This is very good news. Amazing to see bitcoin advance to such an extent that a university now offers their degrees and courses paid for with it.

Hopefully in a decade or so colleges in the US will list it as an alternative payment method for those who don't have a bank account or a credit card. Imagine getting a Stanford or Caltech degree paid for with bitcoin.

I'm assuming of course that this university in Vietnam is simply using it as a bridging method to get their Vietnamese Dongs which is still king for them. Cash is king in most if not all Asian countries. As soon as bitcoin is paid to their wallet, they probably trade it immediately for fiat. I don't believe they store or hoard the bitcoins as a form of investment for the university.

Good to read news like this.

This is the price to pay when trading on an exchange which sets rules arbitrarily and with no room for flexibility.

I value the fact that two local traders exist in my country and they are easy to trade with. No IDs etc and lots of safe payment options. Knowing them for years adds peace of mind.

Of course a bitcoin debit card is still my first preference but absent a solid and reliable card provider, I'd rather not take my chances with cross-border online trades. It's difficult when you don't have recourse to a quick way of resolving issues, especially those involving petty amounts which scammers know are hard to litigate or prosecute. Police and prosecutors are reluctant to work with their international counterparts to apprehend scammers stealing petty amounts.

Unless you provide ID, LBC will stubbornly refuse to unlock the account. Being on Finnish (and EU) soil, they know it will be a challenge for you to even attempt to fight their ID requirements. The EU is just as ID paranoid as the US and it's unlikely you will see your account unlocked unless you give them what they want.

The epic run around is not new. Sad yes but this is now common procedure among exchanges. "Make 'em jump through hoops" as they say.

Never overpay for something which has a value at risk of drastically depreciating over time. All this hype is giving rise to price exploitation. Sellers dreaming of selling the devices for 10s of thousands of dollars to desperate iSheep.

Good to see bitcoin being used for buying just about anything but exploiting the hype and milking people of their coins is just sheesh.

I'm buying this phone next month but I'm definitely not paying thousands for it. If paying 3 or more times Apple's retail price is the only option on the table, then I'll settle for an 8 Plus.

Unlike gold, selling diamonds is somewhat relative in terms of pricing and appraisal. The GIA papers are good but it's difficult to set a price as there are no pricing indicators one can rely on. Gold for example has a global trade value which is uniform and easily referenced (per ounce or per gram). Diamonds.. you need an appraiser to look at the stone and he or she then gives an estimate (or guesstimate) value of it.

How will shipping work? There are countries which require strict certification of their origin. But since they have GIA papers and I presume are not rough cut stones, customs should be OK. Taxes might hurt though.

This is difficult. You want to pay with a reversible payment method and you want the $50 sent to your Skrill account sent first.

I'm not sure if you will find willing first-senders here with Skrill funds sent upfront and no escrow. Escrow is useless anyway in this scenario with PayPal being reversible.

Good luck with finding someone who can do this trade.

Why or how would anyone blindly trust this service? It's unprofessionally designed and very un-transparent. I don't mean to malign or disparage but this is how scams are born and perpetrated. A simply and poorly designed one with zero assurances for the user.

You are advertising a mixing service but the main underlying issue here is that you expect people to send you their bitcoins upfront. And because of the nature of this service, mixer transactions are hidden and contained, making it impossible to see if the obfuscation process is indeed successful and, more importantly, if the transactions were legitimately processed. What assurance can you provide to those who intend to put coins in your mixer?

A range of mixing services provides for healthy competition but I believe vetting is important here to prevent scams. On the one hand, you have legitimate services (such as yours truly's signature) while there are other fly by night mixers inviting one to mix a coin or two on their sites.

Escrow is a must for mixing services with no verifiable track record.

Anxpro is a no no. Bad reviews and stories of card loads not being processed.

Wagecan is so so. Card works but system is a mismanaged and inconsistent one. I had the card and promptly closed it. Twice bitten, lesson learned. First time was their Transforex card in 2016 which worked well at ATMs and stores. But loading the card took ages. I mean forever. The icing of the already spoiled cake was my account having to be reverified despite passing full verification months earlier. I thought this was probably a once-off system glitch. But no... come 2017 and they have this Golden card. Same thing happened. Two months after full verification... reverify yourself. Submit docs and wait.

No real time loads. Be prepared to wait. You will need a PhD in Patience.

These long trail of sad stories of scams and fraud. Just sad.

As for the USD 115k wired (posted by a Singaporean above) that is a massive amount and I struggle to understand how you can stay composed and calm despite the loss. I would be mentally drained if I lost $115,000. That is a staggering amount to even contemplate.

People should actively google before clicking on the transfer or send button on their online banking pages. These exchanges have been around for years and they have a less than impressive reputation. These exchanges are managed and run by a consortium of white collar criminals who know how to defraud in very sophisticated ways. They also know that their victims have almost zero legal recourse in the jurisdictions they operate in (I believe it is Russia and the Czech Republic). Mayzus's UK offices are just a front. Non existent office addresses.

Sad. I hope all of you will find a way to recover even part of the money.

Did you say Yobit? To withdraw from that exchange, you first need to pray it works. If prayer doesn't help, you need to plead and beg them to process the withdrawal. And hope someone reads your many open tickets and shows some mercy. This is how it works with Yobit.

If you were hoping the withdrawal will be a straightforward and quick procedure, I have to sadly burst that bubble of hope.

They are ranked high up (if not first) on the list of rogue exchanges.

I'm assuming you live in Europe which makes you one of the lucky few allowed to use Wave Crest's Visa cards.

As for us living in other parts of the world, Visa probably sees us as money launderers, white collar criminals, fraudsters.. which is why the card is off limits to us.

Enjoy the card! I miss using mine.

I will repeat what I wrote earlier as a form of caveat emptor for anyone considering buying this card:

If you are prepared to wait for your card to be loaded forever (ages in fact... days and days and days up to a week of waiting) then WageCan might be a card worth considering. I use the word "might" and not "should" because I had this and recently closed it.

For one, the card is extremely expensive. It has a lifetime of 3 years and you are allowed an annual ATM transaction limit of 25k USD. If you hit this limit after a few months, you can use the card for non-ATM transactions only (store purchases etc).

Then you have the ATM withdrawal fee of $3 (minimum) or 2.5% (whichever of both is higher). Have a look at it here:

https://wagecan.com/Pricing

If, for example, you withdraw $100, then the fee for that is $3 (since 2.5% would be the lower of both). The more you withdraw, the higher the fee. Taking $2000 as an example, you should expect to pay:

1) The acquiring bank's ATM usage fee (the bank that owns the ATM you withdraw money from) and
2) WageCan's bank's fee of 2.5% of $2000 (which equates to $50)

Compare this to Wave Crest's once-off fee of $3 regardless of whether you withdraw $100 or their max transaction limit.

All of the above might still be tolerable for those who do not care about fees. What you will definitely find inconvenient is WageCan's arbitrary requests for reverification. This is the reason for my decision to have the card terminated and my account closed. I was fully verified to KYC level 2 for their Golden card which is their highest verification level. Two months later while loading USD $2k worth of coins my card was abruptly downgraded to level 1 (lower level with shitty limits). And they did this 4 days after I loaded... while I was waiting and wondering what was going on with the bitcoins I loaded.

I then asked what was going on and why they downgraded the account, they told me to do the entire thing again. Reverify (which takes ages to complete). To me, it looks like a stall mechanism because the downgrade happened a few days after I loaded the card with bitcoins and while they were still processing it. It seems to be a way for them to further stall or delay the loading process. They had a similar card last year (with a company called Transforex) and they did this same exact thing to me too. Abruptly suspended my fully verified account and asked me to redo the KYC reverification thing. They then rejected the second verification.

So you are fully verified a few months back, then they reject the second verification. Extremely inconsistent.

So in summary: if you decide to use this card, be sure to have a back up card funding source (a second card with enough back up money). You might be shopping or on a long queue to pay for that coffee, then boom you get that email asking you to reverify the account. Just imagine the inconvenience. It can happen anytime without warning.

All in all, I do not recommend the card. I now use Localbitcoins to convert my coins to fiat. It's not inconvenient. I have local sources who deposit money to my bank account within minutes after I open an escrow transaction. True, a card offers a more private transaction and the convenience of loading anytime. But then again, this particular card is not loaded in real time. It takes forever.

Verdict: I do not recommend anyone to use this card. The card works, yes, but the service levels are extremely inconsistent. Level 2 verification is never a final KYC assessment. You can be downgraded anytime arbitrarily and told to redo the entire procedure and submit documents again.

That's the spirit. That's exactly how it works.

People here should understand the meaning of the term reversible. Despite the countless warnings, there are some here who dare to trade their coins for PayPal payments from newbies. It's playing with fire. In fact, playing with fire for 180 days.

For as long as scammers have a window of opportunity here, there will be endless rants and complaints on the scam subforum.

You are 100% a scammer and should be tagged accordingly. Criminals like you belong behind bars. If there was an option to ban certain people from the bitcoin community, you are an exact and perfect candidate for that ban. Since that's not possible, people here should be forewarned so they can act caveat emptor when dealing with thieves like you.

Only thieves and fraudsters refuse escrow because they know they can't steal and scam if a middle man or mediator safely holds the coins in a wallet they can't access.

Find a job and earn your bread like a man. A responsible and honest man.

Well, if you might have forgotten, this is a two way street. You don't trust them and neither do they trust you. You want something from them (bitcoins) and they want to sell those but they also want to be sure you are not a scammer.

Use a bitcoin ATM or do a person to person local trade. ID dilemma solved.

If you still insist on buying online and without ID, then I have to suspect a motive here. An ulterior one. Either you want to pay with questionable funds (such as PayPal or credit card) or have something more sinister up your sleeves.

If your intentions are genuine and legit and you really have concerns about your ID being misused, then the best way would be to use a bitcoin ATM or meet up locally with someone who can sell you bitcoins for non-counterfeit cash.

PayPal is reversible. Offer a different payment method and not something which you can reverse up to 180 days ahead.

You will still get offers (from newbies mainly) and I bet they will ask you to send first on the pretext that PayPal is reversible while bitcoin isn't so they want to "make sure that they can withdraw your PayPal money first". Some might ask you to wait a few days. The real motive is they will first spend the PayPal payment or attempt to withdraw it. In total, the whole trade scenario is a scam.

Then you have that ever-present risk of reversing the payment after getting the coins. You can say anything but this risk is real and indisputable. No escrow will or can help recover the coins.

PayPal is highly reversible. Unless you have a ton of feedback testifying to your trustworthiness, it will be difficult to find someone here willing to give you coins for your $500 PayPal. This is because you are eligible to dispute the transaction up to 180 days from the day you send that money. Six months. Imagine that.

So you could do the trade today and fast forward February 2018 you might be in a bad situation (financially) and decide to simply dispute this transaction and tell PayPal it was fraud or a bitcoin scam. PayPal will almost always rule in your favor when they see that keyword "bitcoin" on your transaction dispute request.

You can try Virwox. They do have horrible fees, yes, but then again they probably have a special relationship with PayPal because you will find it very hard to scam them and reverse the money (if ever you have such intentions).

I'm a bit confused as to why you would advertise to borrow money on this forum. And why bitcoin?

As for collateral, unless you are looking for someone specifically based in Turkey, this has to be a safe and liquid form of debt security. A land title deed will work if the lender qualifies to own land in Turkey. I'm not sure what the laws are about foreigners owning land there but this is murky territory, considering Turkey's diplomatic conflicts with the EU and US at present.

Good luck with finding a lender with a very fat XBT wallet. 100 BTC will require extensive due diligence and lots of serous discussions about the repayment terms, especially now that the Turkish Lira is not doing very well.

Despite all the pros and advantages of using bitcoin, this situation shows the difference between banks and exchanges. Banks are almost always consistent and will never put one on "forced holiday". (I wish my employer would do this often, I wouldn't mind at all!)

The uncertainty of being locked out and suspended from trading anytime, arbitrarily and randomly, is one of the risks associated with trading bitcoins on an exchange. This scenario will not work in a general economy where the public will be extremely inconvenienced and put in panic mode by such aggressive measures. Money is a basic and crucial need. Locking it without recourse to quick resolution from an effective and efficient support system is not constructive. It is a destructive payment system. People's lives are affected by such arbitrary blocking of accounts. "We're sorry for the inconvenience" will not cut it.

I have an account with a major bank in Germany and they KYC-verified me back in 2011. That was it. Fast forward to 2017 the account is still well and strong. Not one issue in the six years I have been with them. No forced holidays. No "Your account has been flagged for review".

Yes, bitcoin is still an evolving technology, I agree, but the ideal and best way forward for exchanges would be to set up accounts under strict and stringent KYC protocols. When those procedures are passed and completed, the customer should be considered identified and vetted with finality. Arbitrary locking of accounts on any random day in the future is a broken and mismanaged system.

Read what I wrote about it here:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2255765.0

It's well worth it to do your due diligence and make smart decisions before investing $162 in a card.

The card works and yes they will send it to all corners of this planet with the exception of some rogue countries like North Korea or Afghanistan or Iran but not all is rosy and sweet when using the card.

This is what happens when you engage with an exchange that imposes arbitrary blocking and suspending of accounts. And this they do with impunity. Being FinCEN licensed, this they do with the blessings and green light of the US Department of the Treasury.

As you can see, they will remove the suspension if their mood allows it, not necessarily their so-called rules.

When you put your money in an exchange, always keep in mind that there is a risk of being defrauded and scammed. They brazenly and shamelessly advertise on their homepage that they are the easiest and safest way to buy/trade bitcoins and yet they contradict that basic statement on a daily basis by inconveniencing thousands of their customers.

This is an exchange managed and operated by fraudsters.