Emperor PayPalpatine Orders Destruction of Violin

Hey look! It's our friends over at Regretsy with another sad PayPal story. It turns out that one of the possible outcomes of PayPal's dispute resolution process is that the recipient of an item can be ordered to destroy said item. In this case, it was a $2500 violin.

Yet another victim of the dark side...

Read the story, here.

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SOPA and Bitcoin

I'm going to blatantly steal from this thread.

From the proposed the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA):

(b) Denying U.S. Financial Support of Sites Dedicated to Theft of U.S. Property-

(1) PAYMENT NETWORK PROVIDERS- Except in the case of an effective counter notification pursuant to paragraph (5), a payment network provider shall take technically feasible and reasonable measures, as expeditiously as possible, but in any case within 5 days after delivery of a notification under paragraph (4), that are designed to prevent, prohibit, or suspend its service from completing payment transactions involving customers located within the United States and the Internet site, or portion thereof, that is specified in the notification under paragraph (4).

3) DESIGNATED AGENT-

(A) IN GENERAL- Each payment network provider and each Internet advertising service shall designate an agent to receive notifications described in paragraph (4), by making available through its service, including on its Web site in a location accessible to the public, and by providing to the Copyright Office, substantially the following:

(i) The name, address, phone number, and electronic mail address of the agent.

(ii) Other contact information that the Register of Copyrights considers appropriate.

(B) DIRECTORY OF AGENTS- The Register of Copyrights shall maintain and make available to the public for inspection, including through the Internet, in electronic format, a current directory of agents designated under subparagraph (A).

If you were running a website served by PayPal, and PayPal received a notification that you were somehow in violation of copyright in accordance with SOPA, an "agent" would be contacted at PayPal and all payments to your site would be blocked.

So, the question becomes, what would happen if your payment processor was Bitcoin?

It would not be possible to stop Bitcoin payments to your site. Even if it was possible, most Bitcoin e-businesses already generate a new address for each payment. With such a setup, it would not even be possible to associate your site with a Bitcoin address.

There would be no "agent" for the authorities to contact, as Bitcoin isn't run by any organization and has no employees.

Could they have the site shut down instead? That's a whole other problem, but technologies like Namecoin, TOR, and Meshnet will help in that regard.

So, if you're running an online business and you're worried that you could be affected by SOPA, you should probably start reading up on how to begin accepting Bitcoin payments. It's quite simple, really, and with the assistance of applications like Bit-Pay, you wouldn't have to worry about currency risk, either.

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Bitcoin is Approaching the Mainstream

On December 12th, the Internet Archive announced they would be accepting Bitcoin donations. For starters, the Internet Archive is ranked 224th among all websites in the US and 213th worldwide. Let that sink in for a second.

In the two days that the site has been accepting donations, they've received over $1,000 in Bitcoins. Bitcoin users came through in a way that guarantees that other sites, possibly even bigger sites, will take notice that accepting Bitcoins is an extremely easy and effective method of collecting donations.

A comment from "apeterson", on Reddit, summed it up best:

"If you already have Bitcoins, the necessary steps are:

1) Copy the address;
2) Paste it to your wallet;
3) Enter amount; and
4) Press send.

(editor's note: two of these steps will go away when the URI scheme is implemented)

If you already have a credit card the necessary steps are:

1) Choose from one amount in the options (25, 50, 100, 250, 1000 or other);
2) Select additional options and optionally sign the donation with your name;
3) Add to basket;
4) Review your basket, and untick the hidden option to donate an extra $2.00 to justgive;
5) Proceed to checkout;
6) Login as donor, either by your existing account or by creating a new account;
7) Create an account;
8) Enter email, first name, last name, birth year (chose between 4 options: 1979 or later, 1965-1978, 1946-1964, 1945 and earlier), gender, and how you heard about the site;
9) Untick "I would like to get spam";
10) Enter billing info (full address);
11) Enter credit card info; and...
12) [this is where apeterson surrendered]

The pain alone to complete [these steps hurts more than just giving them] the 5 BTC I sent them."

One other turn of events that will push Bitcoin closer to the mainstream is that you can now sell your Bitcoins on either Mt.Gox or Tradehill and withdraw your cash to PayPal. The significance of this should not be understated.

You now have some serious ammunition to help you convince someone that Bitcoins are actually worth something. Many an argument about the legitimacy of Bitcoin can be put to bed simply by telling someone they can sell their Bitcoins, right now, and withdraw the cash to their PayPal account, right now. You could even offer someone Bitcoins in lieu of cash and not feel like an eccentric Internet geek; the divide between Bitcoin and fiat currency has grown smaller.

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BitInstant Now Facilitating Withdrawals from Mt.Gox and Tradehill to PayPal

In what can only be described as a major breakthrough for Bitcoin traders and merchants, BitInstant is now facilitating withdrawals to PayPal from the two major exchanges, Mt.Gox and Tradehill.

The one-two punch of the announcement of Roger Ver's investment in BitInstant and this announcement could only mean further great things are to come from BitInstant CEO, Charlie Shrem.

How long before BitInstant allows for transfers from PayPal to Mt.Gox and Tradehill? Is it just a matter of time? One can only imagine the explosion in Bitcoin usage that would occur as a result. Stay tuned; our fingers are crossed.

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PayPal, Regretsy, and the Bitcoin100

If you missed all the hoopla today, here's the Coles Notes on what happened: Regretsy set up a PayPal "donate" button to collect money to buy Christmas gifts for kids. PayPal didn't like the way the donate button was used and held on to the funds. The Internet then exploded with rage in the form of 1350 comments and 11,000 Reddit upvotes.

Meanwhile, in the Bitcoin community, thousands of "in-the-know" people tried their darndest to withhold their collective "I told you so" responses. As Bitcoin users, we've become pretty used to hearing stories of PayPal's indiscretions, kind of like when you buy a car and suddenly everyone around you seems to be driving that same car.

What caught my attention among the Reddit comments were the feelings of resignation:

"You have to admit PayPal had a pretty strong position. They're used by tons of people, integrated in many shopping carts. So the next thing will have to have some seriously earth-shattering benefits. The problem is even if there was something like that, how would it get adopted in the face of PayPal? Can marketing even do that?"

"They're not going to care. PayPal has a virtual monopoly in the industry. They don't care about bad press or pissed off customers."

"It must be said, a million times: Paypal is not a bank. Paypal is not a regulated service. Paypal can, at any time, for any reason, decide to take your money and not give it back, and there is absolutely shit all you can do about it. I have a paypal account for convenience, but I don't leave a single penny in it, precisely because of this. When I sell stuff, I don't use it, because they can just magically reverse things months later with no proof at all, and again, you're fucked, because they're not a regulated service and can do whatever they want.

Frankly, I'm surprised that we're in 2011 and there's still no regulated, insured, no-fucking-around way for me to send money to you and not get screwed by it, or at least one that's taken off and achieved the critical mass required to be useful. I guess paypal will just have to fuck around some more."

"I had a moneybookers account (exactly because I wanted a Paypal alternative) and, unfortunately, my overall experience was even worse than with Paypal. They froze some of my money (which Paypal hasn't done to me yet), the whole interface was confusing, customer service slow, fees even higher than Paypal... I decided to stop using it and grudgingly only use Paypal now."

"They have a... um, it rhymes with "nonopoly", that thingamajig where they can tell anyone they want to go fuck themselves at any time. When's the last time you saw a direct marketing or PR effort by Paypal? They're the only game in town, and you play by their rules if you want to play at all."

"PayPal is a horrible, horrible corporation, and I am pissed as all Hell that I am forced to use them in damn near every online transaction I make anymore."

"I have a feeling their customer base is just too big for them to feel the effects of stuff like this. When they're handling your money, there isn't much you can do but give in."

"A company soliciting payments can't effectively threaten to leave because they would cut themselves off from a huge amount of customers/donors. And losses from fraud cut into the razor thin margins paypal already faces. So "donation" buttons are treated with maximal suspicion and complaints are basically ignored."

Cue the Bitcoin100, a group of 100 (and eventually more) Bitcoin users who will donate at least one Bitcoin each to charitable organizations that are willing to add a Bitcoin donation option to their web page. There are over 60 people already signed up, including myself, with several offering to donate two, five, or even ten Bitcoins per charity.

The Bitcoin100's first target will be Regretsy. The moment Regretsy decides to accept Bitcoin, they will instantly receive several hundred dollars worth of Bitcoins which they can then exchange for dollars without having to deal with any bullying from PayPal. The Bitcoin100 is here to prove that accepting Bitcoin is painless and free.

Clearly, the Internet is desperate for an alternative to PayPal. Bitcoin will eventually be that alternative; maybe not yet, but eventually. Today's events have proven that the need is there and Bitcoin is well positioned to fill that gap.

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