Bitcoin Forum

I have a family member in the UK who sends me some money occasionally and beginning last year I started asking them to do it using bitcoin. We used to use Intersango, but that was shut down soon after. We moved to using blockchain.info's UK options but even that was shut down in the last week or so. I asked on the bitcoin-otc IRC channel and someone said the UK authorities are cracking down. I haven't seen any news on this and I follow bitcoin realetd news regularly. Does anyone know WTF is going on?? ???

I use Blockchain.info but they have been showing the "We have no more Bitcoins" message a few times recently.

They are however damn fast and the fee is 3.2% if you're depositing the max of £500 or thereabouts.

Blockchain.info disabled UK bank transfer last week. I tried once but I think they are running low of BTC stock or want to keep due to the rise of BTC price.

http://www.speedybitcoin.co.uk is good for small-ish amounts of BTC quickly

I have done most of my buying direct with people on this forum or via localbitcoins lately.

MtGox is such a pain in the ass now they have no UK bank account, and even their EU bank account is too as they stopped doing SEPA transfers for some reason to UK so you have to do an international wire and pay charges.

Damn you're right. It comes and goes to be honest. Not reliable at all.

I snapped up my last 20BTC at $70, I might have been lucky.

MtGox - It's not depositing the money thats the problem, it's withdrawing it (slow, high fees from Japan).

Bitstamp.net - was a dollar balance only, $15 fee for international wire, tried it, took less than 72 hours. Comments box for reference info/further detail. All good.

Bitcoin-Central.net - Low volume in GBP atm, but withdrawal is 15 euro but MAKE SURE you ask them to raise your withdrawal limit as 15 euro on the basic 500gbp limit is equivalent to a 2.7% fee. Otherwise for higher amounts it's not that bad.

LocalBitcoins.com - Users can do online GBP bank transfer as well as face-to-face, all with comments/reviews. Liquidity and volume will get better. I love this site. 1% fee on online trades that use their escrow but the price seems to factor it in atm.

This is not a new thing, see thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=50056.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=50056.0). and thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=112673.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=112673.0)

Basically the monopoly that the big four banks have on the UK make it very hard to take your business elsewhere when you get treated like dirt.

After approximately a century of stagnation, the cartel eventually had to offer a banking licence to a new entrant 'Metro bank'. Both Intersango and Mt.GOX switched accounts until even Metro pulled the plug on them too. thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=95014.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=95014.0)

The problem is systemic and may be coming from the regulators through back channels, but no bank has said as much.

Hopefully Bitcoin-Central will have more protection from their European bank connection.

Thanks but I wasn't really asking for alternatives, I wanted to know what was up with the UK bitcoin scene and why easy, low fee exchange options are disappearing instead of increasing as one would expect during this crazy bull run of the last few months.

The problem most of those alternatives (esp those that involve bank wire) is that the point of my using bitcoin in this situation is as an easy & fast way to transfer funds internationally (That's how I sold it to him) so if he has to wire GBP to MtGox then it beats the point, he can just wire to me directly.

Back to the point though, why are exchanger UK accounts being shut down? Why is it so hard/expensive to get bitcoin in UK when it has a relatively higher adoption rate than some other countries?

Hadn't seen that before previous post. Thanks a lot.

It's all a massive pain in the arse.  >:(

bitbargain.co.uk (http://bitbargain.co.uk) are a great fast service that are UK based using the "faster payment" service bank uses or barclays ping it. means there are no bank fee's..

edit
but the sellers will have a +£x price over Gox estimates which which may vary depending on the price of bitcoin, which you will find with any service.

http://www.bitcoinfridge.co.uk/ I'll be back up and running on April 6th, will be looking for lots of buyer and importantly lots of sellers (nudge nudge uk miners) of both btc and LTC  ;D

As the UK is such a big financial centre, the UK banks are very, very careful about money laundering and fraud. They have all sort of semi-automatic systems that suspend bank accounts at the merest hint of fraud.

Here's what has set the alarm bells off:

Many domestic bank customers are transferring large sums from their bank accounts to the Bitcoin exchange's accounts. Most domestic customers do not really do any account to account transfers, so this is a big red flag.

Fraudsters gain access to peoples bank accounts with scams and trojans etc., they need to transfer the funds somewhere so they can then extract the money. Often they pay people to use their bank accounts to do this - students etc. But some of them are transferring to the Bitcoin exchange's accounts, converting to Bitcoins and then escaping with those. This is perfect for them.

Once the banks have detected that even just ONE of these scams have been attempted, they will shut down the target bank account and won't even discuss it.

The banks also have multiple suspect accounts that they are watching for money laundering etc., and when they all start transferring to the Bitcoin exchange's accounts, the red flag goes up.

I'm pretty sure you can't transfer GBP directly to MtGox. They had their Barclay's account disabled since September last year (https://mtgox.com/press_release_20120925.html).

I'm pretty sure that you have to convert money to EUR or USD before you can transfer to one of MtGox's bank accounts (in Poland or Japan) which adds significant conversion and transfer fees. There is no way to directly send GBP to your MtGox account.

I've seen where Mt. Gox only accepts bank transfers if it comes from your own account (and not a commercial account like Transferwise).  Are you able to perform this SEPA transfer method from Transferwise to Mt. Gox and they take it?    With SEPA transfer to BITSTAMP I've not read about anyone claiming the same restriction.

Which exchanges allow me to transfer funds from my TransferWise account?
 - http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/8149

Also, other methods include:

Bitbargain.co.uk has a few methods:
 - https://bitbargain.co.uk

Bitcoin Fridge re-opens on April 6th:
 - http://www.BitcoinFridge.co.uk

I think it is safe to assume no banks in the UK will work with any Bitcoin exchanges.  Any agreements to do so have a half-life measured in weeks.

The big boys running "RipOff Britain" are throwing their toys out the pram - GOOD.
There will always be options. Thank you to all who have posted alternatives above, very helpful.

I'll be wading in a selling my BTC for GBP soon on localbitcoin - London area!

can we still wire USD to gox directly?

UK is a mess, need plenty of expensive money transfer licenses to do anything there hence why no direct cash 3rd party deposits allowed. Fraud is epic, so can't accept any soft bank transfers like CHAPS or FPS which cost 25GBP for just a domestic transfer through barclay's anyways.

Cheapest option (besides localbitcoins) is Money PoloUK it's around $20 to send a $1000USD transfer to your Okpay account, or somebody else's Okpay account depending on exchange rate. Can also withdraw from your Okpay account to Money Polo as well.

I would load up my Okpay account with Money Polo, then withdraw immediately in bitcoins from the Okpay wallet because they offer realtime BTC/USD goxrate, sell those for cash locally or approach some guy who has an existing currency exchange storefront in a major city there, and convince him to accept cash over the counter payments from customers for your bitcoins. He already has a money transfer license so good to go.

If somebody wanted to takeover MtGox GBP like Coinlab did for USD it's wide open if you can figure out something over there that won't be shut down and have a few million or so for setting up corporate Isle of Man banks and employing F/T FCA compliant officers.

I've used localbitcoins.com to buy bitcoins in the UK, via bank transfer/escrow.

There is no problem with doing this, as Transferwise are licensed by the FSA and HMRC, so they are seen as part of the financial trail. I have used Transferwise 3 times to move funds to MTGOX: GBP to EUR SEPA. Both Transferwise & MTGOX are totally aware and happy with each other. It's the best way.

www.bitcoinuk.blogspot.com

^check it

Seems people have latched onto my Transferwise tip! :-) Glad to see. And also glad to see the way to withdraw also documented - just go direct

I wonder if it matters if your Mt. Gox account is verified or not.  So just to clarify you are moving EUR via SEPA to Mt. Gox (bank in Poland).  And your account is verified status (AML Level 1)?
 - https://support.mtgox.com/entries/20919111-AML-Account-Statuses

Does anyone know precisely how much it would cost to become a licensed exchange in the UK? The max fees the former FSA charged seemed to be on the order of 25k but that was for "complex cases". If your case wasn't deemed "complex" it'd be lower.

Whilst 25k blown just on a first round of regulatory licensing is a pretty intense cost, stacked up against employee time, office rent and server resources it's probably NOT the largest cost for someone who wants to build a serious exchange. And once you're licensed I would hope that banks give you a much easier time. UK has same-day domestic wires, does it not? So once set up it should be a good place to do trading.

Until then, localbitcoins style agent networks seem like the only way to go. Once you found an agent and have developed a trust relationship, you can use PayPal or the like to buy coins. The trader has to deal with the slow/expensive wires to and from Japan, but they can amortize those costs. I guess as long as the agents aren't doing it as a business then they'd fall below the standard thresholds that trigger licensing requirements.

In short with the fees associated with becoming compliant which include, licenses, bond deposits, solicitors, office space, development & all the rest of it...

Your looking at a minimum investment of about £100,000

Find a UK lawyer and ask them, there are plenty of FSA incorporation/registration sites in the UK all charging various gigantic fees and you need to hire F/T local compliance officers, plus I don't think FSA is a good enough license you probably need the full money transfer license which is a complete racket in the UK to crush all competition, since it's a global hub for transfers. Unless you are a billionaire Russian oligarch with connections to corrupt Lords to put in a good word with the FSA office forget it.

You could also just set up in Europe and run a local UK payment gateway to accept debit and bank transfers but lot's of fraud, and you'd need a huge slush fund to cover liquidity while you're waiting for the gateway to settle to your account, which typically takes a week but some are 2-3days. They also don't want anything to do with bitcoin. I wrote a completely automated system in haskell that used the API from thecurrencycloud.com to accept and process GBP payments that worked flawlessly then at last minute their correspondent banks shut the account down because they read about Bitcoin being associated with drugs. Alas.

I'm selling BTC, my main advert is here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=144886.0

However I only accept cash as loads of funds going in and out of a bank account is too risky.

Meet ups near M25 Junction 25 (Enfield), Herts/Middx/Essex area. Have many customers from London.

BitBargain was mentioned once as "selling for +10 GBP".

Currently the cheapest option is only approx 2 GBP above Mt.Gox. If you're in the UK and looking to buy bitcoins quickly via bank transfer and don't want to take a big risk in getting scammed, always take a look at https://bitbargain.co.uk/ first.

The actual price depends on supply vs demand, really. Any time the price elevates or drops very quickly, the margin will grow. After some period of stability, margins will go lower and lower.

Here's the actual graph (green stuff = mt.gox price, yellow line = bitbargain, space between the two = margins)

https://bitbargain.co.uk/s/img/mtgox-vs-bitbargain-chart.png

Get yourself a verified paypal account, and then when withdrawing fiat, you can use bitinstant to withdraw from mtgox to paypal. You can then withdraw from paypal to your bank account.

Sending fiat money to mtgox is more problematic. Look into an e exchanger that will put money into a liberty reserve account, which then goes into mtgox.

the issues in the UK are not to do with banks hating bitcoin, but banks hating people that don't follow regulation guidelines in regards to FIAT. such as Amir Taaki who is a known hater of government rules that never got FSA regulated with his intersango business.

now he is living as a squatter in some office building somewhere

Funny how the regulators turn blind eyes on the banks yet manage to be very capable at disrupting new services in the UK.

I'm in Ireland and have been using the German site www.bitcoin.de to buy coins recently. I've done 6 smallish transactions (none greater than 1 btc) in the last 2 weeks and they've all been fine. It uses direct SEPA transfers to the seller with a reputation system so maybe it's more friendly to use with UK banks since you don't have to  transfer to a known exchange bank A/C

banks dont get ignored. they follow the rules in regards to asking for Id when setting up an account/setting customer limits.. what FSA does not do is tell banks not to lie about certain things or say dont leg it with peoples money. al they care about is customers traceability.

basic rule of thumb is as long as we can trace where customers send their money to its fine. if you decide to leg it with the money, thats fine too as long as you bought the government insurance from http://www.fscs.org.uk/

but amir taaki never got regulated and never got the insurance so yea, he deserved to get screwed by proving he couldnt look after customers funds legally

I am really looking for better methods in the UK to get access to Bitcoin. I am actually thinking we should seriously do something about this together, form a company, get a law firm to represent a bunch of us and chip in some money to get regulations in place. We are moving at snail speed here, and may as well get started before its too late.

Who is up for doing something about this thing? I would gladly assist with money etc myself for a venture.

.

I am curious, would I face any legal complications if I were to set up an eCommerce store which sells BTC? I have set up systems that accept bank transfer and Bitcoin before so perhaps I could offer better prices then Localbitcoins etc.

This is exactly what the whole thread is about.

this is not official advise, just unofficial tip

speaking to most banks, the FSA, HMRC the basic rule of thumb is, if you stay under the wire transfer limits of roughly £850 per customer per day banks wont see it as a risk to require investigating you. speak to your bank about how much transfer YOU are allowed per day on YOUR account. exceeding this second amount will get the banks and......... (dramatic pause) HMRC to start to take in interest in you (ripple effect through to FSA).

basically if you stick under £850 per customer and under the total daily transmission limits your bank account allows then both FSA and your bank will treat you as a personal transaction (not business) so you can get away with a certain amount.
the general amounts are  here (http://www.paymentscouncil.org.uk/resources_and_publications/faster_payments_value_limits/) but thats generalised as each account type within each bank have their own limits.

so, to those doing occasional localbitcoin style transactions, you don't have much to worry about..much... but don't get "to big for your own boots", and be honest with your bank as to why or what the transactions are for. as saying your selling advertising where infact its bitcoins. and then some scamming &a$tard tries contacting your bank for a transfer reversal, lying to your bank won't have helped your cause.

it is also worth noting that if you do want to regularly exceed these amounts and do it as a business, (hopefully you already know the regulations and what limits there are) to look at if you want to just be FSA authorised or FSA accredited. as they are 2 separate things. (accredited is the more expensive one for businesses doing more then £3mill a month).

i personally would say don't have the mindset of 'what you can get away with' - instead, learn the regulations, learn the limits and do everything official and honest. Purely to avoid headaches and surprises later.

It could probably be a good business idea for someone to open a cash office in London, ala WU, only going GBP <> BTC.

I personally believe that BitBargain.co.uk (https://bitbargain.co.uk/buy?r=thekoolio) is by far the easiest option. Because its a marketplace and not an exchange, you can often pick up cheap coins solely off sellers needing some quick cash. Other benefits over Local Bitcoins is that you can trade LTC too and ratings actually mean something. Plus I hear BTCFaucet is going to implement some sort of ID check soon!

Yes but Localbitcoins and Bitbargain seem to offer the same kind of options, on a larger scale yet they seem to be ok in the UK (including offer bank transfers)? The other Bitcoin services that are getting shut down etc seem to be suseptible due to scale where as I am wondering if a small time shop would work under the radar.


This was my line of thinking tbh, if I was to set up my proposed idea then I highly doubt I would reach a significant size worth investigation. I am sure many on these forums, eBay and so on regularly make large sums. Obviously I wont be using any of this theoretical talk as a basis for legal information. I might offer up 1BTC on one of my merchant channels just to get an idea of how easy the transaction goes through.

I tried an alternative account number for Bitstamp... this worked once for a small payment but then a slightly larger payment failed.

I then tried Currencyfair. I tried a very small payment to Bitstamp as a test, that was 2 days ago. I then tried €100 a day ago and that too isn't there yet either.

I have been using Bitcoin to regularly reduce banking fees. It means that instead of saving up and sending in big blocks of cash to reduce fees I was able to send as little as £1 if I wanted to with no extra costs - otherwise this would have cost me £25 on send, ~$20 in the middle and $15 on receive.

I will try bitbargain. Might look into getting paid outside the UK... it can only get worse

Check out Bitcoin Magnet (http://www.bitcoinmagnet.co.uk) for buying BTC @ Bitstamp +5%  :)

we need a good gbp/btc exchange imo ! :)