Hi all,

I was wondering if anyone had considered (or heard of) a bitcoin service offering travel purchases for bitcoins. Customers could contact the agent and give general criteria for travel, then the agent would provide a few offerings and their USD/bitcoin price, and would accept payment for them in bitcoin. The agent could then just purchase the tickets using a credit card.

This could possibly be extended to hotels and car rentals, but the issue there is the fact that those two usually ask for the customer's credit card in person, to cover incidental damages, and often charge the entire bill to whatever card the customer provides. If it were possible to arrange full prepayment for hotels, that'd be cool too. The service would probably need to be offered by a trusted community member, due to the added inconvenience of a scam when you show up in a foreign country and your supposedly reserved hotel has never heard of you.

Anyway, does anyone have any thoughts about this? Has this been done? I'm mostly asking because I need to buy a plane ticket soon and was thinking how nice it'd be to be able to pay for it in bitcoins

I agree with your concerns and have also pointed them out to mircea, but he seems set on these terms I guess we'll see. Perhaps it would help if we came up with two names for the contracts that aren't stocks and bonds, because these don't necessarily behave like the conventional meanings of the terms.

That kind of shit happens all the time: http://blockchain.info/largest-recent-transactions

 

Same reasons farmers sell futures, among others.

Out of curiosity, where does Deslok fit into all of this? The Shades Minoco business was supposedly a collaboration between him and shakaru, so why is the thread concentrating on shakaru? Is Deslok not involved anymore?

I found someone!

I'm just wondering how people interpret market depth around here. Please comment to elaborate on your reasoning process, if you think it's of interest.

Edit: this isn't so much a question about "fake" walls that disappear if you tickle them. I'm just asking about walls that you can assume people actually intend to leave in place.

This isn't quite the same thing, but http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetuity might be of interest to people wondering about the time terms.

For anyone interested, mircea_popescu posted some information on stock/bond offerings for his options emporium on his blog (and on IRC) yesterday:

http://polimedia.us/trilema/2012/sa-ne-jucam-de-a-investitiile-n-bitcoini/#comment-78745

The arrangements do seem a little uncommon, so I'd be interested to see what people think of them. I've told him about this post, too, so he'll probably be following as well, although I don't think he has a forum account yet.

If you're wondering about trust, his WOT account is http://bitcoin-otc.com/viewratingdetail.php?nick=mircea_popescu&sign=ANY&type=RECV? and he has a GPG-signed statement from the WOT identity at http://polimedia.us/bitcoin/mpoe_sign.txt

Well in that case, I think you should sell me 50k puts at a strike of $50 for 1 btc total. I don't really care when they expire as long as it's sometime in the future that allows me to exercise the options before they expire

I'm not sure I understand this. I'm more inclined to buy if I'm up against a massive ask wall, because liquidity is good. Or did I misunderstand you?

Hah, no. It'd be delivered to an office (that's why I need it delivered during work hours) with an adult recipient. You interested?

Turns out it's illegal to ship alcohol (other than wine) to Texas and I'd like to send a friend a gift. Basically, what I need from you is to go buy a bottle of booze and to deliver it, during work hours, to an address that I give you. I'll obviously pay for the alcohol purchase itself, and will reward you 5 btc (or best offer, if reasonable) for your time. I can also send with paypal if you trust me to do so.

My WOT profile should give you some idea of my reputation, and I can GPG sign a statement if you want proof that I am the same copumpkin: http://bitcoin-otc.com/viewratingdetail.php?nick=copumpkin

I'm willing to send the coins first if you look reputable on the forum, but otherwise I'm going to need to ask you to deliver first, and then I'll compensate you once the recipient confirms receipt of the bottle.

This sounds like a really bad idea...

Edit: I'm not at all opposed to automated trading on principle, even in bitcoin. But this particular instance sounds like it will end in tears

No, it's trustworthy. The guy behind it, mircea_popescu, is a regular at #bitcoin-otc and has a good rating on the web of trust. I've bought options from him and it was all smooth, despite the rather arcane purchasing process.

The pricing is in USD, so when you see a put at 3.5 that means it's a put at $3.50, which is understandably very cheap. I'm not sure what a put in BTC would mean...

However, to avoid dealing in USD at all, he quotes prices in USD and then settles transactions in BTC at the current (24h-averaged) market rate.

Now if only we had a good place to sell options, too doing it over the counter with people is fine, but it's kind of annoying, especially when most people in the community have no clue what an option is, let alone an idea of when it makes sense to buy/sell one

Sure: the numbers are mostly uncorrelated.

I agree. This was pretty spectacular...

bitlane:

Even if he pisses you off, I'd try to keep shit like that to a private message. Responding the way you did really doesn't give a good impression, regardless of how trustworthy you are or how insulting Patrick was.

Just one point of view to keep in mind: on the lending board, if you seek a loan, you are effectively trying to "sell" yourself (your worth, trustworthiness, integrity, etc.) to one or more lenders who will take a risk and send you money. Even if Patrick had insulted your mother (which he clearly did nothing close to), you'd want to be the better man and avoid giving off a bad impression, assuming you want to impress potential lenders. A curt and level-headed response would have been more effective to forward your goals.

Anyway, just my 2 bitcents. I don't think you're dishonest or a gambler or anything like that, and wish you luck.

If you say you'll pay 9 btc / day to an address, it'd be nice if you kept us updated on why you haven't been doing that. Or is this some sort of meta-troll where you not only steal people's money but see how many times you can get their hopes up and smash them in a row before they realize you're just an asshole?

Omnom.