This is incorrect. The CEO of PayPal David Marcus has already denied these claims:<p><pre><code> To clarify: we have no policies against using PayPal to sell Bitcoin mining rigs.
We don't support any currency txn whether fiat or BTC for a host of regulatory
issues. But we treat BTC and any FX txn the same way. We're believers in
BTC though.
</code></pre>
There was a communication error in January but it was retracted within hours: <a href="http://i.imgur.com/GMC0fsd.png" rel="nofollow">http://i.imgur.com/GMC0fsd.png</a><p><a href="https://twitter.com/davidmarcus/status/422632561882316800" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/davidmarcus/status/422632561882316800</a><p><a href="https://twitter.com/davidmarcus/status/422632849670299648" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/davidmarcus/status/422632849670299648</a>
That was predictable, Bitcoin is a huge source of chargebacks and fraud. My bank had issues with people stealing online banking credentials and using them to buy Bitcoin, there's a bit of a blanket ban on that sort of service now I think. It's a fairly common occurrence for sellers on localbitcoins too, I've talked to sellers before who have been ripped off to the tune of thousands of dollars due to similar situations.
No surprise. My personal experience with paypal: Apparently I am permanently banned for life because I refused to cover my "negative balance" that resulted from a scammer buying my old laptop on ebay, claiming he never got it (despite having proof of delivery), then somehow reversing the Paypal transaction just by speaking to a representative. He used a brand new ebay account, mine was at least 7 years old with 100% positive feedback. Have they resolved this issue yet? I keep hearing similar stories from friends, who have obviously stopped using ebay/paypal for this reason.<p>So Paypal customer support apparently just does whatever they want to do, at the individual agent level.
Amazing that the author has--and is keeping--$6k in PayPal. Even after they threaten to ban and freeze him.<p>They're well-known for freezing accounts at a whim, and as a merchant I keep nothing in PayPal longer than a day. I don't keep anything in there as a buyer either; they're perfectly happy to fund purchases directly from a bank or CC account. It's just plain safer if PP has as little of my money as possible.
There are calls on that forum to start 'boycotting' paypal as they have 'gone too far.' The sad thing is: PayPal have been doing stuff like this for years. I've had hundreds of GBP held by them for months for no reason. When I say no reason: I mean that the agent that finally solved it for me admitted there should be no reason this has happened.
Paypal is the worst way to process payments, no one should use them (use any of the alternatives). Paypal will never support anything like Bitcoin unless they absolutely have to because it involves "risk". I wish consumers weren't so use to the easy checkout process, because they're terrible to develop with and will stifle virtual currency adoption.
Even though they are able to keep money from these banned accounts its probably just to get back from all the scammers involved<p>Check out number 4<p><a href="https://www.paypal.com/webapps/mpp/ua/acceptableuse-full" rel="nofollow">https://www.paypal.com/webapps/mpp/ua/acceptableuse-full</a>
While I support the idea of Bitcoin (and have some Dogecoin), I do realize that the central banks (note I did not say government) will act swiftly and mercilessly to crush any true competition.<p>Look at what happened in the Worgl experiment - <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%C3%B6rgl" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%C3%B6rgl</a> - once the idea gained traction the central bank outright banned it, so that other towns considering it, could not start up a competing currency.<p>Can Bitcoin be banned? Not without crushing the Internet; but if made illegal (or just subject to very onerous reporting requirements) such that businesses in the USA could not easily use it, it would stop Bitcoin's growth dead.
They are banning the sale of non-physical items. So miners/hardware, even your GPU :) is safe to sell. Basically if it can be shipped in a box, it's fine.<p>Vires in Numeris! Long live Bitcoin!
Two things:<p>1. I don't see how Bitcoin being sold on Paypal is competition to Paypal. Why wouldn't Paypal love to be a place where people sell bitcoins down the road? Bitcoin is a competitor to money, not to Paypal.<p>2. I've talked to reps at Paypal who have told me transacting BTC using Paypal or even in apps that use Paypal but transact money in other ways is against their TOS.
I lot of people violate PayPal terms of service and then they whine about it. I've been using PayPal as a merchant since 2000, I've been getting nice emails with advance notices when policies change. I wish others had such system in place as well!
The obvious conspiracy here is that David Marcus asked that a bunch of bitcoin related accounts get frozen, then bought a shitload of bitcoin as soon as it tanked before eBay "hastily" declared they "believe in bitcoin"
This doesn't make sense -- from Feb 11th 2014 ebay will be allowing Virtual Currency to be sold in its own category.<p>This is eBay policy, so papal will have to fall in line.
Oh, the humanity! The nerds and their hoarded pseudo-currencies trying to fleece their IT-ignorant neighbors as payback for having to always fix their PC! If the nerds can't find a Greater Fool to dump their pumps, what next?