How do I go about purchasing a large amount of bitcoins

[RodeoX]

500k is a huge amount and I will not advise you to buy the virtual bitcoin, simply go into well arranged contract with people that sells physical bitcoin, get it from them and keep it in your bank vault for safety but buying the virtual one is highly discouraged.

I'm not sure I understand? In fact, I'm pretty sure I don't. lol

Do you mean "physical" bitcoins vs. the normal system? I would be far more concerned about the legitimacy of a physical bitcoin. "Virtual" bitcoins are bitcoins and they are provably secure by referencing the blockchain. Physical bitcoins are much more easily counterfeited because you must destroy them to verify their funding. Perhaps I am misunderstanding you, but I would strongly avoid physical bitcoin as they require trust. 500K is a lot to just trust someone who you don't even know.  

What you want is to have the bitcoins transferred to a wallet under your exclusive control and not use a coin that requires the trust of the coin maker and the seller.  Satoshi gave us money that does not require trust, and he did it for a reason. Trust no one.

[tis_bitc222]

You can buy that amount from bitstamp. But i think will not be easy

[Yoga4]

If you shit money, and 500k honestly means nothing to you, then you are 10x better investing that in Litecoin or stocks that have some sort of safety attached to them. I'm not sure if you are actually considering spending 500k, but the time to take such a risk investment was when Bitcoin was far below the $100 mark. With more exchanges, bank approvals, government regulations, and worldwide acceptance, Bitcoin has become far more stable than it has in the past. I just personally think you're throwing away $500k unless you could realistically be okay with losing that amount of money.

[Amph]

If you shit money, and 500k honestly means nothing to you, then you are 10x better investing that in Litecoin or stocks that have some sort of safety attached to them. I'm not sure if you are actually considering spending 500k, but the time to take such a risk investment was when Bitcoin was far below the $100 mark. With more exchanges, bank approvals, government regulations, and worldwide acceptance, Bitcoin has become far more stable than it has in the past. I just personally think you're throwing away $500k unless you could realistically be okay with losing that amount of money.

are you trolling? you're advising him to buy litecoin because for you it feel more safe than buying bitcoin now? man litecoin tanked like no tomorrow recently, and in a few days, bitcoin on the other hands is holding strong the last non fake-pump(250-275)

litecoin pump instead was a pure bull trap it's already returning, slowly to its old value

[bojan92]

500 000 dollars is a very big amount of money. You should consider maybe other kinds of investments, that may have more turn back power. But it is your money, so your rules

[Furio]

If you shit money, and 500k honestly means nothing to you, then you are 10x better investing that in Litecoin or stocks that have some sort of safety attached to them. I'm not sure if you are actually considering spending 500k, but the time to take such a risk investment was when Bitcoin was far below the $100 mark. With more exchanges, bank approvals, government regulations, and worldwide acceptance, Bitcoin has become far more stable than it has in the past. I just personally think you're throwing away $500k unless you could realistically be okay with losing that amount of money.

What would be your crypto investment advice, since you have such extensive history on this forum

[BlueYozakuraBTC]

I'm not an expert but if you have 500k to spend I'd suggest moving into something like Litecoin or a few other coins. You can always do the shapeshift.io if you want to swap them out for btc.  Even just posting this you're probably a target so becareful of any links someone sends you. Check Trust ratings.

[BlueYozakuraBTC]

If not that get several and I mean maybe a small amount online ( no more than 5k) the rest put in a cold storage.( several different wallets just in case) If I had a 500K I'd have a computer dedicated to btc ONLY. In a sense my own personal bank that would be connected to the internet in short 5 min intervals before a code would have to be entered for another 5 minutes logged in time. Another way is to diversity and buy up several different coins but you want to be careful which ones you do this with because the coin could be a complete sham. 

[subSTRATA]

I'm not an expert but if you have 500k to spend I'd suggest moving into something like Litecoin or a few other coins. You can always do the shapeshift.io if you want to swap them out for btc.  Even just posting this you're probably a target so becareful of any links someone sends you. Check Trust ratings.

keep in mind that shapeshift.io has  limits on how much can be converted, and are limited by their own bankroll of a specific coin. if op has that much to spend, this could be an issue should he need to convert massive amounts at once, at which point an exchange would be the only option.

[cinnamon_carter]

bold move, you may move the price lol


better strategy is to open accounts and go through the verification process at several reputable exchanges ,


get them the required funds and purchase your stash gradually

let the market sell it to you


a lot of btc is traded every day



I strongly suggest if this is a legit scenario and you really plan to do this that you store the bitcoin in a secure wallet only you control the private keys to.

If you are on win / osx/ linux use a verified build by the bitcoin development team of the qt client and withdraw the coins as you purchase them to multiple addresses,  get an expensive well secured computer and run no other software on it ever. 


I would suggest you not even use it for the trading/ web browser to visit exchanges, rather get a vpn to do that on and keep your ip different for your wallet and your trade activity.

Also assuming you are really new at this, 

never give your private keys to anyone

read the bitcoin wiki carefully

lock /password protect that qt wallet you plan to store your coins in with a secure password at least 30 charachters long

google what a secure password is it is not a sentence from your favorite book or poem or your favorite song lyrics !!!

finally if you plan to invest a large sum of money in anything not just bitcoin it is always wise to learn more about it


for you this means a more permanent solution to store your coins in the most secure method you feel comfortable with that will match up with what you plan to do with them

i do not endorse any comercial products however you may want to look into the TREZOR bitcoin wallet

someone like myself would build their own, certainly not recommended for what you plan.....

above all remember that while bitcoin is very innovative and has many great things associated with it, it has no fdic, no central authority or anyone to give you back your coins if you get robbed, (which will be difficult if you take proper precaution) , make a mistake ect....


also you may want to consider putting 1-2% or maybe more of your investment into alternative crypto currencies other than bitcoin

bitcoin will likely always be like the coca cola , the sure fire original crypto currency

still any wise investor keeps a diversified portfolio

i am reluctant to say which coins you would want to invest in.......

if i was giving casual advice i would say avoid some of the largest market cap items since many are actually scams or not really secure and have other complex flaws.... ripple would be the biggest thing to avoid, outright scam......


some strong choices for investment would be namecoin, litecoin, ixcoin, possibly the ethereum project,  i also like riecoin, feathercoin, and I am currently avoiding all proof of stake coins although some quality ones exist like ppc, hobonickles to name two exist and they would be my top two choices for anything related to proof of stake right now.

 i would avoid 'multi hash' algorithms with claims of better security , there are many academic papers which prove this is bunk, single algorithms

like sha 2 (which is also what litecoin ect.... are) is good, 

personally I am involved with the blake coin family so i will not comment on my thoughts there since there is an obvious conflict of interest


good luck to you with your investment, and be very careful , especially around here ......

do not allow any service to 'store' your bitcoin for you unless you have 100% control of the private keys

there are reputable services out there but they are not bullet proof if they have your private keys.....

careful

[ShadowFury]

Localbitcoins is probably the worse place to buy that amount of Bitcoin.

Your best bet would probably be second market. If that doesn't work then I would suggest  coinbase if you are located in the U.S. (Or another country they serve customers to). Their exchange has somewhat of limited liquidity at times however you can buy from them directly with only a ~1% markup above the exchange rate.

Coinbase have limited countries in its list mostly from Europe. Sigh.

Look at different exchanges, they all have limits on what you can buy.  Also look at the fees, they can eat in to your money.  Right now it seems like cex.io has the lowest fees, but I didn't look at every exchange.  They don't charge anything except their regular trading fees.  So you will end up paying for wire transfer fee(s) and .25% to buy btc.  There may be better but that is the best I found.  Also before buying look at the order books.  There is no point in making a price spike because you will pay more than you need to.  With that size I think that what others have said, making smaller purchases at multiple exchanges, is your best option.  If you use LBC just make sure you are not getting too much markup, the % can be (but is not always) pretty steep there if you are not creating your own order.

Best of luck!

I just signup cex.io, the main page buy fees is high but the trading site can't figure how it works here.

The fund deposit part, for bank transfer is zero fees. But the funny thing is withdraw money fee in US$ is higher than using Euro currency?


And do I really need a f2a enable to be on the safe side?

Is it safe to do bitcoin trading buying and selling in cex.io?

Can I sent the btc to other btc wallet(beside cex.io) from cex.io? I didnt see it in help file or option

Thank you.

[countryfree]

I like it when a newbie says he wants to buy $500k worth of BTC. Really smart guy. A guy with balls obviously. I just wonder why he hasn't came back to tell us what he thinks of all the suggestions given above.

[RodeoX]

I like it when a newbie says he wants to buy $500k worth of BTC. Really smart guy. A guy with balls obviously. I just wonder why he hasn't came back to tell us what he thinks of all the suggestions given above.

I assume this is not real. People who have a half million to put somewhere do not ask on some online forum. If you were that dumb you would not have the money in the first place. If this was legit, he/she would start by hiring a consultant. There is just too much money on the line here to learn as you go.

[Eodguy149]

I like it when a newbie says he wants to buy $500k worth of BTC. Really smart guy. A guy with balls obviously. I just wonder why he hasn't came back to tell us what he thinks of all the suggestions given above.

I assume this is not real. People who have a half million to put somewhere do not ask on some online forum. If you were that dumb you would not have the money in the first place. If this was legit, he/she would start by hiring a consultant. There is just too much money on the line here to learn as you go.

I think that a lot of people come onto forums and ask questions and make themselves out to be more than they really are so that they get attention (which this post clearly has). You see it on car forums, investment forums, and here. If someone is bigger, badder, and richer they get more replies and advice.