So does PayPal ban bitcoins or not?

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

Lots of services like Bitinstant pays out via paypal.
There are numerous Bitcoins being sold on ebay, therefore paypal.
What's the official stance?

[1714185317]

1714185317

[1714185317]

1714185317

[1714185317]

1714185317

[Stephen Gornick]

Lots of services like Bitinstant pays out via paypal.
There are numerous Bitcoins being sold on ebay, therefore paypal.
What's the official stance?

From another thread:

If you are only doing small person-to-person trades, infrequently and neither side has chargeback issues, you probably can keep trading bitcoins using PayPal for quite some time.

But when you start trading suddenly for larger amounts (e.g., more than a thousand dollars a month or a multiple of previous monthly average amount) or you start doing a ton of transactions -- especially involving funds from the buyer's credit card, or either you or your counterparty has chargebacks ... then you are playing with fire.  And you will get burned.

Here's the specific terms:

 - https://cms.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/?cmd=_render-content&content_ID=ua/AcceptableUse_popup

Prohibited Activities
You may not use the PayPal service for activities that:
3. h) involve currency exchanges or check cashing businesses,

And if you'ld like to see a heartwarming story about the aftermath after Paypal realized some trader was selling bitcoins and followed that discovery by reversing 20 or so recent transactions and then freezing the funds, start here:
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=83679.msg1001602#msg1001602

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

I got suspended for selling paperclips with free bitcoins 2 days ago, and yes i sent the damn clips with a tracking number. They want all kind of documents to re-enable my account. I had only positive votes with them but the fees are killing me so i think i will pass doing something about it. They will get to know bitcoin in the end.

[Xch4ng3]

You can easily get away with this if you're doing person-to-person trades but you can't start doing it as a business.

Prohibited Activities
You may not use the PayPal service for activities that:
3. h) involve currency exchanges or check cashing businesses

Quoted from above me which clearly states you can't use it for currency exchanging services. You could attempt to get away with it by adding the BTC on as a "gift." but due to the nature of this kind of business it'd lead to red flags for PayPal.

[nobbynobbynoob]

The most headache-free option is just don't use PayPal. They are asinine like banksters. Of course, this isn't really very helpful advice in the main, especially if you're itching to do business on eBay. Still, the reversible nature of transactions makes PayPal, credit cards, etc. a risky method to sell BTC.