Bitcoin Forum

Hi,

I just launched a new site that allows people to buy Bitcoins using UK's Faster Payments system (i.e. regular bank transfers for most people). It's not a marketplace, so users can't register as sellers; it's really just a simple service to send Bitcoins once money has been deposited.

It's in a testing phase at the moment, but is live (with minimal margins to compensate those helping to test) so if anyone's interested, please sign up at http://www.bittylicious.com/ (http://www.bittylicious.com/). I'll post another announcement when it's open to all.

Feedback, constructive criticism etc. all welcome on this thread of course.

Thanks.

What are you rates versus Gox?

Thanks. Tested it out and BTC received pretty quickly.

It's a good idea - easy to use and you get to save on seller fees at other sites. You might need to be a touch more competitive on price though. There are (or were) some marginally cheaper options on localbitcoins, for example, where sellers do pay seller fees. Plus buyers using those sites get the benefit of coins being held in escrow.

For the website:

It would be good to see something like "> 100 bitcoins in stock, X available for you to buy" near the buy button. I'm guessing trades won't process or the available number will show as zero anyway, but making it nice and clear for the buyer is never a bad thing.

Also, I was waiting for the page to refresh to tell me bitcoins had been sent. For whatever reason, it didn't.

Hi,

Rates: The rate vs gox is currently approximately 1.5% above. It's just a test rate at the moment, quite low to get people interested in the service. It seems to be a relatively cheap day for LocalBitcoins so that's probably how runam0k found a cheap deal. The reality is that the prices on Bittylicious will go up when launched - it's not supposed to be the cheapest service around, but is supposed to be the most convenient and simplest to use.

Escrow: About the Escrow functionality, people trust LocalBitcoins' escrow system without worrying, and that's the idea here. Naturally, it's a new site, but in time people will hopefully trust it without worrying.

Website: Regarding the website, I intend on never running out of stock ;) Well, at least I want the users of the site to think that; I don't want to add another figure for them to worry about. Just near the 'Buy now' button, it says how many BTC are available to buy for the individual user. Do you think this isn't clear enough?

Page refresh: Regarding the page refresh as well, this should have happened automatically. How long did you want after you received your (unverified) Bitcoin? It should have refreshed usually within 20 seconds to show the transaction ID.

Many thanks for your testing. I welcome others to join in. Right now, you can get a Bitcoin on Bittylicious at http://www.bittylicious.com/ (http://www.bittylicious.com/) for only £72.39!

Thanks,

Marc

Are your fee's lower then GOX?

I took that as meaning my account could buy up to 1 BTC. That's not the same thing as saying 1 BTC is actually in stock and available. Taking localbitcoins as an example, it gives you both numbers. It also sets the coins aside in escrow. Comparing the buying experiences, I wasn't 100% confident you had enough bitcoins to fulfill the order until the bitcoins actually arrived.

I left the tab open for an hour while I went for lunch. Probably just a quirk with my browser/web access here at work.

OK, understood. I've now clarified this by adding a simple 'plenty in stock' message to the right of the amount you are allowed to buy.


Strange. I'll give it another test here just in case - thanks for the feedback.

For anyone interested, the price is now £72.28 at http://www.bittylicious.com/ (http://www.bittylicious.com/)

The beta testing period has ended and Bittylicious is now available for all users.

If you're unregistered, the maximum purchase is current 0.5 BTC. Register to get access to more Bitcoins.

The current price at http://www.bittylicious.com/ (http://www.bittylicious.com/) is £70.09 per BTC.

Cool. You might want to post to Currency Exchange, if you haven't already.

Great idea.

But got a feeling I won't be long before the banks shut you down.

by having a 0.5BTC (£35) limit per customer not registered this should be fine for bank risk. i would however tell bittylicious to have a regular contact with his local bank manager and ensure the bank manager knows that the business is bitcoin based. and not stupidly advertising based like blockchain.info tried to act like.

the only problems that could cause hassle are:

1) doing transactions to a customer above £850 a day or £12k a year
2) a customer (morelikely a paypal chargeback scammer) attempting to pphone the bank to complain about not receiving coins and demanding refund. then the bank investigating bitty. to see it is indeed a bitcoin business, where as bitty. claims it is not.

so again be honest with your bank tell them its a bitcoin business and show them how transparent it is to show proof of delivery (blockchain explorer) + plus logs of communications between bitty and customer.

and everything should be fine

What about VAT? If bitcoin is subject to VAT this might be a serious problem.

I've just given this service ago, it seemed a little cheaper than local bitcoins at the time. :)

Received my bitcoins within about 5 minutes. :D

Not bad at all.

Indeed, if Bitcoin is subject to VAT then the entire UK has an issue when it comes to Bitcoins. We're way below the VAT threshold, but my opinion is that it's not a VATtable item. I'm hoping we'll get HMRC to decide either way before we get near the threshold.

Frankly, if it is VATtable, then I agree it's game over for pretty much all UK Bitcoin selling outlets.

I agree and I really hope it isn't otherwise this will totally kill off all bitcoin businesses in the UK :|

It probably will unless the seller avoids paying taxes.

That's cool but you MUST have more information on your site around what makes you legit, are you properly licensed, etc.

Running an exchange like that invokes a titanic pile of regulations and if you don't follow them to the letter then the banks will shut you down. I didn't see a strong answer from you about whether your bank knows what you're doing. As you're a one man operation and the AML rules require you to be at least two, I suspect the answer is they don't know what you're doing, and that makes you very likely to get terminated. That in turn makes it harder for anyone else who is trying to run a UK exchange because the view that "bitcoin == money laundering" just gets reinforced at the banks. Just verifying identities isn't enough!

I have a UK bank account and would like to use your service, but frankly right now you look like a fly-by-night operation of the kind we've seen so many of before. I can't really justify using your service over Gox until it's clear that you've ticked all the right boxes.

If only gov.uk would actually make it crystal clear what regulations/licensing is required for a business involving Bitcoins. On one hand HMRC suggests it's not a money service at all (but a voucher service) and on the other, vague noises come out suggesting that it needs to be fully regulated. We're in communication trying to come to some sort of concrete answer. Regarding AML, We registered under the HMRC MLR system (which makes sense to us) and haven't been informed in any way about two people being required.

I think you have to register with the FCA and inform your bank that you'll be engaged in currency exchange too. They can then inform you of what else is required.

BTC0,5 trade went through without a hitch - thanks!

If you've not registered with the FCA you'll likely be shut down :(

Just sent payment for 0.5. Waiting for BTC now. Great service for UK!

If all goes well will be purchasing more!

We just added a new release that adds a few usability improvements plus increases the number of Bitcoins people can buy. In particular, users with accounts over 3 days and then over 7 days old are able to purchase more Bitcoins regularly going forwards.

The margins have just dropped due to successful testing to 3% above Gox.

Have you registered with the FCA yet?

No, we are awaiting a response still from them. Our understanding is that this is unlikely to be a requirement because we are at no point holding customer money, but we are discussing with them.

If they do decide to regulate you, you're going to be sol coz they don't accept registration after the fact :(

Just a little update. We now have four live sellers on the system competing to get your business, so the prices are going down. The current Bitcoin price on Bittylicious is £72.10.

And another announcement.

We have now got quite a few really good sellers on board that are able to source cheap coins, so our prices have now dropped to below MtGox's prices quite often. For instance, right now, Bittylicious's price is £86.06 compared to Gox's price of £87.31.

I've brought Bitcoins from this service. Coins were transfered to me in minutes.
Excellent, would recommend.  ;D

The UK is a void for BTC-Fiat conversions, I hope this one takes off as.....Quite bluntly... We need it  ;D

Why is everyone still hooked up on Gox? We need to brake away and decentralize, Hasn't Gox messed things up enough?

Bittylicious and LocalBitcoins are doing a pretty decent job of providing bitcoin trading options in the UK. And if you really must, it is still possible to wire funds to Bitstamp or Mt Gox.

It's now over £3 less than MtGox because of a bit of a seller war happening behind the scenes. All good news for Bittylicious customers though.

Does this mean you have no Bitcoin of your own and are dependent on sellers for your liquidity?

We do have Bitcoin of our own but our own prices are a bit higher than the prices that other sellers on the system can offer. Our aim is to provide good prices, whether from our own coins or from others, so we happily get sellers on board that can undercut us. The reason we offer our own coins is in case all sellers run out of coins (and we trade 24/7 too, but some sellers do as well).

It's all transparent to the end user though of course.

There's no mention of the coins coming from third parties on the site. Do they deposit the coins to your wallet or are you effectively just an escrow/third party?

There's no doubt that further documentation is really needed on the site. We're working on it.

As for how it works, they deposit coins into our bitcoind instance (but each seller has their own account). We then automatically lock the coins in a trade and send them on after the seller confirms that payment has been received. In this way, it's pretty much like Local Bitcoins and friends, but with marketplace information hidden so the user knows how much the cheapest provider that he can use costs.

gigatux: If I've signed up, verified my mobile and provided proof of name and address what is the most BTC I can purchase per day?

Almost 3 BTC, basically. The most important thing is you have a track record, so are a user for a fair amount of time. So, making a small purchase now will increase confidence.

What's happened to the seller wars recently? :(

https://i.imgur.com/KD8BeFz.png

Have a chat with the owner of Bitcoin Average. The different markets use different averages for their prices. Bittylicious seems to use a 1 (or perhaps 3)-hour average compared to sometimes a 24-hour average, which means in a rising market it will look more expensive. Conversely, it will look cheaper in a falling market.

Even not using bitcoinaverage though it's currently £265 to buy on bittylicious, £240 on gox, under £260 on localbitcoins and bitbargain.

OK, in which case yes Bittylicious is a bit more expensive at the moment (it's just not £10 more expensive as the BitcoinAverage page would lead you to believe).

Bought some FTC from Bitty yesterday and was very impressed with the speed of the service. Think I had the coins within about 5 minutes. Is this a UK-only based service? I'd recommend it to others, but don't know if you need a UK bank account to trade with.

Thanks for your comments!

It's only UK-only because we don't have any sellers in other countries that have suitable bank accounts to help us out.

lol funny name with the licious part but  congrats on ur site.

need help in the USA let me know, PM me lets see whats your mission on this business.

Hi Gigatux, nice work, just had my first successful trade and will do more. I agree with other posters that more information and more detail in the help and support sections is needed. I transacted using Barclays PingIt and it worked well, but there is no description of the PingIt process in the help. My first attempt to use PingIt failed because the seller failed to include his mobile number - your seller interface should be checking that sort of thing so that simple mistakes can't happen. For me, PingIt is preferable to UK Bank transfers because with my bank (NatWest) I would have to setup a new payee each time there was a new seller whereas with PingIt I can just add a mobile phone number to my contacts book. Keep up the good work.

It's not that difficult to set up a new payee. And isn't it more expensive to use Pingit?

There's no reason for it to be more expensive to use PingIt, but there are fewer sellers offering this service so there's less competition. This usually makes the price a bit higher.

Regarding the lack of a mobile phone number for PingIt, you're absolutely right. In the future, we won't be trusting sellers to add this detail and will require that they request activation for each offer. I assumed they'd set the offers up correctly before making them live but clearly it's better to manually validate each offer.

You're right that more documentation is needed. We are adding it when we can, but there are a few gaps to fill in, no doubt. I'm glad all in all you like the service though!

I recommend it to everybody I meet who asks where to buy Bitcoins and they haven't had any problems and some of them were very wary about buying coins and bank-transfers etc. Do you have any plans to add any more coins?

I message you but never got a response. 

I assume you made the payment for £150? Our systems were looking for a payment of £150.03 but you paid £150. Although you requested £150 our system matched you up with £150.03 of Bitcoins and would have displayed this (although we'll try to find out why). Because of the mismatch, your order had to be manually approved.

Hey,

Just wondering is it possible, instead of sending an online bank transfer. Could I go to a local bank and cash deposit the money into your account? Just wondering as my Bank doesnt support faster payments which is annoying. However the cash deposit method is instant. It would be an extremley helpful way of purchasing BTC.

Thanks.

I'm very sorry but in terms of fulfilling AML guidelines, we cannot accept cash payments via banks (as they usually accept cash from anyone). It's a shame your bank doesn't support Faster Payments - this system has been around for ages now.

Can you not just use Pingit? Or do none of your friends or family have a account with Faster Payments? If not, you can always try buy some coins from the marketplace here. Just use a trusted escrow.

Hi,

Yeah, I normally use a friends account. Just thought I would ask about the cash method as well though as it would be handy. Have never used Pingit before.

I've bought some BTC on the marketplace here as well. But it can take a few hours trying finding someone trustorthy to trade with, wereas bittylicous is always there. Although is more expensive.

Yeah, I can understand that. Pingit is pretty simple and easy to set up and it might be your best bet if you want to buy coins yourself through Bitty.

lol I never used your service. 
Can you PM your skype, business related.  

In which case I'm not sure who you are. I don't think we've not replied to an email from more than a few days ago. Please email us again at admin@bittylicious.com

I've a load of coins bought from Bittylicious. It works beautifully. The price occasionally goes mad but if you wait around there are some decent prices to be had.

I've used this service a handful of times, really good service. Transactions are fast and the prices are better then other UK Bitcoin sites from my experience.

And now Peercoin and Worldcoin are available on Bittylicious.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=440242 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=440242)

Nice to see more coins added to the platform. Any more in the piepeline?

Yes, but we haven't decided exactly what yet. It mostly comes down to the availability of sellers - we want there to be a competitive price so we need a few committed sellers for each coin before launching.

What's the max number of Bitcoins you can buy if you upload all the documents required?

It's one point something Bitcoins at the moment. This figure varies a lot, and gets reset every 48 hours (halfed every 24 hours).

I uploaded my docs earlier and they were just verified. I can now buy 3.3BTC  :D.

It also depends on when you made your first trade (and subsequent trades). We'll increase the limits more if you're a longstanding, and non-idle user.

Ah, good to know, but 3+ will be enough for me now any way, but I'll probably be buying a few coins for friends I've got interested in soon.

Did you guys sell many Maxcoins? Noticed they were at £20 near launch now they're only £6  :o.

We sold a few, but yes the price did vary and incredible amount from launch until now, I agree.

Seems you've run out of Feathercoins. Any idea when they'll be back?


They're £2.58 now but they were £1-ish the other day. You'd be foolish to buy into these hyped coins straight away as they always bomb soon after.

My apologies, they're back now. A misconfiguration took them out.

Classic pump and dump. Nebs will never learn.

Or more like dump and dump in this case. ;D

Somebody must've made quite a bit off those initial £20 a piece prices.

And nebs haha.

LOL, never mind about maxcoin, I just noticed your handle! The Monkey Island quadrilogy was one of my favourite games evah, and you deserve a little crypto tip just for that handle alone. ;D

Barkeep: Guybrush? Is that a French name?
Guybrush: No, actually it’s a fictional name.

BTC Address is in my profile if you want to tip  ;) :-*

Need some advice please.
Just used BittyLicious for the first time using Pingit and think I made a mistake...when going through the payment I forgot to add the reference number.
I'm currently sitting at the timer at 40 mins and take it the process wont go through as the reference number wasnt added in?
What happens next, I raise a ticket and hopefully will get my coins?
Thanks

Haha ;D

500µ tipped.

I don't think anyone's simply lost their money, even when they've made mistakes or banks have let them down.

Make sure you use the support system in your trade to let the seller know that you might have made a mistake. I'm sure it will work out just fine.

thanks for the reply, get create a support ticket
cheers

And now Bittylicious allows for payments with credit and debit cards.

https://blog.bittylicious.com/2014/05/buying-bitcoins-with-a-credit-card/ (https://blog.bittylicious.com/2014/05/buying-bitcoins-with-a-credit-card/)

Glad to hear it. I've used your service a few times and would much rather deal with debit cards than bank transfers, though I hope one day we don't need to use any cards at all.

Took me some time to upload all the documents until they were ok and verified but I think this is going to be one of my mayor sites to get BTC when I need them fast.

I'm glad you had a good experience with Bittylicious.

Extending the card acceptance thing, all altcoins on the Bittylicious platform can now be bought via credit/debit card (in EUR only still though).

Hi,

been using your site for the past few days now, and it seems to be a smooth process thus far.

I am concerned about the cost / commission I have to pay. Would be good to bring that down as mentioned by other posters.

Is it a fixed % or can sellers charge what they want?

A possible bug - the recommend friend via email button does not seem to do much....

Also - a wider question - what wallets are people generally using?

Thanks

Hi,

Thanks for your comments.

You might want to read https://bittylicious.com/help/index.php/Why_do_Bitcoins_on_Bittylicious_cost_so_much%3F (https://bittylicious.com/help/index.php/Why_do_Bitcoins_on_Bittylicious_cost_so_much%3F) as it describes how the pricing works.

In a nutshell, for most payment methods, sellers dictate the price. It's been very cheap recently though, and generally hovering around 3-4% above Bitstamp. I don't think you'll find many sellers in the UK willing to drop a lot below that, especially considering the costs in getting money into Bitstamp (currency conversion and bank fees). Bittylicious sets its own prices for credit/debit cards and cash/ZipZap though.

Thanks for the bug report. Really that's an old feature from when Bittylicious was invite only. We might remove that, or might do a "refer-a-friend- type setup.

As for wallets, there's a wide variety. Some people use their own wallets on their own PCs (Multibit for example) but many use web wallets like HolyTransaction, Blockchain and GreenAddress.

Marc

Bittylicious now offers credit card purchases for British Pounds. Happy days.

https://blog.bittylicious.com/2014/12/bitcoins-using-credit-cards-in-british-pounds/ (https://blog.bittylicious.com/2014/12/bitcoins-using-credit-cards-in-british-pounds/)

I've been using this site for a while now.
I find it much easier and more reliable to use than other sites.
Thanks for the great service!

Bittylicious celebrates its second birthday today; it's been two years since this thread first started and Bittylicious started getting traction.

Many thanks to those on this thread and elsewhere who trusted us with their money during the early days and gave constructive feedback!

All the best,

Marc

https://blog.bittylicious.com/2015/06/bittylicious-is-two-years-old/ (https://blog.bittylicious.com/2015/06/bittylicious-is-two-years-old/)

I have been using this site on and off for a while, very straight forward and quick no problems at all.

What is the usual ETA on receiving the Amazon Gift Certificate when selling BTC?

Thanks

It's usually a matter of minutes, and rarely more than half an hour.

Hi Admin.

when are we able to buy again?
Could not set up trade: Temporary error: {"status":"Maintenance"} Please try again later

cheers,
Patrick

This only affects certain card payments. If you are attempting to use a non-3D Secure enabled card, then I'm afraid it's still a case of waiting because this PSP is still waiting for their bank to implement something.

If you want to use a 3D Secure card in EUR or GBP though, drop us a mail at support@bittylicious.com.

Thank you for your quick reply.

how long will it takes? roughly

kind regards,
Patrick

I'm afraid there is no ETA. The PSP is waiting on their bank to implement something and they haven't been given an ETA from them. They are hopeful we're talking days rather than weeks though.

Thanks for the update..
Much appreciated

Just want to say I was sceptical on using Bittylicious until I read some comments on here , Just purchased .2 BTC and well i think within literally 5 Mins I have got the BTC pending in my Wallet. A service I shall use again in the future for sure! And it is literally the first BTC I have ever owned !

Thanks so much for that! It's always really great when a new Bitcoin user has a positive experience on their first purchase!

Used Bittylicious about 6 times now, very fast. And also easy to use as I'm still not the best dealing with BTC ! Thanks for the transaction today, had to be manual investigation though as I put the sellers name instead of my own, oops

Thanks so much for that feedback. I'm glad you found the process smooth and that it was handled OK even though the manual investigation was initiated! It happens a fair bit, but thankfully usually doesn't cause too many issues.

Went to buy about £10 worth of BTC using Pingit, front screen says you can buy a minimum of 0.0018BTC input all my details, clicked buy, said I must buy a minimum of 0.18BTC ?? IE over £100,  Plus, there's a 15% price difference between a bank transfer and a Pingit transaction.

 :'(

Bank fraud is becoming more commonplace and as such, many brokers have increased their minimum amounts for users that are not verified. If you verify your ID, you will have access to a lot more offers, and (counter-intuitively) a decreased minimum spend.

PingIt is also a lot less popular than bank transfer, and thus has fewer brokers placing offers for this and the price is generally higher.

I have been using Bittylicious for over a year now. I dont buy bitcoins/litecoins from any other source as I am now very comfortable with the proceedure. I know I can source alittle cheaper with some searching but for me the peace of mind of receiving the coins outweighs the slightly higher fee. So a pat on the back and a thumbs up for Bittylicious.

I only wish I could buy a bitcoin for £72 as stated at the beginning of this thread!

https://blog.bittylicious.com/2018/05/bittylicious-turns-five-years-old/

Bittylicious turns five years old. There are some interesting stats contained in this blog post -

And our vital statistics for the last year, 22nd May 2017 – 21st May 2018:

220,000 trades completed.
£99 million traded.
67,000 new user sign ups.
150,000 pieces of documentation verified.

 
Which is impressive for a not hugely known site in one of the lesser crypto markets.