Bitcoin Forum

Most UK banks are now blocking payments >£1000 to the main exchanges like Kraken, Coinbase, Binance.

What safe options do we have to buy BTC?

Must you buy from the centralised exchange?

What happens when you use Dex Exchange, where the reason for your payment won’t be defined? All you need to do is agree with whomever you are buying from, and you can use any payment option you both agree on, and you won’t have to worry about bank restrictions.

I don’t know if Bisq is allowed in the UK but you should try checking it out.

If you want to make use of a centralised exchange like Binance, instead of using the direct card funding option that your bank is placing a limit on, you can use the P2P option, and you can buy with the amount that you need, transfer it to the merchant, and get your coin released back to you, which you can withdraw immediately after you finish your purchase back to your noncustodial wallet.

I dont want to buy from a Central Exchange, but it appeared to be the most safe and reliable method.

Dex exchange? Is there a system that allows safe bank transfers?

Or are you referring to services such as localbitcoins, where you have to find and meet(trust) a stranger who "claims" to have BTC in public? - these often bring alot of risk.

No, I'm not referring to a service like F2F, as I see that as a very good but dangerous means of buying a large amount of coin for security purposes. 
 
You can use centralised exchanges and the P2P option, which will allow you to make a safe bank transfer to your seller, and in return, you will get the BTC you want.

my experience over the last few years with UK banks is if the amount is over £1k they do a security call to your listed number where they check that you are who you say you are (not a hacker, hacking the bank account) and if transferring to a regulated in the UK exchange like coinbase for instance they will do a welfare check of asking you if you are being demanded to pay someone a sum or coerced or made to make this payment,
(by scammers/blackmailers)
 and asked how well do you know about bitcoin and its investment risks, to be making a well informed decision about the transfer to the exchange. and if they feel you genuinely want to buy coin, they let the transfer go through

they already know the funds are intended to go to an exchange when you first make a transfer to an exchange bank account.. so if you then sound evasive or not want to answer questions..(some pretend to be private and not want to talk about bitcoin, when it obvious to bank your making transfer to a bitcoin exchange) they will deny the transfer, out of fear your evasion is suspicious for reasons of you being coerced into making a payment but dont want to admit it

i personally have a hoard of coin from many years back, but couldnt turn down the opportunity to add more in the 2022-2023 correction period of the 2021 ATH, and in the 2018-2019 correction period of the 2017 ATH

---

doing things via localbitcoins /DEX is where things did get/got more annoying. and banks flag it as MORE suspicious when you do X amount or X times payments in certain period to random people.(more suspicious then using CEX)
they can end up starting to think you are running a payment service business if done too often via DEX. which if done using a personal bank account is against the accounts terms and conditions.. or they could deem it as you being repeatedly scammed/blackmailed by random people
banks guidelines are more annoying when it comes to dex/localbitcoin trades, compared to CEX

Unfortunately, if the bank is not CryptoFriendly, it is better for you to use online payment services via PayPal or via P2P using any online payment services, but you must make sure that you carry out the transactions with a reliable person and not with random *many* people.

The problem with banks is that one red light is enough to make them monitor you, especially if you have more than one international account. Therefore, I think you should look for Bitcoin-friendly services that you can link your bank account to them instead of direct payment to Kraken, Coinbase, Binance.

Can you recommend some DEX exchanges?

If you mean localcoinswap, agoradesk, hodlhodl, they are useless and full of scammers.

Bisq I cannot install, so havnt tried it.



From this month, almost all UK Banks are against crypto, nothing  about being monitored.
The UK banks blocked all exchanges via their sortcode / account number

The only true DEX is Bisq, the other are just no KYC P2P, you can find the other alternative on kycnot.me

I ever had experience with Agoradesk, trade for multiple times and all went smoothly, so I don't know why you can say it's full of scammers. Probably you're looking for the best rate or they gives too good to be true offers, definitely it's full of scammers.

What's the reason you can't install Bisq? if it's because of firewall or ads block, you need to turn it off. Here's the tutorial https://docs.bisq.network/getting-started.html

Don't buy Bitcoin from any Exchange and keep your Bitcoin in their custody.

 If invest in bitcoin and keep your bitcoin in the exchange mean you are not investing in Bitcoin but investing in the exchange. The Exchange will secretly or openly sell your bitcoin and latter will file bankruptcy and claim that hackers has stollen your Bitcoin.  Invest in Bitcoin and keep your Bitcoin in  your own Locked Wallet or GNiD Wallet. All the GNiD Wallet s are KYC compliant so even any thief steal it cannot spend your bitcoin. If the wallet get damaged you can prove your ownership  and regain access to your bitcoin which is in the Blockchain.

To buy Bitcoin in the UK you can buy from Exchanges, agent or P2P on the OTC market place.   

P2P Platforms: Platforms like LocalBitcoins, Paxful, and Bisq allow you to buy BTC directly from other individuals. They often provide a variety of payment methods, including bank transfers, PayPal, and even cash. These platforms typically have escrow services and a reputation system to reduce the risk of fraud.

I don't have any problem buying using my monzo premium card.

I guess P2P is the way to go for you, that way it's bank to bank transfer kind of thing and not directly from the exchange. There's also the possibility of using Paypal but there's scammers out there that would do some shady thing so it's not a good idea, maybe even as a last resort. Take your chances on a centralized exchange, they're reliable if decentralized exchange isn't an option for you, you don't store your bitcoins there anyway so it's a good place for you to do your P2P trade, I recommend Binance if you want to do it there, I trust them as an exchange as I've been doing some of my P2P trades there and so far, I haven't had any problems with them over those years that I'm using them even though they're banned in my country, I would still use them because they're just that good to me.

I sold my first btc using localbitcoins they are trustworthy company.

There is no way you can buy it from centralised exchanges. Though I am not from UK, but I guess the method that I will say you works in almost all the nations. I am talking about using the P2P methods. Buy bitcoins through the P2P methods directly from the peers. In this manner no bank can trace about the crypto transactions. You can do P2P deals at Paxful. I have previously bought Bitcoins there, and it worked for me absolutely without any problem.

Where do you live ?

Is it the same as OP?
  I think the OP is better off just using P2P transactions, it would be safer if it was verified so they wouldn't be fooled,

I don't live in the UK so I don't know how bad the situation could actually be but there must be some crypto-friendly banks, no? Especially because for them it would be a great opportunity to get new customers. At the end buying cryptocurrencies is perfectly legal, if the bank doesn't want to deal with that type of transfer is because of their own (stupid) policies, there must be some smart bank taking advantage of this situation.

Your point is valid re the rates, but thats not the reason for scammers, that is when you wanna buy >£2000, the scammers try harder. also the higher you go the less likely a genuine user fulfills.
this is the problem with p2p

Maybe you had success because you exchanged <£150?



They often only have 1 or 2 users who can provide meaningful volume, those users ask for more KYC than the exchange.  ::)



Did you try to buy over £3000 in one transaction yet?




P2P is the way forward, but there needs to be more sellers facilitating for big buyers

when it comes to amounts

scammers love the UNDER £1k amount, this is because its not worth the legal/time/energy costs for a victim to try tracing and torting.
(same with scam calls. they ask victims for under £1k of gift cards)
as they know its less likely to get caught if they victimise 100 people for £500 rather than 1 person for £50k


banks usually are more lenient to let transfers through unquestioned at lower amounts because reimbursement and confiscation is less of a headache for small amounts(even they dont want to have to play with the court system)
this is why the banks have limits of £500 for ATM, £100 for tap and pay and £1k for wire transfer before things get actively triggered to investigate

but if doing things p2p for more then £1k expect bank to call you and ask a few questions. by which some p2p buyers get annoyed with constant phone calls per trade. thus they keep buys below thresholds to avoid annoying calls. so sellers start to only do offers of small amounts as thats the market they fall into, (not getting bids due to buyers not wanting to buy large lumps)

years ago there used to be a tier system for OTC. where by you could not offer large amounts unless you first done X trades of small amounts(gain trust rating) which weeded out the risks and such and the competition. where only a few high tier traders offer larger amount to fewer large buyers. where the large amount trades were treated as a higher privilege level with its own separate markup rate(spread/commission/profit) from spot

this is where the KYC stuff started jumping in. larger amounts = business bank account for sellers, money licence and KYC requirement to make deals

Use Bisq! Go through the hassle with installing and learning and such. I have a laptop with a Linux installation dedicated to Bisq. This platform works perfectly for me. It´s open source and decentralized.

After all, banks are just the government's backyard. If the government doesn't like bitcoin, no bank will dare to go against the government's will. Just like the country I live in, no banks accept bitcoin and if they find out we are using a bank account to make bitcoin-related purchases, they will freeze the account ours. But that won't stop us from getting into bitcoin, and there will always be a way for us to buy bitcoin with a bank account.
I can't offer any ideas as I don't understand the actual problems the OP is facing nor the specific regulations of banks in the UK. But I believe there will always be a way for us to circumvent the law to buy bitcoin even though it will be a bit more complicated.

I am not sure if you are aware of Bisq, but you should give it a try and start with low amount. I have personally used it many times and I haven't faced any issues yet.
Website: https://bisq.network/

It's open source, No registration required and also uses 2-of-2 multisig wallets encourage safe, successful trades.
You can read more on the website.

Its better to use bisq or hodl hodl in buying, i don't know why the use of centralized exchange has been so common with the people in buying or investing in bitcoin, i think its may be due to the fact that they often use some of these exchanges in making trades and they will see it more easy and convenient for them to use the same exchange in buying bitcoin, but they are not the only means neither are the exchange the best way of storing our digital asserts.

You are right because it is very difficult to open a bitcoin bank account in a country where bitcoin is not legal and where the government has not issued bitcoin. Because where I live Bitcoin is not legal in our country so we can never openly say that we are doing transactions through Bitcoin by opening a bank account because if I reveal it I may get into legal trouble. Those who transact through Bitcoin or invest in Bitcoin in our country must avoid the eyes of the government to do our Bitcoin transactions. By investing in Bitcoin so we can never directly say the money we will get through Bitcoin investment that we are transacting through Bitcoin because we have to evade the government of our country to transact Bitcoin.

What distro did you install on?
Official Bisq package or user created repository?