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Why is Paypal freezing all accounts selling Bitcoins if Bitcoin is actually a virtual good and not a currency?

It seems "currency exchange" is against Paypal's policy, but Bitcoin is actually a virtual good and not a currency.
More info here: http://themonetaryfuture.blogspot.com/2011/05/paypal-freezes-accounts-of-two-bitcoin.html
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tynamite
tynamite's avatar Because Bitcoin is a P2P (peer to peer) currency that is decentralised. That means that there are no banks, no regulations, and no logs. All payments are irrreversible and instant. Most of all, it's anonymous. You can get a Bitcoin address in 5 seconds without ever having to give your name. You can convert any currency to Bitcoin for a small fee to the exchanger. You can have as many Bitcoin addresses as you want.

The main benefits of Bitcoin are there being no fees, no contracts, instant payments, your account can't be frozen,and that you get free Bitcoin money for using your computer's resources to work out algorithms, called mining.

There are no fees. So do you think Amazon.com will be accepting Bitcoins? Well they do offer no fees. Let me tell you what the main purposes of Bitcoin are.

Common sense

  • Selling child pornography
  • Selling drugs
  • Selling stolen identities
  • Funding criminal hacker group Anonymous


Taken from the official Bitcoin site

  • Selling virtual private networks (VPN)
  • Offshore webhosts, meaning they accept piracy on their servers.
  • Gambling
  • Selling Xbox, PSN, Nintendo, gametime points
  • Classified sites
  • Auction sites
  • Escrow
  • Community lending
  • A money laundring site, which charges you 0.5% to send Bitcoins to it, and it will send them to a Bitcoin address of your choice.
  • Selling Amazon gift certificates


Bitcoin is the saviour for the black market and the scammers.
Would you trust the online retailers selling those things? What about the Escrow service. It's anonymous, and there's no logs. All payments are irreversible.

This reminds me of ponzi schemes, better know as HYIP websites. Imagine a farmer who has a large plot of land. Here's a quote from a HYIP blogger. He makes money by telling people which HYIP are scams or not. And I'm telling you that they all fold (go bankrupt).

What is said below is very long, but it will help people who asked the question, not to get scammed, and pay using anonymous decentralised online currencies. Read everything below to help you all from getting scammed. It will help you.

PTVPartner (a ponzi scheme) which managed to last for quite a long time, even though their legend of making money from a silica mine (which later yielded a gold mine!) was simply laughable. The admin never once bothered to back up his words with a shred of proof.

However, let’s analyze the admins that are trying to stand from this crowd and provide some evidence of their alleged activities of some sort that supposedly should provide payouts to everybody in the long run as long as their “business” flourishes. Is it really true? Let’s take a simple example and see.

Suppose I’m a tomato farmer and I’m a professional in my field, meaning I can grow really nice crops and deliver really good product to my local market and sell them at a profit. I heard of HYIP industry where the website owners seem to make money out of thin air (ie your money!) so I’m entering this market to make you a tempting offer:

I’m going to grow tomatoes and sell them on the market for you and share part of my profits with you in return for you financing my business. Sounds nice, right? I have everything with me to prove that I’m really growing tomatoes and sell them in my local market because it’s my hobby and nothing more. You can’t say I’m telling you lies because I will provide you with some photos of my produce and me with all the gardener’s tools in place. I can answer all your questions about the tomatoes as I’m thoroughly into the subject (if I don’t know more I can always consult Wikipedia, lol). And you can’t blame me for anything because I really grow tomatoes for the market.

The thing that you cannot prove is whether I really take your LibertyReserve and PerfectMoney and use it to manage my business. (LibertyReserve and PerfectMoney are centralised anonymous payment processors.) So I’m actually using your money for my personal needs and telling you what I know about growing tomatoes. Because it’s my hobby and I know something about it and it gives you enough comfort that you can sleep at night safe in the knowledge that your money is actually working for you in a real business.

This paragraph is very important for you to read.

The only thing you can’t understand is why this farmer didn’t take a loan from the local bank. It would surely be given to him provided his business plan was good and he was going to repay the loan at a vastly reduced interest rate to what he’s offering you. You are wondering why this farmer needs your e-currencies while he can find other sources from the offline world to finance his profitable business as he offers you nice returns on your investments, doesn’t he? But you try to forget about that because you think the farmer is honest. Because you were convinced by his photos and videos of him growing tomatoes accompanied by the “analysis” of a couple of referral sharks telling you that this one is different. Maybe they even believe it themselves, I don’t know.

There is nothing wrong in asking yourself such reasonable questions as you’re going to invest big money into this project which was nicely presented to you as a real venture by some established “experts”. So my tomatoes (in reality “ponzi”) business is developing nicely and I harvested some good money (sorry, tomatoes, always confusing those things, lol) at the end of the season. On the next season, inspired by the results and the money received from the previous venture I offer you even better returns but I will need to hire more staff and expand my business. You trust me even more new because you received your payment from the previous round. But this year was not as good as the last one.

There were some unfavorable conditions affecting the crops: too much heat, too little rain, and the worst thing that I never expected – lightning from a recent storm burnt down my shed where I kept all my tools and seeds. So what to do next? Of course I will come to my dear investors to ask for help with that and might even show you some pictures of a burnt shed and ask for more money to restore my business from scratch. Your old deposits will all be nulled but I will compensate you for that by offering even higher returns for the next tomato season which will definitely be more successful than this one. And so another round will start. But perhaps I will just keep your money for myself this time. I’m bored with tomatoes now but I’ve got plenty of money. Don’t worry though, I’ll be back to you later when I come up with another real business idea.

Source: http://money-news-online.com/blog/2010/08/20/20082010-mnofridays-and-daily-news-from-the-industry/
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