But this is not new news? When did EBAY ever allow listings where the seller was willing to take btc as a payment. Im sure they have been taking down those listing for the better part of the last 3 years.
No this is not new news, I had a listing taken down 2 years ago for saying I wouold accept btc.
Obviously they know people are looking to use btc, but why would they allow listing to be hosted on their website, only to have people complete tranactions in btc and avoid their listing fees. Similarly if they knew you were going to say send a check and avoid the fees, they wouldnt allow that.
Will be interesting to see if they try to put all this effort into actually allowing btc to be used as payment, rather than wasting all this effort banning its use. They could really open up a HUGE potential for btc use as tey are already worldwide and the largest place to sell stuff online.
The simple option here is to allow Paypal accounts to be funded with bitcoin, I think they have much to gain with this, probably it's even better for them than current system only allowing credit and debit cards.
This is the easiest solution to the problem. If you could fund and withdraw from your PayPal account with Bitcoin. That way buyers can buy with and sellers can receive Bitcoin, but the actual transaction could be backed in case of fraud, as it is now. When it comes down to it, PayPal is their escrow service.
But the thing is there isn't need for Paypal anymore.. there is better escrow technology availible these days, but they are still being developed and in experimental phase, but soon it will be decentralized peer to peer escrowing, paypal will be useless in a decade or two compared to BTC.
Merchants don't want and shouldn't be exposed to bitcoin volatility, it's not that they don't want to be paid with an irreversible, 0% percent fees payment system, it's about the value variation.
For the vast majority of merchants bitcoin is useless.
