My girlfriends house in Germany

[bitcoin_bob]

I've read the whole thread (yes, the whole thread), and I can only conclude that Goat is not a troll nor a shill, but a very poor analyst with very poor critical thinking.
Chaang Noi (Goat) is ridden with egocentrism

+1.

However, one must never mock the teacher- and the Goat has taught me with fire, just what logic really exists out here. I have bought and sold many things on eBay and in the real world, however I have never been subject to people's 'Thinking out loud'. For instance now I know that some people DO read the auction listings and then completely ignore the content, whereas my assumption was some people, just don't read.

If I take away any lesson from the last week, it has to be 'Never underestimate a F*&kwit'

That being said, the man had some genuine concerns albeit voiced in the wrong way. He also, by rights, did email me asking for the Lawyers information but being Friday I did not manage to reach him. So in reality I should have set this up far better and had some verifications in place to begin with.

My biggest fault is not understanding the bitcoin/escrow culture. Obviously in all my cash sales, with the lawyers involved, trust has never been any question whatsoever. For some reason Bitcoin being a completely non reversible blah method of payment has lead to a huge level of mistrust. Probably due to the anonymity of the currency. I did try to point out there will be no anonymity here due to the nature of titled property, but, I guess some people just don't get that yet.

It's a bit like the mythical hot blonde who thinks she is so hot and too good for anyone that she dies a virgin and alone. I just hope that Bitcoin does not end up going in that direction.

[1714843387]

1714843387

[1714843387]

1714843387

[1714843387]

1714843387

[1714843387]

1714843387

[bitsalame]

I've read the whole thread (yes, the whole thread), and I can only conclude that Goat is not a troll nor a shill, but a very poor analyst with very poor critical thinking.
Chaang Noi (Goat) is ridden with egocentrism

+1.

However, one must never mock the teacher- and the Goat has taught me with fire, just what logic really exists out here. I have bought and sold many things on eBay and in the real world, however I have never been subject to people's 'Thinking out loud'. For instance now I know that some people DO read the auction listings and then completely ignore the content, whereas my assumption was some people, just don't read.

If I take away any lesson from the last week, it has to be 'Never underestimate a F*&kwit'

That being said, the man had some genuine concerns albeit voiced in the wrong way. He also, by rights, did email me asking for the Lawyers information but being Friday I did not manage to reach him. So in reality I should have set this up far better and had some verifications in place to begin with.

My biggest fault is not understanding the bitcoin/escrow culture. Obviously in all my cash sales, with the lawyers involved, trust has never been any question whatsoever. For some reason Bitcoin being a completely non reversible blah method of payment has lead to a huge level of mistrust. Probably due to the anonymity of the currency. I did try to point out there will be no anonymity here due to the nature of titled property, but, I guess some people just don't get that yet.

It's a bit like the mythical hot blonde who thinks she is so hot and too good for anyone that she dies a virgin and alone. I just hope that Bitcoin does not end up going in that direction.

Well, the problem is that this cryptocurrency attracts nerds, libertarians and paranoids, and these folks are not exactly known for being the most sociable, open and emotionally balanced bunch out there lol.
Plus, the explosive popularity of bitcoins are bringing younger crowds who are terribly immature and who love to troll. Plus add to that the trolling effect of the internet, and you'll get an explosive recipe.

So you'll frequently encounter people who are terribly immature for their claimed age (and don't be surprised if they fake their age for the sake of winning an argument... based on argumentum ad auctoritatem *facepalm*), and people who isn't willing to reason, and people who isn't even aware of their incapacity of reasoning.
But don't be discouraged, not everybody is like that. Whenever you find them, just ignore them.

Welcome to the community lol

[gopher]

I've followed the two threads with great curiosity.

Although I (like many others) felt disappointed that the house did not sell, it did not actually came as a surprise to me.

The main reason, I believe, is because the OP managed to threaten the most basic foundation of this forum - the anonymity of its users.

By offering an immovable property for sale, implying that the process will require the successful bidder to disclose his identity, I believe automatically antagonised majority (if not all) users here.

For some reason, most of the users on this forum get very upset if something forces them to reveal their identity. I don't know, perhaps most of the users are not proud of themselves and that's the reason they like hiding behind a pseudonym. But these same users are also very happy to reveal their identity when purchasing large ticket items with BTC, as long as the trade does not happen on this forum but on a different site. The mind boggles.

@ bitcoin_bob, don't despair, I see your efforts as genuine and sincere, and I wish you, at the end, manage to sell your girlfriend's house for BTC, I agree that will make a good precedent and help the Bitcoin cause.

But that's not going to happen here, on this forum - if the trolls do not pollute your thread and reduce it to a series of ignored users' posts, the resident idiots will keep sabotaging your auctions until they see you give up.

My advise would be to list the house on e-Bay (UK is the most logical choice), state that you would accept Bitcoin, and then post a link to the e-bay auction on this forum for discussions - but be prepared to ignore many of the idiots that will come and chirp-in and soil your discussion thread, as this is what they do for fun.

[Pzi4nk]

I too watched this auction with interest. (Even thought about bidding at one point but really don't have any prospects of living in Germany anytime soon.) So I was disappointed on your behalf when it didn't sell.

Still, as has been said, people are only going to risk a fraction of what they think the house is worth on such an auction. I don't think you can expect to get more than 100BTC in this situation. I hope you do, but I think it unlikely.

It's a circular argument but it goes something like this: If you post a house on a bitcoin forum auction you can't expect to get much for it. If you're willing to sell it at such a deep discount there must be something wrong with it. If it's possible there's something wrong with the house (foundation, zoning, back taxes, ownership, whatever) I'm willing to risk even less.

Anyway, best of luck. I'll be watching to see if this shows up on eBay (which might just be your best bet).

Cheers

[skull88]

Didn't read everything but calling OP a scammer is pretty stupid, how the hell will he scam you?

It's a house, you don't pay upfront, you first do the paperwork, than you pay. Their is no need for an escrow or anything. 

[Inedible]

I've read the whole thread (yes, the whole thread), and I can only conclude that Goat is not a troll nor a shill, but a very poor analyst with very poor critical thinking.
Chaang Noi (Goat) is ridden with false dichotomies, negativity bias, confirmation bias, hasty generalization born from his egocentrism, argument from incredulity, and I believe that there was also some level of False-consensus effect which resulted in his poor judgement.

Hell, I haven't seen so such a gross collection of informal fallacies and cognitive biases in one post since Lucif's thread.
I gotta give it to you, Goat, in this thread you beat Lucif and Kano together in lack of critical thinking.

Btw, Goat claims that bitcoin_bob is a scammer because he doesn't reply to him, or that if bitcoin_bob cancels the auction that automatically "proves" that bitcoin_bob is a scammer.
Regardless of bitcoin_bob being or not actually a scammer, that reasoning is so childishly flawed that my fallacy detector in my brain just exploded.

Goat, you've been pretty much unfair to OP and you fail at critical thinking.
Besides that, honestly I doubt you have purchased a home in anywhere in the world, considering that you fail to understand that a lawyer can act or set up an escrow agent. Everytime OP was mentioning about it, it went way over your head failing to understand what he was implying to.

In any case, I still fail to understand how he fails to understand that the seller has all the risks in a non-escrow transaction.
Once the buyer you sign it BEFORE the transaction of the money, it becomes the buyer's and the deed is irrevocable, THEN it is paid.
So if any buyer was careful enough to hire a competent lawyer who does his due diligence to do all the appropriate checks and reads carefully the deed FOR YOU, there are nil chances of getting scammed with a real estate transaction.

Looks like you've swallowed a psychology dictionary

[Welsh]

Didn't read everything but calling OP a scammer is pretty stupid, how the hell will he scam you?

It's a house, you don't pay upfront, you first do the paperwork, than you pay. Their is no need for an escrow or anything. 

Exactly and it was mentioned more than once throughout the forum.

You must agree to the terms and conditions, meet up in person with your lawyers.
AND sort out everything, before even sending a fraction of BTC.

[bitcoin_bob]

I've followed the two threads with great curiosity.

Although I (like many others) felt disappointed that the house did not sell, it did not actually came as a surprise to me.

The main reason, I believe, is because the OP managed to threaten the most basic foundation of this forum - the anonymity of its users.

By offering an immovable property for sale, implying that the process will require the successful bidder to disclose his identity, I believe automatically antagonised majority (if not all) users here.

For some reason, most of the users on this forum get very upset if something forces them to reveal their identity. I don't know, perhaps most of the users are not proud of themselves and that's the reason they like hiding behind a pseudonym. But these same users are also very happy to reveal their identity when purchasing large ticket items with BTC, as long as the trade does not happen on this forum but on a different site. The mind boggles.

@ bitcoin_bob, don't despair, I see your efforts as genuine and sincere, and I wish you, at the end, manage to sell your girlfriend's house for BTC, I agree that will make a good precedent and help the Bitcoin cause.

But that's not going to happen here, on this forum - if the trolls do not pollute your thread and reduce it to a series of ignored users' posts, the resident idiots will keep sabotaging your auctions until they see you give up.

My advise would be to list the house on e-Bay (UK is the most logical choice), state that you would accept Bitcoin, and then post a link to the e-bay auction on this forum for discussions - but be prepared to ignore many of the idiots that will come and chirp-in and soil your discussion thread, as this is what they do for fun.

Well I was thinking about the idea of eBay UK, but am wondering how many people here that do NOT have an eBay account whose bids I would loose.














[/quote]

[baloo_kiev]

Well I was thinking about the idea of eBay UK, but am wondering how many people here that do NOT have an eBay account whose bids I would loose.

You could also start it here with pre-announcement on as many realty-related websites as you can get. Then the proper buyers will find it.

[Welsh]

Well I was thinking about the idea of eBay UK, but am wondering how many people here that do NOT have an eBay account whose bids I would loose.

You could also start it here with pre-announcement on as many realty-related websites as you can get. Then the proper buyers will find it.

Just put a link to the ebay listing, and then people can see the current price it is at, then they can bid directly here with BTC.
Just state on your ebay listing, 'or best offer'.

[FanDjangoBTC]

Interesting read.

It's not just the fact that buying with BTC's and at the same time giving up your anonimity might be a problem or that BTC users are overly paranoid.

I think that BTC's inherently have a few characteristics that make it necessary for people to be very careful, as part of BTC's design. This has been covered in prior posts in this thread so I won't reiterate this here.

In Germany the laws/regulations regarding how a transfer of porperty is to be handled (disconcertingly) show how difficult the protection of both the buyer and seller really is, even using cash or bank transfers.

Other countries are equally (or less) rigid.

Hence, the Notary Public gets some more work to make him rich. (By the way: We don't really want to need to trust someone, as BTC fans, right?)

After moving from cash based transfers in front of the notary, face to face, especially with the large amounts of money involved, to bank transfers, even in Germany, a small "time period" of risk/overlap actually exists, and the notary informs both parties of this eventuality.

The move from cash-hand-over to bank transfer was not easy, whilst trying to keep it as safe as possible for both parties.

And now we come to payment in BTC's.

Paid, but stated by the seller to not have arrived, and thus "gone" forever? Proof of the payment accepted or not accepted by courts?

For escrow, it is unacceptable to have only ""John" for the entire globe, and he might be on vacation tomorrow.

Of course the notary public is the ideal person, should be educated to analyze the blockchain and see the payment. But how to prove it went to the seller?

This makes it necessary for the notary to be "a money recipient in the midde" while at the same time being the guy who initiates the transfer of title in the land registry.

But until you get notaries to be savvy concerning BTC's, this curreny has a problem for purchases on the order of beyond a couple of thousands of Dollars.

Qou vadis BTC, if we cannot even sell a house using this as payment?

It has nothing to do with knowing the address of the house, the girlfriend's age or anything else:

assuming you have all the information you personally need to bid on the house, no matter how scant they may be or how uninformed your impulse might be - in the end you need to solve the problem described above.

In this thread, some are complaining about "not enough data to decide: Bid or Not Bid", others are complaining about "How do we handle it, if my bid wins".

The second problem is a fundamental problem that the BTC community needs to address by finding out what to replace the "John" escrow by.

Just my 0.01BTCs on this

[skull88]

Paid, but stated by the seller to not have arrived, and thus "gone" forever? Proof of the payment accepted or not accepted by courts?

Put in the contract the amount and address to where the Bitcoins should be send.
In case of a dispute, it can be easily verified if the coins where send to the specific address.

[bitcoin_bob]

Qou vadis BTC, if we cannot even sell a house using this as payment?

My thoughts exactly.

I was actually having a bit of a discussion about this today with a college and he pointed out that somehow, somewhere someone, persuaded a bunch of people to trade in 1 billion dollars worth of 'beer tokens' amongst each other. Someone, somewhere, somehow, also managed to persuade a bunch of drug and weapons dealers to trust them as an intermediary, to send out drugs/guns on the silk road and that they would get paid.

Someone had to accept the first bitcoin, someone had to accept the first silk road transaction.

This house could have sold, but as pointed out the chances are that it would not have gone for what we wanted for it.

However I cannot afford to play the game of 'what ifs' when the auction was so ungraciously hijacked. If it had run it's course, civilly, I would have offered it at 10BTC with no reserve and we would have sold it for 11 in principle.

Of course many people will probably be thinking that it is easy for us to say this with hindsight.

But, we are willing to put our money (well house) where our mouths are and run the auction again.

John has said he would stand Escrow, but is very swamped at the moment. Candoo has offered to escrow but become MIA since I last emailed him.

I would like to ask someone trusted on these forums to come forwards and offer to help me here. I have said this before but I will say it again, I am willing to provide all documentation and lawyers references to prove who we are, where we live, that this deal is 100% correct and the house is what it says it is. Once said person has validated this information and is willing to state publicly on the auction that all this information has been validated, then we should be able to move forwards with a 10BTC, 14 day this time, no reserve auction and see where it goes from there. I would like to try it without eBay on a matter of principle- All BTC, by BTC forum members, without the use of a 3rd party company.P2P house auction- after all is that not what bit-coin is all about?

I have put my money where my mouth is, Now I would like to see some Bitcoin champions come in and help get this to work.
 

[bitsalame]

I still think that using John here is too convoluted for this transaction, you both will have lawyers.
Simply make a notarized statement of which address belongs to whom, and that a transaction from x to y for z amount means that the funds are effectively transferred.
Then if I won the auction, after signing the deeds I would simply send the funds from my notarized bitcoin address to your notarized bitcoin address.

That's it, that should suffice.

But if you want to make it even more undeniable, just make each parts to sign a note with their bitcoin addresses, with a clear statement that such bitcoin address belongs to NAME, SURNAME at ADDRESS, NATIONALITY AND ID#. Both parties print them out, sign it, and notarize it just for the records.

[bitcoin_bob]

I still think that using John here is too convoluted for this transaction, you both will have lawyers.
Simply make a notarized statement of which address belongs to whom, and that a transaction from x to y for z amount means that the funds are effectively transferred.
Then if I won the auction, after signing the deeds I would simply send the funds from my notarized bitcoin address to your notarized bitcoin address.

That's it, that should suffice.

But if you want to make it even more undeniable, just make each parts to sign a note with their bitcoin addresses, with a clear statement that such bitcoin address belongs to NAME, SURNAME at ADDRESS, NATIONALITY AND ID#. Both parties print them out, sign it, and notarize it just for the records.

ultimately, if trust is such an issue, all of this could be solved in the notaries office with a laptop.
 
Buyer- click- bitcoins transfered
Seller- sign- property transfered

House sold......

[bitsalame]

I still think that using John here is too convoluted for this transaction, you both will have lawyers.
Simply make a notarized statement of which address belongs to whom, and that a transaction from x to y for z amount means that the funds are effectively transferred.
Then if I won the auction, after signing the deeds I would simply send the funds from my notarized bitcoin address to your notarized bitcoin address.

That's it, that should suffice.

But if you want to make it even more undeniable, just make each parts to sign a note with their bitcoin addresses, with a clear statement that such bitcoin address belongs to NAME, SURNAME at ADDRESS, NATIONALITY AND ID#. Both parties print them out, sign it, and notarize it just for the records.

ultimately, if trust is such an issue, all of this could be solved in the notaries office with a laptop.
 
Buyer- click- bitcoins transfered
Seller- sign- property transfered

House sold......

Exactly, but still for legal purposes the first paragraph of my previous post should be done as an extra precaution.
The receiving part could say that the receiving bitcoin address is not his, or to prevent accusations of having mistyped of the address or claiming that the receiving funds are from a cousin and not from the buyer (the last one would be quite dumb, but could complicate things)

If there is a signed and notarized statement that x bitcoin address belongs to the buyer and y address belongs to the seller, there are no excuses possible.
I think it is necessary as a prophylactic measure.

[Welsh]

I still think that using John here is too convoluted for this transaction, you both will have lawyers.
Simply make a notarized statement of which address belongs to whom, and that a transaction from x to y for z amount means that the funds are effectively transferred.
Then if I won the auction, after signing the deeds I would simply send the funds from my notarized bitcoin address to your notarized bitcoin address.

That's it, that should suffice.

But if you want to make it even more undeniable, just make each parts to sign a note with their bitcoin addresses, with a clear statement that such bitcoin address belongs to NAME, SURNAME at ADDRESS, NATIONALITY AND ID#. Both parties print them out, sign it, and notarize it just for the records.

ultimately, if trust is such an issue, all of this could be solved in the notaries office with a laptop.
 
Buyer- click- bitcoins transfered
Seller- sign- property transfered

House sold......

Exactly, but still for legal purposes the first paragraph of my previous post should be done as an extra precaution.
The receiving part could say that the receiving bitcoin address is not his, or to prevent accusations of having mistyped of the address or claiming that the receiving funds are from a cousin and not from the buyer (the last one would be quite dumb, but could complicate things)

If there is a signed and notarized statement that x bitcoin address belongs to the buyer and y address belongs to the seller, there are no excuses possible.
I think it is necessary as a prophylactic measure.

Yeah, I think this would prevent the seller from being scammed himself.

It's always better to be safe than sorry.

[BitcoinAshley]

I've read the whole thread (yes, the whole thread), and I can only conclude that Goat is not a troll nor a shill, but a very poor analyst with very poor critical thinking.
Chaang Noi (Goat) is ridden with false dichotomies, negativity bias, confirmation bias, hasty generalization born from his egocentrism, argument from incredulity, and I believe that there was also some level of False-consensus effect which resulted in his poor judgement.

Hell, I haven't seen so such a gross collection of informal fallacies and cognitive biases in one post since Lucif's thread.
I gotta give it to you, Goat, in this thread you beat Lucif and Kano together in lack of critical thinking.

Btw, Goat claims that bitcoin_bob is a scammer because he doesn't reply to him, or that if bitcoin_bob cancels the auction that automatically "proves" that bitcoin_bob is a scammer.
Regardless of bitcoin_bob being or not actually a scammer, that reasoning is so childishly flawed that my fallacy detector in my brain just exploded.

Goat, you've been pretty much unfair to OP and you fail at critical thinking.
Besides that, honestly I doubt you have purchased a home in anywhere in the world, considering that you fail to understand that a lawyer can act or set up an escrow agent. Everytime OP was mentioning about it, it went way over your head failing to understand what he was implying to.

In any case, I still fail to understand how he fails to understand that the seller has all the risks in a non-escrow transaction.
Once the buyer you sign it BEFORE the transaction of the money, it becomes the buyer's and the deed is irrevocable, THEN it is paid.
So if any buyer was careful enough to hire a competent lawyer who does his due diligence to do all the appropriate checks and reads carefully the deed FOR YOU, there are nil chances of getting scammed with a real estate transaction.

I couldn't agree more! I read through (not every day something like this happens!) and Mr. Goat made a complete fool of himself. Bitcoin_bob you have some mighty patience. Good luck with the auction, sounds like you have a plan to get things moving again.

I lol'd at the tag sale bit because it looks exactly like what Goat was doing (out of sheer ignorance, though, same as the tag sale man)

[bitcoin_bob]

Just to bump this and say that I have not forgotten and will be auctioning the house again, just waiting to get escrow approved.

[herzmeister]

auctioning the house again

11