virwox End of Service: January 6, 2020

[hugeblack]

2019-11-04: IMPORTANT! End of Service: January 6, 2020.
We regret to inform you that we will permanently close our service on Jan. 6, 2020.

Please make sure that you have finished your trades well before 11am Central European Time on Jan. 6, 2020. You will not be able to access your account after that time!

This platform is one of the oldest and easiest ways to buy Bitcoin using PayPal. More than 260 billion dollars of (SLL) token were traded on that platform.
Paypal seems to have been a factor in the closure.

2019-01-26: PayPal no longer supported
PayPal is no longer available on VirWoX. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

It shows the futility of keeping money on the platform for long times.
It is the third platform^[1] to close in a short time.

I do not know what anyone had talked about this topic, but I did not notice any similar topic to this forum. I will lock it if found.


[1] https://en.cryptonomist.ch/2019/11/05/einstein-canadian-exchange-closing-soon/
[1] https://en.cryptonomist.ch/2019/11/04/dxexchange-closes/

[gentlemand]

I'm surprised this hasn't been picked up on more. Virwox is one of the oldest BTC related services still going. I know they lost Paypal for crypto quite some time ago but have no idea how they managed to keep Paypal on board for so long for anything they did. Looks to me like every aspect of their business went against their terms.

I've never used them but it's a shame to lose any portal especially one so storied.

[bitmover]

Is PayPal involved in this somehow?

PayPal has a lot of money and influence, and it is one of the services most threatened by bitcoin.
I believe they will try to close all exchange related services, or at least remove their support.

[gentlemand]

Is PayPal involved in this somehow?

PayPal has a lot of money and influence, and it is one of the services most threatened by bitcoin.
I believe they will try to close all exchange related services, or at least remove their support.

Looks like they lost it at the start of this year.

This is their current set up.



They don't seem to have given a reason but I can only assume the majority of their business was through Paypal and it gradually faded. All the same those other options should easily take up plenty of slack.

Saying that I have zero idea what Virwox is for beyond BTC. Maybe Linden dollars and the other obscurities have no demand any more.

[squatter]

I'm surprised this hasn't been picked up on more. Virwox is one of the oldest BTC related services still going. I know they lost Paypal for crypto quite some time ago but have no idea how they managed to keep Paypal on board for so long for anything they did. Looks to me like every aspect of their business went against their terms.

Maybe. I always thought in-game currencies were an interesting loophole. I tried to find a prohibition against dealing with them in Paypal's terms and came up empty handed.

[hugeblack]

Is PayPal involved in this somehow?

PayPal has a lot of money and influence, and it is one of the services most threatened by bitcoin.
I believe they will try to close all exchange related services, or at least remove their support.

The idea of this platform is to buy Bitcoin indirectly using PayPal. You can deposit Bitcoin to your account, convert it to intermediate currency (SLL) token and then convert that currency to the balance of PayPal with high fees.
It was one of the best and easiest ways to transfer using PayPal. The company claims to have sold around 260 billion dollars of (SLL) token.

Paypal appears to have been penalized for indirectly violating its rules.

The majority use that site because of PayPal.

[gentlemand]

Maybe. I always thought in-game currencies were an interesting loophole. I tried to find a prohibition against dealing with them in Paypal's terms and came up empty handed.

You would've thought an in game currency would be the very definition of virtual currency, but then again I guess they're fully reversible, seizable and only come from one operation who can be abused on the phone rapidly.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

I've never used them but it's a shame to lose any portal especially one so storied.

I haven't either, but I've heard the name mentioned enough on the forum to know it was an important service.  I think I was going to try to buy some bitcoin with PayPal at one point but something on their site scared me off--or it could have been that they weren't offering that option anymore.

It does suck that virwox is closing up shop.  I don't like it when these kinds of businesses just disappear, and I vividly remember when Circle stopped letting people buy bitcoin through them.  There hasn't been as easy a way to do it since then.  And man, there used to be a service called wesellcrypto.com (remember them?) that I used a few times for PayPal transactions.  They're all disappearing, man.

I tried to find a prohibition against dealing with them in Paypal's terms and came up empty handed.

Yeah, I'm curious about that as well.  I thought there used to be some kind of rule against using PP funds to buy crypto, but they don't seem to care much even if there is one.

[alyssa85]

This platform is one of the oldest and easiest ways to buy Bitcoin using PayPal. More than 260 billion dollars of (SLL) token were traded on that platform.
Paypal seems to have been a factor in the closure.

I'm surprised they didn't find other partners like Skrill for example. It's really sad seeing these pioneer companies fail. Without their efforts and services bitcoin wouldn't have got to where it is today.

[fratoshi]

Oh, i used this exchange ages ago, the only one that accepted Paypal, really bad news, all exchanges shutting down recently 

[julerz12]

2019-11-04: IMPORTANT! End of Service: January 6, 2020.
We regret to inform you that we will permanently close our service on Jan. 6, 2020.

Please make sure that you have finished your trades well before 11am Central European Time on Jan. 6, 2020. You will not be able to access your account after that time!

This platform is one of the oldest and easiest ways to buy Bitcoin using PayPal. More than 260 billion dollars of (SLL) token were traded on that platform.
Paypal seems to have been a factor in the closure.

Aw. For real? This is certainly sad news.
Despite their high fees, I personally made several trades on Virwox, BTCtc to SLL then SLL to PayPal (vice versa) and the trades always come through without any problem.
If Paypal really has something to do with this then shame on them for bullying such good platform. 

[Grinder]

The official reason for the closure is stricter EU rules which they can't or won't comply with, but it has been in semi exit scam mode since shortly after they lost Paypal support.

They were originally an exchange for the Second Life currency Linden Dollar (SLL), but in 2015 they were shut out from Second Life. This effectively made the SLL currency on Virwox worthless except for what others on Virwox were willing to pay for it, and the value of SLL crashed. The actual SLL was always on Virwox's account, so they could now sell it for the full price on the Second Life exchange while owing their users nothing.

Virwox started buying back SLL before the value crashed enough that their users lost all confidence, but in the years after that they let the price slip slowly. Since this spring that price slip has accelerated, and you now have to pay about 320 SLL for 1 USD on Virwox even though the owners of Virwox sold the same SLL for 250-270 SLL per 1 USD. The difference can be pocketed by the owners.

This is not the only shady way they have made extra profit. They have also done a hefty amount of front running. If the price difference between the seller and the buyer was sufficiently large, they would take up to 80% of a transaction for themselves. This meant that if you put up an order to buy SLL for the amount of USD 100 at a fixed price and someone sold $100 worth of SLL at market price, then only 20% of your order would be fulfilled. The rest of the SLL would be bought by Virwox so they could sell it back at a higher price to other customers using the same method or normal orders. This would be invisible for both the buyer and the seller unless you paid attention to the order depth and checked the transaction log.