It is true that once registered, the user would have a channel for getting easy and fast bitcoins. But if the user at all plans to buy any sizeable amount of bitcoins, he would be better off exchanging locally for cash or sending money to an exchange.

There may be cases where someone have the cell bill covered by their workplace and starts buying coins, but not sure if employeer will be too happy if bill start to get too high! And there may be other cases where users will dumpt phone credits for whatever reason, and rather have bitcoin (leaving the country, having no use for their prepaid phone service any more), or emptying credits if they are expiring (?).

But frankly, I think sms purchase would mainly be for those just wanting to dabbling into bitcoin, but of course I could be wrong. I guess some people would not care if prices was twice that of an exchange, but I would think most people would find that price too high.

If I remember correctly, it was impulsepay that I implemented the sms service with, and everything worked fine, it's just that the possibility of scamming seems to be too high. And when chargebacks can occur as long as 90 days after the sale, then that doesn't give the operator much room for stability in regards to the finances. You may be churning along quite happily, and then one cell operator sends along a batch of chargebacks, and suddenly you're out a sizeable amount, that's not fun.

It's also the same reasons why all operators selling bitcoins for CC's are very short lived. Here, you just have a middelman, the phone operator as a proxy, so the risks are basically the same. Also, I don't know quite how it works in the UK, but in some countries you can have a phone subscription on credit, and pay the bill after usage, so you could actually rack up quite the large bill the first month, and if the account was fraudulently aquired, there's no recourse for the phone company, and they surely will not pay the payment operator, which again will not pay you, and you're again out of bitcoins.

This will happen, trust me. Once there's a way to get 'free' money, someone will exploit it.

What you propose is that a user is registered on a site, which basically adds no extra security, unless you do verification, which may take quite the while, to establish with a certain degree of certainty that a user is who he says he is, and then the ease of use is gone, and he might just as well have exchanged cash for btc, or sened money to an exchange.

Bitcoins over mobile phone is surely a killer app, it it could be made safely. Never said it was easy to pull off a mass heist, and there will most likely be safeguard in place with the provider.

Another problem is that for a service to be sustainable, it must also turn a profit. If the time is spent avoiding fraud, and it turns no or little profit, then there's no incentive for running it.

I've thought of many schemes about how to verify a purchaser, but the whole point of purchasing coins with the phone is ease of use. Once that ease of use vanish, for instance if it will take days to verify a user, then the whole idea of ease of use goes out the window, and using traditional methods seems to be a better bet.

From the operators point of view, what he really needs to know is whether the payments are really legit or not. Not knowing this until months have passed by, makes for a very unpleasant experience. If ringtones were sold, even if 5% were fraudulently obtained and never paid for, the operator would still be in great profit. The same would not necessarily be true with a bitcoin operator. Also it's possible to send text messages that seems to be from someone else, with the right access to the network, whether or not this could be used to scam the operator into giving away bitcoins is a good question, I'm not technical familiar with all the steps involved, but if there's money to be made from it, it will be done.

Anyway, although I sound very pessimistic, I really wish a service like this would be something that could flourish and be a nice addition to the community. But it's hard to have nice things, when there's always people scamming.

Yes, and by the time some hacker breaks into a cell operators homepage and starts sending messages from their web interfaces to pay for the coins, the wallet will be just empty. :\

oh, yes  

Not sure about that - and am not buying into any conspiracy theory stuff (and tip my hat off to the Avalon team).

Also things in Shenzhen and especially Hong Kong would be quite different to Beijing (will be heading down that way later this year).

Although I shouldn't be saying this, because I'm holding mah btcs, I have to say : guys, you're fucking stupid.

Some of the you claim to not see any link between potentional BFL failure scam and a price crash. You obviously don't understand how markets work. Trust is the single most important thing on financial markets. If people are upset that they got scammed (again!), they quickly get the feeling that bitcoin is doomed. Yes, it is strongly exaggerated, but investors tend to exaggerate. Also, since bitcoin is an emerging market it needs new investments. Bad publicity = close to no new investments.

And before you start saying : 'hurr durr, real life scams don't make dollar price fall' let me say that you can't compare bitcoin to dollar.

Also, for those of you who say that bad news in 2012 didn't affect the price at all, please go see a doctor. There's something wrong either with your memory or eyes.

If When BFL managers hit the road with gullible people's money in their pockets, the price is going to go down for at least a few days. The only reason why I'm holding btcs right now is to exploit the recent discrepancy between Bitstamp and MtGox prices.

oh, yes  

You are both not gullible enough to preorder with BFL yet not sceptical enough to know that get-rich-quick isn't something that comes when you want it.

The collapse of the BFL can only lead to an increase in prices of coins (canceled boom-Mining), see, everything is going according to plan. IMHO


https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=116994.0