Build our own instant buy service - Buy PPC with BTC or payment cards (VISA/MC)

General
1

TL;DR: Provide our own payment processor service that would be trusted by everyone (because WE are Peercoin). Make it easy for users to buy their first Peercoins with payment cards or Bitcoins directly from us (i.e. buy.peercoin.net). This solves 3 issues for the users: simplifying the complex process of buying PPC, diminish the risk of sending money to untrusted exchanges, speed up the whole process.

What would stop our community from building its own financial service that would let users (especially new Peercoin starters) to buy their Peercoins safely from us?

At the moment, the process of buying PPC is quite complex, especially for novice users. They first have to randomly choose a PPC exchange from this list: http://peercoin.net/. Then, they have to send their FIAT to the chosen exchange and pray that it’s a legitimate one. I personally find the buying process incredibly complex and risky for novice users, especially since it’s basically just based on trust. If something happens during the process (such as a payment being incorrectly acknowledged) most new starters may be discouraged from continuing with it or giving it another try… if they didn’t get discouraged in the first place.

I personally know several people who really enjoy the whole cryptocurrency idea, especially Peercoin’s idea with PoS. But they do not own a single Peercoin, because they are immediately put off by the complexity of buying some. This I believe is what has to change. We need to make our coin more user friendly, and I think it should start with the buying process.

What users want when they buy their PPC is to change FIAT for crypto easier but safer. By using credit and debit card services such as VISA/MasterCard this can be possible. Eventually, if the user already owns crypto currencies such as Bitcoins (which are more or less easy to obtain nowadays) (s)he could also consider this payment option. So, why don’t we try an implement this type of system?

It would certainly be a lot of paperwork, but I believe it’s worth it. First of all for us (I think most of us here are buying PPC) but also for new starters or novice users.

As for the technical aspect, it could just be a partnership with one or several exchanges. Our service would just have to act as a proxy and provide transparency:

  1. Our platform receives a payment from the buyer (and at the same time funds are released on the exchange)
  2. A buy order is then submitted to our exchange partner
  3. The buy order is filled on the platform and the coins are then submitted to our platform

Fees and commission would be part of the process of course to cover for eventual loss or price fluctuations.

What do you guys think about this project?

2

The only other alternative I can think of is proving a p2p localbitcoins-like service, or backing a trusted community member to run a new exchange in a DAC fashion. The latter of the two suffers from the same faults that all other exchanges, however.

3

What about this: https://www.247exchange.com/peercoin

4

That’s the idea. But with a service that would be provided by us, the Peercoin community itself. Do you know who’s being this business?

If we know who’s being this service, we could eventually become partner with them. So that we can create our own buy.peercoin.net on which we can use their API. But first this service must be fully trusted by us and must be transparent for our users. Like I said the main idea is to cover these points: transparency, safety, visibility, ease and speed.

As a novice user I want to input my credit card details on buy.peercoin.net, click a submit button and receive my peercoins on my desktop wallet within a few minutes. Nothing else.

In my opinion Peercoins shouldn’t be reserved to the elite (techy people). Most people barely know what an exchange is. Most people are also scared to input their credit card numbers on the Internet, especially on websites that are not Amazon. If we assume that people who are interested in Peercoin and trust us enough to download and use Peerunity, they would also buy from buy.peercoin.net, because it is a service provided by us. In my opinion it would make sense that the people behind the Peercoin ecosystem would also be the people who provide a way to buy some PPC.

5

Thireus, thank you for taking the time to start this thread

6

I think it would be great if we had the following different means of buying/selling peercoins:

[ul][li]One-click buy peercoins using credit card/SMS (like ?)[/li]
[li]LocalPeercoin (like LocalBitcoins but decentralized)[/li]
[li]Decentralized one-click Xcoin to peercoins conversion (like shapeshift + B&C Exchange)[/li]
[li]Regular fiat enabled exchange (like btc-e but no-cost for withdrawel and like bitfinex for security)[/li][/ul]

7

AML/KYC rules may get the site into trouble. If you try to get compliance you will deal a lot of bureaucratic paperwork.

You might consider what I proposed here to promote Peercoins to PEGs

8

Don’t think, expect, just do it, go ahead.

9

+1 for LocalBitcoins alternative for Peercoin

10

You can buy crypto-currency on ebay using PayPal. There is plenty for sale there in addition to Bitcoin. Markups are usually huge, but I’d imagine enough motivated sellers can fix that.