19 comments

[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 64.4 ms ] thread
why only 4 followers?
They are launching later this week--this HN post is their first publicity (as far as I know). They literally just enabled the beta invites to attract some attention.

It looks pretty good on the inside. Sort of an amazon.com with bitcoin.

"They" or "I"?
They. I'm not a part of the company...
because it was just announced for the first time a few minutes ago.
This is pretty scant on info. I'm guessing they act as a middleman between other online markets?
Almost certainly. Dropship from Amazon with a 10% markup, probably? Sounds like a plan to me. I wonder if they'll succeed.

Best of luck, dudes.

(comment deleted)
This has the potential to be big...
So why would I use this instead of Amazon?
Because you're a money launderer! Or maybe, just maybe you got those Bitcoins from selling LSD (or possibly a handgun?) on Silkroad. Who knows.
Three reasons that come to mind:

- You bought bitcoins in the past, and now decided to get rid of them.

- You generate bitcoins and want to spend them.

- You are outside of the US, and want to buy Amazon.com stuff.

If they play their cards right, they'll make big bucks and help the bitcoin economy in the process.

If you're able to use an online trading service, reasons 1 and 2 don't really hold, unless BitcoinDeals' margin is less than that of trading services (which would be weird).
Things can technically be about 2-3% cheaper if you don't have any merchant fees.
Realistically, most Bitcoin transactions are likely to be USD-BTC-USD, which involves two fees and currency risk.
If the idea is executed well, this can become a hit. Not to mention the fact that it could make Bitcoin even more known than it is already (not sure if that's a good or bad thing).
34 points as of right now and it's nothing but an image?
Strangely, there's more info in their Twitter profile description than on their website (wow. Never thought I'd say that...). In its entirety:

>Over 1,000,000 products, all priced in Bitcoin. Coming July 22. Follow us if you would like a pre-launch invite. http://www.bitcoindeals.com

I guess we won't have to wait too long for more info. But that's one of the more worthless sites I've seen in a while.

I was looking for a service just like this the other day.

Because I'm in Thailand, Paypal freezes my account regularly, and for CCs many places won't ship to a different address, let alone a foreign address because of the risk of CC fraud. Online shopping is set up to protect the consumer and so merchants are cautious and prefer to deal with the 90% low-risk transactions and turn away the 10% risky ones.

When you're in the 10% though - you want to just say - 'I trust you to ship. I'll take the risk. Here's the money. Ship it.'