Bitcoin Forum

For all bears, this is something new for you:

https://www.circle.com/ja/2014/09/29/circle-opens-doors-global-audience (https://www.circle.com/ja/2014/09/29/circle-opens-doors-global-audience)

I quickly read the info about them and their about section but I still don't know what the hell are they trying to achieve and why does it matter. Can anyone explain?

Same question.

They're making it a whole load more painless for an average personage to buy and own BTC.

A clone of Coinbase ?

What's so new about that? It is already as painless as it could be. Just transfer your fiat to an exchange, use bitcoin atm or find someone from localbitcoins.

I think you may be overestimating the motivation of the average person :P

I'm sure that panic buying will ensue because of this announcement.... right ghuyz?  Right?  Any minute now...

If PayPal couldn't move the price then i doubt circle will do... The site looks great though...

Painless?

Getting verified at an exchange is not exactly what I would call painless.

It is a lengthy process that requires much more information than an average user is willing to give up.

With Circle I can register and purchases instantly with a CC, all within a matter of minutes.

They're trying to pump and dump. It's kinda sad it'll fail.

Payday tomorrow. Will give this a go with a small part of it.

Now, now, stick to the doom mongering about the price - you don't fare well on other subjects.

You don't need Circle for that! What the hell. All the verification trouble is because of LAWS not because lack of painless service. We need laws to change. Circle is nothing new. If they didn't put me in jail I'd be selling bitcoins as commodity myself over the iPizza protocol as if I operated just another online shop. However, I cannot do this because police will immediately fuck me up for that. How can Circle get past police and I don't? Does not compute.

Every big Wall Street player is lining up in this very moment. We'll have 10k prices in a matter of days.  :D

Yes, yes. We very much need Circle for mainstream, non-technically inclined people to use Bitcoin. Before Circle there were no such service. Stop thinking the universe revolves around you.

I don't think my self-importance has anything to do with it. I just brought myself as a hypothetical example. If paypal accepts bitcoin they can as well as sell bitcoins themselves. I still don't see what Circle has to offer that other could not. Think of it, if Circle could do it, exchanges could also do it. So I could go to BitStamp and just directly buy bitcoins from the order book without having to register a Bitstamp account. If every exchange implemented such simplicity for buying bitcoins then Circle would be pointless. Now the question is --- why don't other exchanges implement it? Every exchange could be an alternative to Circle.

edit:
btw your claim is wrong. There was a place btc-dealer.com which allowed instantly buying bitcoins with a credit card.

Just noticed their ToS says it's americans only. Oops. Hopefully they get little things like that fixed soonish.

Everyone who bought today will probably be in a a loss tomorrow. Great advertising.  :D

I used it from the UK today, other eu countries also work. It was a pretty slick interface. Not sure about cc fees though.

Can't link my danish bank account or plastic. Bummer.

Circle is great, and buying BTC with a credit card is 100 times easier and less of a pain in the fucking ass for the average person to buy BTC.


But still, regarding the price. If PayPal pump failed miserably, why do you think this will be any different?

Muggle adoption is not an instant pump, it's a long term pump and support. Patience.

Yes you are right. Everyone and their mother could offer that service if they had dozens of millions of venture capital behind them, a team of experienced entrepreneurs, compliance officers and expensive lawyers.

But for now, Circle is the only one to offer that service on a global scale, all while insuring 100% of your holdings.

The interesting concept here is the insurance. I don't like their list of disallowed transaction types, some of which are completely legal items. But I don't see how that can be enforced when it's so easy to first pay to some new address, then to the intended recipient. That sounds more like a way to indemnify themselves if someone ever has legal issues.

The situation from a danish perspective so far.

Can't link my bank account. CAN link my visa, but the fees are too high to use. About $15 for depositing $500. Anyone know what the fees are like for americans? I assume I am being racisted against as usual, but need confirmation.

Fees aside, it is super fast and easy to buy with plastic. Assume bank transfer is just as easy. Also sent in a bit of coin followed by withdraw to confirm that it works, no problems there. Once they eventually get around to letting me link my bank account, the fees will go away so looking forward to that. Until then, it's easier and cheaper to send my money to Kraken in one lump sum as usual.

The concept works. They just need to finish the international part of it.

This system is just stupid. An average Joe does not need to buy a large amount of bitcoins at once. That activity thus cannot be a possible act of money laundering or terrorism funding. The laws should be changed in a way that anyone can sell bitcoins without any paperwork needed just as if the sold bitcoins were post cards or what ever. It's simply against the common sense to make it possible for only well funded companies with lots of lawyers to sell commodities such as bitcoins. AML and KNC laws should only apply for larger quantities of bitcoins being sold. If I sell 1 bitcoin a day at maximum then why demand complicated paperwork and certificates? The way Circle wants to solve the problem is like fighting with the symptoms and this is definitely not a long term solution because it is ineffective. It generates friction in the form of bureaucracy.

Circle is open! Great news! Look at how the market is responding! Rising BTC price!

Right ...?

 ;)

Their going to begin pushing bitcoin pretty hard imo

Here's 1 example

"Student Bitcoiners: Circle, the Boston-based digital currency venture, is looking for campus reps across the country to participate in a social media marketing program this fall!  Each rep will receive a Circle account with $250 in Bitcoin to spend over the course of the semester. Reps are required to post at least five stories about using Circle and Bitcoin to their Facebook accounts (and/or other blogging platforms like Tumblr) and to cross promote these via Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and other social channels.  To apply, send your resume to reps@circle.com click onthis link to be redirected to the brief application."

It's worth $250 when they receive it, but how much will it be worth a week later? LOL!  ::)

Damn, as BTC falls I get more and more the feeling that NuBits is going to replace bitcoin. It is crypto and it is not volatile. If I want out from Bitcoin or some altcoin I'd simply get into nubits rather than USD because I can only hold USD on an exchange but nubits can be held in cold storage. win win

Seems very easy to use. Great piece of bitcoin infrastructure!

Bitcoiners celebrating that can now buy bitcoins with cc (and pay massive fees) is beyond me...

"
Scheduled maintenance

We are currently performing scheduled maintenance. We will be available shortly.

We apologize for the inconvenience.
"

Is what I get when I try to log in again... why would they  do maintenance on a day like this?? Me thinks someone broke the site...

Yes, it was the evil banksters, the government and the bear whales trying to manipulate the price to buy more cheap coins.

Americans love plastic and suck at math. It will drive adoption up, even if just a little. Circle plus discounts when paying with bitcoin will drive it up more.

No fees at all if you link a bank account, and once that happens I'll be using Kraken a lot less. Probably just for higher volumes.

Circle is a great product. They really do make it easier, faster, and cheaper to get started with bitcoin.

Hopefully they're able to implement their goal of being fully operational internationally. Services like this really will help unlock bitcoin's potential as core international payments infrastructure, as well as making general consumer adoption easier/nicer

And its open again.. god sign that it had such a run, that they had problems with servers

You need to change your username to Butthurt Troll. So negative for no reason.

PS: circle is the easiest bitcoin buying platform I have ever used

To the guys not understanding why this is big and good: I have now 10 friends, that got coins from Circle today.. so it has set something in motion.. They are IT ppl, and wanted to buy bitcoin, but the exchanges look shady.. I know they are right, and localbitcoins is not the place to go and try to buy for a novice. Circle is backed by known name institutions, and is not Mt.Gox... I did not want to sell, I want to buy. So now I can sell them more coins than I mine/trade.. so this is good.

Thank you. That's the clear and simple explanation I wanted to read.

I hope you don't live in the US.  If you do you are risking prosecution for financial crimes by selling directly to friends.  The land of the free is not so friendly to financial freedom.

LOL wat?

Yeah, this is huge, and the price clearly reflects that. BTC price is shooting through the roof today. We're obviously headed for the Moon or Mars. The demand is just incredible.

Or you have ADD  or is just impatient... it will take time, but it will be easier for people to invest or use BTC.. ::)

wow you people are pathetic...

Why would the price suddenly start rocketing? It will go up slowly and steadily as circle attracts new people to Bitcoin.

They have a mass advertising campaign going on in universities soon. Even that wont double the price overnight, but they are advertising their service to the right people and as they grow the price will go up...

At least I can buy cheap coins off the naysayers expecting the price to rocket whenever there is some good news just to sell when it doesn't happen...

Nice avatar btw... oh, wait, you did not get one...

if circle so "big" and "good" news can bitcoin price go back over $400 within 1-2 week or stay at $380 ?

of course you cant say it for sure , if 2 weeks not enough for a so good news to push the price up/back $20 for at least 1 week, then i have no more question in short term

Circle makes big announcement, price goes down.

It seems that every time someone makes an announcement of something that makes it easier to spend Bitcoins, the price goes down.

i checked out circle today too. it did seem slick aside from some weird stock photos of "happy free good looking people", but lol marketing and stuff...

i got setup to buy 5k usd of bitcoin and it said the fee would be 42 dollars via my linked credit card. i did not buy the coins, just playing around, but the whole process of signing up to being able to buy took a few min. sweet.

the insurance also is great. makes you feel a bit better. However, i did want to add an anecdote about insurance. I hang around old school bankers and lawyers sometimes and the most skeptical ones often cite insurance as a big issue. not necessarily against theft from the exchange, but the ability to just grab you and beat the shit out of you until you give up your passwords and then you lose all your money. they just can't get on board while this is a possibility. they are not interested in securing their own coins to the extent that we early adopters do. Either they dont want to or they just technically can't do it (that is, knowledge, skills, interest, etc).
 

So your old school bankers don't even use cc or internet banking?

wow.

instantly buy bitcoin and also 100% insurance, what the fuck does the average joe needs more?

countdown to next ath is already running  :P

they do. and i guess they feel they are insured against these types of events... as these legacy payments can always be reversed.

Electrum offline wallet, put the seed in a bank vault.

True, because they tie up with coinbase and redeem their bitcoin instantly when they receive coin.
For them nothing changed and because of them Bitcoin price on pressure.

USA woke up  and so many of them use the new Circle buying options that the price can reach its todays lowest

ok, i could help them out, and i do in some cases. but clearly the point is (from my first post) that they will not/cannot come to this conclusion on their own, and so it will take a while yet before lots of people even consider this as a viable option. also your option means its a huge pain to use their btc. maybe its just a store of value you to, but certainly not to them yet either.

Yeah, so the criminals might have to kill them on top of beating them up to make sure that nothing gets reversed.
With bitcoin you 'll get away with just a beating and no money.

Being a store of value is a property of sound money. Ask them how beating their keys out of them is different from beating their cash out of them. Or their plastic and pin. Or their online banking info.

Anything can be stolen given enough effort. This is not new and is a standard part of everyday life. Bitcoin is new and therefore scary, but the underlying realities of life have not changed.

definitely. and thats the conclusion i came to as well (besides the plastic and pin part.. that can be reversed after a beating i think). anyway, i tried to convey its similar to cash, yet better in the sense that they can carry around what they are willing to lose and they can have other more safe measures to access a bit more, and then their real safe big storage is the most secured, and actually a bit difficult for them to retrieve - that is, impossible to retrieve via a beating.

honestly, i dont try that hard with these guys. i think they will slowly come around as new simpler tools are built for them to solve these types of concerns.

What is this circle thing? Is this an international bitcoin online banking account? I read through the blog and about sections and could not find anything to describe precisely what they do? It sounds like it is an online bitcoin wallet and an exchange with a 100% theft insurance.

I think that's it. Plus you can use any CC worldwide to buy.

You got the gist of it.

Another thing is it also allows unparralled ease in purchasing bitcoins instantly by the use of a credit card

yep.  i tried it today.  simple and fast.

If the insurance is genuine, and covers both theft and data loss on their part, then this could be a turning point in adoption. Most people are not comfortable with being responsible for keeping their own coins safe, and having no recourse if they somehow go missing. Even I get nervous about it sometimes, and my coins are as secure as they can reasonably be. This is what all the people who want someone to protect them have been waiting for. And they vastly outnumber us.

You are still responsible for keeping your account credentials safe.

Which is why I always recommend to friends who are serious about having multiple crypto-related accounts to get a password manager like Keepass. Lots of neat features... my favorite is the auto-type obfuscation to thwart keyloggers. Then you can have strong 32 character passwords for everything and sleep well at night. Also it's open source. Also use 2FA authentication.

Just tried out Circle a bit. Very well designed and easy to use.

Circle buys OTC right?

Brilliant peace of news, more important to bitcoin than paypal, Circle have made it easier for joe public to own and use bitcoins. For anything near mass adoption bitcoin needs to be as simple as using your credit card. Great news no wonder they raised 25 million so easily.

Only US bank accounts can be linked ... so much for "global" audience  :o

Also, when offering a localized version of a website, containing a localized support form, answering support request in a language other than your customer's language kind of defies the whole purpose of offering support in different languages in the first place :-)

if so, then there wont be buying pressure only more selling by payment processors

everybody can see in the order books of exchanges that there is no buyers , only selling walls

That's rich. It would have been sufficient for them to offer only english, if only US bank accounts are supported.