Bitcoin Forum

I am interested in trading a large art collection, some books, vitamins/aminos, outdoor equipment, music samples/cds, and some other goods with bitcoin to raise some $ for college. Is the bitcoin marketplace and exchange a good place to do business vs. eBay or other classified sites?

Some other ideas of interest are a bitcoin venture capital fund and a bitcoin classifieds or auction website. I have looked at some of the other online sites, and there is a lot of room to develop in the bitcoin ecosystem.

I see the bitcoin exchange rate has fallen to around $7.x and there may be arbitrage opportunities for buying and selling with bitcoin. Do bitcoin goods generally trade at a market rate equivalent to dollars or euro, or at a premium price, for example as goods on barter exchanges bought and sold with barter credits?

http://bidbitcoins.com or... https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade#Auction_sites
I can't vouch for any sites under "Auction sites" as I've never traded on them.

Thanks. I like the concept of the #OTC bitcoin marketplace: http://bitcoin-otc.com/vieworderbook.php

The bitcoin monitor is also great: http://bitcoinmonitor.com/

I have just a few sets of goods to trade at this time, but would like to look into developing on the web bitcoin marketplace sites and investment groups.

Converting bitcoins to stocks, hedging bitcoin exchange rates through long/short trading strategies, and paying a dividend return to savers or investors on bitcoin equity fund holdings is another business model I am interested in developing.

Wouldnt you say the price has to stabilize before it can gain critical mass? How many are in circ now?

Even before the price stabilizes (if it ever does) a fund can approach bitcoin trading like forex, and make dollar/euro/etc profit if implementing successful trading strategies and convert that to gold, silver, & real estate. From what I can see, only CampBX is offering short selling currently, and they are not live with it. https://campbx.com/faq.php

If bitcoin exchanges have grown based on mining, ecommerce, and a limited number of websites offering the forex currency trading, there has been little short selling in the bitcoin market traditionally. Because of this bitcoin exchange rates could be vulnerable as a fixed currency to attacks by short sellers backed by large amounts of capital in traditional currencies.

Mainstream financial press have been negative towards bitcoin recently, compared to the mass of coverage that accompanied the exchange rate spike. "Critical mass" would be defined as a sustained trend where more money was flowing into bitcoin continually from other currencies via exchange than was being withdrawn by users -or- the attainment of some percentage of GDP in a market for sales conducted in bitcoin?

Well, bitcoin is not as popular yet as compared to other 2, its not the perfect time yet.