I don't think it would be safe to assume that PayPal tends to protect the buyer. They will be partial when dealing with dispute cases, especially if the "seller" (which would be you in this case) aggressively defends the transaction against a charge back or dispute by making creative excuses about the nature of the transaction. Or worse, you might withdraw the funds from a throwaway PayPal account and never be heard of again. A dispute in this case would be moot since PayPal will have nothing to draw or recover funds from, leaving the "seller" (lender) with no recourse.

PayPal will not simply reverse the funds if there are no funds to recover in the first place. If the goods and services terms are not met (if there is no proof of anything shipped or not shipped) then protection terms might not apply.

This is too risky. You can't really use PayPal as a form of collateral. Anything related to PayPal guarantees nothing. They are unpredictable.

For your financial safety, I very strongly recommend using a trusted escrow on this forum. Here is the link to the list of trusted members offering reliable escrow services:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=855778.0

Scams are so very common here and there are scammers who will go through great lengths to steal less than $10. Yes, they are that desperate.

Whether you are selling or buying something, escrow is the safest way to get the job done cleanly and risk-free. Beware of the “increments” scam. It goes this way: scammer says send the full BTC amount first. Being smart, you refuse and insist on using escrow. Scammer (furious now that he can’t boss you around for the full amount) desperately tries to save the day and will now do and say anything to extract some coins from you, even a few bucks to pay for his Mac burger or pizza so he says ok pay half first and pay the rest later. The scammer then disappears with that 50% incremental payment.

Use escrow and you won’t be sorry.

Scams like this are the reason why 99% of my posts are about reminding everyone to use escrow. Do NOT trade without engaging a trusted escrow to mediate transactions here or elsewhere. Scammers dominate this online market. Why would you trust a stranger and send him $50k worth of bitcoins upfront?

This is painful to read.

Scams like this encourage other scammers to put their collective energies in conning people here. They see how easy it is and they dream of that big coup. That super catch.

Please be very careful when dealing with anyone, trusted or otherwise. Use a trusted escrow for maximum protection.

This just killed my day.

Escrow is recommended for all transactions with fly by night exchanges which has no established reputation and long term presence here and in the wider cryptocurrency market.

This is risky if no escrow is engaged.

All that red is blinding my eyes. Plus there's that pesky this user's password was reset recently which would be very hard to ignore. And then you had to offer PayPal of all payment methods. They all add up to one giant red flag.

Having been here for a while and with your reputation in tatters, I'm sure you (whoever bought this account) know that you don't stand a chance of getting any bitcoins here.

Why would you expect random strangers you never interacted with to trust you with their coins? If this is a new exchange, you should engage a trusted escrow here and deposit a certain number of coins to protect those who sign up on your exchange and send coins to your hot wallets. New exchanges are very risky platforms to trade on. When a user creates an account and sends coins to your hot wallet, balances shown on that account reflect an artificial value. It's just numbers the operator assigns to the account based on coin transactions sent to your hot wallet. The true and actual value is embedded in the hot wallet itself which your users have no access to. 

Or do you offer a wallet-type of account within which users can store bitcoins? If yes, then I'm 100% certain that private keys to each account are known to the exchange's owner or staff only.

As harsh as it may sound, you have zero trust in the community and you can't simply expect people to send you their bitcoins without any form of assurance or collateral guaranteeing the safety of their money. As a new exchange, I suggest you use a trusted escrow here to hold this collateral.

All these fly by night exchanges opening for business overnight. This is a worrying trend and explains why regulators are enforcing stricter checks on their compliance and legitimacy.

And the collateral is a wallet with enough altcoins in it to secure the loan? How many do you have? Your altcoins should convert to at least 120% of the loan amount.

And yes, scammers need not respond indeed but by the same token, lenders here also expect scammers to refrain from posting frivolous loan requests. Not saying you're a scammer but the red trust suggests you might be one. If you have valid collateral to secure the loan, then you're probably legit.

If the collateral turns out to be an empty wallet, then you deserve every pixel of that red paint.

Without the password or even a functional clue about its composition, your wallet.dat file is worthless. Encryption science is still evolving and is a very young science. Part of that evolutionary work involves finding ways to decrypt or reverse engineer the very components which make encryption technology extremely secure mathematically. Unfortunately decrypting complicated passwords with today’s computational tools is a very time intensive effort. Cracking your wallet.dat file will not be easy.

45 BTC is a very tempting amount but frankly, it would be delusional to pay 0.5 BTC for an encrypted file based on technology designed by its creators to withstand today’s most advanced brute forcing systems. Not knowing bits and pieces of the password adds to the uncertainty. It could take a week or it might even take 3 centuries to crack it.

Or are you perhaps trying to sell an empty wallet? That would be easy 0.5 BTC from anyone naive enough to fall for it. Don't blame me for being suspicious and skeptical. There are always three sides to a triangle.

I understand it’s another throwaway account, one you don’t mind being splashed with red paint. But borrowing 1 BTC on your first post (on this account, that is) takes the cake. Offering to double it in 4 days makes you a legend. Yes sir, you indeed are one. Words fail me.

You should have waited a bit more and posted this 48 hours later, giving you the title of 2018’s first scammer on Bitcointalk. It’s not too late. You can still try by first signing up for another throwaway account and posting the same drivel. Your parents will be proud.

Highly unlikely you will find recourse or a positive resolution in the courts of Bolivia. With bitcoin being banned in Bolivia, neither the criminal justice system nor the civil courts will recognize your claim and complaint. And because the country has no functional laws governing bitcoins as a tangible or intangible form of asset, property laws will not apply to your case. In the absence of recognition by both the courts and the police, you will probably see your case stagnate in a lawyer's office. Nobody will act on it as there is no case in the first place. For a case of theft or fraud to be valid, you need to have had something stolen from you or you must substantiate that you have been defrauded. It has to be something with a recognizably material and valid value. By that, you can't put forth a claim, for example, of cocaine having been stolen as, yes, it does have value but it is not one the courts will recognize as valid.

Having said that, the authorities will want to know what you lost. When you drop the B word, that's probably where the case ends.

Then there's the thief or scammer who will pull all strings in his native country to stop you on your tracks. Bitcoin's illegality in Bolivia will be one of his strongest defense strategies. If he is intelligent, he might also invoke domestic laws on the issue of jurisdiction and authority of local courts to prosecute him for a crime which has little domestic relevance. In the rare event that you manage to convince the authorities to prosecute, I'm certain it will be a very long process.

It's an entirely different story if the scammer is an American citizen. If he is, the US has laws making certain felonies committed by Americans overseas eligible for prosecution in a US court.

Upload them here please and expose them. It always makes my day when dishonest people are stopped on their tracks long before they can wreak havoc on someone’s financial life. Expose their Mycelium credentials and any links you found about them. I know it’s probably moot, considering they could simply change their trader credentials and btc address but giving them all that work to do is a small piece of justice.

Yep, the increments scam is how they hit those they can’t outsmart or those they can’t boss around for the full amount. Then they throw a hissy fit when you refuse to send even smaller amounts of coin upfront. Priceless.

I usually send around €2k every month. To avoid triggering alarm bells, I would stay in the sub-10k territory and even that is already critically high enough to raise eyebrows, especially if the local bank detects some kind of structuring pattern in the way money is flowing into your account. Structuring is obvious when incremental transfers can be assumed or perceived to originate from a larger source of funds but the transfers are deliberately trimmed or minimized to an amount which falls below statutory reporting standards (usually USD/EUR 10k). Irregularities in the timing of the transfers and a deviation from certain account activity patterns are the usual signs they look for. Keeping amounts reasonably low and being careful not to withdraw those inward funds in cash are crucial to avoid a transaction audit and inquiries being made “behind the scenes” (for example, the local bank might send a SWIFT MT107 AML Interrogative for clarification purposes).

And yes, adding your own reference description on the Mistertango app is perfectly ok. Here’s a trial transfer page to show you:

http://imgur.com/aFWwRak

As long as you have legitimate motives, you will enjoy Mistertango’s services.

The ATM will accept cash only. Bitcoin ATMs do not accept credit cards or bank transfers. He must bring CHF or EUR cash to the ATM. I think the ATM in Basel is inside a Wechselstube or currency exchange service:

https://www.bitcoinsuisse.ch/atm-network/

As for buying from sellers advertising on Localbitcoins, I’m not sure if LBC lifted their trade restrictions for Germany. The risk i see is possibly your friend’s account getting suspended or banned.

Another option is this site: https://www.bitcoin.de

It looks like a trustworthy source of coins.

Back to the ATM... your friend must either bring his phone-based wallet or the ATM might print out a private key. I’m not sure if it will ask for ID. It might (for large amounts) so bring a Personalausweis too.

I would suggest getting a Mistertango account and using it for bitcoin-related transactions. You can then transfer money from Mistertango to other EU accounts via SEPA. You get an IBAN account and a MasterCard and they are free to apply for. You will be charged for using the card on ATMs of course but that's nothing unusual. ATMs are specifically installed for a purpose: to rake in fees for the acquiring banks.

What I do is load bitcoins on my Mistertango account, then I use the MasterCard at shops and for online purchases. I transfer money from Mistertango to my account in Germany every month. No questions asked by the German bank. Why would they? They can see the money's source is another EU bank and it's an IBAN account in my name. Plus I always add a reference line: Transfer of personal funds for savings purposes. This makes the German bank happy.   The important thing is to keep the amounts balanced and trimmed to a minimum. Don't send wildly large amounts because that is when alarm bells ring and they start asking questions and digging deeper into your financial life.

And you will use escrow, right? When you get an offer from a buyer, here's the full list of trusted escrow:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=855778.0

If new and not yet activated, $950 is a good price.

How will you ship it? Where are you located? I suggest you use a safe courier service, overnight if in the US. It can be complicated if you will send the phone internationally. Customs will charge duties or import taxes which they usually calculate based on the market price of the phone. They don't always follow the shipper's declared value. Adding duty fees to the cost of the phone will lead to a higher total cost for the buyer. Because of this, you would be better off selling the phone to a buyer based in the same country you live in.

Good luck! And don't forget to use escrow.

Be careful of any offer to simplify something. It often starts that way.

Let me make it easy for you...
Let me make you rich...
Let me double your coins...
Let me show you how very easy it is to get btc for payoneer...

If you show interest, you will be invited to chat on Skype or somewhere private where the scammer can scam you undisturbed.

If the offer is a P2P transaction, do not forget to use escrow. A list of trusted members here offering escrow services is on this link:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=855778.0

Heed this advice and your money will be safe.

If you are fortunate enough to convince Coinbase to finally fix this mess and give you your money, make this your last transaction with them. This is a third world exchange operating in first world countries. They thrive because of their customers' misplaced trust in them which they reciprocate with this disgraceful quality of support.

I suggest you bombard them with emails and messages on their social media pages. They have a presence on Twitter and Facebook so I'm sure you can reach them on those platforms too. I find that if you stubbornly remind these exchanges of any unresolved issues, they will eventually respond. It's hard to ignore a flood of one and the same message, repeatedly sent until they actually respond and address the problem.

Don't allow them to ignore you. It is unacceptable for an exchange to offer a service which is dysfunctional and useless. They require their customers to strictly comply with their terms and conditions and yet they fail to abide by their obligations and responsibilities. This is not a fair relationship.

Here's my comment about this: use escrow from this list:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=855778.0

If you plan to launch a service without using any escrow and if you expect people to send you their money first, then I already know what this is. I will wait for you to confirm your intentions... will your service use a trusted escrow or no escrow? The answer to that will determine if this is a scam in the making.

I know these are harsh words but it's always good to be blunt and direct. It helps keep things in perspective. I'm sure honest members of this community will agree.

I know you mentioned something about an escrow API but I also see you plan to introduce this later (i.e. "second step") which suggests you won't be using escrow in that crucial first stage of your plan. The critical loophole there is that you could simply stretch the "first stage" forever to maximize your window of opportunity to transact without escrow.

"Will see how it goes" implies uncertainty. All the more reason to use escrow on the day you launch this service and not 2 or 3 stages later.

Looks like a herd of Binance shills vouching for and advertising that exchange. Then there's an aggressive Binance shill who goes on ultra defensive mode when someone vouches for Bitstamp.

Whatever choice one makes, always do your due diligence and never rely on the suggestions of newbie shills alone. Exchanges love to lock funds and block accounts so be careful when deciding where to trade your coins. Always keep in mind that exchanges own and control the private keys of their customers' accounts. The bitcoins are never really yours while they are within and on their system. It's only when the coins finally appear on your own non-exchange wallet that you can really call them yours.

Never store coins on exchange accounts. Trade in increments to minimize exchange-perpetrated insider scams and theft.

People who read this are naturally concerned about what could or might happen to them inside that office. Obviously it is an enclosed and private place, where there is a risk of being forced to transfer the coins under threat of assault or worse. Assuming you have genuine intentions, I can imagine how worried and nervous one would feel while counting the money and checking it for genuineness in the presence of several (most likely armed) strangers.

Why is a bank venue not an option? For example the coin seller's bank. It would be safer for bank staff to check the money for genuineness and deposit it directly into the account of the coin seller.

If I had the coins, I would be downright scared to be driven somewhere by a group of people (you mentioned partners so I assume a group is involved) not knowing if I would ever see my family again.

You should understand how sensitive the issue of safety is for anyone who takes on the risk. Put yourself in the trader's shoes. How would you feel, for example, being driven or taken somewhere, not knowing what might or could happen or who might be waiting at that unknown destination?

If you want to attract offers, you might need to change your trading terms indeed.