They prey on greed and desperation.

People who are greedy or desperate will take risks with scammers, knowing it's probably a scam but hoping it's not.

This guy paid the then-equivalent of $8,000 for insider trading knowledge. Not only is this potentially a serious crime which carries jailtime (so you should NOT report to police! This could be considered insider trading), but it's foolish to pay so much for knowledge.

Remember, if it sounds too good to be true, it is.

I have up to 9 days to think about it, since Coinbase won't let me withdraw until the payment settles, which they said up to 9 days. (Edit: took 1 day actually, I had to verify again and then I was able to withdraw).

Are there any advantages to keeping bitcoin in Coinbase? Or is it more advantageous to move into a private wallet controlled only by myself (such as Samouri Wallet)?

Another concern I have is how fees would work and when is the optimal time to withdraw to a private wallet.

I was curious about finding places to find obscure crypto that aren't on the major exchanges like Coinbase. I found YoBit.net, what do you think of this?

What exchange would you recommend for obscure crypto?

Right, but if you missed a surge then the couple dollars extra in fees is easily made up in minutes, like it was today. So it's better to do that in some cases (not all).

Plus since I didn't have time to do extensive research on everyone and saw the price still going up, I feel much more comfortable with one of the most trusted exchanges. And, after a week or so I can move it into my private wallet only controlled by me, I think. And then I'm totally safe. Assuming my wallet is safe.

I'm not sure what market orders and limit orders are. I have more to learn.

Interesting about the Coinbase Pro though. I would consider it. I'll need to learn about it. I'm not a day trader but would like to learn it. Just remember never to invest what you are not willing to lose.

What I mean is what I said, it isn't possible until I get a new ID with current address.
[I have to get a new ID with my current address since I've moved since I got my ID.]


Yes, with each seller wanting a crazy identity-risking amount of information, and located in 3rd world countries, I'm definitely passing on that, not to mention the 5%+ markup over the going bitcoin price, which is WAY more than secure places like Coinbase charge.

Seems like LocalBitcoins was good for privacy, but only until they added all the verifications, like maybe people would be willing to pay the markup for privacy. Not the case anymore.

Never trust anyone who tells you some stock or currency is going to jump in value to buy in. Never ever believe them. Only invest what you are willing to lose, and don't give anything to someone on the internet unless you're willing to take the risk that they'll run and leave you dry. And only trust people online who have a serious reputation.

He posted this today. He clearly must have seen the 20% jump since yesterday, because it was already near 50K when he posted. He's happy with his ROI and that's good.

Not everyone is wealthy enough to keep that money. For someone who hasn't had 30k cash before, that amount can be life changing.

I've done it and now I have bitcoin.

Binance wouldn't confirm because I need an ID with the same address as my proof of address. I've moved recently. It would take some time before I could get a replacement ID with a new address on it - by postal mail, and 1 to 3 weeks, not to mention finding a day that I can commit the whole day to the DMV, unless I can do it online.

Coinbase was a pretty good option though. Although I got approved in full at several vendors including Kraken and LocalBitcoins, the risk didn't seem to justify the marginally lower costs. Even at thousands of dollars, it's just a few dollars extra in fees - although I don't know about the other fees like withdrawal.

But still, Coinbase seemed like the best option. I was going to wire transfer, because I didn't have a compatible personal account. Instead, I woke up early, withdrew some cash out of an existing bank (in person), got into a bank and opened a new personal account, deposited the cash, it was set up immediately with me in person and ready to use, as well as the funds available immediately since the funds were deposited in cash (physical dollars).

Then I just linked the bank account in coinbase, bought bitcoin, and two minutes later I had bitcoins.

I feel more comfortable with my money in Coinbase than others with less liquidity, not to mention the others like Kraken could only accept a wire transfer.

Of course, this doesn't count the 8 hours yesterday trying to get approved as well as last minute research on which website to pick to buy bitcoin, nor the 8 hours the previous week doing the same research and attempts.

LocalBitcoins couldn't even do it because the sellers, which still sold at a big markup, wanted an inordinate amount of personal info, and even then, wouldn't do it if you had less than 10 or 30 trades, which means for the first trade, you'd have to choose the most expensive and most sketchy seller and possibly lose your money - and your identity. Big risk.

So in summary I used Coinbase after verifying, creating a new personal account, depositing cash, and connecting to Coinbase to instantly purchase bitcoin.

Anonymous? Impossible. The government assured that you will not be able to anonymously buy bitcoin, not within one day with legitimate platforms and not back alley shady deals.

The nice thing is that Coinbase let me deposit and buy bitcoin immediately, without any additional wire fees (didn't use wire transfer), although it won't allow me to withdraw for up to 9 days. But that's fine in my case. For day trading on the same day from scratch, I don't even think that would be possible with anyone based on my experience.

But I had to physically open a personal bank account, they don't accept business accounts, which wouldn't connect and you can't wire transfer from a business account. So a big hassle, but now I can buy bitcoin easily, and I did so within a half a day.

It's many hours now and my whole night was WASTED.

I give up, I just lost whatever money I could have earned.

$55 here and there isn't going to make me any real money. I was to put thousands in and I'm not sending thousands to any forum member or stranger on the internet.

I want to do with Coinbase but I can't because my bank account says I already added it, but can't send with it, and that takes 3-5 days. I want to send a wire transfer, but it says the name has to match exactly, and won't post until the morning anyway. Well the name won't match exactly because it's a BUSINESS ACCOUNT with a BUSINESS NAME. My personal name is on the business account, but it's a business account so I don't know if that will be a problem and coinbase has NO SUPPORT and even a warning that there are "delays" with them getting back to people. Meaning I won't get an answer until I've lost thousands in profits since I couldn't invest until then.

I hate this stupid world.

Start with a small transaction. I'm new here trying to buy Bitcoin today. As I'm paying my money then would need to have positive reputation to buy from.

Mainly trying to avoid fees. So Zelle from a human seems to be the only way to instantly send money to buy bitcoin, unless you have other suggestions.

Will leave positive rep for successful transaction.

Obviously coinbase is well known. It also has high fees.

LocalBitcoins has no fees to buyers. But there are fees because the sellers charge big markups, not to mention a tremendous amount of verifications to send them. I'd be worried about identity theft more than getting ripped off on bitcoins.

Got verified on Kraken. Is this legitimate? What about Paxful?

Any other more recommended?

Binance is not possible for now. I have to get a new ID with my current address since I've moved since I got my ID. Stupid policy.

I would consider buying from a forum member. I bought and sold other things on forums before. How do I find them, I'm not seeing it

I see if I click on your profile the Trust section, if that's what you mean. I just have to browse the forum trying to find someone one-by-one?

I tried to use cash app to send some people some money from craigslist 3 times over several months after verifying my account. All 3 times it FAILED I had to spend an hour each time finding another way. Two times I used zelle. Third time my friend wrote a CHECK (!!) because I didn't have cash and cash app AGAIN BLOCKED me and there was no other way to pay. Fortunately my friend has a check on them because otherwise I would have had to turn away the seller disappointed.

Bottom line, Cash App sucks.

Zelle sucked too though. My payment ended up being blocked and I had to spend 2 hours going into bank of america to get them to release the money. Was pissed about that. Fortunately I said not to block me anymore and I paid on a later day without any issues via zelle.

I'm already verified in 3 exchanges.

I don't want all this privacy crap. I know how to not choose 0000 as a password and not leave my phone in public places and not give my info to scammers. All these stupid rules are for

1. privacy violation (money laundering laws are 99.999% ineffective, they only serve to give the government more power)
2. idiots who choose 0000 as their password

Not for people with a brain. This is all bloody nonsense and I hate the world.

As for your other points, I already know all 3 points. I'm extremely tech savvy and run web servers. I know what private keys are.

I tried to do it last week. If I'd have been able to then I'd be up 20%. My fault for moving on to other things as it was hard to find a way to buy bitcoin.

Anyway,

Today I signed up at Coinbase and Kraken. Approved instantly. Problem is

1. Coinbase has high fees. It will also take 3-5 days.

2. Kraken has low fees but requires a wire transfer which costs $30 with my bank. It will also hold for several days.

Also signed up at Localbitcoins. LocalBitcoins was very fast to approve my account, but it's too sketchy.

Is there another way to buy Bitcoin now?

I'm obviously not going to contact a stranger online, which would probably be a scammer, and I also have no family or friends with bitcoin to buy from.

If I initiate everything today, it seems that the earliest would be next week with available options. At which point I probably would not want to buy. How can I buy it right now?

REVISION:
As it turned out, Coinbase lets you convert to bitcoin instantly before the money settles, if you trade using a connected personal bank account. You cannot use a business account. I ended up opening a personal bank account in person at a local bank which is supported by Coinbase and depositing cash to do the same-day transaction, the next morning.

As to the previous post, yes I know not to accept any messages "invest in bitcoin". Good tip for naive noobs though.

Just telling me the names of a couple exchanges doesn't solve my problem, anyone can google "crypto exchanges", and a list of all of them is even more useless. The problem is which ones can be trusted? Why are those better? Are they free? Do they have high transaction fees? Inactive account fees? Are they private? Special features? Easy to use? Secure? Etc.

Can someone give me one or two of the very best options with the lowest fees, most features, or whatever is most important?

Yes, I meant Samourai. Why is Wasabi better? Is it also private and secure?

"Don't believe in apps" what I meant is I don't even trust using an app from China. I would need further advice on whether HyperPay can be trusted. I'm not saying trusted to store my keys, I know that this needs to be written offline in a safe place. I'm saying I need to know if it's trusted to use at all.

"Segwit": of course I can read white papers, website, and wiki pages on it, but as I mentioned don't want to have to do that, it's needlessly tedious. I get the general point with it, but I'm just saying it's needlessly complicated.

"Bitcoin vs fiat" I understand the different between crypto like BTC and fiat like USD. This is super basic and obvious.

"If you use OTC trading or P2P trading" my point is how would I do that without giving some 3rd world country enough info to steal my identity, which is a far worse problem than not having crypto. It's ridiculous they want all that info especially when the site itself already holds it in escrow. Sounds more like an identity theft scam to me.

I just want to change USD into BTC. Simple and easy without getting ripped off with fees or violating my privacy with 3rd world countries. Is that too much to ask?

It's easy after you konw
* which app to use
* which providers to use
* how to do the trades
* etc.

But before that, it's extraordinarily difficult and basically requires knowing the Whitepaper of Bitcoin and Ethereum to proceed.

As I mentioned, I already have a wallet for Bitcoin, and that was easy as Samouri made it easy. I didn't say there was a problem with verifying the wallet.

Coin control feature? What's that.
I still don't understand what Segwit vs Segwit32 etc are. I figure just use the bc1. Why make it so difficult? Even that was a roadblock although not too hard with the Samouri if you just consider using the default.

The wallet is not the part I'm saying is hard. It's tedious, not hard to write down the mnemonic and 5 passwords and pin for the HyperPay app. What's hard is the getting the money from my bank account into the bitcoin wallet without either getting ripped off by some exchange or broker, or getting my identity stolen by some criminal in Venezuela in order to avoid the brokers.

No one can use Tor or VPN. I was unable to create an account from a VPN, as I have my VPN active 24/7. It said I had to pay a fee to proceed because I cannot use a VPN. I was forced to disconnect my VPN to create an account.

Maybe I could have spent all night trying other VPNs or Tor addresses, but I don't have the time for that so I just disconnected the VPN to ask my question, and this forum makes it extremely difficult to register, as I had to try 7 times as each time something was wrong, first time username was used go back, now I have a new Recaptcha that I have to do, fails several times as is usual since Recaptcha never works right, hopefully it will work, nope it says bad cookies, so go back, reload page, again go through the process, this time is says nope wait 45 more seconds, now forced back to do another Recaptcha, wait several minutes, no sorry you have to pay us money because you registered iwth VPN, then I have to disconnect VPN, go through the whole process again and choose a different username.

As a result, this forum forcefully prevents people from using VPN or Tor. There is no anonymity on this forum. I value my privacy extremely high and was very disappointed I was not allowed to use a VPN. It's also extremely user unfriendly, I suppose this forum must have a real bad sapm problem because they're willing to make it too hard for some people to register so they give up, but although it took me 10 minutes to register, at least it finally let me ask my question.

I am surprised at how extraordinarily difficult it is to buy Bitcoin. Worse, it's 10x more difficult to buy Ethereum, not to mention understanding it.

I am extremely tech savvy. I've been a developer for 15 years and I have built computers and web servers from scratch. I code in several languages, and also speak several languages. In fact, some years ago I started mining bitcoin. Therefore, I am smart enough to understand technical things. Although I am kicking myself for not getting crazy into bitcoin like I planned back then, I was going to build mining rigs, etc.

Yet, I am completely overwhelmed by information. I don't know who to trust, what apps to trust, how to trade, what to do. I just want to throw some freaking money in Bitcoin and Ethereum, and do so without getting robbed, charged high fees, scammed, or otherwise ripped off! Why is this so hard to do? If it's hard for me, who is tech savvy, it's basically impossible for most people.

Fortunately I found an app called Samouri which partially solved the problem for bitcoin, by making it very easy to create a bitcoin wallet, and even by downloading the apk directly from their website. But they do not have any way for me to convert a fiat currency like USD to BTC. It's only a wallet to send/receive BTC, although I'm grateful for this half of the battle.

The same type of app is not so available for Ethereum. I got HyperPay setup, but I don't know if I can trust it. It comes from China, after all, and the interface is extremely complex and confusing, bad user experience for someone relatively completely new as I haven't done anything with Bitcoin in years and everything is new and different.

I saw that one way to avoid all the third parties was to go through Local Bitcoins. The $1,000 limit is fine to start, but I was surprised by the astounding amount of requirements. For example, someone in Venezuela with 100% feedback wants me to send my ID, a selfie, and an absurd amount of personal information. The cash in escrow isn't enough?

Zelle for example is a great way to transfer cash, and it can't be reversed like Paypal. Who the hell in their right mind thinks I'm going to agree to that amount of privacy violation - I wouldn't even do that for Wells Fargo! Much less some person I've never met from a country that has been demoted to third-world status due to Communism. Are you kidding me?!

There are so many different apps, and I don't know what to use. I don't have time to read 20 books on Bitcoin, much less to waste the time if/when none of them really helps me.

I wish there was simply a list of steps:
1. download this app, this is the one you need.
2. here is how to add money from your bank.
3. success! money is now in your wallet. Refresh and it will show up.

No such luck! Why is it so hard for anyone to just make a simple step by step easy way to just send it, I don't care about all this, all I want is just to add some money to Bitcoin that I'm happy to lose if there's a crash, but that could profit if it goes up, without having to worry about getting scammed or ripped off. Is that too much to ask?