Hi guys, Every exchange that I go on to seems to fail the authenticity process or hang during indefinitely. I was just wondering what methods people are using to buy Bitcoin? Any help much appreciated. Cheers Anthony
I've used almost every method there is over the years. Off the top of my head: Instant debit-card buy: Circle (stopped doing it), Uphold (had a data breach a while back, judging by the spam I get to Uphold's email address), Coinbase (referral link, we both get... £8 or something if you sign up.) Dead easy, fairly light KYC requirements, very quick. You'll pay a hefty premium above market rates, though. Bank transfer buy: Uphold,Coinbase. Slower, typically a few more KYC hoops to jump through, better for larger sums. Coinbase has stopped GBP deposits at the moment, tho', for some reason, but says they'll be back soon. Peer-to-peer centralised: LocalBitcoins.com. Pairs people with crypto to people with money. KYC's still there, but it's a per-transaction thing. Uses an internal escrow system to attempt to stop people being ripped off, though it does still happen. Never had a problem myself, though. Peer-to-peer decentralised: Bisq. I used it under its original name, and never since the rebranding, but it worked pretty well. No KYC, but poor liquidity. The person selling the Bitcoin bears most of the risk, here, but again there's a kinda-sorta-escrowy thing going on. In the Marketplace: I've bought Bitcoin in the Marketplace a couple of times. Big risk for the seller, as it's possible for me to claim bank transfers (or almost any other fiat payment methods) were made in error and claw 'em back whereas once the Bitcoins are transferred they're not going anywhere. Pleased to say I didn't rip anyone off, though, and it all went smooth-like. For Amazon purchases: Purse.io. Odd one, this. It's kinda peer-to-peer, but instead of the seller saying "give me £9k for 1BTC" they say "buy me this £9k TV on Amazon and I'll send you 1BTC." Tried it out just to see how it worked, bought a couple of graphic novels for some guy in Mexico. Worked out quite well: they got the stuff for less than the Amazon list price, while I got the Bitcoin for less than the premium on traditional debit card transactions from Coinbase. Not sure I'd trust it for more than a double-figure sum, mind you, and it took me *ages* to stop getting advertising email from Amazon.mx... That's about it, off the top of my head. Never seen a Bitcoin ATM in the wild, so that's one to tick off the bucket list...
Thanks for the help Gareth. I think I need to do a little more research into it. I'll have a look at the ones you've mentioned when I get home from work. Cheers
Also keep in mind that if you aren't going to use the bitcoin for something right away but rather want it as an investment then you will need to do your research on safe long term storage as just leaving it lying around is a really bad idea for security reasons.
