I think exchanges have a vested interest and are defaming Paypal / direct deals

[Coincrazy]

The main exchange is becomming un reliable. They can turn on their switches and turn it off at will

There is massive price diff between local bit coins and exchanges

Direct sell / buy seems  the only reasonable way forward at least till a better exchange Eco system comes up

I think the exchanges have a vested interest in scarring the sh1t out  of the direct seller / direct buyer so they call PayPal a scam ...they call all electronic payments a scam and so all of us will run to exchanges

What do you say ?







Ps : All above in my humble opinion

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[BubbleBoy]

PayPal exchanges really are a scam since the sender can invert money at will. Reputation is essential for PayPal trades, you should not send  more than say 10% than someone received in total during his reputation history and exchanges should enforce this. You should wait at least a week before releasing the escrow, to minimize the chance of chargeback from a stolen account. And even so, there is a non-negligible chance of fraud from an initially honest guy who simply decides he doesn't want your bitcoins any more sometime in the next 6 months, for example after a price correction.

Cash in person or bank transfer are golden on p2p bitcoin sites.

[Stephen Gornick]

so they call PayPal a scam

PayPal is a scam.  Well, maybe not a scam but what they do is scammy.  They have a user agreement that specifically prohibits the use of PayPal for payment for various types of transactions and digital currency is one of those types.

They are a private company and are perfectly entitled to have those restrictions.

What is scammy is to freeze your account and all funds within it (for 180 days) if they determine you've been trading for bitcoins.  

Ironically, this was the cause of one of the first "flash crashes" to hit bitcoin.  In October 2010, Mt. Gox was accepting deposits from PayPal.  Then Owner Jed's personal PayPal account was frozen, which resulted in the suspension of that funding method and a subsequent crash of the exchange rate.   Then another bitcoin seller, CoinCard, with permission from PayPal and a very customized and carefully monitored risk algorithm was operating until PayPal froze that party's PayPal account.



 - http://www.bitcoinmoney.com/post/5086167006

You'ld think with a 0% batting average, people would learn.  But no, it has happened over and over.   Some approaches tried by selling one and two dollars worth at a time.  Bzzzzt.  Thank you for playing, but no -- that was not the right answer either.  

Not only that, those who bought bitcoins would find funds in their account frozen as well.

So basically, those who are able to get away with it are those who fly under the radar ... individuals doing a personal trade here and there.

Every other seller has had PayPal come down and come down hard.

Every.   Single.    Seller.



Now VirWoX has a different approach.  They sell Second Life Lindens (SLLs) for PayPal, and then let you trade those SLLs for BTCs.    That works fine.

[Ekaros]

Paypal is crappy evil company...

On other hand with such system as SEPA you money is relatively safe after you received it, on other hand it's slow and one side must be trusted. And the logging is very good.

I wouldn't accept money with paypal... Though I will certainly use it to pay from my credit card.

[mr chong]

No one has had to make Paypay look bad, they have a long history of doing it too themselves. Just spend a little time reading these forums about Paypal which have NOTHING to do with bitcoins buys most are ebay, I know people who have experienced these scams first hand so they are REAL and do happen everyday!!

The first link is the latest forums the second link is an older forum from 5-6 years ago so you can see this has been going on since Paypal was started.

http://paypalsucks.com/newforums/

http://www.paypalsucks.com/forums/