Bitcoin Forum

Hi,
I am new to trading but not new to bitcoin. I want to purchase some btc and trade them on www.Bitstamp.net. They have been around for few years and is one of the oldest in the field as I gather. But before I proceed to buy btcs(planning to get about 3btc) from them. I want to see some feedback from the community here. Please give me some heads up about bitstamp on their efficiency and integrity.

All feedback are appreciated

Thanks in advance.

They are one of the larger and more trusted exchanges on the market. They are very compliance-oriented, so I would use them strictly for trading (not buying coins to send to darknet markets) and you will need to verify your identity. Personally, I am comfortable using them.

They were hacked a few years ago and covered all losses out of pocket; I believe they have tightened up security significantly since that time. You can always find a complaint here or there, like any exchange, but I see much less complaints about Bitstamp than I do about some of their competitors like Kraken and Coinbase.

Bitstamp is amongst the best you can find, well funded and professional team.

Been using Bitstamp since the beginning and I don't have a single complaint, well, interface could be a bit better. :D

They have a very strict verification procedure but once you pass that, this is one of the biggest exchange in the world and the biggest in Europe and are one of the most correct. So far I don't know any complaints against them except a few persons which have had their verification procedure rejected, that's it.

Thank you for your valued opinions. One last thing I would like to ask  is how good is their turnaround time for delivering any of the services - Deposits and Withdrawals from the time i make a request . Also Can I just buy bitcoins the and send it to another cold wallet or a friend's wallet  of mine for other uses.I don't intend to use the btc for any kind of dark market transactions :).

Bitstamp is one of the internationals exchanger,
if you want to buy Bitcoin in there and store it by yourself you can do it.
But if you want to do the trade in there and keep it in there i advice you to not doing that.
you can try other exchanger such as kraken,bittrex,binance etc etc other than Bitstamp.
they ever hacked by people before and lose a lot of Bitcoins in the process.
i never trust a flawed system like that with my money in there,never feel peace when i try to do it in there.
but it is up to you

I've used them in the past without issue but I'm not sure id do it again. That's not because they're dodgy but their kyc questions are ridiculously invasive and they rescind verification and ask for more if you go over unknown limits.

I'm buggered if I'm getting tied up in their secret policies.

Their KYC questions are indeed quite invasive.
However, in my experience you can get away with rather vague and ambiguous
answers and still get through the verification.

It´s probable that they do not really care for the details they ask for, but rather
want to have plausible deniability in the case of government investigations
into a Bitstamp client.

All in all, Bitstamp is the best of all exchanges in my opinion. The big downside is
that they don´t offer Margin trading. 

If you are only getting 3 BTC anyways then if i were you i would get them from localbitcoins. You get so much more choice on the type of payment method you want to pay with and there is room for negotiation.

With Bitstamp, you can trust them fully but in order to deposit you need to verify yourself.

If this is something you are willing to do then by all means. They've got a pretty good rep and apart from the occasional complaints, you should be good to go.

I've heard some negative feedback regarding the speed of their support system, and sometimes deposits and withdrawals can be delayed. But apart from that, they are a licensed exchange in Britain i believe(definitely in Europe though) so there is little risk of them scamming you.

It's not going to be the fastest process to deposit and get coins. Bank transfers can take a few days to hit your account.

However, once it does the spreads on the site are among the lowest in the industry.

Well as far as my own experienced is concern, deposits and withdrawals are just fine. Customer support kinda fine too compare to other trading platforms on which some of them already tagged as poor.

And yes you can send bitcoins to your preferred bitcoin wallet after buying those at that platform.

Bitstamp is licensed in Luxemburg according to the Bitstamp front page.
The main bank account of them is
based in Slovenia.

SEPA deposits usually take only one day and the trading engine
works pretty well.

This is an important consideration. It's one thing if you plan to regularly trade. In that case, it makes sense to fully verify your identity and use a trustworthy exchange like Bitstamp. But a one-time purchase of a few bitcoins probably doesn't justify doing so.

Personally, I'm very paranoid about giving out my personal financial information and passport to a foreign company. It's getting tougher to buy coins without ID now, though. Even Localbitcoins traders in my area are asking for it now. I wish that exchanges would publish more information about their compliance with data storage laws.