Bitcoin Forum

I want to buy some BitCoins with USD, WHY IS THIS SO DIFFICULT?!?!?!?  First of all, forget eBay, they are $20 each or more.  I heard MtGox is reputable & opened an acct, hoping to buy them there.  But I can't. I need to "add funds" in first. (Why can't I just do that with a bank transfer to MtGox?) So, I opened a Dwolla account.  It took 3 days for them to verify my checking account. Now that's finally done, I had to sit and wait another 2 or 3 days for the actual money to make it from my checking account to Dwolla (just shows up as pending till it cleared). Then someone told me that bitcoin7.com is a fast site to buy BitCoins. Knowing I had funds in Dwolla, I went to bitcoin7.com, clicked on the "add funds through Dwolla" link, and got the message "sorry, you we can not process funds through Dwolla now"  Is this some kind of practical joke or something? Why is it so DAMNED hard to obtain BitCoins? Or do I just not know the way to do it like most of the non-newbies are doing it? I FINALLY obtained some BitCoins at TradeHill, but geez, the hoops you have to jump through to get any is like some big practical joke.  My guess is that the difficulty in obtaining BitCoins is what's preventing them from growing in popularity.  I'd really like to hear where the other members are buying their BitCoins...

If you're lucky enough to live in Canada, or have a bank account here, you just open an account with Virtex, do an interac email transfer from your bank to them and in a couple hours tops you can be buying your BTC.

I buy from Tradehill. I have done transactions both sells and buys in less than a few hours.
(I did have money in my dwolla account though)

Congratulations, you've discovered one of Bitcoin's advantages over the existing banking system: No waiting 3 days to validate an account or send money.

In short, it's hard to buy bitcoins since (most of) the old guard really don't want to make it easy. Bitcoin is going to kill them. :)

I buy from cavirtex as piper mentioned, but I live in Canada, for Canadians it's a great service
 ::)

Just couple days ago WARlrus came up with service that allows to use SMS payments to buy Bitcoins http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=29992.msg386319#msg386319 (http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=29992.msg386319#msg386319), i hope such service would be available soon in US



Yep, i use interac all the time, SEPA in Europe should be good too, sorry to say but US ... well its stone age in US.

There are a number of methods to obtain bitcoins quickly in the U.S.

 - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Buying_bitcoins

You can transact with an exchange where MoneyPak is accepted.  MoneyPak is available at thousands of locations.
 - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/MoneyPak

You might find someone local willing to trade:
 - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Category:Local

So why can't you?
I just added funds via bank transfer.

I'm curious as to why this was a problem for you.

I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt and assume you're not working for Virtex. Mind giving your impressions on what makes it superior to MtGox/others for Soviet Canuckistans?

Virtex not superior by it self, but because it utilizes convenient money transfer system called Interac  http://www.interac.ca/ (http://www.interac.ca/). e.g. I send money from my TD EasyWeb, it costs 1.5$, takes 1-2 hours to process and recipient doesn't get my personal information.

Not working for nor in any way associated with Virtex here. Primarily, what makes it superior is that I can fund my account from my Iphone, on my way to work, and by the time I make it to work the money is usually there and I can start trading. That isn't necessarily due to Virtex itself, but to the fact that Canadian banks have a system called Interac email transfer, which makes it much faster than, in my experience, MtGox/others.

Their interface could improve, IMO. But if the question is where to BUY bitcoins, as opposed to where to engage in day trading of bitcoins, for anyone in Canada the answer is pretty clear.

And if I get into a car crash while funding my account on my iPhone, I will be rushed to the hospital, get first class treatment and when I'm healthy again will walk out of the hospital and never see a bill... so yes, if you're lucky enough to live in Canada :-)

I bought them at bitcoin7.com.

I started out frustrated because it was not clear to me that I could not realistically just mine a fraction to play around with using just a CPU.  Built the software and got kicked out of the second mining pool I tried for inefficiency.  The first pool (some .cz one) was down or something. 

Much of the info I ran across about Bitcoin was 'ancient' (as in, written some months ago.)  I like building machines, but a little research indicated to me that building an efficient miner was not really the way I wanted to go.  I wanted to acquire more BTC than I could realistically mine in the timeframe I wanted them even with a good mining rig, but less than the cost of a good rig with high-end cards (if they were even available.)  Lesson:  put high priority on ultra-new information (if the author was thoughtful enough to provide a date.)

So, it was purchase for me.

I wished to drain the money I had in paypal for philosophical reasons, so I gravitated to bitmarket.eu.  These guys seem to do some manual research to try to figure out if your are a scammer before they let you play, but that took less than a day in my case.  So far, bitmarket.eu has worked well for me as a buyer, and I still used it from time to time if I want some smallish number of coins in a hurry.  (Funny story...the last time I used bitmarket.eu, the seller had all kinds of issues with Paypal and I had to really work at it to get him his money.  But I had my BTC right away.)

The cost on bitmarket.eu tends to be a bit higher since it is a risk to the seller (I am supposing.)  So I set up a Tradehill account.  I had limited experience with wiring money and was not looking forward to it.  As it turns out,  I can stop by the bank on the way to work, and the money would be in Tradehill by the afternoon and ready to trade.  Shortly after than, I've got what I want in my working wallet.  Not bad at all.  Tradehill has normally been pretty fast at sending me my BTC, but the last time I did it it took until the next morning.  This was an annoyance to me.

You could sell something for bitcoins.

Thanks for the response. I do wonder where you will be getting that first class private treatment in the Canadian healthcare system, but that's another topic.

What are the fees like with Virtex? You have about $1.50 with each Interac email transaction, what else is there on top of that?

Works for me.

Actually, my bank just lowered the interac fee to $1.00, and Virtex charges .59% per transaction ( I think). They cap you at $5,000. So if you transfer the max, the $1.00 fee is very low.

Cheers.

Have they solved their Dwolla problem yet?

On their website it said it was charged at 1% of the transaction value, which is rather high but not terrible for the convenience I guess. Here is a useful option for Interac in case you're willing to get another bank account.. http://www.banking.pcfinancial.ca/a/waystobank/interacDirectPayment.page?refId=sidenav (http://www.banking.pcfinancial.ca/a/waystobank/interacDirectPayment.page?refId=sidenav)  *Edit: Just realized this is direct payment and probably wouldn't apply to email transfers.

What have you been using to sell? Or are you primarily just hoarding for the moment?

You can get them in a couple hours from us,

http://BitcoinBux.com

Looks like a good service, but I prefer TradeHill, because they provide you with your own E_Wallet.  I can transfer USD to TradeHill with Dwolla, then have BTC sitting in my TradeHill acct, and I don't have to transfer them to a wallet of my own which may or may not have compromised security.

Where have you been? You can no longer transfer funds into TH from Dwolla.

They must have JUST removed that then. I bought 5 BTC's last week with a DWOLLA transfer to TradeHill.

That was last week. Things have changed as it appears Dwolla have scammed TH and IMHO Dwolla is in process of going out of business. Search for Tradehill Dwolla and I'm sure you are in for a nasty surprise.

That's really bad!!! I have $1000 on the way to Dwolla now

CampBx and MtGox are still accepting dwolla incoming I think.

TH will do out but not in.

I wish this thread didn't die, I want to hear where other members aquire their BTC's when they buy as opposed to mine...

Forced to deal with MtGox, it's the only place where the system is pretty much fully automated, and you can buy or sell BTC in a second.
Huge liquidity so the 0.30% isn't bad at all

Never going to touch small manual exchanges, the other person could jump out of the deal if the price moves within a few days, they don't pay and you get screwed
(you have BTC and they're worth less now, instead of having fiat $)

I got a bit through MtGox but the majority of mine lately come from people contacting me for amazon gift codes for BTC.  I've been thinking about offering services like sound editing in exchange for BTC.