It may still be possible to exchange bitcoins through mtgox and then through liberty reserve and bank money orders. Each stage along this route eats up 1-5%. Otherwise, informal transfers through the OTC ( http://bitcoin-otc.com/ ) do work.
Tying too much cash in paypal is a mistake. There is no guarantee that you won't snag on some tripwire in their rules engine. That and all BTC-cash exchanges have so far been shut down by PayPal.
But more fundamentally, Bitcoin is incompatible with the credit card system. CC security is very lax, so CC transactions have to be reversible (the onus is on the merchant rather than the buyer). Banks (and Paypal is a bank) are ill equipped to parse the math and the crypto that go with a proof that a transaction has occured. Not technically, but institutionally they are a different thing.
This is exactly correct. I got seriously down voted for making the same point in less words. Bitcoin and exchanging e-currencies is nothing new. People have been getting screwed over exchanging Paypal and credit cards for other currencies for a long time. That's why Paypal doesn't allow it. But yet, these services keep popping up. Poor business idea, it's been tried many times and it doesn't work.
Tying too much cash in paypal is a mistake. There is no guarantee that you won't snag on some tripwire in their rules engine. That and all BTC-cash exchanges have so far been shut down by PayPal.
But more fundamentally, Bitcoin is incompatible with the credit card system. CC security is very lax, so CC transactions have to be reversible (the onus is on the merchant rather than the buyer). Banks (and Paypal is a bank) are ill equipped to parse the math and the crypto that go with a proof that a transaction has occured. Not technically, but institutionally they are a different thing.