Buying bitcoins

OriginV

The last price I seen on Bitstamp was $1,065.00 euro per Bitcoin, Is it easy to sell at this sort of price?

srsly78

Again: when you say "price" what do you mean? If it means current buy orders then yes. If it means sell orders then no. More likely the "price" you see is some kind of average in-between.

There is no "price", there are only buy and sell orders.

OriginV

Sorry, I am confused to how this works.
So the sell order's are which people are willing to pay?

srsly78

Sell orders are people offering to sell at that price.

Buy orders are people offering to buy at that price.

This is not something specific to bitcoins, but rather how all real markets work.

For example: I could make a sell order, offering 1 bitcoin @ e10000 euros. Clearly this is much higher than the average price of the other sell orders so noone would bother with it.

Caliden

Also you don't to buy 1 entire coin to buy bitcoins. You can buy a fraction of one, 0.5BTC, 0.05BTC , even smaller if you want.

shanemort

if anyone here needs to get thier cash out and cant wait 6-8 weeks like mtgox are offering i can have the euros into your bank account or cash for you in 3-4 days from BTC Deposit

Long time boardsie and adverts.ie verified with long time feedback!

Drop me a PM

Lenin Skynard

Caliden wrote: »

Also you don't to buy 1 entire coin to buy bitcoins. You can buy a fraction of one, 0.5BTC, 0.05BTC , even smaller if you want.

It makes me want to smash my head in with a hammer. I bought five bitcoins for around the €100 mark a year ago and traded them. I think €100 would get you 0.20 bitcoins now and that's after there was a huge crash at the start of summer.

AtomicHorror

Lenin Skynard wrote: »

It makes me want to smash my head in with a hammer. I bought five bitcoins for around the €100 mark a year ago and traded them. I think €100 would get you 0.20 bitcoins now and that's after there was a huge crash at the start of summer.

Not even. About 0.14BTC. Still there seems to be great potential for 10x or even 100x growth from here. Or 0x, though with each "crash" and the subsequent recovery that seems less likely to me.

Komsomolitz

Any way to buy bitcoins without having to go through all this verification crap like scanning in photo id and what not? Bit elaborate.. why cant i just use paypal or moneybookers etc?

srsly78

Anti money laundering rules is why you need to provide id etc, same as with any other kind of brokerage.

Paypal etc do not deal in bitcoins. The entire point of bitcoins is to bypass all these financial middlemen, so don't expect them to help

MyPeopleDrankTheSoup

Komsomolitz wrote: »

Any way to buy bitcoins without having to go through all this verification crap like scanning in photo id and what not? Bit elaborate.. why cant i just use paypal or moneybookers etc?

loads of methods have been tried but nobody has figured out how accept credit cards or paypal simply because if the buyer does a chargeback, PP or the CC will always side with the buyer. so too risky for the seller.

Roonbox

georgiecasey wrote: »

loads of methods have been tried but nobody has figured out how accept credit cards or paypal simply because if the buyer does a chargeback, PP or the CC will always side with the buyer. so too risky for the seller.

I used a Bitcoin ATM here in Vancouver, no ID needed. I think there are plans to have one in London too. If this whole thing doesn't fall apart at the seams there may be an ATM in Dublin at some stage.

pH

Komsomolitz wrote: »

Any way to buy bitcoins without having to go through all this verification crap like scanning in photo id and what not? Bit elaborate.. why cant i just use paypal or moneybookers etc?

localbitcoins.com is probably your best bet.

Zascar

I hope its ok to start a seperate thread for this, but can anyone please give me a step by step guide to buying bitcoins? There seems to be so many ways and different steps involved. How do I get a bitcoin address? Which wallet do I use? Where should I buy them from?

Advice appreciated.
Thanks

hullaballoo

Zascar wrote: »

I hope its ok to start a seperate thread for this, but can anyone please give me a step by step guide to buying bitcoins? There seems to be so many ways and different steps involved. How do I get a bitcoin address? Which wallet do I use? Where should I buy them from?

Advice appreciated.
Thanks

Sorry, there are already quite a number of threads on bitcoins between the first couple of pages of the forum. This thread is probably best suited to your purposes.

spix

Zascar wrote: »

I hope its ok to start a seperate thread for this, but can anyone please give me a step by step guide to buying bitcoins? There seems to be so many ways and different steps involved. How do I get a bitcoin address? Which wallet do I use? Where should I buy them from?

Advice appreciated.
Thanks

Q. How do I get a bitcoin address?
A. By creating a wallet

Q. Which wallet do I use?
A. I recommend https://blockchain.info/wallet/new for beginners.

Q. Where should I buy them from?
A. Imo the best place to buy bitcoins in Europe are localbitcoins.com, bitstamp.net and kraken.com as they all allow cheap SEPA transactions.

pH

Zascar wrote: »

I hope its ok to start a seperate thread for this, but can anyone please give me a step by step guide to buying bitcoins? There seems to be so many ways and different steps involved. How do I get a bitcoin address? Which wallet do I use? Where should I buy them from?

Advice appreciated.
Thanks

Given you've posted this in I&M - I'm presuming that you want them as an "investment" ie to hang on to a bit.

One of the things people have a hard time "getting" is that bitcoins are not really stored in wallets- they're actually stored in the P2P network AKA blockchain.

Each bitcoin(or part of) is associated with a public key - you "own" that bitcoin by having in your possession the private part of that key.

So the simplest way to own/store bitcoins is just have a paper printout with the public/private keyparing on it - and then send (or pay people and get them to send) bitcoins to that key. You don't need a computer or a wallet until you want to spend/sell the coins - at which time you sweep the keys into a wallet or account and spend them.

So for example go here : https://bitcoinpaperwallet.com/bitcoinpaperwallet/generate-wallet.html (or https://www.bitaddress.org )
Print yourself a paper wallet - to be absolutely secure you need to d/l the files and generate the wallet offline.

Now anyone with bitcoins can send them to the public address on the wallet - you can check the wallets contents using something like blockchain.info and as long as you don't lose/destroy/give away the paper wallet when you need to you use the private key to sweep the bitcoins into a software wallet (or indeed somewhere like mtgox)

As an aside - anyone who actually has bitcoins can use these paper wallets to make for example 0.1 BTC or 0.01 BTC "gift vouchers" to give as novelty xmas gifts for the techies in your life!

Stuxnet

Whats the purpose of bitcoin wallet sync if I download it.....it takes a very long time to sync.....I understand its processing all transactions that ever happened, but for what purpose would I need it ?

I can still buy and transfer BC without this app...what's its purpose

fergalr

Stuxnet wrote: »

Whats the purpose of bitcoin wallet sync if I download it.....it takes a very long time to sync.....I understand its processing all transactions that ever happened, but for what purpose would I need it ?

I can still buy and transfer BC without this app...what's its purpose

So that when someone sends you coins, after you buy them, you know that they haven't already been sent to someone else.
Because, if they had already been sent to someone else, your client would have processed that transaction, as it was 'processing all transactions that ever happened'.

Does that make sense? You don't strictly need to sync up to send coins, but you do in order to receive coins, and be sure that you have really received them.

srsly78

If you download a preprocessed blockchain you are trusting someone else to do the verification bit for you.

pH

srsly78 wrote: »

If you download a preprocessed blockchain you are trusting someone else to do the verification bit for you.

Yes, but at the end of the day you're still just "trusting" the software you just downloaded, unless you write your own verifier or check the source code involved and compile it yourself.

For the vast majority of people using bitcoin in the future having the entire blockchain "live" on their computer isn't going to be a option, most will be using a wallet that "trusts" someone else to check the blockchain for them.

Something like multibit should be enough for all but the most paranoid who want a wallet to store a couple of bitcoins.

https://multibit.org/faq.html

Worztron

Saw in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cBeye7BuOo

Has anyone used http://www.gunkfood.com?

It seems like a scam. The above site is not found.

Roonbox

Coinye all the way

http://www.cbc.ca/newsblogs/yourcommunity/2014/01/coinye-west-kanye-themed-cryptocurrency-takes-aim-at-bitcoin.html

Worztron

spix wrote: »

...Q. Where should I buy them from?
A. Imo the best place to buy bitcoins in Europe are localbitcoins.com, bitstamp.net and kraken.com as they all allow cheap SEPA transactions.

Of those 3 sites, can anyone who has used them post their experience. Which one is best?

windowlicker

i've used kraken and found them great. i've used mtgox and bitcoin-central in the past also and found kraken to be the best.

the only problem with them is that the volume traded there is quite low so if you want to buy a lot of bitcoin (> 100 BTC), then you would need to look elsewhere.

both deposit and withdrawal from kraken took about 3 business days.

Worztron

windowlicker wrote: »

...if you want to buy a lot of bitcoin (> 100 BTC)...

That would be near €67000. :eek:

That limit is plenty.

Worztron

Has anyone used localbitcoins.com?

Is a passport or other ID required to buy bitcoins via SEPA?

AtomicHorror

Worztron wrote: »

Of those 3 sites, can anyone who has used them post their experience. Which one is best?

Can't speak about the others but Bitstamp are good. Quicker than Mt.Gox to get users verified. Deposits go off without a hitch, and the price of bitcoins is lower on Bitstamp than on Mt.Gox.

srsly78

Ehhh so just buy on bitstamp and sell on mtgox, arbitrage alert!

AtomicHorror

srsly78 wrote: »

Ehhh so just buy on bitstamp and sell on mtgox, arbitrage alert!

Fees will kill you unless you have a lot to spend, also long delay in withdrawing from Mt.Gox. Overall, I reckon there's probably profit to be made, but only if you plenty to spend?