I have already had several bank accounts closed without notice, usually after starting to make or receive wire transfers to and from Bitcoin exchanges.

Does anyone have a good bank in Europe to suggest that will allow wire transfers to and from Bitcoin exchanges ?
Ideally, the bank should offer accounts in multiple currencies like USD.

I know of Fidor Bank in Germany which is pro-bitcoin but unfortunately they require German residency to open an account and they only offer EUR accounts.

I recently started using a new bitcoin exchange, which is still still small but catching up in terms of monthly volume. They are trading about 10k BTC monthly.

However, I was really surprised at the way they handled the matching of limit orders, and I wanted to know if this is something anyone had seen before on any other exchange (even on exchanges other than bitcoin exchanges).

Basically, when you place a limit buy order above the current best ask price, your order will get matched at the best price available. This is what I would have expected.
However, when you place a limit sell order below the current best bid price, your order will get matched at the price you have given instead of the price of the order against which it matches. This seems very strange to me.

Let me write up an example to make things clear:

Suppose that the current order book is as follows :

Asks: 2 BTC at $400, 1 BTC at $401, 3 BTC at $402, ...
Bids: 3 BTC at $395, 2 BTC at $394, 2 BTC at $393, ...

If I place a limit buy order for 3 BTC at $440, I will pay 2*400 + 1*401 = $1201 to buy 3 BTC, which is what I would have expected.
However, if I place a limit sell order for 4 BTC at $350, I will only receive 3*350 + 1*350 = $1400 for the 4 BTC sold (instead of 3*395 + 1*394 = $1579, which is what I would have expected). This seems very strange.

Having contacted the support of that exchange, they tell me that their system "favours the buyer".

Have anyone encountered such limit order matching behaviour? Does it make sense?

I am currently having a negative experience with Bitbays.com.

I had about 300 USD in my account and asked at the beginning of November 2015 to withdraw them to my bank account.

After 1 week, I had still not received any funds in my bank account, so I contacted support.
Support took 1 week to reply something totally irrelevant, like instructions on how to request a withdrawal.
I replied and told them again that the withdrawal had been requested (and it appeared as processed on their website) but that I had not received it on my bank account.
Another week and a half later, support told me that there was a problem with my bank account (seriously ?) and told me that they would refund the money in my Bitbays account.
After a couple of days, I still had not been refunded the money in my account, so I contacted support again.
After another week support told me that they would chase this up.
We are now another 2 weeks after they told me they would chase this up, and still no trace of the funds neither on my Bitbays account nor on my bank account.
I am sending an email to support every week about this issue.

So my conclusion, based on the irrelevance and slowness of the Bitbays support, is that you should beware of this website.

It smells like scam.
 

I am happy to work with an escrow/middleman if that could establish trust.

I am able to get funds in USD on any of the major exchanges (MtGox, Bitstamp or BTC-e) without commission and instantly.

It's a win-win situation to be completely honest.

I am interested to get funds on any of the major bitcoin exchanges (MtGox, BTC-e or Bitstamp) and don't want to pay commission fees. On BTC-e there is no cheap method to fund your account (there are a couple of Russian websites but you won't be off paying less than 4-6% if you take into account currency exchange rates as well if you have EUR or GBP), while on MtGox, it takes ages for them to process your deposit (not to mention the nearly one month long validation queue).

There are exactly similar issues when trying to withdraw USD: On MtGox they charge a 2-3% currency exchange fee to EUR or GBP and it takes about a week for them to process your withdrawal, while on BTC-e there is a 1% commission for transfer to OKPay and about 2% commission for exchanging to EUR or GBP and then yet another 1% for withdrawing from OKPay.

I am offering this service as a win-win situation as it really cuts out the fees on both sides.

If you are interested to withdraw your USD funds into a EUR or GBP bank account, I can make a payment at current USD/EUR or USD/GBP exchange rate to your bank account with 0% commission.

If you want more info, please check my post:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=195665.msg2034134

Would like to withdraw USD from MtGox, BTC-e or Bitstamp quickly and efficiently, without paying overrated fees?

I am offering withdrawal of your USD held on the MtGox, BTC-e or Bitstamp for EUR or GBP payment into your bank account, at current exchange rate with 0% commision (reference exchange rate taken from Yahoo finance at time of transaction: http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=USDEUR=X for EUR and http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=USDGBP=X for GBP).

How does it work?

1) Send me a PM expliciting the amount that you would like to withdraw and the exchange where the funds are (MtGox, BTC-e or Bitstamp)
2) I will accept your request and send you an email address to which you can send your MtGox coupon, BTC-e coupon or Bitstamp coupon
3) As soon as the code has been verified, I will make a payment from my bank account (from Deutsche Bank Belgium for EUR payment or from HSBC UK for GBP payment).
4) EUR SEPA payments usually clear withing 1 business day and GBP UK payments usually clear within 2 hours

I can provide you with my eBay seller account for trustworthiness

Nicely spotted!

Seeing a bit what has been going on with current exchanges that have been shut down, I identify 2 points:

- security of the bitcoins held on the exchange (bitcoin-central.net and many others got hacked, giving access to the private keys to the hackers)
- legal and anti-money laundering regulations (bitcoin-24.com got shut down by authorities due to money laundering suspicions)

Bought BTC 2 weeks ago when it was at $260... It has never reached that level again... And I had lost 75% of my investment in 2 days time...

Except if you have an ASIC, mining bitcoins is hardly profitable now (as BTC price is relatively low currently and mining difficulty is high due to many ASICs mining)

Great post! Thanks very much!