Re: Nice ebay close with WOT, bitcoin, escrow and verified identity ...

Interview here:

http://bitcoinmedia.com/interview-with-marius-falke-of-bitmit

Interview with Marius Falke of BitMit

Tell us about BitMit in one line and what motivated you to create the site.

Bitmit a site on which people from all over the world can sell and buy
their goods - with Bitcoin. I want to reduce the need of exchanging
bitcoin to a regular currency.

Why does bitcoin need merchant sites?

People should see that Bitcoin is more as making quick money on mtgox,
it should be used as currency and not as speculative trading object.
Now bitcoin beginners can get easily in touch with their first coins,
they only need to sell somesthing on Bitmit instead of eBay.

There are two adversial viewpoints about growing bitcoin. One side
says we should be pushing bitcoin as a liberating piece of software,
that it offers a tool against banks and is empowering. The other side
says we should sell bitcoin based on its properties (low fees,
international transfers, no chargebacks). How do you view bitcoin?

And what is the best approach for gaining wider adoption of bitcoin?
The idealistic approach or the practical.

I think we should combine this arguments. When we only spread the
anti-banker argument people might think that we are conspiracy freaks
but the great thing is that Bitcoin really has advantages for everyone
(low fees, international transfers) and that should be the arguments
to convince business people.

Fact is that most people dont care about economy and currency systems.
I think most people wont use it when you only come with the idealistic
argument. But you can combine the advantages when you say something
like "hey, with Bitcoin you can make international transfers in
seconds and besides this you pile the pressure to banks and maybe they
will reduce their fees for international transfers one day because of
bitcoin.

How do sites like BitMit improve the bitcoin economy?

Without bitcoin merchants bitcoin will never be a real currency
because you would always need an exchange service to do something
useful with your coins. Besides this it is a benefit for the exchange
rate cause less people will sell their coins when they can buy some
stuff for it and it is really cool when you can say "hey, I have
bought this car by bitcoins ;)".

No question, we need merchants.

Bitcoin is still a small community. Do you think that it is maybe too
early in bitcoin's lifecycle?

I think it is perfect. You have seen what happens when a exchange
service is unprepared for the big rush so I dont worry about the lower
attention these days. Now we have time to prepare services and make
bitcoin more secure with the upcoming features. Just imagine tomorrow
is the big bitcoin boom and the day after tomorrow every second person
cries about stolen bitcoins.

Good things take time.

How does BitMit compare with the other services that came before it
such as BiddingPond and the recent rush of merchant sites?

On Bitmit sellers dont have to worry about the current exchange rate.
Merchants can couple the product price to a fix USD/EUR value.
Furthermore it is important for us to guarantee a secure trading
experience. We have a integrated escrow system and users can verify
their identity.

No room left for scammers.

How do users verify their identity?

Community question from mizerydearia: Is it possible I can verify my
identity using gpg?

It can be done by online banking (automated, this takes only some
seconds), wire or by uploading their id. It isnt a requirement but we
advise our users only to buy from sellers who fulfills at least one of
the following criteria: The seller allows the escrow service. The
seller has a positive rating level. The seller has verified his
identity.

@mizerydearia, currently not but it is on the todo-list. That's a good idea.

Tell us about yourself: where are you from? Apart from BitMit, what
are you up to in your life? How did you discover bitcoin?

I am a 23 year old guy from Germany and currently studying business
informatics. When Bitmit earns some money I am goiing to open a
business for it and be on the next European Bitcoin Conference. I've
always been interested in the money system and came to bitcoin through
go-bitcoin.com . It was

At the conference, there were many Germans. Why is bitcoin so popular
in Germany?

Strangely bitcoin seems to be most popular in the strongest economy of
Europe. I was commenting yesterday how there seems to be no Greek
users.

Yeah, the german subforum at bitcointalk is also very big.

I dont know how it is in other countries but in Germany many people
know about the shitty finance system we have. You can imagine that in
a 81 million citizen state there are quite more independent blogs and
alternative media which inform about things like that. Mix this with a
high number of computer freaks and you have the german bitcoin
community.

Most users are idealists I believe. In the big summer boom bitcoin was
mentioned in all big online newspapers. the big price jump did the
rest.

I heard a sentiment on the forums, that we should be offering things
in bitcoin are not possible to get elsewhere. As a way to draw users.
What do you think of this strategy?

This would be great. When you look at the silk road you see that it is
working but because drugs are illegal the only way to offer
bitcoin-only products would be to be a producer and establish a
bitcoin-only brand. And that is quite costly.

When you are good at marketing you can try to make your own clothing
brand and work to establish it as noble brand. Thereby it can only
bought by bitcoin. It is an elite brand.

What are such goods though? I can only think of drugs and gambling.

Me too. only thing would be to establish a own brand of a normal
product which is bitcoin-exclusive.

What kind of goods would you like to see on BitMit?

I dont want to see illegal stuff.I like to see products that are
straight from the producer like the tupilaks from Greenland, or the
chess-like game Arimaa.

It's cool when people can boost the publicity of their non-standard
products through bitcoin.

So you view one way is to promote bitcoin as the underdog against the
competition? As a niche alternative for the indie types.

That's it! That's a good way of putting it.

Merchant sites are in a constant state of flux. People come in, setup
site and because of economy is a small one, they don't make any
profit. Soon after the go belly up. How determined are you to stick
around? Tell people why they should support BitMit. Are you in this
for the long term?

Of course you can not expect that the bitcoin community which is
anyway very small will bring you the big profit from one day to the
next. You should take the small economy as a big chance. In internet
projects the saying "the early bird gets the worm" is very right.
Bitcoin projects have a first-mover advantage.

Within the bitcoin community you have the chance to establish a
internet service which could grow. I have endurance and I am sure the
next bitcoin boom will come.

... and then, I'm here.

Finally I hope that politicians will take up clear positions to
bitcoin in order that there are no barriers for opening legal bitcoin
businesses.

Marius Falke, of BitMit can be found on IRC as tosaki or by email as
marius.falke@gmail.com. BitMit is a new auction marketplace for buying
and selling bitcoin goods

On 19 December 2011 19:13, Melvin Carvalho <melvincarvalho@gmail.com> wrote:
> http://bitmit.net/en/trade/i/130-1-btc-casascius-coin

Received on Monday, 19 December 2011 18:42:18 UTC