- From: Melvin Carvalho <melvincarvalho@gmail.com>
- Date: Mon, 19 Dec 2011 19:41:49 +0100
- To: Web Payments <public-webpayments@w3.org>
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