Here's a seller on LocalBitcoins from Bangalore:
 - https://localbitcoins.com/accounts/profile/Cryptos/


All of India:
 - https://localbitcoins.com/country/in

And that's the challenge.   A lot of people expect that to happen.  And thus they aren't selling at $11.75 (today's rate), and are willing to buy at $11 and buy a lot more at $9.

Bitcoin's use as a currency obviously doesn't today have the volume to justify a $100+ million valuation (number of BTC issued X market exchange rate).  But there is sufficient speculative interest as to its future value that it won't drop anywhere near its value that is mathematically justified.

I'm suspecting your concern isn't that there "isn't a reliable way to track and prove irrevocably that the BTC had been sent to the buyer" but instead that as a seller you are taking the risk of seeing a chargeback or other reversal when you accept PayPal, credit card, Moneybookers/Skrill, or any other reversible payment method.

That's a different problem entirely.

It is not impossible.  It is fairly simple and straight forward, actually.  You are describing a standard contract.

The contract between buyer and seller defines payment terms and simply says that delivery of the bitcoins is completed when N BTC are sent to the Bitcoin address X and all transaction(s) in which the coins were sent n have N confirmations.

This contract can be signed (physically, with a pen) and sent by mail, fax, e-mail attachment, whatever method is legally recognized in the two jurisdictions.  In certain jurisdictions, a digital signature (e.g. GPG) is acceptable as well.

It has been accepted that Bitcoin would benefit with the inclusion of a payment protocol which would lessen the need for an external contract like this, however that protocol has not yet been implemented.


If you are looking for escrow, there are several listed here:

Escrow list
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=108716.0

I'm a noob when it comes to futures contract trading but "always" is probably the wrong word to use, and "normal" might be the more appropriate term.



 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_backwardation  


The difference with bitcoin, and specifically with BUZ2 is that there are so few options to trade on margin that the price on ICBIT.se appears to end up being an exaggeration of current market sentiment.

Because ICBIT offers leverage somewhere in the range of 10:1, it is one of the few options available to aggressive speculators.  But there is not that much liquidity, so even with a relatively large delta between BUZ2 and the current BTC/USD, the futures contracts don't influence the market (spot) rates hardly at all.

It does, however, give someone who thinks the exchange rate is going to rise but has no USDs at an exchange the ability to add to their BTC position by entering at a lower rate, currently about $11.24.

There are some multi-currency accounting apps listed here:
 - http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/q/3612/153

Perhaps a method for doing the importing of the exchange rate table could be built into one of the open source ones.

But the "lurking threat" you fear is exactly this works.



That is showing how someone with $100 quickly saw that amount's buying power (in terms of Iranian rial / IRR) doubled in just a few weeks.   It sucks for those who were late to get rid of their rials, or never exchanged them out at all, but the end result is more dollars moved in a result of that increase in buying power.

If Bitcoins trade at a premium because they are scarce, more will be drawn in by the increase in the buying power of those bitcoins.  Since bitcoins can flow easier (i.e., electronically) than dollars do, which do you think is capable of reaching market equilibrium first?   On one hand you have bitcoins that can be received by millions of Iranians with family abroad who can receive bitcoins via a mobile or PC.  On the other you have paper money that must be smuggled through border crossings, or dribbled through via travelers from abroad or the few other entry vectors.

Of course, we all are well aware that bitcoin doesn't just explode onto the scene, but it probably does have a role that can be significant for both Bitcoin and for the pioneers who use it

From another thread:


And another thread where the eBay seller got his PayPal account frozen:

I can verify that the BitAddress.org website has been updated and returns the same HTML from the commit with the description v1.9 (770d933029b8bbb56539d866db6b8fa37f262102) in github:
 - https://github.com/pointbiz/bitaddress.org


To confirm this I first check the sha1sum hash of the html returned by a request to http://bitaddress.org:

$ wget --quiet -O - http://bitaddress.org|sha1sum
a487b495d710d6f617d688e5f758e40c8b6c510e  -

$ GET -eSd bitaddress.org|grep -i "200 OK"
GET https://www.bitaddress.org/bitaddress.org-v1.9-SHA1-a487b495d710d6f617d688e5f758e40c8b6c510e.html --> 200 OK


Then from my bitaddress.org repo:

$ git checkout master
$ git log --pretty=oneline|grep "v1.9"
770d933029b8bbb56539d866db6b8fa37f262102 v1.9 Testnet Edition fixes

$ git checkout 770d933029b8bbb56539d866db6b8fa37f262102
$ git rev-list --max-count=1 HEAD
770d933029b8bbb56539d866db6b8fa37f262102

$ sha1sum bitaddress.org.html
a487b495d710d6f617d688e5f758e40c8b6c510e  bitaddress.org.html


[Update: Had to update the procedure since there had been commits to master since v1.9.]

@Frisco2, you might want to consider updating the first post of this thread.  The thread started under a different title, before there was a Propster, and the links to the old site in that first post are no longer functional.

(Additionally, the FSF's page still shows the old URL, so perhaps you want to let them know about the Propster URL as the replacement.)

Particularly for a financial site involving non-reversible transactions.

Related:

Ah.  So perhaps displaying the message "Open business hours, CEST" or something like that would help lessen confusion?

Thanks for the explaining how that works though.

Yes, Bitcoin's value will be the result of speculation.   Your hoarding helps someone else (someone who is hoping to sell at a higher price).   Your dumping helps someone else (someone who is hoping to buy at a lower price).   Also, your buying and selling helps liquidity, thus shrinks the spreads between the buy and sell.

When I buy bitcoins using Dwolla, I pay a total of $0.25 to send USDs to an exchange, and the 0.55% in exchange fees.  There is also a tiny spread between the bid and the ask price, which might cost under a half a percent.

So, for a $100 purchase, I have about $99 worth buying power.

When I make a $100 credit card payment with a merchant, the merchant gets $97.  Thus the merchant might offer me a discount for paying with bitcoins.

So my bill is:

 $100 (if paying with credit card), or $98 ($98 worth of bicoins, if using that payment method.)

The merchant comes out ahead.  I come out ahead -- I saved about a dollar for converting my fiat and using it to pay with bitcoin, including my conversion costs).

Bitcoin can be used in a manner that protects your privacy.  Every bitcoin transaction is traceable though, so without taking protective measures, there is information that can be gleamed from the blockchain.
 
 - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Anonymity

There is an effort to provide the associations:

 - http://toolongdidntread.com

The site, BlockViewer is offline currently, but it was showing some of these associations between people who were careless with their information (e.g., used static addresses) and/or weren't protecting their activity from this type of flow analysis.

 - http://blockviewer.com

It looks like there are some bad numbers being used or bad calculations occurring with the exchange:
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=50817.msg1281760#msg1281760   [Edit: Issue has been resolved.]

That $10 is bogus.  I hope nobody got forced liquidation due to an insufficient margin maintenance because of that.  

Trading range of $9 to $11, what?

@Fireball, where are these numbers coming from?

If the weekend indicator continues being accurate, then now would be a good time to dump some coins!



 - http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg60zczsg2012-10-03zeg2012-10-19ztgSzm1g10zm2g25

That shows a clear week-over-week downtrend (measured Wednesday evening (west) / Thursday morning (east),  ... and yes, I'm a little late looking at this ... sorry) and thus there is a GREEN LIGHT.

Now all this says is that historically when this condition occurs, more often than not the price drops into the weekend, where the coins can be bought back at a lower level.

Timed properly, this trade should have begun about 18 hours ago (when the exchange rate was around $11.75-ish).   I'm late in looking at this, and actually benefit by selling at a higher level, ... just under $12. 

For scoring the Weekend Dip indicator's success though, $11.75 will be the amount used.  Looking for a dip by a couple percent below that for this weekend dip indicator to ring true.

We'll see!

Guess not.



Also:

45ghz $199 "supercomputer"
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=115021.0

Parallella
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=114996.0

The site currently shows: Status: Not available   and nearly every time I look it shows that.  Is that accurate?