Show HN: Buy Amazon gift cards with Bitcoins | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Buy Amazon gift cards with Bitcoins

amazonbitcoins.com

29 pointsatomon11 comments

So far so good, just got the first email - "Congratulations! We've received your payment and are currently processing your gift card order. We have to wait for your transaction to be verified, so it may take a little while before you receive your gift code. Don't worry — We'll email it to you as soon as it's ready. Thanks for using AmazonBitcoins! "

Let's see if the gift card comes through in the next couple hours (or however long a transaction takes to verify in bitcoin world these days)

Well, that was easy. Color me impressed.

"Success! Your Amazon.com gift code is ready. To redeem your gift code, go to www.amazon.com/giftcards and click on Redeem Amazon Gift Cards in the top bar. Thanks for being patient while we processed your order."

I'd expect Amazon's trademark lawyers to descend on this quite quickly. Why not genericize it to giftcards from multiple vendors?

That is something we'd like to do eventually, but this seemed like a good place to start.

It'll be a lot cheaper if you do it before having to hire lawyers (not to mention Amazon can probably yank your affiliate earnings for terms violations). Buy a new domain, change a couple bits of text, and you're done. An hour, tops.

why would amazon care about this? their lawyers probably dont get out of bed for less than a $1,000,000. also, this brings business to amazon.

Trademark infringement. All infringements have to be responded to or Amazon loses rights (eventually) to the trademark. When you get the "please stop infringing" email that asks you (hopefully nicely) to hand over the domain, recognize that this is entirely expected and predictable behavior for every trademark owning entity in the world. Don't freak out - just pivot to "giftcardbitcoins.com"

> why would amazon care about this?

Their name is in the domain, the service uses their name, and it's selling their products.

> their lawyers probably dont get out of bed for less than a $1,000,000

Their lawyers will be on salary, and trademarks have to be aggressively defended to remain valid. This is why large corporations smack down such violations on a regular basis.

> also, this brings business to amazon

Doesn't matter if it risks their trademark.

Amazon definitely cuts off even small affiliates who incorporate an Amazon trademark in their domain name.

nice job guys. this looks awesome.

so sick!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com