BuyBitCoins.com - Buy Bitcoins with your credit card

[joey.rich]

I just finished writing a simple website which accepts credit card payments and gives out bitcoins.
I already have an Authorize.net credit card account, so I was able to implement this payment system
pretty quickly.  Please send me any suggestions that you have for the site.  Beware that
I have not yet added an SSL certificate to this site because of the cost, so don't use my website
if you're on an unsecured wifi network.

https://www.buybitcoins.com

-Joey Rich
joeyfrich@gmail.com

[The Madhatter]

You get an A+ for convenience, but selling an irrevocable currency for revocable credit is fundamentally a bad idea.

:/

[sirius]

Good job. You should also show some info that makes the customer trust you (in addition to your name and website), people don't want to give their credit card details to just any site. But you probably know that already :]

In 1971 the US Treasury stopped backing US Dollars with gold (see HowStuffWorks.com), but this did not devalue the dollar. Currencies derive their value based on how difficult they are to obtain. Bitcoins are valuable because they are limited, and they can only be generated through a slow computational process. It takes time, electricity and computers to generate bitcoins.

Actually, Bitcoins are valuable because there are people who accept Bitcoin for payment, i.e. they can be exchanged for other things of value. The limitedness of Bitcoins just helps keep that value.

[D҉ataWraith]

Beware that I have not yet added an SSL certificate to this site because of the cost, so don't use my website
if you're on an unsecured wifi network.

You can get StartCom SSL certificates for free. AFAIK they are accepted without a warning dialog by everyone except Opera users.

Tutorial: http://arstechnica.com/security/news/2009/12/how-to-get-set-with-a-secure-sertificate-for-free.ars

[laszlo]

I would recommend using a self signed certificate over a third party one.. anyone can pay verisign or thawte for a buybitcoins.com certificate so it means nothing.

[The Madhatter]

You might want to check with authorize.net. A lot of credit card companies won't let you buy digital currency (or on your part sell it) because they consider it a cash advance, and higher fees typically apply to those transactions along with a lot more regulation.

Actually, it is the rules of the merchant number provider (called an acquiring bank) that you need to follow.

[Gavin Andresen]

You get an A+ for convenience, but selling an irrevocable currency for revocable credit is fundamentally a bad idea.

... or, in other words:  have you thought about what will happen when somebody buys a bunch of bitcoins from you and then disputes the charge on their credit card?

Or worse:  buys a bunch from you, turns around and sells them to you.  Waits a day.  Does it again.
And then disputes all the charges at the end of the month...

[The Madhatter]

That is a poor example. I'm sure joey.rich would open up a PayPal dispute in response to that customer opening up a credit card dispute with him.

If this kept happening PayPal might decide that he is performing "currency exchange" and freeze his account. After all, "currency exchange" is prohibited in their terms of use.

PayPal is notorious for freezing accounts over the slightest uninformed assumption. (Remember when Freenet had their account frozen because PayPal thought they were selling a proxy service? lol!)

A better example of fraud would be a someone who purchases Bitcoins with stolen credit cards, and he sells the Bitcoins to another exchanger for Pecunix or Liberty Reserve. The Pecunix/LR could then be transferred to a prepaid debit card and cash could be withdrawn from an ATM. A great way to 'cash out' stolen credit cards! :O

[laszlo]

It says there are only 4 bitcoins for sale when I try to buy some.

[Vasili Sviridov]

Did that too... There's a temp auth for $1 on my card, pointing back to ISOFFCAMPUS.COM, which mentions Notre Dame, which is also mentioned on http://www.joeyrich.com/.

So looks like at least the authorize transaction was made (no capture yet), however no bitcoins were received, and the count on the site still said 0.04, which was what I was about to buy, just to check if it worked.

[joey.rich]

Sorry to those of you who tried to buy bitcoins from buybitcoins.com in the past couple of weeks. 
I actually had 0 bitcoins, even though the site said that there were 4 coins for sale.
Anyways, I managed to get a hold of 50,000 BC thanks to Madhatter, so the site is now open for trading.

I also modified the site so that the minimum payment is $4 USD.  Payments of smaller than $4 aren't economical because they still incur a credit card processing fee.

-Joey

[lachesis]

I'm getting this error:

Code:

Your credit card payment failed with the error code "The configuration with processor is invalid. Call Merchant Service Provider."

I tried two different credit cards.

[kiba]

25 bitcoins for a dollar, is well below the market value at both exchanges, almost a 75% discount.

If it is not cheaper than what being sold on the exchange, why buy bitcoins from him at all? The only question: Where would he come up with all the bitcoins supply?

[nelisky]

I'm not an American, and thus the IRS system is deeply different where I live, but still I really think that kiba put it right: toy money. You could trade monopoly money for groceries, if the owner of the grocery store would feel so inclined, and for low volumes it's just a 'loss' he incurs, much like giving away eggs or bread.

But when your business takes a loss, the loss, according to the IRS, isn't just yours, it's everyones (if you believe in the IRS and its credibility on using collected money is a different discussion), Basically, you don't pay taxes for (some part of) your earnings because you've offset the positive income with the sale of things you had bought (and thus spent money on) for, well, nothing of value.

If the practice of turning goods bought with "real" money for "toy" money becomes something of volume, you don't only skip paying taxes for the goods you sold for BTCs (which is ok, I guess) but you also further lower the IRS slice by reporting on the spendings for material you bought and then magically disappeared without rendering profit.

You can sell products in exchange for services, but in this is inherently different as these services you would pay for if you didn't get them in exchange for goods, making the delta of the operation the same (in theory).

This whole discussion of multiple hard linked currencies seems to me to have some technical merit, in terms of the resilience and redundancy of the system, but not so much in the economical side. It's just like when the Euro was introduced, and all local currencies were hard linked to it. Basically the local transactions were still in the local currency, but it was no longer a "real" currency, it was just a token of "worth x Eur" which you could trade both ways knowing that the value would always be the same.

[kiba]

I'm not an American, and thus the IRS system is deeply different where I live, but still I really think that kiba put it right: toy money. You could trade monopoly money for groceries, if the owner of the grocery store would feel so inclined, and for low volumes it's just a 'loss' he incurs, much like giving away eggs or bread.

But when your business takes a loss, the loss, according to the IRS, isn't just yours, it's everyones (if you believe in the IRS and its credibility on using collected money is a different discussion), Basically, you don't pay taxes for (some part of) your earnings because you've offset the positive income with the sale of things you had bought (and thus spent money on) for, well, nothing of value.

If the practice of turning goods bought with "real" money for "toy" money becomes something of volume, you don't only skip paying taxes for the goods you sold for BTCs (which is ok, I guess) but you also further lower the IRS slice by reporting on the spendings for material you bought and then magically disappeared without rendering profit.

You can sell products in exchange for services, but in this is inherently different as these services you would pay for if you didn't get them in exchange for goods, making the delta of the operation the same (in theory).

This whole discussion of multiple hard linked currencies seems to me to have some technical merit, in terms of the resilience and redundancy of the system, but not so much in the economical side. It's just like when the Euro was introduced, and all local currencies were hard linked to it. Basically the local transactions were still in the local currency, but it was no longer a "real" currency, it was just a token of "worth x Eur" which you could trade both ways knowing that the value would always be the same.

I think you're writing in the wrong thread. Anyway, this "toy money" is only a fantasy of IRS. As long as their map of reality is wrong, the bitcoin economy can continue to grow and thrive unmolested. They must not believe what we believe.

[nelisky]

Yep, definitely the wrong thread... I'll paste it into the correct one. Funny thing is I wasn't even following this thread and I'm pretty sure I did post it while looking over the other one. Ah well, go figure.

[joey.rich]

Sorry to those of you who tried to buy bitcoins from buybitcoins.com in the past couple of weeks.  
I actually had 0 bitcoins, even though the site said that there were 4 coins for sale.
Anyways, I managed to get a hold of 50,000 BC thanks to Madhatter, so the site is now open for trading.

I also modified the site so that the minimum payment is $4 USD.  Payments of smaller than $4 aren't economical because they still incur a credit card processing fee.

-Joey

I still haven't gotten the bitcoins I bought a few weeks ago.  When will you pay me?

Ok, I just 10 of them your way.  Sorry for the delay!

[bitcoin_pl]

I bought bitcoins (at www.buybitcoins.com) yesterday by paypal and did't recive it yet.....
My btc number 172o3gBxsYvpUzb4Ky3h6qxmybhJU19ZYz 
payment method :  paypal
 
What is going on ?

Best regards
 

[barbarousrelic]

This Connection is Untrusted
     
     
You have asked Firefox to connect
securely to www.buybitcoins.com, but we can't confirm that your connection is secure.

Normally, when you try to connect securely,
sites will present trusted identification to prove that you are
going to the right place. However, this site's identity can't be verified.       

         
What Should I Do?

If you usually connect to
this site without problems, this error could mean that someone is
trying to impersonate the site, and you shouldn't continue.

           
         
Technical Details

www.buybitcoins.com uses an invalid security certificate.

The certificate is only valid for the following names:
  www.isoffcampus.com , isoffcampus.com 

(Error code: ssl_error_bad_cert_domain)

I Understand the Risks

If you understand what's going on, you
can tell Firefox to start trusting this site's identification.
Even if you trust the site, this error could mean that someone is
tampering with your connection.


Don't add an exception unless
you know there's a good reason why this site doesn't use trusted identification.

[FreeMoney]

Wow, what the hell.

It asks for my country for tax purposes which is pretty sick since I think we all know what taxes go to support. The form doesn't seem to work anyway, at least it doesn't accept Somalia or Canada.

I was only going to check the rate.