Bitcoin Forum

Fellow Forum Members,
In my opinion the safest way to buy 50 bitcoins is to buy from a miner in a face to face transaction located in my bank where I could easily give him the cash after I see 15 confirmations on my Armory wallet for 50 bitcoins.

However, I don't know any miner wanting to sell me 50 bitcoins so this is not an option for me.

Therefore, below I have listed what I think are other options and my hope is someone out there can look at my list and provide their opinion on it:

1. Coinbase - In my opinion not a smart option because they charge you a spread on the way in and the way out. Also I hear they tend to cancel purchases a lot when large sums are involved.

2. Circle.com - No spread is charged but their buying limit makes it impossible to make a one time 50 bitcoin purchase.

3. Exchanges - After the MtGox fiasco I'm not sure about this option. Nevertheless, can anyone please share what is the best exchange to buy a lot of bitcoins without paying a huge spread?

4. Miner convention - Does a yearly convention exist for miners? I'm guessing this would be a good option to buy some bitcoins.

5. Bitcoin Forums - Find bitcoin sellers in bitcoin forums. Not safe in my opinion. However, what is the safest way to buy 50 bitcoins from a seller located in California when I am located in New York. What is the best way to fix the mistrust problem? Meaning how can I get 100% assurance that when I PayPal him thousands of dollars I will get my bitcoins in exchange?


Any opinions will be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

If you have the cash you can try posting on your local board depending on your country and try to find someone willing to trade. Having that much cash could be dangerous so probably trading in parts would be a better idea.
Also using an exchange would not be too unsafe as long as you don't keep the coins there for long. Just transfer the fiat, buy the coins and withdraw immediately.

P.S.: You don't need 15 confirmations!

Safest and Smartest way to buy 50 Bitcoins is thru registered companies like CoinBase and Circle.

LBC might work, but 50 BTC mined coins - yeah right, good luck on that one.  You're looking at paying a premium or being lucky and finding someone who mined early on.

I see no problem with exchanges. You just don't need to buy all 50 bitcoins at once. In my opinion, buying through exchanges is less risky than anything from the list above (save for Coinbase only). There are quite a few reputable exchanges out there like Kraken, BitStamp, some others maybe...

Using a forum might take a while as you wouldn't trust someone with that and you could do it in 'small' amounts but that, as I said, would take a while. I would recommend Bit-X as they are quite reputable and recently there was a thread about exchanges. Take a look at that and it should help you decide.

Localbitcoin meet up, bring a body guard  ;) ;D or Bitcoin ATM is an option.

I find it sketchy to just meet up with someone and do an exchange. There is only Bitcoin ATM in my country :( and it's like 450km away :'(

why not purchase online thru a payment processor like egopay

If coinbase is available in your country then just go with that, it's the safest imo but they charge a little as you mentioned but if you need to be safe then you shouldn't worry about little over charge here and there. You don't have to buy all at once, you can buy in small quantities.

The safest way to buy a huge amount like this is needed first a very secure wallet or all of this will be zero ,
then you can think to buy by blocks btc , you will have to buy 10 btc per blocks , to make it safe , also you can
just buy from btc-e(always lows price but and aslo 100 btc limit per day look perfect !) or bitstamp (little complicated)
or coinbase (Not really cool) . Hope this help you


Kind Of Respect ,
Bicoin Boy .

Thanks to all for all of your postings. I find them all very informative.

Bitcoin_BOy$ you mention using a very secure wallet. What is your opinion about Armory? That is what I am using because I'm told it's the most secure wallet around.  Can you please tell me more about Bit-E in the link below:


https://btc-e.com/ (https://btc-e.com/)


This site interests me a lot because their bitcoin ask price seems to be five dollars lower than other sites. Let's say I want to buy two BTC blocks. This means I will be buying 20 bitcoins from BTC-E. But what I hope you can clarify is what payment options do I have to pay for the 20 bitcoins at BTC-E?  Can I pay with a credit card or does BTC-E require I link them to my bank account? Also, does BTC-E charge me a spread on the way in and also on the way out like Coinbase does? Lastly, does BTC-E have any kind buying limit or hidden charges?

Any opinions will be greatly appreciated.  

Southpaw0,
Thanks for your post. I researched LocalBitcoin as an option for buying a lot of bitcoins. However, I don't like how most of the people selling their bitcoins through LocalBitcoins seem to add a large spread to the price of the Bitcoin itself. My thinking is I am giving them USD for their Bitcoins and therefore no spread should be involved. Just my opinion.

Well as I knew , Btc-e is a russian bitcoin exchange plateform , from the oldest ones and secure , buying 20 btc by Wire transfer
 , will need alot of verications and identification documents ... You can also use { Perfect Money , OkPay ,,, } ;

You can see here fee news : https://btc-e.com/news/217 ; and also you can try to create an account just to know more ; and
contact support ,,, ; The withdraw limit per day is 100 BTC and also if you change your password or new user within 3 days
withdraw will be blocked for 3 days !

For more information :

 * Terms : https://btc-e.com/page/1
 * FAQ : https://btc-e.com/page/2
 * Support : https://support.btc-e.com


About Armory seem secure but for this huge amount don't forget also to buy an '' antivirus '' too :o or use another offline computer
to store your bitcoins with safe .

Kind Of Respect ,
Bitcoin Boy .

I think it would be better if you did with a local seller around your area w. localbitcoins.com.

Only reason I say this, from experience is because when I did my 1st initial transaction for .1btc, I actually asked if I could get a better rate if I bought another one on the spot which he did.

Now I can only imagine if you do that for your 50 btc purchase, its going to be a huge save, and you can go spend your extra fiat money on something else.

best bet is here on the forum(just don't do paypal, and use escrow, it's pretty safe in this way, there are plenty of trusted traders here), or your local zone, any exchange will ask you for documentations(for the deposit)

15 confirmations? Do you expect that any miner will sit around your bank for two and a half hours waiting for your 10 confirmations when they could just sell at an exchange and receive market price there on the spot? Not unless you're paying a SUBSTANTIAL premium for their inconvienence.

That said, why do you need to do this face to face at your bank? What's wrong with buying them through coinbase, circle, or the like?

Additionally, why do you need to buy the coins as one single lot? Versus several discreet purchases?

You're right though, exchanges could have alarm bells going off when a brand new account attempts to buy $15,000 worth of coins. Might be an inconvenience, but they need to cover their own butts.

You could look into SecondMarket. They're a very reputable company in the space and they deal in amounts over 25 BTC. I don't really know how it works but here's the site anyway.

https://www.secondmarket.com/bitcoin-trading/

in some countries there are bitcoin services that allow you to buy instantly a certain amount of bitcoins.
i'm only not sure if you can buy up to 50btc without going through a verification process.