already have 40/a day, but I think it should be more restrictive. The amount could stay the same but lets say you only do 40/week/person. This would limit the damage in case of fraud while still allowing legit users to get their initial 40 Bitcoins and participate in the community, playing bitlotto or whatever. With time restriction could be lifted

Isn't the limit already 40 BTC per week, not per day?

yes, just checked. my mistake.

maybe it should be 40/2 weeks then

Last time I checked, most of PayPal's internal fraud detection took place within the hour after the transaction. And while they send an email in the case of such a suspicious transaction, I don't recall whether anything comes across the API. In any case, if it came down to it, I'd be willing to wait an hour versus not having the service at all.

Thank you all for the suggestions and comments.  I agree that near-instant Bitcoin sales help the community.  I'm not sure I'd be working on Bitcoin if the old Bitcoin Gateway hadn't been open the night I read Satoshi's paper.  I'll do what I can to keep the site open.

The current plan is to reduce the purchase limit for first-time buyers back to approximately $20 (essentially what mewantsbitcoins suggested).  That was the limit when I started, but Bitcoin appreciation has pushed it closer to $40 recently.  I'll also be changing the purchase limits for returning customers based on the chargebacks I've seen.  There will also be some behind-the-scenes changes which I can't describe in detail.

error, PayPal does report chargebacks through their API.  I'll keep the 1 hour window in mind. Thanks.

I also plan to enhance integration with the #bitcoin-otc web of trust, for those who want to participate.  I think the WOT makes many exciting Bitcoin projects possible.  If it were strong already, my work at CoinPal would be much easier :)

CoinPal is open again for trusted customers.  If you bought Bitcoins from the site more than 7 days ago, you fall into that category.  Of course, beta testers and those with OTC ratings are trusted as well.  I'm still planning to reopen to the public later today.

Being able to quickly and easily buy bitcoins is essential to their success, but the seller in such an enterprise is a HUGE fraud magnet.

Here's some other ideas:
 - Transfer the coins in installments, i.e. 10% of your order per hour
 - Bigger fees for first-time buyers
 - Add donation addresses to your forum post signatures and web pages so we can help support this essential service
 - Consider everyone a scammer until proven otherwise!

On Jan 7th, after some prodding by email, mndrix gave me this donation address, which I assume is still valid: 15VmbbyvpZQk7P4Vs7EvzYrGbtKTnW1f27

Obviously don't send anything there until he confirms it.

CoinPal is open to the public again.  The donation address dacoinminster presented is correct.  I've put it in my signature in case others are inclined that way.

The only publicly visible change is that new customers can purchase only 20 BTC their first week.  After the first week, it goes up to 40 BTC.  After that, the old purchase limits apply.

These are a bit problematic for a service supposed to be an easy entry point for newcomers.

I don't mean to imply dacoinminster is untrustworthy, but it's good practice to quote such things for preservation.

PayPal has placed a 5% reserve requirement on my account.  For each PayPal payment I receive, they hold 5% of the payment for 90 days.  This is a standard precaution for sellers of high-risk goods.  I'm a little surprised they didn't institute the requirement immediately after my initial discussions with them.  It reflects no dissatisfaction on PayPal's behalf.  They're just being cautious.  However, it is one more reason I'd love to see Bitcoin succeed :)

In the long-run, the reserve requirement shouldn't affect anyone but me.  It only translates to a $500 higher reserve than I had calculated for my own personal risk threshold.

ooo interesting, mndrix. :)

Hi there,

Forgive me ignorance as I'm new to the world of Bitcoin and CoinPal, but I have very recently purchased 12 Bitcoins, and was wondering how long it takes for them to appear in my Bitcoin account? Or have I missed something, it's definitely possible.

Thanks.

There is no bitcoin account. Anyway, it takes about 10 minutes for a transaction to be confirmed.

IF there's no bitcoin that appears in your client, you probably didn't complete the download of blocks.

Okey dokey. Well I meant that Bitcoin thing on my computer. It turns out I've been selected for a manual review by CoinPal. Thanks for the prompt reply though, this is all new territory for me, all this talk of blocks makes me think of Tetris...definitely need to do a little more research on all this.

@mndrix : How come I cant sell more than 82 BTC in your site mate ? it always display "insufficient fund in your account... blah blah"

He doesn't have enough $$ on his PayPal balance. Check back in a day or so and he'll probably have it.

Thx mate  :D

Hi,

Is there anywhere particularly good or useful that I can read the basics of what is going on? I just paid for 12 Bitcoins from CoinPal and my Bitcoin address had mysteriously changed again, with my coins being sent to my old address...are they lost to the void now and have I lost my money? Why would the address change if there were no transactions taking place? Or do they do it randomly when generating coins as well? Sorry having some probably quite simple and silly complications here.

Thanks.

The GUI client will periodically present you with a new address, I think after a transaction is received at the one that was displayed before.  None of this matters though, because your client never discards secret keys.  In other words, as long as you have not lost your wallet, you will always be able to use coins that arrive at any address your client has ever created for itself.

EDIT:  Already answered by cdhowie while I was typing.  Oh well, posting anyway.

The client likes to make new addresses for you automatically.  I think it's supposed to happen only after you receive coins on a certain address (to encourage you to only use each address once) though I could swear it sometimes makes new ones just for the heck of it, lol.

Rest assured, as long as the address appears in your Address Book, it is valid and you will be able to accept coins on it as many times as you wish.  However, it is probably best to get into the habit of using each address only once, and clearly labeling each one so you know exactly where the coins came from.

Hey guys,

Many thanks for the very prompt replies. Yeah I think my address did just change for the hell of it, as the only previous transaction was my free 0.05 Bitcoins, and I've already had 3 different addresses. But my coins have come through now, think I'm new to the system and it takes a little while to get up to speed when you first start using it. Will definitely do some more reading around though.

Cheers.  8)

Looks like there is indeed a problem. I have used it successfully twice before, but now I get this message too.

bitcoind hung last night causing the errors you observed.  It's restarted now and orders are coming through again.  On Friday, I'll try and upgrade my bitcoind to a version with the deadlock patch to prevent this from happening again.

Based on some calculations of the discount rate of credit card scammers, I've increased the purchase limits (http://coinpal.ndrix.com/page/prices) for returning customers more rapidly than I was doing before.  I've also added a slight purchase limit increase for customers three days after their first purchase.  This 3-day increase is experimental and I may remove it on short notice.

For OTC users who have linked their GPG key to CoinPal (http://coinpal.ndrix.com/user/gpg), I've increased the purchase limits further still.  You'll now get more credit for positive ratings and being well-connected in the web of trust.

I've also upgraded bitcoind to a nightly build that includes the deadlock fix.  Hopefully, the service can now operate uninterrupted.

As always, I welcome feedback.

Getting error when putting my Bitcoin address in.

Same, getting error when putting my receive address in.

I get the same error, just postin to confirm other 2 posters' claims

yeah I tried 4 different addresses but it still says its wrong.
hope you can fix it  :)

I've restarted some server components and the site appears to be working fine now.  I'll investigate the failures later this morning.  Thanks for the reports.

I've reduced fees for repeat customers by .5 percentage points.  This reflects my reduced costs for servicing such customers.  First-time buyers still pay approximately the same as they did before.

bitcoin address was accepted, thanks


e - just received, thanks

repeat customer = same email, correct?

Yes, that's right.

I have to concentrate on some big projects that are coming up (not related to Bitcoin) and won't be able to devote much time to the forum for the next several months.  I'll still manage CoinPal as I have over the last few months.  I'll try to check in on this thread about once a week, usually on Fridays.  If you notice problems with CoinPal, please contact me at coinpal@ndrix.com so that I can fix them right away.

For customers who have linked their PGP key to their CoinPal account (http://coinpal.ndrix.com/user/gpg), OTC ratings are now automatic.  Within an hour of linking your account, your OTC rating will be updated.  As you place new, successful orders, your rating will be updated if justified.  Likewise, chargebacks are automatically reported through negative ratings.

If CoinPal has already rated you for past trades, new trades may not give you a higher rating immediately.  The ratings are based on PayPal payment age and volume.  This is essentially the same formula I was using when rating OTC users manually.

Thanks to nanotube for making the automated ratings possible.

Good luck with those projects. I hope managing CoinPal/CoinCard will include improvements to their automation, robustness, prices and limits.

Have you considered making an automated service for selling MoneyPak for bitcoins? These can't be chargebacked, right? If it's possible, it should really help with maintaining cash for CoinCard while obviating your need to buy MoneyPak on the forum.

I'm confused about the "Order ID" part of linking PGP. Does it need to be the order ID of any one of my orders, the first one, all of them?

I have considered something similar.  I may pursue it further once my schedule lightens up.


Any order ID will work.  I'll try to clarify the instructions.  Thanks for the feedback.

@mndrix here's a driveby idea:  What about offering bitcoin subscriptions?  It would stabilise exchange rates during the inflationary period, reduce risk, and you could create an open futures market to fill them :)

Basically you could subscribe with paypal and automatically get coins sent each month or week ?

Yup.

That's an interesting idea.  I'll consider it.

Some CoinPal orders from first-time buyers are now verified with an automated phone call.  These orders were previously reviewed manually which required buyers to wait 2-48 hours for my attention.  The new system completes these orders immediately after verifying their phone number.  It should be a more pleasant experience for everyone :)

The phone number used is the one on your PayPal account.  The language used on the automated phone recording is one of 30 possible languages.  It's chosen based on your browser's Accept-Language header.

Some orders will still be reviewed manually.  Overall, I think this new approach provides more accurate order screening.  Hopefully it can help reduce fraud rates and labor costs so that I can further reduce CoinPal fees.

Heh, and Bitcoin once again forces me to check to see which phone numbers I have on file with various places.  The first time was when I was first buying Bitcoins through Bitcoin Gateway but realized my bank had my parents' home phone number on file instead of my own.  Wouldn't be surprised if I did that for PayPal too.

That's excellent. You really are doing a superb job mndrix.

+1

I've been out sick for the last couple days and am just now catching up on emails.  I may continue to be slower than usual responding to emails over the coming few days.  Just so you know, I'm not ignoring you all on purpose :)

Welcome back. I hope you're feeling alright now.

Because of recent Bitcoin appreciation and to keep fraud losses manageable, I've reduced the purchase limit for first time customers to 10 BTC.  All other purchase limits remain the same.

I may have to drop that limit to 5 BTC, if current prices and past fraud conditions remain constant.

ETA on when the site will be back up?

Funny that you should ask.  PayPal just froze my accounts.  I'll post more details shortly.

That's not good, I hope it comes back up soon :(.  I've enjoyed using your service as a fast way to cash out my BitCoins to pay for new hardware.

PayPal has frozen my account so CoinPal won't continue as we know it.  My funds (only about $5k) are tied up there for the next 180 days.  Read the huge wall of text below for all the details :)

History and details about the freeze

When I started coding CoinPal back in December 2010, I emailed compliance@paypal.com asking for permission to sell Bitcoins using PayPal.  I also emailed aupviolations@paypal.com seeking clarification on whether selling Bitcoins met their definition of "currency exchange".  After about two weeks, I received no response to either email. I decided to start operating the site, thinking they wanted to see something working before spending time on a response.

After operating for two months, PayPal's anti-fraud department called me to discuss some earlier chargebacks.  We spoke for 20 minutes and PayPal told me it was fine to sell Bitcoins as long as I kept chargebacks low.  Two months after that, PayPal placed a 5% reserve on my account.  I spoke with the high-risk goods department on the phone a few days later.  They were fine with me continuing business as long as I had a reserve on the account to cover any chargebacks that might arise.

Today PayPal called to say they were freezing my account because they consider Bitcoins an "ecurrency".  I told them that they had given me permission on two separate occasions to sell Bitcoins.  They responded, "that department isn't authorized to make those decisions."  The official statement in my account says "This limitation cannot be appealed."

During the entire time I operated CoinPal, my fraud rate was 1.5%  That includes the first wave of fraud when I was still learning how the scammers operated.  If that first weekend is excluded, my fraud rate was 0.9%  I obviously honored my end of the arrangement.

CoinPal was a success

During the four months that CoinPal operated, it helped introduce Bitcoin to 1,484 people by distributing 60,858 BTC (not counting MoneyPak trades).  It also helped 76 people (http://bitcoin-otc.com/viewratingdetail.php?nick=coinpal&sign=ANY&type=SENT) bootstrap their OTC ratings.

My personal view is that PayPal freezing my account is a coming of age for Bitcoin.  Previous PayPal account freezes in the Bitcoin community were related to chargeback volume.  That was obviously not the problem here.  Someone inside PayPal specifically decided that Bitcoin was a big enough risk that it should be prohibited.  I see no greater compliment to a Hydra than cutting off one of her heads :)

CoinPal's future

I'm not entirely sure what CoinPal's future will be.  I have a nice long train ride from Denver to San Francisco next week (on my way to Google IO) which should give me plenty of time to consider.

I've thought of selling Bitcoins for Dwolla, but it sounds like Mt Gox has that under control.  I'd consider selling/donating the CoinPal source code but PayPal will certainly shutdown any official sucessor now that they've decided that Bitcoins are "ecurrency".  The fraud detection code is probably the most valuable component.  Perhaps I can leverage that in some way to help Bitcoin succeed.  I can't open source the anti-fraud code since most anti-fraud measures are "security through obscurity".  Of course, I'm open to any suggestions on CoinPal's future.

CoinCard will be easier to bring back, minus PayPal payments.  It only needs a debit card number to operate.  A possible PayPal freeze was one reason I focused on "gift cards" rather than PayPal exclusively.

This whole situation has reminded me once again why distributed, resilient systems like Bitcoin and OTC are so important.

That sucks. Good luck with your future endeavors and all the shiny new toys they'll give you at Google IO.

Damn PayPal! :(
Now how im going to get my money i dont know. I sadly need paypal for now.

Well damn, really sorry to hear that.  Thanks again for your hard work.  

What a bunch of cunts!

What if this community decided to put their paypal accounts where their mouth is and gave you their own account to operate coinpal with. Is it even feasible? If so, how many frozen paypal accounts do you think it would take for them to reverse the policy?

I also heard from Bitcoin Morpheus that PayPal has shut him down from receiving PayPal Payments.  He is tied up on another unrelated project this weekend and won't have much time to get back to people about this until Sunday night or Monday, but he'll provide an update on his service then.

--Darrell

Anyone know an easy, still alive, service like this one to change bitcoins for paypal?
Im afraid of getting stuck now with my bitcoins, since the only way for me to get money at this time is this PayPal crap =/

Ah darn. What frustrating news! I definitely really liked this service.

Anyway, please check your coincard email, mndrix. I sent you 50 BTC for an order I made right before your site went down for maintenance. I now see why I haven't received the paypal funds.

At this point, I'm guessing your best bet would be Bitcoin-OTC, which can be relatively low-key and fly under Paypal's radar.

How about AlertPay?

I don't know if this is possible, but could you replace the Paypal client with one that transfers to major Credit/Debit cards instead? There would be more trust involved here, but I know that wouldn't shy me away.

Actually this might be a great idea. Also I think there's also some services that change alertpay money for paypal

Maybe you could try a payment processor like Plimus or 2Checkout as a "middleman" between you and Paypal?

Transferring to eWallets like Neteller would be good as well, but I haven't looked on their terms to see if they accept this kind of transfers.

For foreign users, it would be great to withdraw the funds at the ATM using Neteller's prepaid Master Card.

For a while, Bitcoin Gateway exchanged Bitcoins for debit/credit card funds, and that's actually how I got my first coins.  The problem is that credit cards (and debit to a lesser extent) also have the same chargeback/fraud issues that PayPal has.  The only reason Bitcoin Gateway was able to work is because the guy manually called up the bank to make sure it was actually your card, and then called you personally to confirm the order, using the phone number on file with the bank.  It was a lot of manual labor and because of that, it couldn't scale to the size that CoinPal/CoinCard reached.

I see. I do love how CoinCard is just a simple click of the mouse.

Wow this is really unfortunate. I just used coin card this morning and thought it was a great service and was easy to use.

No way with such a low fraud rate that PayPal just suddenly decided to cut you off. I'll bet good bitcoins that somebody (i.e. the admins at overclock.net) tipped them off.

I basically live by OCN, but I know those mods, and if one of them tipped PayPal off I'm gonna be really mad. There was a huge thread about it with like 3000 replies on OCN.

EDIT: Yea it just go closed, http://www.overclock.net/other-software/1001123-earn-your-gpu-bitcoin-mining-guide-165.html

It was huge because of the incredibly large number of trolls and naysayers. I was hardly expecting the staff to be trolls and naysayers themselves.

Well, with every major forum comes trolls, and trolls there are on OCN.

I don't really blame the nay-sayers though, who would believe that you can sell bitcoins and acquire them by doing basically nothing?

PayPal, owned by eBay, is in the middle of their third class-action for defrauding customers and freezing accounts.

Regardless of whether or not the department that gave you permission to trade BitCoins was authorized to, you have their permission.  In commerce law, this is referred to as "principal and agent".  The agent (say a teller at a bank) is understood to represent the principal (the bank manager) and vice-versa.  If they misrepresent, it's the bank that must keep its word to you - not you that must be inconvenienced by the bank.  Same goes here.

As for "This limitation cannot be appealed", they mean within PayPal's internal faux-court.  In PayPal's EULA, there is a proviso which requires you to agree that, in the event of a dispute with PayPal, you agree to forfeit your access to a real court and must instead seek remedy exclusively through a hearing comprised of PayPal staff.  In 1992 a real court ruled that PayPal couldn't include that proviso, because it fraudulently convinced Paypal users that they had no access to real courts as a result.  Last I checked a few months ago, the proviso was still in PayPal's EULA despite the court ruling.

You have a strong case, and PayPal has left itself wide open in its flagrantly abusive practices.  You might come out of this financially ahead given punitive damages, and what's more a lawsuit against PayPal would be effective material for a press release.  News coverage would certainly be free advertising, and in this case such a venture would actually make it advertising that paid you instead.

Submitted for your consideration.  Be well.

What would OCN tell Paypal that would make them shut down CoinPal? Bitcoins are goods traded by users for money and other services, so I don't see what Paypal can really do about this business. I'm don't know a lot about how the financial world works, but Bitcoins aren't "an actual currency", just virtual points that people buy/sell for real money.


This might be the greatest post I've ever read.

A solution would be to create a website, perhaps in Drupal, that would automatically purchase BitCoins from users who wanted to sell.  Users would log in, put their BitCoins up for sale, and the site would draw from a credit line to purchase them at current valuation.  Thus you could put cash in at one end, and accumulate a trickle of BitCoins as they came out of your site.  Your site could then also sell them to users by accepting credit card orders.  This would stimulate BitCoin usage by allowing users entry into the economy.  A minor transaction fee would probably be in order, to cover the hosting costs and credit card processing fees.

People would essentially be buying and selling with your site itself, and unlike a person it would be constantly available and always-on.

[EDIT: I recently compiled a comparison list (http://hubpages.com/hub/Online-Credit-Card-Payment-Gateways-Comparison-Shopping) of the top online credit card payment processing gateways, which you may find useful.]

Be well.

This is VERY VERY interesting information. Ill be waiting for ndrix to respond, hopefully soon.
Also press free advertising would easily help bitcoin to spread out to the world :)

Try Amazon Payments. It is almost the same as Paypal nad most people have Amazon accounts.

Just reason number #9,001 why PayPal is an awful establishment. Ugh. They've had an account of mine frozen for about 6 months now.

Which wouldn't be that bad if I didn't have a few thousand in my account. Idiots.  :-\

Actually, PayPal does this with its merchants systematically.

The frozen funds all get pooled, and PayPal earns interest off the cash while the funds remain frozen.  So they have a certain motivation to freeze accounts, then require their users to justify their existence with all sorts of paperwork they never mentioned upon sign-up.  For instance, a utility bill that must be in your name.  Not all of us have that.

In short, they're not happy until you're not happy.

The primary reason people use them as the standard is because they heard about PayPal through the mainstream media outlets.  Those media outlets are essentially owned by the same few megacorporations, so what they hype vias the media determines what the majority of people use - until people can discover a better alternative.  Thus sites like Facebook and Google, both the bastard offspring of C.I.A.-based investment firm In-Q-Tel, have become what the mainstream use.  Never mind that they work closely with the Information Awareness Office, which actively compiles data on users and tries to keep it all cross-referenced in its own databases for easy domestic snooping of citizens.  It's the federal government's approach to using commercial entities to get around the Fourth Amendment safeguard against unreasonable search and seizure, with a fair amount of tycooning and market manipulation thrown in for good measure.

Well, I say "good" measure...   ::)

QFT! That's why I don't use I'm out big money because a buyer said I shipped them a broken computer they shipped me back random pieces of wood.

PayPal was founded with such noble intentions.  It's a shame such assclowns are now in charge.

I have a feeling it will only get harder and harder to purchase/sell Bitcoins, the fees will rise as the risk level rises, and they drown the currency.  I am more committed than ever to make this work, though.  This mean WAR!

Exactly. God. Then I'm sure when I have utilities in my name, I'll be asked to scan copy of my 4th grade report card...

They are scared. It means we are winning.

I hope it goes well for you mndrix.

It depends what they are scared of.  They have to avoid government scrutiny as well, and they have a lot on the line to lose if they piss off the government.  So it's not *entirely* their fault they suck.

mmmmm what about using some system like, Payoneer instead of paypal?

Bitcoin is not the natural enemy of Paypal.

They just decide to be assholes a long time ago and end up making lot of enemies.

Here's a thought.  What about a site which accepted credit card payments from users who sought to purchase BitCoins, and then bought BitCoins when other users sold them to the site?  It could then transfer its BitCoins to users who'd already paid, on a first-come, first-served basis.

You'd be enabling people to acquire BitCoins with cash.  You'd be earning interest off the cash in the meantime.  The availability of BitCoins would help the system thrive.  The steady demand for BitCoins would make them even more valuable, and cause an increase in their valuation.  BitCoins at once become more accessible to people, and yet also worth more.

You'd have legitimate interest earned off the funds, much as PayPal does but in this case legitimately, to fund the server costs and credit card processing.  The site would be providing quite a service to the BitCoin community, and potentially gleaning interest above costs, without having to charge users for the convenience.

Well, on the bright side, now it's official, bitcoin is a currency.  Next up, Amazon.

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." - Mahatma Ghandi

Eventually PayPal will support BTC as a currency, just like they support USD or EUR.  Then we win.  :)

They dug their grave along with governments when they cut off Wikileaks funds. Now it's just the last nails into the coffin

Amazon Payments seems like a good plan

This highlight the need for peer to peer network of bitcoin exchangers.

I'm a little worried that the anons will catch wind of this little scuffle and initiate an all out war with PayPal, which could end up bringing negative press to bitcoin.

The big problem is non-US Users... for example i actually NEED the money on PP, so i can transfer it to Payoneer card so i can go to the ATM...

Sucks that this had to go, it was so simple to use. I never could get the hang of the ridiculous chain you needed from mtgox to libertyreserve to who-knows-what.

mtgox can do direct bank transfers in EUR though, can't it? I suppose that would be even simpler if it works, since it cuts off paypal as the middleman.

No, it's down here as well. I wish I could see current buy/sell rate, see if it broke 4.0 or if it went back under 3 now.

Google checkout???

Why has Google Checkout not been suggested? Its the same damn thing as Paypal... isn't Google involved in BTC???

agreed

Search the forums.  Google Checkout has already rejected bitcoin.

seriously, can someone not just sell "lollypops" at current exchange rates?

Searched and found it. Thanks
For the record, amazon payments also is out of the question

Thanks to those who have expressed appreciation for CoinPal and CoinCard.  I'll consider all the recommendations made here about PayPal alternatives, etc.  I won't pursue a lawsuit against PayPal.  Whatever publicity might be had for Bitcoin, I won't obtain it that way.

I was reminded of PayPal's blog post about Bitcoin (https://www.x.com/community/ppx/devzone/blog/2011/02/12/fyi-virtual-currency-bitcoin-reaches-dollar-parity).  It was two days later that PayPal contacted me and suggested ways to improve CoinPal so that I avoided chargebacks and reduced PayPal fees.  I would be intrigued to hear the board room discussions at PayPal that happened then and the ones that have happened this week.  Somewhere along the way, they lost courage in this experiment.

I agree with xf2_org's sentiment.  Someday, when people are depositing Bitcoins into their PayPal accounts, we'll look back at this time and chuckle.  It'll be a fun ride.

I'm more than happy to say nasty things about PayPal on general principles, but I wonder if they see bitcoin as a potential threat to their business.

I was using coinpal and gutted that it is frozen... I would try Alertpay they are used by some adult services etc. and seem to deal more with fringe type business also there is Moneybookers, but think this is mainly Europe, suits me as I'm in the UK

Why don't you allow for sending checks or ACH for people in the USA.  You would make more profit due to no paypal fees on your end.  Sure, not everyone wants that, but it would work for some.

In that context, PayPal's attempted rejection of BitCoin makes an even stronger case against them.

With U.S. maintaining even stricter regulations than most countries, I wonder if overseas currency exchanges might be easier to implement.

This is absolutely dreadful! Especially wrt CoinCard. How are we supposed to convince mainstream shops and organizations to accept bitcoins now?

mndrix, thank you for making available this wonderful service while it lasted.

I think alertpay has a tos section about not using it for ecurrency exchange.



What if we came up with a code word for bitcoins and called then carrots....

Would paypal stop you selling carrots at carrotpal ?
 :D

I think gift cards to major e-tailers is the way to go. Especially for e-tailers who allow you to stack as many gift cards as you have.

I'd trade bitcoin for Newegg credit in a heartbeat.

I'm pissed  :(

Let us know what we can do to assist.  

So it begins, the first shot is fired in the bitcoin wars.

PayPal can go pound sand ... they have shown their true colours ... kind of knew that after the wikileaks fiasco.

So much for hip new internet business PayPal are just suck up toadies to the corrupted old money power elite establishment ... losers.

Please do this! You will make me a happy man. :D
PayPal Class-Action Lawsuit information (http://www.freedweiss.com/PayPal-Holding-Money.shtml)

Moneybookers might be a solution, it functions much like paypal, it has an e-wallet and allows payment by credit card.
However they locked out Wikileaks months before Paypal did, so who knows how tolerant they would be of BitCoin?

Another possibility could be Click and Buy, http://clickandbuy.com/ , not looked at them in detail, but I used them once to pay something by credit card.

Got this "Loadavg too high due to ddos, please retry in ~5 min" when I tried MtGox.   :(

mndrix, I just realized that you and your site built up such a good reputation that you could try taking Credit/Debit card payments. As recent events show, community support is everything and you've earned every bit we can provide.

Please don't abandon this project

I'd vote against AlertPay, though I will openly admit that this is because they cut off funds to a site I support for (what I consider to be) stupid reasons, and they didn't allow the site-owner to withdraw the funds in his account after they cut him off.  So I'm possibly biased.

the thing is, there are several countrys that now they cant do anything...

for example in my country if someone wanted to make some money and buy a better mining rig, the only way was using Payoneer card... with by itselft is a very indirect way, the only way to load a payoneer card is trough PP, so there is nothing now.

After the scam with the "liberty dollars", i dubt any company will accept bitcoin marketing.

This will make small BTC --> USD conversions extremely difficult.  :(  I need the money to pay off loans, not to buy things from retailers!  Gift cards do me no good.  :(

The effect of cutting Bitcoin exchangers off of Paypal: 

1) Users will still trade Bitcoins for Dollars.

2) But now they will be individually paypalling those dollars to each other, instead of using a central service.

3) Seems to me that if you have a supercomputer, and you have access to Amazon's transactions, and you have access to the block chain, then this move makes it suddenly much easier to associate block chain transactions with paypal transactions.

4) Basically if this came from higher up, the purpose was to make the block chain traceable.

5) Anyone receiving dollars in Paypal has a verified identity, taxpayer ID, bank account, etc.


I think it's time for Bitcoin aficionados to consider anonymity layers...

otc needs a web interface. irc isn't for everyone  :P

+1

How can Europeans get their BTC converted now that CoinCard is down? I'm expecting to have 100 BTC by the end of May.

BitMarket.eu is going to become one in a week or so, we have already spoken about that.

EDIT: Some major changes are being done to the website, including incorporation of the otc-ratings.

@mndrix if you end up filing a lawsuit against Paypal I will be more than happy to toss a few thousands of BTC to support your case (or EUR should that be more useful).

Have you considered accepting Ukash/PaySafeCard/Wallie/other prepaid vouchers in exchange for bitcoins? These are anonymous already (in general) and at least in Europe you can easily buy them in physical stores, although I am not sure about the US.

From the little I understand, I don't think mndrix's service can scale very well unless he can exchange in both directions.

Reloadable debit cards come to mind, though you have the problem of getting one into someone's hands.

Yes, but that would partly be solved by accepting Ukash/PSC/Wallie/Creditcard, and giving out gift cards for various different stores plus potentially VCCs.

This really sux, this was my only way to sell bitcoins. I really hope you get coincard back up soon.

Do you still give OTC-Ratings?

I can't take a virtual card number to the grocery store.

+1! I really wish this was possible. OTC could be a phenomenal market but they're cutting off a very large portion of internet users who do not know IRC well(90%+ of users).

But... PayPal seems to tolerate other currencies and exchanges. See Virwox (https://www.virwox.com/) for example. What are the differences compared to CoinPal?

At VirWoX, you do not buy from us or sell to us
I wouldn't pretend to know PayPal's motivations but it looks more like an otc exchange.

So what you'd need is some kind of ATM access.

There's probably a local credit union somewhere with an online presence willing to allow online bill pay to a BitCoin to USD exchange site.

Also, there are purely online banks now.  The cards they send work with ATMs.  The rest is done online.  Univest is one.

Green Dot cards are reloadable at 7-11s.  Wonder if they have an API that BitCoin site could use to accept Green Dot-loaded funds.

Someone out there will appreciate the new business that BitCoin can bring them.

[EDIT: If organizations have difficulty with the concept of BitCoin as rival currency, perhaps you would find it easier to describe it as a digital commodity.  When businesses like credit unions think of BitCoin as that can be bought and sold online, like groceries, the mental aversion is very likely to disappear.]


Be well,

- Satori

For all the people who said that they can no longer get fiat money for BTC because they can only use paypal:

I'm currently advocating two services, alertpay and dwolla. Both of these are as easy to set up as paypal, differences follow.

Alertpay will eventually treat bitcoins like paypal does and shut you down. However they haven't reacted yet as far as I know. So this is a good stepping stone in the river of opposition. Also has saner international currency handling than paypal.

Dwolla will eventually treat bitcoins like paypal does and shut you down. However the community opinion is they will take much longer to do that. Dwolla also has lower fees. The downside is that it is American USD only, American bank accounts only.

I accept both of these now as payment, and at this stage it would be good for basically everyone to switch in order to avoid paypal.

We will re-evaluate once alertpay and dwolla attempt to bust bitcoins balls.

#bitcoin-otc ;)

EPIC FEES. $5 for a bank transfer?
Paypal didn't charge a fee to deposit or withdraw
Just registered, but I stand by my earlier comment

$5? I didn't pay that much when I did a test deposit. I guess it depends on your bank. And your country. I deposited for free.

mndrix, can you

1) Apply for merchant account with your bank (and implement the same security paypal uses - charging the small amount and then entering the confirmation code). Plus if you add sms confirmation, i think you'll get a much lower than your current 1.5% chargeback rate. If you don't have time to program this, than i can help and you will handle only financial issues.
2) To send money in the reverse direction - use direct transfer to visa and mastercard. It works well outside US, and as far as i can see supported in US now too: http://www.ecommercez.net/featured/visa-now-you-can-direct-money-transfer-between-credit-card/

I think you will need to apply for money transfer license, but i think it worth it. I think community will be able to raise fund for license cost.

people without phones can't use it (like me :( )

You probably don't have a card too and can't use it anyway?

Can you use Google Voice for the sms confirmation thingy?

Just because I don't have any use for a phone doesn't mean I can't get a visa pre-paid card if it was useful.  ::)

why paypal freezes everything? :S

and me..

This is only applicable and useful if you have evidence to support such permission. Satori is absolutely right that the agent(s) represent the entity and thus if they misrepresent the entity the entity is liable for such misrepresentation. Without evidence of the misrepresentation it would be foolish to enter a court and attempt to hold the entity responsible. Always collect evidence when interacting with PayPal and similar companies. It is perfectly legal to record a telephone conversation with PayPal and many other companies without notifying them you are recording (in ALL US states) and such recording can be used as evidence in court.

Are you sure that was 1992? :)

I couldnt agree more, As far as i know i've got a PGP key but.. Well, Thats the extent of what i know about the IRC otc GPG/PGP key thing. Seriously.

Then learn to use it. Sending and receiving singed and encrypted messages is not big deal.

What's more, it may prove very useful in the near future 

You're correct of course, it was 2002 (http://itlaw.wikia.com/wiki/Comb_v._PayPal).

For the record, our modern chancery courts aren't "real" courts within the Union either.  But they did manage to supplant our common law courts over the last couple hundred years.  Interestingly the court ruled against PayPal essentially for seeking to do to its customers what the government had already been doing to its citizenry.

It was only 50 cents for me to to do a bank transfer. The only more expensive bank option was a wire for 15$.

The only $5 option I saw was to fund a credit or debit card as a means of withdrawl.

yes, I have a google voice # that I used on coinpal.

I really hate Paypal!  >:( Thanks for your help ndrix.  :)

havent had the time, but how about amazon payments?

There are many countries not supported by Amazon.

How about switching to http://www.paymate.com

they are in direct competition with paypal and might welcome the custom.

Good idea. After the PayPal fiasco,  It would also be prudent to work out all details beforehand so as to not face some form of similar consequence

I'd suggest people use Venmo (https://venmo.com/i/darrell-duane.cFL.pdq).
This payment system has no transaction fees for the consumer, it is funded when people use it with merchants.  
Bitcoin Bonus provides 50 cents USD worth of Bitcoin when you sign up for it via the link above and fully complete your Venmo profile, and then Claim (https://bitcoinbonus.com/claim) your Venmo Bonus (https://bitcoinbonus.com/venmo) by entering in your Venmo username.   (You'll also get a dollar from Venmo).

You also can go social with Venmo and optionally let other people know that you're buying bitcoin, helping promote it, but you can keep your transactions private as well.  Here are some more details from the Venmo website:

Venmo: The story.
Venmo was built by two friends that found it incredibly frustrating to pay each other and their friends back. I'll get you, you get me back hardly ever works out, and eventually the missing cash starts to add up. Venmo was built to solve this problem by allowing anyone with a phone to settle mini debts between friends in person, securely and instantly. But that's not all. Venmo is designed to be social and fun, just like the times you have when you're spending money with your friends. You can share your payments, keep track of the places you're spending money, and leave personal notes with every payment you make. We think of Venmo as the best payment service for friends.
What is Venmo?
Venmo is an iPhone, Android and Blackberry App that lots of people use to pay back their friends. It's completely FREE (no transaction fees) to use, and it makes splitting the bill at a restaurant between a group of friends very easy, and kind of fun. There are plenty of other ways to use Venmo, for example paying your roommates back for living expenses like rent, utilities and groceries, or getting your co-workers back for lunch runs or coffee runs. It's even useful to send friends birthday cash, or other cash gifts instead of writing checks. Whenever a friend owes you money, just use Venmo.
How big is Venmo?
Tens of thousands of people in America use Venmo, and we've processed millions of dollars in transaction volume between friends. And, we're still in Private Beta. That's awesome, right?
What are some ways to use Venmo?
The most frequent use case is splitting up a lunch or dinner bill at a restaurant with 2 or more friends. We've all been there before, one person gets the bill and has to figure out how to collect the money from everyone. Venmo saves the day in this situation. Other ways people use Venmo are to settle living expenses with roommates like rent, utilities or cable; to get money for concert tickets and trips; to pay co-workers back for coffee or lunch runs. Basically, whenever someone owes you money, or you owe someone money, just settle it up with Venmo.
How do I pay someone, where does the money come from?
It comes from a credit card or a debit card that you link to your phone number. Once you signup, we walk you through the whole process, and it only takes a couple minutes.
If I receive money, how does it get into my personal Bank Account?
That's easy. Just setup Direct Deposit when you signup, and we automatically transfer all the money you receive on Venmo into your bank account every two weeks. You can always cash out manually if you'd like, but rolling deposits make it really convenient for you to get your money. To setup Direct Deposit, you need to know your bank's routing number and account number (you can find it on a check from your bank or in your online banking portal), that's all! We designed it this way so you don't have to worry about maintaining an extra balance somewhere.
What banks does Venmo work with?
We've partnered up with all the major banks in the country.
Is Venmo Secure?
Absolutely. Venmo uses Bank Grade Security and 256-bit SSL to encrypt and transmit all of your data. Venmo is also certified by Verisign, the leading SSL provider in world.
Venmo is certified by Verisign
What makes Venmo better than other payment services?
For starters, we're completely free to use and there are no transaction fees when you make a payment.

There are lots of other reasons too:

    * Direct Deposit. You can setup direct deposit and we'll automatically transfer any money you receive on Venmo into your bank account every two weeks. You're free with your cash, and we're not trying to earn interest on the float.
    * It's Social. Venmo is the first social payments service. On Venmo, you can share select payments with your friends on Venmo, Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare as a way of telling them what you're up to. This is a fun way to engage with Venmo, and you get to leave comments on shared payments. Don't worry, only friends you explicitly accept can see the payments you share.
    * Realtime Statistics. We give you detailed statistics after every payment you make. This keeps you informed about how much you're spending with your friends, and if you add your location to a payment, we tell you how many times you've visited that place and how much you're spending there.
    * Your Phone Comes First. You can do everything on your phone. That includes signing up, adding your credit card and making your first payment. This makes it so easy to get your friends to use Venmo with you, especially when your hanging out with each other!

How much does it cost to use Venmo?
It's completely free to use Venmo. There are no fees to signup, and there are no transaction fees.
If it's free to use, how does Venmo make money?
While Venmo does not work with any service providers, or businesses right now, it has plans to work with them in the future. There will be standard transaction fees charged to any business that uses Venmo. This will allow Venmo to remain free for friends to use with each other.
How do I get an invite to Venmo?
Just join our waiting list, or ask a friend that's on there to invite you. We're constantly sending out invitations to new users.
I have more questions
Not a problem! Just use our contact form to get in touch with us, and we'll be happy to answer any of your questions.

sounds interesting. is it international?

It does't work here in Italy ...

Yes.  Automated OTC ratings still work.  You can link your PGP key (http://coinpal.ndrix.com/user/gpg) to your CoinPal account to receive automated OTC ratings.

As far as I can tell, Green Dot doesn't have a public API for accepting payment.  I've contacted them several times about selling Bitcoins for MoneyPak, but they never return my calls or emails.

Thank you to everyone for the suggestions about alternative payment methods.  I'll consider them all in the coming months.

this sucks, coincard was one of the main reasons I love bitcoin
hopefully the accounts will be unfrozen soon.

+1 on Venmo, sounds awesome, and exactly what we need!

Venmo might work ok for most as most people don't read User Agreements/Terms. Just click "Ok, I Accept" and proceed. Not uncommon terms though.

Awesome thanks, it doesn't seem to accept coincard transactions but I'm happy to have an otc rating for the bitcoins I bought  ;D

Aww, that's a shame.

Suggestion to mndrix:

Rather than devote yourself to creating one site for everyone in the world, perhaps working on allowing people to create their own, using their own countries' available services, would provide something more robust for people.

If there were a Drupal module for BitCoin, anyone could start a site and the only difficulty would be finding a service that would be tolerant of BitCoin.

The result would be that the effort would become distributed.  Lots of sites where people could use, and purchase, BitCoin.

If the BitCoin community collaboratively funded a BitCoin module for Drupal, it would certainly get written.  All manner of BitCoin services would appear, limited only by the number of users who had approached ATM and card service providers and had arranged something with them.  People would become motivated to approach those services and seek to co-ordinate with them, because the result would be a site they owned that many BitCoin users would use.  Small transaction profits would add up.

For BitCoin users who are unfamiliar with Drupal: It's a free open-source system for developing websites.  Very easy to create them, and you essentially just select modules (like a BitCoin module) and configure them for your site.  No programming skills are needed.  Point and click.

BitCoin users who'd like to contribute to developing such a module will probably find this (http://groups.drupal.org/node/128389) useful.

If you are sad you can't buy bitcoins with your paypal account, you can always bid on my ebay auction. See the thread about it here: http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=7072

Ah here is the discussion I hoped to start here:http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=7069.msg103412#msg103412 (http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=7069.msg103412#msg103412), I made a list with all options I know.

https://squareup.com/ might be an option for accepting credit card payments.... the logistics of actually doing it are a little beyond what my brain is willing to handle at the moment but it presents a path that may be walkable.

Actually, I just realized that you can buy bitcoins with your credit card right now on the ebay auction I linked to, if you are in the U.S.

Squareup looks like it might be pretty awesome, just in general.  At first glance at least.

Wrt Bitcoin, it could be excellent for face-to-face transactions.  Swipe the card, wait for the money to clear, use your phone to send the bitcoins.  Though, I can't imagine how there would be a significant amount of business for someone selling bitcoin in the streets like that.

Liqpay is also a good credit card payment processing service.

I use square for my tech support business, it works as a good platform / example of how the transaction process might be able to work with a bitcoin wallet app. Either it does not require that you have the card, you can manually key in the CC info as well. Square has no idea what was bought, your CC company won't see the transactions as bitcoin.

But then who is going to email their CC info? I would hope very few unless they were using onetime use cards.

Since a chargeback against a credit card transaction is easy, I don't know that this would be an option for selling bitcoin "in the streets", though I suppose for friends and family it might be suitable.  2.75%.  No different than using PayPal, except that PayPal has the "personal / gift" option where no fees are incurred by the recipient.  AmEx's Serve is another credit-card + ACH based payment network similar to PayPal, and for now (through August, 2011) they charge no fees to either the sender or the recipient.  

Again, if you trust that you won't get charged back, these all work fine for person-to-person payment methods.

  http://squareup.com (http://squareup.com)
  http://gopayment.com (http://gopayment.com)
  http://serve.com (http://serve.com)
  http://dwolla.com (http://dwolla.com)

There's a good list of options being built here: http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=7069.0

Exchanging in and out of bitcoins for each transaction certainly gets to be expensive though.

I'd just like to thank you for your support in helping me to get some of my first bitcoins.  The transactions were always swift and without hassle.

I agree.

So is there any way to actually get my money from bitcoin account? Actually I need this money asap and since I can't just 'start an order' I need to say I'm pretty screwed :(

What do you mean by "get my money from bitcoin account"? Do you have bitcoins you wish to send to someone?

Did you took a look at http://www.bitcoincashout.com/ ?

there is a bunch of others: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade#Currency_exchange

How many do you have ?

PM me if you have ideas. Very serious about what you said, but a different strategy in mind.

What about Western Union?

If I can use my W.U. online account to send money to someone in China, who then picks up in cash, they've clearly addressed the fraud charge-back thing (I think they ring you to confirm the transaction). Could CoinCard use WU instead?

Don't they charge like 50 bucks for international transfers?

Yes. (I was quoted $45 for transferring $1000 from Israel to US by MoneyGram). WU is the polar opposite of CoinCard (which was about instant, cheap, easy cashout for small to medium amounts). BitcoinExchange (http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=9730) offers cashing out bitcoins for WU.

Western Union is expensive, it makes sense for big transfers but not for small. There is also Moneygram as alternative.

Glad to hear you might just send it using debit cards.

I think that'll be a better long-term plan, and most people already have one.

Please update us with any new info! I'll probably not sell btc for a while, but when I do hopefully you get this working again!  :)

Actually we could create a "Western Union" ourselves, doing e-transfers by BTC and local by cash.
Eg:

A is in US and needs to send 1000 US to B that is in China
A contacts C who deals with BTC - OR - A himself has a 1000USD worth of BTC
A/C sends the BTC to the Chinese local operator who delivers the money to B.

Alternative paths would include:

A buying 1000USD worth of BTC from C and send them to the Chinese operator

A sending BTC to B who cashes them out with the Chinese operator

This would need just a bit of organization to put forth, along with ways to contact the needed operators.

Nice.

A Google Map, with people adding labels for their location and contact info, would do it.

...and relinquish their anonymity in the process.

This is very similar to what www.Ubitex.org is doing.

I believe this would need a bit more organization than a simple distributed grid, specially due to liquidity. Imagine you sent some BTC, like $100 worth, to someone that's near an "independent exchanger" for him to cash it back, if that independent exchanger has no more than $10 with him the cashing out wouldn't be possible.

If we had local exchangers everywhere we wouldn't be having this discussion to start with

Here is a way to get around paypal's rules about selling currency.

You setup your website so the user can have a balance in BTC and USD (or whatever currency you like).
You use paypal to add money, or cash out from your sites USD balance.
Another way is to sell "tokens" or whatever you want to call the balance on your site.

Your site will then do conversion between BTC and USD using the balance in his account.
The difference here is that you are not selling currency (BTC) with paypal, you are selling tokens for your site.

You could also do it more practical, like sell email addresses (customer@yourdomain.com) for $50.
Then allow customer to sell the email address back to you for bitcoins.
It doesn't have to be emails, you could do this by selling anything that you can create one time and does not cost anything further to distribute, like software license keys etc...
Again here your not directly exchanging BTC for paypal.

Precisely right. Selling crypto-keys associated-with/linked-to/backed-by merchant held accounts is perfectly acceptable. Open Transactions already has all the machinery in place for merchants, exchangers to do all this, essentially issue their own keys/token/licences/currency (call it whatever you like at this point) Merchant Credits ... OT can do all this if someone wanted to just use the back-end library and API, then put a web interface on top of it.

mndrix,

Any update on the situation?

If any1 wants to develop frontend for OT, I am available, since I am already doing it currently for the Money Changer OT client.

I heard a rumor that mndrix sent paypal a letter. In the envelope there was nothing except this picture:
https://i.imgur.com/cJJYp.jpg

the man is a fighter

Nothing much to report.  PayPal will keep my frozen funds for the next 6 months.  I won't try to persuade them otherwise.  I have obligations that will occupy my time for the next few months.  When those projects are done, I'll revisit CoinPal/CoinCard and decide how to proceed.

I'm still very interested in Bitcoin and plan to continue working on Bitcoin projects.  The Bitcoin ecosystem can change a lot in a few months.  When that time comes, I'll see what needs can be met and go from there.

meanwhile they earn interest on your money.
I couldn't take that lying down, but then again losing that amount of money would break me.
To each his own. I'm glad you won't let this deter you from working on bitcoin projects in the future  ;D

I got a call from phone number 402 935 7733. While answering I dropped the phone and it rebooted, cancelling the call. Research suggests it's paypal calling about unusual activity on my account. People reported questions like 'what kind of items are you selling' and 'do you intend to continue selling this kind of item.' I don't know what they would have asked me, but this is disturbing.

I have used coinpal once, and I trade with a lot of people on #bitcoin-otc. Something tells me I'm in the middle of a giant witch hunt. Nothing of mine has been frozen yet, and I am keeping zero balance in my account.

Reviewing the terms of service to determine if I have to answer those above questions. Not that it would stop them from freezing my account if I don't.

This is almost stalkerish on the part of paypal. Ive heard a few bitcoiners so far  have been contacted by them personally at home and at their places of work. I suspect they have created some sort of data mining to link anyone using services like coinpal and other people who publicly accept paypal for btc.

Perhaps its time to collect data on paypal and note when they ring and what questions they ask. It needs some sort of strategy because a private company targetting individuals like this is unnacceptable. If this continues I suggest all the data be shown to the EFF. I can imagine the publicity if it got out what paypal is doing here.

 :)

The next time someone gets a call from PayPal answer and tell them you can't talk right now but will be happy to call them back shortly, get a phone number to call them back at, return their call and record the conversation. You do NOT need to get their consent to record the call legally. The recording can also be presented in a court as evidence. This is legal in all states in the USA, I don't know about the legality in other countries.

Uh... you may not need their consent, but in the majority of states, you DO need to notify them that you are recording the phone call.  It is inadmissible as evidence if you do not follow your local laws regarding this.

Agreed. And record yourself telling them that.

Sorry, I misspoke. You do NOT need to notify them that you are recording the phone call. I just rang PayPal to double check at 1-402-935-2050 and verified. They give you their consent at the beginning of the call, no need to notify or ask for consent. Listen carefully to their consent and make your own determination whether it could be provided as evidence in court. I would have no hesitation recording a call (and have many times) and presenting it in court if necessary (no need as of yet).

You gave your consent by calling them, they gave their consent at the beginning of the call. This IMO satisfies 2-party consent.

Ah, I didn't realize they gave consent before you even asked for it.  :P  I would agree then, you shouldn't have to notify them of call recording if they explicitly state that it is ok for you to record their calls.

Not to alarm you, but some people also found some withdrawals from their Paypal-linked account/CC after receiving those calls.
Something like: PAYPAL 4029357733 SGP.

Rather keep an eye over your accounting for a while, just in case.

Paypal is really getting desperate with bitcoin, isn't it?

So it's a scam?

Or paypal is stealing peoples money??

Withdrawing via Virwox/Second Life still seems to work ok.  I would imagine going the other way would be safe as well.  Paypal has been doing business with Second Life for a long time, so it is unlikely that you would raise any red flags going that route.

I think I will no longer do any sort of direct bitcoin <-> Paypal transactions though.  All of these accounts getting frozen is making me rather averse to the idea.

Actually, according to the reports, it seams it's Paypal itself doing it. For "verification" (ripoff) purposes, I guess.

Hi, I have been tiring to buy bitcoin with paypal and came across your site, and send Paypal a Email, asking if they allow buying bitcoin. the reply:
*************
I can assure you that there is no policy against the purchase of
BitCoins, however it is possible that BitCoin simply do not accept
payment through PayPal.
*************
The reply might mean that the front line that replys to this E-mails has no ideal what Bitcoin is?
if enough people sends them E-mail asking for Bitcoins, they might give it some weight in future decision.
I will attempt inform them of what a Bitcoin is.

By the way, sorry if some one posted a similar reply, a lot of people have a lot to say about this, and i can't read it all.

Interesting.  Care to post the full email here?  Definitely update on any future replies they come back with...

Discrepancies in what their employees tell us may force Paypal to outright announce that Bitcoin transactions aren't allowed.  It'd be good publicity.  :)

You shouldn't wait to get involved in bitcoin projects! You have a great mind for what's needed and what people like!

 

If you still have that anti-fraud software available, I'd love to talk to you about licensing it for some of my bitcoin projects to save us some time on that end.

Send me a PM!

Brad

You'll probably get a faster response sending him an email, see http://ndrix.com/ .

mndrix: 

When selling BTC, you could maybe pursue becoming a merchant accepting Credit Card payments for BTC digital cryptographic key rights, and not process your credit card customer's purchases through Paypal. 

Then when you buy BTC digital cryptographic key rights, you could maybe still pay your sellers with paypal because of your good reputation with your BTC sellers - that you will not reverse any paypal payments.

BTC being anonymous is open to discussion, BTC being an e-currency and not maybe just plain digital cryptographic key rights is open to discussion.

Pardon my ignorance, what exactly is a "BTC digital cryptographic key rights"?

Rights to numbers in wallets as opposed to the value.

you mean the private keys?

I love this statement.

PayPal thawed my account today (after 6 months).  My full PayPal balance is being transferred to my bank account.  I received two small chargebacks shortly after the freeze and none for the following 5.5 months.  Those chargebacks didn't materially affect the fraud rates I mentioned in April (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2555.msg101084#msg101084).

My plan is to bring back CoinCard (http://coincard.ndrix.com/) within the next month or so (minus PayPal plus a couple other payment methods).  Once that's running smoothly again, I'll start implementing credit card payments on CoinPal (http://coinpal.ndrix.com/).  I don't have a timeline, but I think my anti-fraud systems are up to the task.  I've kind of missed swimming with the sharks :-)

I do believe AccessCoin beat you to the punch on the creditcard idea. :(

Great news!

A service that charges 20% extra doesn't count.

MemoryDealers beat me too it also (via physical delivery).  As I understand it, AccessCoin uses Google Checkout whose ToS prohibit currency exchange.  I'm sure Google will be friendlier than PayPal was, so I wish AccessCoin the best of luck.

I don't want to promise a specific fee at this point, but I'll be disappointed with myself if it's above 10%.  High fees tend to discourage honest customers, leaving only the fraudulent ones using the service.

I thought Google Checkout was friendly to digital currency?

It's always a little hard to tell how the ToS will be interpreted.  Google says they prohibit "wholesale currency" transactions (https://checkout.google.com/support/sell/bin/answer.py?answer=75724&hl=en) which includes "currency exchanges."  I don't know whether Google's legal department considers Bitcoin a currency.

Not at all.

Months ago, I ran the Bitcoin Store, which sold bitcoins in return for Liberty Reserve / GlobalDigitalPay / etc.  Tried to add Google Checkout, and was explicitly denied within 24 hours of adding G.C. to my site.  When bitcoins were explained to Google, they pointed me to the "no digital currencies" portion of their ToS.

I run btcnow.net, and after months of fighting with google checkout (got my IPN code working tonight), I'm taking my chances with paypal (with some major restrictions).  It will be a good test to see if they are still hostile towards bitcoin.  I operated fine on checkout for a while, but once one jackass got it in their head that it was some sort of criminal scam, they banned my account, and hunted down any new ones I tried to open up.  They said I didn't violate any TOS, but my business model was just "incompatible" with google checkout, and they wouldn't tell me anything more for "security reasons".

For those subscribed to this thread, I posted another thread about anti-fraud lessons learned (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=93770.0) while operating CoinPal.

Thanks for the lessons learned thread, good tribal knowledge!

We at CoinMama.com (http://CoinMama.com) also had the misfortune of having or PayPal account reviewed and frozen after a period of 2 months.
But now we're working with Western Union and MoneyGram money transfers.
This way we can allow people to buy bitcoins with a credit card since Western Union and MoneyGram offer the option of making a money transfer through a credit card or debit card (in certain countries).  

damn necros...  ;D

This thread poped up and I am reading all those smart people saying smart things.. and thinking WTF? is it bitcointalk or am I dreaming...

I'm wanting to know if they ever unfroze your account? Did you get your money back from them that was seized? Since they are now starting to mingle with bitcoins, I was curious if they would release funds they seized during their btc is against TOS.

I got scammed 6k selling BTC on PayPal. Does this CoinPal guarantee insurance in case of charge back from credit card buyers?

- Mayer Amschel

Coinpal is shut down. They seized and froze the assets due to trading currencies. I was curious if they ever got their money back now that Paypal is starting to verse with Bitcoin. Sorry you lost money on there. Maybe you will get it back one day.

Anyone with more than two peas for a brain saw that coming from miles away.... :)

Unless I'm missing something, the account was unfrozen long ago - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2555.msg595903#msg595903.

Thats great. Thank you very much for responding to this. I was extremely curious if Paypal would give the money back or unfreeze accounts since now they are having dealings with bitcoins.  I wonder how much money Paypal acutally had tied up with these type of accounts that were hit. Its kinda a large number I would imagine.

As Meni mentioned, PayPal unfroze my account about 6 months after freezing it.  I was able to withdraw my cash at that time.

However, until last month (about 4 years after the freeze) that PayPal account was still restricted.  That is, I was unable to add or withdraw any new funds or make any transactions with that account.  Before those restrictions were lifted, I had to provide a verbal promise that I would not use the account to trade virtual currencies.  So PayPal's baby steps towards Bitcoin haven't reached the ToS department yet, apparently.

Well it is quite a step for them to take I would imagine. Think of all the money that they froze. All the people that had interactions with because of it. I'm not saying that you was last on the list, but it was about what 2 months ago that they announced publicly that they would begin to determine if bitcoin would be a viable resource they could use? So 1 month and they did at least update your account. So, to me, that means that they must have have realistic intentions of implementing btc into their company.

You guys forgot one important thing: Paypal (a system player) can't and won't go against the system. Neither of these small steps taken by them indicates less hostility towards BTC.

paypal itself has become a risk for many people nowadays. many of the paypal accounts have been hacked by the hackers.
in this situation using paypal and bitcoin together will be a huge risk for yourself.
its a completely risky thing but if its secured by the hackers completely then may be you can be successful in attracting many people towards this.

paypal still the best payment processors over the world since most ebusiness use it,bitcoin is new and already got a part of the cake,besides those is hard to exchange to paypal as a user can open a fight and get back the money sent on the 60 days ahead the transaction,soo exchange to paypal currently would be a disaster since desonest people will open a dispute and take the btc as well the money back.... soo better avoid paypal....

Hello

Took me some time to read all the page
Now I have more than one points about some questions that I already find the answers here
Thank you @mndrix

paypal a true myth...

This service is great. I enxchanged paypal to bitcoin one time about 6 months ago and I got a lot of troubles because my paypal name is not the same with my real name on the identity

10 to 20 BTC , it s big amount of money. I think you should lower the minimum purchase, 0.1 is great for all paypal users. I find difficult to buy bitcoin with paypal. Most exchanger don't accept paypal but they can sell bitcoin to paypal accout. I mean we make bitcoi to paypal balance. That 's good idea. Most internet users still use paypal as one of the biggest payment gateway.

mndrix, I just realized that both you and your site developed such a good reputation you could try getting Credit scoreOrDebit card repayments. As recent occasions show, community assistance is everything and you've got earned every bit we are able to supply.Please don't give up this task

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Keeping more relaxed for me. No need to consider cstoconditions in marketplace. Particularly if i must viewing charts daily. Da trading will require up my time and become less affordable, because profits that i achieve not yet large.y

is this service still active? its a good service by the way some people that selling their stuff on ebay and other marketplace will get payment in paypal balance, and maybe this service can help them to buying bitcoin with their paypal balance

Its seems Arora is the best option to check into the link you sent. This is because my own browser is not responding at all. Thanks to those guys that made the suggestion of Arora. I think that should solve my problem.

If its works, i will be over the moon. Because changing paypal to bitcoins is kind of very problematic. I hope this is the key

no message in 2018 !!

on their site:

PayPal froze my accounts. CoinPal is permanently closed

coinpal.eu is a scam

they got me for about $780 last night

bitcoin address 12awVrBX3J95qXjDKC7btodpL27mxgg2fF

I can change bitcoin to paypal $1=$1 if you need to change bitcoin to paypal , webmoney or perfect money contact me.
By the way if you need to change bitcoin to virtual credit card this site help you www.vcc24.com

I also prefer PayPal as a payment system. But i wouldn't save my bitcoins there. Because i'm afraid of scammers. By the way which trading platform do you use ?