Bitcoin Forum

These are suppose to be completely anonymous but yet on MT you need to do bank statements for most things. Why are there not easier ways to fund and get bitcoins?

you can get them peer to peer. Otherwise, if you go through a central banking authority, you will have to jump through some hoops.

yes but where do I fund these, what funding options are there, how do I protect myself from not getting scammed.

You can mine bitcoins anonymously  :)

^ unfortunately with the increase in mining difficulty it seems like pennies per hour instead of a real profit most people probably thought they'd be getting.

Exactly

http://bitcoin-otc.com/ <-Definitly the best P2P exhange, I use it ALL the time for ALL of my buying/selling
http://bitcoin-otc.com/viewratings.php <- And this is how we trust people

Bitcoin is not bad money.

The Answer. ^

because none of us who are holding bitcoins want your stinky fiat

Which is why it's so difficult to exchange EUR/USD/GBP/RUB/JPY/etc for it.

"These" as in peer-to-peer? That means you go to a person that wants to sell their bitcoins. How you fund them? It depends on personal taste, but there are many that can be you can fund by handing over fiat notes...

I guess it's because of the risk of chargebacks. In a way it shows a strength of bitcoin (transactions can't be reversed). You could use other exchanges like Virwox (though their exchange rates are extremely high).

It's hard to get them because it is more secure

Whoever told you that lied to you.  Bitcoin is not "completely anonymous".

Bitcoin is pseudonymous, and with significant effort you can maintain anonymity while using bitcoin, but most people either aren't aware of the effort required or don't care enough about anonymity to bother.


Bitcoin transactions are not reversible.  Other forms of electronic payment are.  Nobody wants to take the risk of giving up something irreversible for something that might be reversed a few days later.  If you want true complete anonymity, and you want something that is irreversible, you have to offer something irreversible in exchange (such as physical cash).

You can mail me some cash along with a bitcoin address, and I'll happily send you some bitcoin (after keeping a reasonable transaction fee for myself).

Because, if doing transactions between people was easy, safe, reliable and cheap, we would not need bitcoin. But our current system is made of tons of expenses, tons of frauds and slow transactions. This is why bitcoin was made, to solve all this.
Buying bitcoins with credit card? It would be a chargeback fest

I understand the challenges, but the ease of "buying into" bitcoins is prohibitive for this becoming mainstream. The average person would find most of the ways you buy bitcoins too complicated or very shady. I personally use dwolla -> campbx, but that takes a few days for the transfer to go through, so it's frustrating if you wanted to buy coins right away.

Once someone can come up with a safe, reliable way to sell coins to an average consumer, then we will really start to take off.

Okpay works for me.

If only.

If you do #1 how do you insure #2 happens? Commerce with Bitcoin is difficult to say the least. With Bitcoins it is either Pay first and hope you get goods or services, or transfer goods or services and hope that you get paid.

But isn't the same true of cash?  If you pay someone with cash, how can you be sure that they will deliver the service or merchandise purchased?  If you provide goods or services to someone who will be paying with cash, how do you know that they will pay?

Bitcoin as a payment network protects merchants from fraud, theft, and chargebacks as long as the seller receives payment.  But bitcoin as a currency has the same problems as all other currencies in that there is a level of trust necessary to engage in a transaction.

Other currencies deal with this problem with trusted third-party services that handle the exchange and reversal of transactions.  Eventually bitcoin will likely also have such services.

Actually, other currancies deal with this problem with a legal system in place  to offer  backup. You can't sue for bitcoins, you can't use them in everyday purchases. With out a physical coin to use in everyday purchases, it will be relegated to be a second class currency. There may be a place for bitcoins as an international exchange currency, but even that is hindered by the simple inability to convert it to other currencies.

Amusingly you can actually buy bitcoin. I don't mean those physical ones from 2011 with a code on the back. I've seen people selling bitcoins, and the prices are actually higher that mtgox pices.

Both methods are possible with other currencies.  I can make a purchase using my Visa card, and Visa will reverse the charges if I can show that the merchant didn't provide the goods or services.

In addition to that, if two parties are in disagreement about a transaction or contract, there is a court system available to settle the dispute and mechanisms in place to attempt to force payment of funds determined by the court to be owed.

I'm not aware of any settled court cases yet regarding a dispute involving bitcoins, but in theory the courts should treat a contract that requires payment in bitcoins the same way they would any barter contract.  If the court finds that the merchant did not deliver on their contractual obligations, the courts should either require them to deliver as promised or require that they compensate the consumer with local currency (U.S. dollars?) an amount equivalent to the court determined value of the obligation.

The sort of protections that Visa supplies are already available in bitcoin through escrow services.  In time, I suspect that payment processors and banks will be developed to supply consumer protections.

How is this amusing?  You can buy Euro, Yen, and Dollars as well.  How else would one convert their local currency for some other currency?