On Thu, Sep 05, 2013 at 01:19:33PM +0200, Eugen Leitl wrote:

On Thu, Sep 05, 2013 at 01:09:07PM +0200, rysiek wrote:

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inb4 "why would they use PayPal" -- from what I've heard they didn't plan it originally but it was brought in by popular demand.

Why, why did they keep 45 kUSD worth of funds in an account run by known jerks? Friends don't let friends use PayPal.

Your first and second sentences don't go very well together, Eugen. :) Using Paypal is not a bad idea; they're pretty efficient in terms of fee percentage, their servers don't go down very often, and they have a very large market presence in the US and a few other markets. I personally don't use any other standalone online payment system. But, keeping a significant fraction of your capital in Paypal is a terrible idea. They have very little patience for innovative business models, they have a poor track record of customer service, and their default response to any surprise is to freeze the account balance. Noisebridge automatically transfers our Paypal balance to our bank account on a regular schedule (nightly, I think, but don't quote me.) -andy

Why did they use Paypal? Probably because they are aspiring to gain popular attention and support, and most people don't use Bitcoin; they use Paypal and credit cards for online transactions. Of course Paypal is a liability in terms of privacy and the risks of them doing something just like what they did, but if MailPile hadn't gone with Paypal, it's likely they wouldn't have gotten the amount of funding that was donated so far. It's always a tradeoff of risk, especially when you're aiming to go mainstream. On Thu 05 Sep 2013 07:58:07 AM EDT, CypherPunk wrote:

On 09/05/2013 06:09 AM, rysiek wrote:

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inb4 "why would they use PayPal" -- from what I've heard they didn't plan it originally but it was brought in by popular demand.

This kind of stuff really makes me wish Indigogo would allow donations via Bitcoin as well as PayPal. Too many people have had trouble with PayPal and they've done this kind of thing before. I, for one, am encouraging anyone who wants to donate to do so via Bitcoin on the MailPile site. Who the hell needs Paypal!

-- http://disman.tl OpenPGP key: http://disman.tl/pgp.asc Fingerprint: 2480 095D 4B16 436F 35AB 7305 F670 74ED BD86 43A9

Yes, but they could have used WePay, Stripe, or some other alternative. Remember Diaspora? $80K in donations frozen by PayPal. Once you get your account unfrozen, as Diaspora learned, your momentum stops. So it's doubtful that they'll make over $45K now, without another appeal. On Thu, Sep 5, 2013 at 5:19 AM, CypherPunk wrote:

On 09/05/2013 07:06 AM, Dan Staples wrote:

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Why did they use Paypal? Probably because they are aspiring to gain popular attention and support, and most people don't use Bitcoin; they use Paypal and credit cards for online transactions.

Of course Paypal is a liability in terms of privacy and the risks of them doing something just like what they did, but if MailPile hadn't gone with Paypal, it's likely they wouldn't have gotten the amount of funding that was donated so far. It's always a tradeoff of risk, especially when you're aiming to go mainstream.

Oh I completely understand why they used Paypal. Like you said, not enough people use Bitcoin to really make a successful go of a Bitcoin based fundraising campaign. I'm just saying I'd like to see Indigogo offer Bitcoin as an option. I'm sure a lot of people would use it and it would also be a good way to get people interested in Bitcoin.

Dnia czwartek, 5 września 2013 11:13:57 Kyle Maxwell pisze:

Fortunately it looks like they have another $90k from non-Paypal sources or at least already transferred, so they're not dead yet.

And apparently they gathered $4k *just today* (no doubt slashdotting of the campaign page due to PayPal SNAFU helped a bit here).

("I'm feeling much better, I'd like to go for a walk!")

I, for one, would like to thank you for the random Monty Python quote that is so much needed from time to time to lighten up this dark, dark world. In return, I offer two of the best renditions of the Parrot Sketch, both from Amnesty International's "Secret Policemans's Ball" (how on-topic, eh?): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_hfOY4IIuk (Michael Palin loses it and John Cleese is not helping) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTV3lQc4AmQ (surprisingly short) -- Pozdr rysiek

On Thu, Sep 05, 2013 at 08:27:19PM +0200, Moritz wrote:

On 09/05/2013 05:53 PM, Yosem Companys wrote:

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Yes, but they could have used WePay, Stripe, or some other alternative.

Not really, since Indiegogo is the largest platform besides Kickstarter, and Kickstarter is only available for projects in US/UK (due to Amazon

I've used Kickstarter from Germany. Amazon is present in many countries beyond US/UK.

Payments). Indiegogo exclusively uses Paypal. You want to use one of the large crowdfunding platforms for outreach.