Buy anything with Bitcoin - Suggestion

[Kakmakr]

I just thought about this, and want to hear if this is a good idea. Let's call it, Bit4You.

Let's take the current situation with Bitcoin and merchant adoption. We have a situation, where some services and products cannot be bought with Bitcoin, for whatever reason.

Would it not be great, if we had some sort of service, where someone else buy a product for you, and you pay them in Bitcoin. The Service can be the escrow between the two parties, to resolve the issues.

The service could add a little fee for the service and the buyer could add a little fee for his/her efforts.

Now you might ask, why would someone want to use a service like this, well here are some examples :

~ The service or site does not accept Bitcoin. <The other person pay with say credit card and you give him BTC >
~ Your PayPal account or other payment method was blocked for some or other silly reason. <They have control >
~ You want to buy some special gift for your honeymoon getaway < Do not want it advertised to the world >
~ You share an account with someone and you want to buy a surprise gift.
~ You want to signup for a service and you want it too be private. < Donkeylovers.com > 
~ You want to mess around with the people tracking your spending habits. < Your financial privacy >

Here is a opportunity for people to buy anything with Bitcoin and for the buyers and the escrow to make a profit.

The concern might be, if we do it this way, most merchants would not need to adopt Bitcoin. I disagree with that, because most merchants only accept Bitcoin if there is a demand for it. We need to create a sub-market where people buy more Bitcoin to use these types of services and once that happens adoption will follow on it's own.

What challenges do you reckon this service would have to face? < Legal issues / fraud / money laundering > 

I just want to buy stuff everywhere with Bitcoins and most merchants are too slow to catch on. The other thing that is making me crazy, is the privacy issues. Why do I need to divulge all my spending habits to a central 3rd party? < Coinbase / Circle / Xapo  > If I use this service, my spending habits will be decentralized. ^hmf^

Let's stick it to the people who wants to tell us where we are allowed to spend our Bitcoins. 

Let's discuss and see if this is a good or a bad suggestion or if this has been done before.   

[lumeire]

The first problem I see is trusting the service itself. Unless the service is built on a platform solely run by smart contracts, you would have a problem people trusting the service to be their middleman.

I'm also concerned with speed and usability, although if you'd implement a browser plugin for the service, I think it's plausible. Something like Honey, which you'll just click the browser plugin and it'll automatically apply the best coupon/deal. If you can just 'click' the service and then a smart contract would provide for everything, I think it's a good idea. 

[pawel7777]

There already is such service - purse.io. There are also few services that let you buy various giftcards with bitcoins. So it's pretty much covered.

Also in both cases there are no additional fees (as you proposed) instead they would often offer you discounts for paying with bitcoins.

[SFR10]

I like it, although it's kinda similar to what purse.io does but there you could only buy stuff from amazon and not other places (correct me if I'm wrong) and hopefully with your idea, we could buy everything with BTCitcoin and the possible challenges are: A trusteable and working escrow service in place. Also if it could be implemented on a way that the sellers doesn't have to adopt totally to BTCitcoin in order for them to sell, maybe some sort of automatic exchange so we pay in BTCitcoin and they receive in whatever money they want.

[Slark]

Op's idea is interesting and I like it very much, however, as always there are some issues with it. In theory when every cog in the machine would do well it is great.
But I understand that service is like advertising platform for people who either want to buy something for bitcoin or people who want to buy for them with Credit Cards, PayPal etc.
So who would be the escrow here? Site/service itself, or some other party? If you introduce option to refund failed purchases directly by the owner of the service then it may be successful.

[Amph]

the problem with those services is that they are always slow, take a look at purse.io, i submitted an order 3 days ago and is still there no buyers, how can we suppose to buy with bitcoin comfortably if there are no buyers for 3 days damn...

i want reliable service that you can use to buy everything with bitcoin, it seems that there isn't any...

[Shibashi Dogemoto]

Doesn't ShopemNL already does this?

Don't remember the exact name of his service, but you basically buy something online, but send the bill to them... You transfer BTC to them, and in return, they pay your invoice...

[n2004al]

The words of OP are a big and strange wonder which cannot become true even if with the adoption of its model be involved all the community of bitcoiners and the people who will accept bitcoin (as it is told at the example at the main post) will be paid over the amount of value of "thing" which will be bought only for accepting the proposed transaction of OP. Leaving aside the mess and the confusion in him's thoughts I am giving below only one of the much probable situations that can be verified only for the first example given by him in which someone else pay a service for you and you pay him with bitcoin for the money spent by him from him's pocket.

Firstly the person who will buy for you the "thing" must be a bitcoiner (and normally cannot be - are to few the bitcoiners) otherwise for what is needed to him the bitcoin which will receive for him's service. He have not even the most little idea what is bitcoin and you can stay with him all the day to give arguments about the beauty of bitcoin and at the end for sure you will have this simple the question: What to do with it?

And if you will tell him that bitcoin one day will have high price he can ask: but you how do you know this? And if you will try to explain him the limit supply of it in market or the halving every four years or the spread of it every day more, he will see you like someone who is came from the moon. You will understand him's thoughts from him's face and will change discussion telling that bitcoin has big value and can be sold at to many exchanges. If you will tell that to have him's money must find a good exchange but needed to give a mountain of documents to be verified, that must be paid "fat" fees and that to change must have much more than the bitcoin had from you (which have paid to pay the everyday bread) because those are to few and go all for the fees he for sure will make the most normal question: why to make all these things when I can pay with my credit card and everything end within seconds.  

[tom555]

this is proof of why we must use bitcoin,thanks..
~ The service or site does not accept Bitcoin. <The other person pay with say credit card and you give him BTC >
~ Your PayPal account or other payment method was blocked for some or other silly reason. <They have control >
~ You want to buy some special gift for your honeymoon getaway < Do not want it advertised to the world >
~ You share an account with someone and you want to buy a surprise gift.
~ You want to signup for a service and you want it too be private. < Donkeylovers.com > 
~ You want to mess around with the people tracking your spending habits. < Your financial privacy >

[franky1]

how about the OP speak with purse.io and be part of their crew.. developing a new service under the umbrella of purse.io to offer more potential products that people can buy.

i think purse.io has developed some reputation and trust and thus the OP working within their business will help expand purse.io's business and usage, while not risking customers funds because purse.io handles the escrow, instead of an unknown entity,

it just makes simple sense

[n2004al]

this is proof of why we must use bitcoin,thanks..
~ The service or site does not accept Bitcoin. <The other person pay with say credit card and you give him BTC >
~ Your PayPal account or other payment method was blocked for some or other silly reason. <They have control >
~ You want to buy some special gift for your honeymoon getaway < Do not want it advertised to the world >
~ You share an account with someone and you want to buy a surprise gift.
~ You want to signup for a service and you want it too be private. < Donkeylovers.com > 
~ You want to mess around with the people tracking your spending habits. < Your financial privacy >

With red is the example treated by me in my post.

As for the rest where are the proof here?

I see that there are others who see wonders with open eyes and want to build castle in the air. I see only a mess of words without meaning (except the first sentence which at least express something which have meaning).

All the rest are a bunch of words which probably can be understand only by a bunch of people. And for sure have not the importance given by this bunch of people who understand the above written.

Anyhow if the rest of the rows (except the first) have or want to have the same meaning of the first row the explanations given by me in my previous post can be easily used even for every of those.

[Kprawn]

I like the suggestion... if you create a platform, where you bring the alternative buyer / escrow / real buyer together this might actually work. Purse.io is slow because there are no

incentive for people to react quicker. In this model the incentive would be the fees / commission being paid by the real buyer. You could also include a rating system to grade the

escrow providers and the alternative buyers. If they have a low grading, people will not use them, so it's in their best interest to provide a trusted service. Hmmmm this might just

work.     

[Kakmakr]

The words of OP are a big and strange wonder which cannot become true even if with the adoption of its model be involved all the community of bitcoiners and the people who will accept bitcoin (as it is told at the example at the main post) will be paid over the amount of value of "thing" which will be bought only for accepting the proposed transaction of OP. Leaving aside the mess and the confusion in him's thoughts I am giving below only one of the much probable situations that can be verified only for the first example given by him in which someone else pay a service for you and you pay him with bitcoin for the money spent by him from him's pocket.

Firstly the person who will buy for you the "thing" must be a bitcoiner (and normally cannot be - are to few the bitcoiners) otherwise for what is needed to him the bitcoin which will receive for him's service. He have not even the most little idea what is bitcoin and you can stay with him all the day to give arguments about the beauty of bitcoin and at the end for sure you will have this simple the question: What to do with it?

And if you will tell him that bitcoin one day will have high price he can ask: but you how do you know this? And if you will try to explain him the limit supply of it in market or the halving every four years or the spread of it every day more, he will see you like someone who is came from the moon. You will understand him's thoughts from him's face and will change discussion telling that bitcoin has big value and can be sold at to many exchanges. If you will tell that to have him's money must find a good exchange but needed to give a mountain of documents to be verified, that must be paid "fat" fees and that to change must have much more than the bitcoin had from you (which have paid to pay the everyday bread) because those are to few and go all for the fees he for sure will make the most normal question: why to make all these things when I can pay with my credit card and everything end within seconds.  

A wall of text that makes no sense at all.  You saying a person who use this service, has to be a bitcoiner? You get a lot of people who have been unbanked by banks, who would use this service and some users that ran into difficulties with other services like PayPal, but still need to buy something. I have only mentioned a few of the examples, why people might want to use this service, there is much more.

When someone blocks you from using your credit card or your PayPal account, what other options do you have? Currently there are very limited options and a service like this, could be the answer. ^hmf^

[franky1]

A wall of text that makes no sense at all.   You saying a person who use this service, has to be a bitcoiner? You get a lot of people who have been unbanked by banks, who would use this service and some users that ran into difficulties with other services like PayPal, but still need to buy something. I have only mentioned a few of the examples, why people might want to use this service, there is much more.

When someone blocks you from using your credit card or your PayPal account, what other options do you have? Currently there are very limited options and a service like this, could be the answer. ^hmf^

if you are talking about people that are not bitcoiners.. and dont have a bank account. and dont have a paypal account.. well how are they going to pay you, when you buy them expensive things delivered to them?

you got to realise that your idea does have limits, but that aside... i still think you should talk to purse.io and become part of their team. expanding them to offer a better service and offering more to customers.

[ivanst776]

the problem with those services is that they are always slow, take a look at purse.io, i submitted an order 3 days ago and is still there no buyers, how can we suppose to buy with bitcoin comfortably if there are no buyers for 3 days damn...

i want reliable service that you can use to buy everything with bitcoin, it seems that there isn't any...

It's because you maybe put a higher rate of what you wanted to buy/sell, but in generally if more people use a service the faster you can deal there, i like the OP idea, the challenges would be financial declaring to the country, and maybe fraud activites, that's why instant deal are not always the best.

[Shibashi Dogemoto]

Here's the post i was talking about:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=978504.0

Seems like they're doing a good job, heared positive reviews about them

[NorrisK]

Doesn't ShopemNL already does this?

Don't remember the exact name of his service, but you basically buy something online, but send the bill to them... You transfer BTC to them, and in return, they pay your invoice...

What is the speed on this one? If it is all automated and happens withing minutes (or conf time of bitcoin), than I could see this as a successful service.

Wonder if they can handle large order though, if they have the transfer limits.

[Amph]

the problem with those services is that they are always slow, take a look at purse.io, i submitted an order 3 days ago and is still there no buyers, how can we suppose to buy with bitcoin comfortably if there are no buyers for 3 days damn...

i want reliable service that you can use to buy everything with bitcoin, it seems that there isn't any...

It's because you maybe put a higher rate of what you wanted to buy/sell, but in generally if more people use a service the faster you can deal there, i like the OP idea, the challenges would be financial declaring to the country, and maybe fraud activites, that's why instant deal are not always the best.

only 15%(the slide was stuck beyond that value) and it was for a small thing ($20) in value, so i don't this is an excuse, the problem is that there are scammer there

in fact the admin cancelled my order the first time, and then i needed to wait for the legit buyer...

[ivanst776]

the problem with those services is that they are always slow, take a look at purse.io, i submitted an order 3 days ago and is still there no buyers, how can we suppose to buy with bitcoin comfortably if there are no buyers for 3 days damn...

i want reliable service that you can use to buy everything with bitcoin, it seems that there isn't any...

It's because you maybe put a higher rate of what you wanted to buy/sell, but in generally if more people use a service the faster you can deal there, i like the OP idea, the challenges would be financial declaring to the country, and maybe fraud activites, that's why instant deal are not always the best.

only 15%(the slide was stuck beyond that value) and it was for a small thing ($20) in value, so i don't this is an excuse, the problem is that there are scammer there

in fact the admin cancelled my order the first time, and then i needed to wait for the legit buyer...

There are many frauds activity there and i think that you hear about the negative reviews for purse.io, well the amount is low and for 20 i think it would be processes asap, maybe by this friday you will sell it as many people are focused in black friday and to spend their money.

[Shibashi Dogemoto]

Doesn't ShopemNL already does this?

Don't remember the exact name of his service, but you basically buy something online, but send the bill to them... You transfer BTC to them, and in return, they pay your invoice...

What is the speed on this one? If it is all automated and happens withing minutes (or conf time of bitcoin), than I could see this as a successful service.

Wonder if they can handle large order though, if they have the transfer limits.

From what i've heared (never used the service, but i've read many of his replies, reviews, threads,...), they process the invoices manually... I don't know if their service can be automated, since they accept almost any invoice payment method from everywhere, and all formats of invoices... BTW, i'm not affiliated. I just come from the same country, and i'm interested in his service.