Quote from: nauru on July 22, 2010, 04:26:41 AM

Hi

I'm new to this forum and I have an idea that I'd like to see if anyone is interested in.

I'm from the Republic of Nauru and we use the Australian Dollar as our currency. I have installed Bitcoin and find it very useful for privacy purposes. Nauru is famous for privacy afforded to it's citizens and as an offshore banking centre/tax haven. You can read more about Nauru at Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nauru.

A local bank (which also happens to be a top 5 bank in Australia) offers prepaid, anonymous Visa and MasterCard for use on the islands and over the Internet. While I'm not really able to post the cards outside Nauru/Tuvalu/Kiribati, people who bought them on the islands are able to take them overseas and use them anywhere Visa/Mastercard is accepted or over the Internet. So I don't imagine there would be any problems selling them for Bitcoins.

I would like to offer the cards in denominations of AUD$50 for Visa or AUD$25 or AUD$50 for MasterCard. You wont physically receive the card, you would just receive the number, expiry date and CVV2. There is no name printed on the cards. There is also a AUD$5.95 issuance fee and the cards can't be re-loaded. So for AUD$55.95 in Bitcoins, you would receive AUD$50 in credit.

The problems I see so far are:

Trust - how do I verify that I am able to offer this service legitimately? I don't see why the bank would complain, but I'd rather not name them. They get their issuance fee in any case.
Cards - People might prefer a physical card. I may be able to post the cards, but it would take a long time to reach the US/EU from the middle of the Pacific Ocean!
Price - Bitcoin exchangers seem to only be in USD or Euro and not AUD. How do I determine a fair market value in Bitcoin?
Fees - if you use the cards for purchases in any currency other than AUD, you will be charged a 2.5% currency conversion fee
Anonymity - how should people contact me so I can give them a Bitcoin address to pay to, without revealing their identity?
Legitimacy - I'm not a registered business nor do I have a bank licence, I'm just someone who buys cards at the bank. To become a registered offshore bank in Nauru costs $25,000 and is out of my price range.
Automation - at the moment you would have to pay to a Bitcoin address, I'd go to the bank, buy the card, and then send the numbers. It would be better if I could buy a whole bunch of cards and load the numbers into a database, to automatically issue them when paid.
Website - can anyone proxy purchase a .com.nr domain name for me and anonymize the whois? Does anyone other than vekja.net offer hosting paid in Bitcoins?

Thanks!

One suggestion would be to suggest to one of the bitcoin markets that they trade in Australian dollars. I am not sure how popular bitcoins are in AUS$ using countries.