Buying bitcoins

martyoo wrote: »

Yes but I can call my bank or credit card company if my details are stolen or compromised and I can get my money refunded. You can't say the same for Bitcoin. There is no recourse.
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So maybe *you* get your money refunded but it isn't "magic" - someone somewhere pays.

12 element wrote: »

Imagine everytime you used your debit card you would have to wait 10-30 minutes for the transaction to go through. Bitcoin...

Yeah your right, the 10-30 min transactions are so much of an improvement over the 5 days it takes a card payment to process. When you purchase something in a shop all that happens is the shop is told, yes this person has this money, the actual transaction takes a working week.

Exactly how do people buy bitcoins with cash? Does the seller after receiving the cash then send btc via their smartphone at the meeting place to the buyer (who also would need a smartphone app to verify payment)? Are QR codes used (typing out the long btc address would be cumbersome)?

martyoo wrote: »

Yes but I can call my bank or credit card company if my details are stolen or compromised and I can get my money refunded. You can't say the same for Bitcoin. There is no recourse.

What is going to happen MT Gox's customers? What would happen if your computer was hacked and the coins were stolen?

I get why people want it to work but I just don't think it will.

I get where you're coming from, and I've a few related thoughts on this, this isn't all directed at your post but it's related.

Firstly on the "why Bitcoin?" aspect : You're dealing with Irish banks and euro currency, which on a worldwide scale are relatively safe and stable. We're already seeing slower uptake of Bitcoin in Ireland than in other countries because people trust the banks to return their deposits and trust the Euro to not devalue overnight. Where would you keep your money if we had a Cyprus situation and deposits were frozen for days and then given a haircut? What would you do if the Euro lost 12% of its value in a day due to monetary inflation.

There's a reason Neo opened in Cyprus and not Dublin, and that Buenos Aries has 6 times the Bitcoin economy that Ireland has.

Secondly, on the security of traditional banking: Sure you're right, BOI, AIB get bailed out, no one lost deposits, if there's fraud on a credit card or ATM card skimmed you'll probably get your money back. But it's not free, either you pay for it with fees, or the losses get socialised to all users. Many people like that Bitcoin is buyer beware in this manner, that your own competence ultimately determines how safe your coins are, and that any losses by others incompetence does not come out of your pocket.

The libertarian viewpoint is that gox should be allowed to fail, not be bailed out and that good consequences can come from this. Allowing failure is necessary for better services to emerge.
After this gox debacle other exchanges now need to convince users to trust them, it pushes them to improve transparency. One interesting point here, is that with Bitcoin they can prove they have control of funds without any kind of expensive 3rd party audit. Right after the gox trouble, Bitquick announced they now provide proof of their reserves.

The few who took a risk on gox lose, the many who didn't are rewarded with better alternatives that emerge.

The argument is that gov regulation doesn't work anyway, it just moves trust from people to other people. Anglo was regulated and still managed to make what I think are the biggest losses in the history of the world.

I realise these are quite extreme views, and I'm not personally a die hard libertarian, I'm just explaining what the viewpoint of many Bitcoiners is and I'm curious to see how it all pans out.

Thirdly, on the security of Bitcoin:

What if my computer gets hacked? well as you rightly point out then if that's where the private keys to my coins were, I have lost my coins and I'm never getting them back. Buyer/user beware indeed.

But, the Bitcoin protocol allows for some really interesting advanced usage to avoid this risk. You can create what's called a multi-signature wallet. This means you can create a wallet which has 5 (N) keys, and 3 (M) are needed to spend from the wallet. You can then disperse these 5 keys across a number of places, put one in an encrypted file in your gmail or drop box, print two on paper and put them in safe deposit boxes in banks, bury one in your back garden, keep one in your parents house. Anyone finding one key, or even 2 of them still can't steal your money, but you also have redundancy - if the banks refused to give you your keys back you still have 3 remaining keys you can use.

This is just an example, M and N can be any values you like 1 of 3, 5 of 10 etc. In my opinion this is a killer feature - distributed, redundant, secure storage without need for 3rd party trust (or cost). Is there any store of value in the world that offers this type of security? As I said before, creating these wallets isn't yet user friendly but there's no reason why it won't be.

Those speculating on Bitcoin aren't betting on Bitcoin being finished in its current state, they're betting on what future value it will bring.

12 element wrote: »

Imagine everytime you used your debit card you would have to wait 10-30 minutes for the transaction to go through. Bitcoin...

Do you think the people queuing at the Bitcoin ATM in the pic in post #576 are waiting 30 minutes each for their transaction? You'll see the transaction reach your wallet in seconds, it just takes 10 mins for each confirmation. The chances of a transaction reaching your wallet and not confirming are tiny, for small transactions there's no need to wait.

Seems to be some good news out to the UK of all places that normalizes the tax status of crypto currencies.

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/briefs/vat/brief0914.htm

Are we looking at the last days you'll ever be able to buy a bitcoin for under €500? Prices are up 15% in an afternoon.

12 element wrote: »

Up Up UP!!1

I think the phrase you're looking for is:

"To the Mooooooon"

Couple of technical (I think!) questions and hopefully they haven’t been asked before…
I plan to buy from bitcoin.de and (maybe) the vending machine opening soon.

- Is it the case that I can buy, say, 0.2 BTC and if someone has 10 BTC they sell me this partial BTC amount and a brand new blockchain code is generated (whereas previously all this person’s full BTC would have had their own blockchain codes)?

- Having received this partial BTC into my wallet I can take this stuff fully 100% “offline” (stored, for example on a USB key)?

- I can continue to buy small amounts, each one with their own blockchain codes, and store all this offline. Or is it the case that if I buy 0.5 BTC today from .de and 0.5 BTC tomorrow from the vending machine, they merge into one block chain code?

The Baggot inn now accepts BTC https://twitter.com/Baggot_Inn

PanBrian wrote: »

BitCoin is dead by all accounts....7%, half a billion have been stolen.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/bitcoin-dead_784187.html?page=1

I'd advise you get your news and opinions from more informed sources, that 'article' is full of misinformation. Mt. Gox is dead, Bitcoin is still very much alive, as suggested by the very first line of the article, oddly enough.

Another negative consequence....reported 5 hours ago...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2573863/Bitcoin-exchange-CEO-dead-home-suspected-suicide-age-28.html

I know about all of these events already. Gox was the only major one of these exchanges (though not the largest overall - one of the pieces of misinformation in the original article).

I didn't burn my euros when Anglo shut down or AIB went bust, and I won't throw away my Bitcoin because gox is bankrupt.

Bitcoin is decentralised, it's not dependent on any exchange or company. Every single online Bitcoin exchange could shut down right now and my personal coins would still be secure, and I'd be free to send and receive Bitcoins as I wished.

Don't get me wrong this news is terrible, I'm sorry people lost money, but at the same time it was due to extra risk they *chose* to take by entrusting their Bitcoin to a stranger that either already had a history of red flags (Gox) or was amateur and unestablished (flexcoin) and in both cases not insured, externally audited or particularly open about their security measures.

Bitcoin the protocol works fine, but it's clear that at least some of the Bitcoin company ecosystem is not ready for the kinds of money involved now. The bad companies will fail (either through being hacked, or being scams themselves) better ones will emerge. Only in the last 6 months has the issue of regulation really surfaced, it will come, and it will bring safegaurds for consumers. Also with the spotlight very firmly on the remaining exchanges there is pressure on them to convince us we should trust them by proving their reserves, getting independent audits etc. and this has already started.

Proving reserves of funds is actually easier with Bitcoin than traditional money, as you can publicly verify the balance of an addresses in the blockchain and companies can prove with a digital signature that they control them, it's up to consumers/regulators to pressure companies to do this.

There is no inherent reason a company dealing with Bitcoin cannot be audited, insured and regulated the same as any other financial company to protect the customers from theft and fraud - and it will happen. In the meantime it's buyer beware, don't trust any significant amount of funds to third parties, and learn how to secure your coins yourself, keeping any large amounts in offline cold storage.

In the meantime, the 2 ATMs coming to Dublin are a nice way the average person can dip their toe in the Bitcoin water, without going near any online exchange.

http://www.smh.com.au/money/investing/why-bitcoin-will-never-be-real-money-20140213-32jdk.html