Bitcoin Forum

having read many of the other posts, I have to agree.....while I am fascinated and amazed at the bitcoin concept and becoming obsessed with its commercial possibilities....it is sadly more than fraught with problems...

1) getting hold of bitcoins anonymously is indeed like something out of the bourne supremecy and takes major hassle and headaches in the UK at least....buying ukash codes, then trying to convert to USD to use on cashu to finally get to mtgox....or using other online guys taking a whopping 20% !!...as for using paypal or CC....forget it !!!

(if i dont want a trace to my bitcoin purchases its a real headache !!) or dont have a bank account to use...its more than tricky...any advice on the process and reduing the whopping transaction,commission costs appreciated.

2) for all the blah blah about how well this currency will do, as it stands, its dead in the water without bridging the gap between real money, cash, cards, banks and bitcoin. As an online merchent with nearly 20 years experience online and growing an online business from peanuts to $500,000 per annum, I can say, that the everyday online customers will not use or go near bitcoin until it is majorly simplified and user friendly.....

3) pricing......another trickty area as any payment systems needs to be linked or some poor sod merchent will be forever having to change his/her prices to reflect the unstable nature of bitcoin values....just this week having bought 2-3 items by BTC, it has cost me a lot more....


3) Also there does need to be some movement towards buyer protection too. Everyone sparks on about the benefit to sellers as no chargebacks etc are possible....yet we forget, you will never make this payment successful without offering buyer protection. As without serious trust online, and seller rep...no possible protection for the customer is bad news for the seller.

be keen to see others ideas on this, as I really want to be part of making bitcoin work....and want to get solutions for all the reasons why it wont, so it will :)

Sorry to self advertise but I currently have some cash in my Mtgox account that I'd like to sell via redeemable code. You get the code, input it into mtgox and convert to btc. I'm selling the codes for face value from as little as £10 up to £640 (the amount I have in the account) or anywhere in between. I can take UKASH, bank transfer/ deposit or Western Union. Here's my thread https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=137242.0. Even if you're not interested I can direct you to a few sellers who are 100% trustworthy.

thank you, just emailed you now

The big problem is that we don't any exchanges with a UK bank account access (at least as far as I know). Intersango used to work well when they had a UK bank account but they have lost their UK bank account and you might speculate why. MTgox had a strange setup where you could pay in but transfers out where like normal international transfers. However they too have lost their UK bank account.

One option which is a possibility is to open a UK bank account denominated in Euros (make sure it is SEPA compatible as this usually means cheap transfers) and use one of the exchanges using Euros/SEPA like bitcoin.de to do an interchange. This isn't totally simple but often in these accounts you can pay sterling in by normal transfer and the bank converts to Euros. A variation of this to have paired bank accounts of GBP and Euros at a bank. This might all be too much effort but is an option at least until such times as we have a working UK exchange/interface again.

https://localbitcoins.com/ad/3678/buy-bitcoins-with-cash-santiago-spain


via skrill or paypal
also sepa transfers or personal deposit , you can deposit in my account 24 / 7 on BBVA bank cashiers
cheers


nexusakachus@gmail.com

If you are in London, you needn't pay more than 5% for anonymous, cash purchases:
 - https://localbitcoins.com/postal_code/uk/london


In the U.S., Coinbase has an approach that seems to work well.  The cost is relatively trivial (1% above spot when buying bitcoins, 1% below when selling bitcoins).   Of course, this is not anonymous.  There's no such thing as using the bank system for its convenience and not putting up with the hassles that AML/KYC require.



With most e-commerce / shopping cart software solutions, including payment processing like is offered from BitPay allows the merchant to set the price in USDs (or some other other currency) and the price shown to the customer is computed dynamically based on the current exchange rate.


Cash also is non-reversible and doesn't enable chargebacks.  Not sure how customers still patronize these cash-only businesses  :-)

agreed, however, I think its safe to say that very few online retailers accept cash. It's Debit card, credit card or paypal, pre paid card. Most of which offer (however nightmarish for merchants), some kind of buyer protection. Quite agree nearly all is entirely buyer bias, poorly conceived and a danger for the seller. I just hold the point that, if BTC wishes to be successful, we need to find some way offer this protection both ways....we all know both buyers and sellers can be untrustworthy.

But, if you want to succeed online...the customer is ALWAYS right....we need to be offering them, processes, services they are comforable using that benefit both parties.

Some kind of escrow and slowly introducing buyers to this and how it works could be good.

Made this guide: www.bitcoinuk.blogspot.com

So far the cheapest way that I found to buy btc from UK..

Hope it helps.