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Craigslist adopts Bitcoin

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dsmalone

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Posts: 30
Location: Austin, TX

The title of this post "Craigslist adopts Bitcoin" is the goal and am asking the LTB community for help to achieve.

I'm an avid user of Craigslist and avid user of Bitcoin. The synergy between the two platforms is compelling. Craigslist is the precursor to "Open Bazaar". However, Craigslist has a very large marketplace NOW and Bitcoin can use this to immediately expand its user base, utility, and achieve scale.

Here's the proposal. I want to get a 1 page proposal in the hands of Craig (the founder of Craigslist) and I'm reaching out to the LTB community to help.

Inline-style: ![First proposal draft]https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B01_-pECcUwcN2kxTUE0U29mN0U/view?usp=sharing "First proposal draft")

1) Review, critique, edit, make changes, etc to first version of proposal at: first proposal.

2) Once we have a clean, concise, proposal from 1) what methods would you use to get the proposal into the hands of Craig? (i.e reddit, direct email to Craig, radio, TV, etc)

I appreciate feedback (good, bad, ugly) on the idea and welcome all suggestions.

Best,

Dale.

Posted on October 12, 2014 at 12:43 PM
Last Edited: October 12, 2014 at 1:17 PM

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• jamesmm

  

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  Location: Texas, Block #301130

  That would be a good match, but are you proposing that Craigslist themselves accept Bitcoin for making paid posts on Craigslist? Or somehow tie in Bitcoin so the users posting could use/accept Bitcoin?

  To me idk if the later would add much benefit, because the people involved in the transaction could just do it in person. Maybe I'm not seeing the whole picture, I'm just thinking of the scenario when someone is selling a physical item.

  Posted on October 12, 2014 at 12:53 PM
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• jamesmm

  

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  Location: Texas, Block #301130

  I think once the proposal was complete, some ideas to have it seen by Craig himself:

  • post publicly online, possibly craigslist itself, reddit, maybe it's own domain/website
  • promote it with simple news style press releases
  • try to get Craig's email, send direct emails with proposal and asking for comments/response
  • try to find emails to the Craigslist 'office'/corporate, send to them
  • try phone calls to prompt a response to the email
  • snail mail letters asking for response

  Surely using these methods above Craig or another higher-up at Craigslist would eventually see the proposal and hopefully offer a response.

  Posted on October 12, 2014 at 1:06 PM
  Last Edited: October 12, 2014 at 1:07 PM
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• dsmalone

  

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  Location: Austin, TX

  Thanks Jamesmm for the great comments and thoughts.

  Let me answer your question in the first post. I'm not asking Craigslist to accept BTC for paid listings (although that would be a nice possible outcome of this request) but instead I am asking Craigslist to visibly show which seller listings on Craigslist accept Bitcoin. By showing the BTC logo next to each seller listing this would greatly improve the awareness of bitcoin within the general population. Also for larger transactions I think bitcoin would be the currency of choice.

  I sold a car on craigslist a few months back and it was such a pain. The buyer wanted to give me a cashiers check (warning bells as there are so many scams with cashiers checks). So we both had to go to his bank and confirm his identify, account balance, etc while at the bank. Even then I took the risks that if the check was discovered fraudulent a few days later I would be out of luck.

  The main reason I'm making this proposal to Craigslist is to ultimately grow the awareness and use of bitcoin within that (very large) community.

  Best,

  Dale.

  Posted on October 12, 2014 at 1:32 PM
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• jamesmm

  

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  Location: Texas, Block #301130

  I see, that would be very helpful and seems it would be an easy addition to implement. I wonder if there's any stats on Bitcoin use with Craigslist that you could use to back the proposal.

  Posted on October 12, 2014 at 7:34 PM
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• meriver

  

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  @dsmalone Thanks Jamesmm for the great comments and thoughts.

  Let me answer your question in the first post. I'm not asking Craigslist to accept BTC for paid listings (although that would be a nice possible outcome of this request) but instead I am asking Craigslist to visibly show which seller listings on Craigslist accept Bitcoin. By showing the BTC logo next to each seller listing this would greatly improve the awareness of bitcoin within the general population. Also for larger transactions I think bitcoin would be the currency of choice.

  I sold a car on craigslist a few months back and it was such a pain. The buyer wanted to give me a cashiers check (warning bells as there are so many scams with cashiers checks). So we both had to go to his bank and confirm his identify, account balance, etc while at the bank. Even then I took the risks that if the check was discovered fraudulent a few days later I would be out of luck.

  The main reason I'm making this proposal to Craigslist is to ultimately grow the awareness and use of bitcoin within that (very large) community.

  Best,

  Dale.

  Hey dsmalone, I started up Peerhub (www.peerhub.com), a marketplace startup that I hope to help Bitcoin go mainstream and be much more like Craigslist/Ebay. It's really early, but were hoping to drive a lot of mainstream adoption by keeping it simple and really just trying to compete head on and be better than Craigslist/Ebay. You can use fiat & btc. Let me know what you think. We're focusing on marketing right now. ttyl! Jd.

  Posted on October 19, 2014 at 11:43 AM
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• knircky

  

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  Location: Philadelphia PA

  i wish u luck. craigslist using bitcoin would indeed be great.

  Posted on October 19, 2014 at 7:31 PM
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• Rob

  

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  Location: California

  Sorry, browsing quickly, and didn't read you paper. But as another way to attack this, what if you tried to get a movement going in the crypto community to place ads on Craigslist (for items, services, and garage sales) and mention in every ad that Bitcoin is accepted?

  Posted on October 20, 2014 at 7:11 AM
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• dsmalone

  

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  Location: Austin, TX

  Rob,

  Great idea! I already see many Craigslist postings that say "accepts Cash or Bitcoin" but that is buried in the detailed description. Getting the crypto community to use a simply phrase in the TITLE of the Craigslist listings would add tremendous visibility and build awareness.

  Example:

  1986 Schwinn Madison Track Bike 21"(Bitcoin accepted)

  (Bitcoin accepted) might be simple enough to get people talking..... Any ideas how to best reach the cryto community to get people to start doing this? LTB is a great start but what about Reddit ?

  Best,

  Dale.

  Posted on October 22, 2014 at 9:47 AM
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• JRB0bD0bbs

  

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  I was going to mention Peerhub, on which I've sold items for bitcoin, but someone already beat me to it. I think that with the development of OpenBazaar and other projects, there are sure to be more marketplace options that will be using cryptocurrencies. Peerhub is probably the first, and is only in early-stage development, but will mature rapidly if it becomes more popular. I strongly encourage folks to try it out!

  I have used Craigslist for both cash and bitcoin transactions, and would like to see how they would integrate bitcoin into the platform, but at the very least we could ask them to allow sellers to flag their listings with a bitcoin button, as you suggested. That can't require more than a few dozen lines of code they could easily slap together in a day or two. I'd be much more excited if they could develop a button that integrates with Kryptokit or Blockchain.info (or any other browser wallet or local client) to simplify the transaction. How about one that connects both parties to an escrow service by default?

  Hell, if Peerhub adds a browser plug-in for simplifying crypto transactions, it would clearly be more compelling for this community than Craigslist. Isn't competition great?

  Posted on October 22, 2014 at 2:15 PM
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