[ANN] You liked instawallet.org ? You'll love instawire.org !

[OneEyed]

I'm currently testing the service, but while everything went very quickly so far (I initiated the transfer around 22:30 yesterday if I remember correctly, and it looks like you already received it 20 hours later) my purchase entered a so-called "Pending risk assessment" state. Does this phase take long? (I've been using this bank account with bitcoin-central a lot, inbound and outbound)

This lasted only a few hours, and I got my bitcoin. I really like this service!

One suggestion though: when you are ready to convert the € to bitcoins, you should indicate the rate and the expected amount that will be sent. Same thing when bitcoins are delivered, the page lists  the "Complete Bitcoin address", the "Bitcoin transaction ID", and the "Notification email", but not the "Amount" (which was at this type the only information that interested me :-).

Great service!

[Foxtra]

Just tried this service, it was fast and easy.

One suggestion though: when you are ready to convert the € to bitcoins, you should indicate the rate and the expected amount that will be sent. Same thing when bitcoins are delivered, the page lists  the "Complete Bitcoin address", the "Bitcoin transaction ID", and the "Notification email", but not the "Amount" (which was at this type the only information that interested me :-).

+1

[wuala]

Hi. I have been testing your service and is very quickly, how do you do (usually less than 4 hours)??

Last time, I get the "ID scan" mss.
Do you store the scans??
Is there any way to refuse the ID scan process and have my funds back? How?

And a last question. The money was received yesterday (when you had exchange rate ~ 8.4 €/BTC). If I send you the ID today, are you going to apply today exchange rate (~9.1 €/BCT)??

Thanks

[davout]

Hi all and thanks for the positive comments !

So, to answer the couple of questions that have been raised :

Q. Why can't I see the total amount I'm buying ?
A. Because the rate is frozen at the moment your coins are in "Ready to deliver" state.

Q. Can I cancel a transaction because the rate has changed between the time I sent the money and the time the rate was frozen ?
A. Yes, absolutely.

Q. Why are you asking for an identification document ?
A. Because we need to mitigate the risk of accepting fraudulent incoming wires (in other words : wires that come from phished bank accounts)

Q. I don't like you guys being so nosy, can I cancel my transfer without providing an identification document ?
A. Yes, absolutely, we'll send the money back to the account it came from.

Q. Do you accept international wires ?
A. Yes, but our bank can charge us fees that we'll have to factor in to your sale. Only wires EUR wires coming from the SEPA zone are guaranteed to be free on our end.

[OneEyed]

Hi all and thanks for the positive comments !

So, to answer the couple of questions that have been raised :

Q. Why can't I see the total amount I'm buying ?
A. Because the rate is frozen at the moment your coins are in "Ready to deliver" state.

Note that I was specifically addressing the page you get when your coins are "Ready to deliver" and the confirmation page that you see after your coins have been delivered.

[D.H.]

I haven't tried it yet, but it looks good! So, if I use SEPA there is no fee on your side, right? What kind of price will I get compared to the latest price on Mt.Gox.? It's hard to compare since the price on your site is not updated that often.

[drekk]

From what I understand the exchange rate is set once a day, therefore the information on the page doesn't "update often". That's a pretty convenient thing, IMHO.

[D.H.]

From what I understand the exchange rate is set once a day, therefore the information on the page doesn't "update often". That's a pretty convenient thing, IMHO.

Still, I'd like to know what the price was at Mt.Gox. at the exact time that the exchange rate was set, so that I can compare them.

[SgtSpike]

Do you support firstbits addresses?

[davout]

Note that I was specifically addressing the page you get when your coins are "Ready to deliver" and the confirmation page that you see after your coins have been delivered.

Fair enough, this should now be fixed. Thank you very much for the report !

From what I understand the exchange rate is set once a day, therefore the information on the page doesn't "update often". That's a pretty convenient thing, IMHO.

We usually update it once in the morning (unless wild price swings happen during the day), sometimes you'll end up paying a little less on Instawire than the average price on bitcoin charts, sometimes a little more. At the end of the day that's not what Instawire is about. Instawire is about bridging the gap between the traditional banking system and the Bitcoin world in the most possible elegant way

Still, I'd like to know what the price was at Mt.Gox. at the exact time that the exchange rate was set, so that I can compare them.

Instawire offers no such feature, there are no plans to implement it. That's how we roll.

Do you support firstbits addresses?

We will probably never support firstbits addresses, think about it for a minute, by inputting someone's address I can instantly find out whether this person transacted with Instawire, what this person's IBAN and name are. Probably not the best idea when firstbits are often part of forum signatures.

Additionnally, we rely a lot on bank wire references, these references can get truncated along the way, with a regular address that's not an issue, you can immediately see if it's valid or not and complete it at the moment the user inputs his full address. Truncating firstbits could be catastrophic since truncated firstbits could possibly resolve to a completely different address than the one originally intended.

[SgtSpike]

Good points regarding firstbits davout, thanks for the reply!

[casascius]

We will probably never support firstbits addresses, think about it for a minute, by inputting someone's address I can instantly find out whether this person transacted with Instawire, what this person's IBAN and name are. Probably not the best idea when firstbits are often part of forum signatures.

How does requiring the full address lessen this exposure?  If the reason you don't support firstbits is because you divulge personal information given a bitcoin address with the assumption that only the correct account holder will be able to provide the entire bitcoin address, how do you reconcile that with the fact that anyone can look up the full address for any firstbits on the internet and query with that instead?  In fact, the total set of bitcoin addresses ever used is very finite and publicly available, and someone could just query your server for every bitcoin address that has ever been used since your service started and datamine your entire database.

[SgtSpike]

We will probably never support firstbits addresses, think about it for a minute, by inputting someone's address I can instantly find out whether this person transacted with Instawire, what this person's IBAN and name are. Probably not the best idea when firstbits are often part of forum signatures.

How does requiring the full address lessen this exposure?  If the reason you don't support firstbits is because you divulge personal information given a bitcoin address with the assumption that only the correct account holder will be able to provide the entire bitcoin address, how do you reconcile that with the fact that anyone can look up the full address for any firstbits on the internet and query with that instead?  In fact, the total set of bitcoin addresses ever used is very finite and publicly available, and someone could just query your server for every bitcoin address that has ever been used since your service started and datamine your entire database.

My take on it was that people would more easily use firstbits familiar to them, possibly ones that had been previous posted on the internet.  It's a bit of a heavy-handed approach, but I can't deny that users are generally stupid, and protecting them from themselves is sometimes appropriate.

[casascius]

My take on it was that people would more easily use firstbits familiar to them, possibly ones that had been previous posted on the internet.  It's a bit of a heavy-handed approach, but I can't deny that users are generally stupid, and protecting them from themselves is sometimes appropriate.

Not using firstbits is already a good idea (since firstbits offer no protection against typos and practically guarantee that any mistake means you'll pay the wrong person).

But the revelation that one can see someone's identity and personal banking details by providing nothing more than a Bitcoin address and that this is by design, if true, would indicate... well... I'll leave it up to others to draw their own conclusion as to what that means.

[SgtSpike]

My take on it was that people would more easily use firstbits familiar to them, possibly ones that had been previous posted on the internet.  It's a bit of a heavy-handed approach, but I can't deny that users are generally stupid, and protecting them from themselves is sometimes appropriate.

Not using firstbits is already a good idea (since firstbits offer no protection against typos and practically guarantee that any mistake means you'll pay the wrong person).

But the revelation that one can see someone's identity and personal banking details by providing nothing more than a Bitcoin address and that this is by design, if true, would indicate... well... I'll leave it up to others to draw their own conclusion as to what that means.

That's the other part that confuses me...  I can see someone being able to attach a name/address to a bitcoin address if they had access to the wire transfer data, but how would a random person on the internet be able to make that connection?

[casascius]

That's the other part that confuses me...  I can see someone being able to attach a name/address to a bitcoin address if they had access to the wire transfer data, but how would a random person on the internet be able to make that connection?

I was just going by the following:

We will probably never support firstbits addresses, think about it for a minute, by inputting someone's address I can instantly find out whether this person transacted with Instawire, what this person's IBAN and name are. Probably not the best idea when firstbits are often part of forum signatures.

I understood this to mean "If anyone inputs any bitcoin address into our system, they will be able to see the person's name and IBAN, so it's a good thing we don't allow firstbits, because some people's firstbits are available to the public and bitcoin addresses are not, and people might start seeing other people's personal information if we allow people to input firstbits".

[SgtSpike]

That's the other part that confuses me...  I can see someone being able to attach a name/address to a bitcoin address if they had access to the wire transfer data, but how would a random person on the internet be able to make that connection?

I was just going by the following:

We will probably never support firstbits addresses, think about it for a minute, by inputting someone's address I can instantly find out whether this person transacted with Instawire, what this person's IBAN and name are. Probably not the best idea when firstbits are often part of forum signatures.

I understood this to mean "If anyone inputs any bitcoin address into our system, they will be able to see the person's name and IBAN, so it's a good thing we don't allow firstbits, because some people's firstbits are available to the public and bitcoin addresses are not, and people might start seeing other people's personal information if we allow people to input firstbits".

Yeah erm... that would be bad.

[D.H.]

Still, I'd like to know what the price was at Mt.Gox. at the exact time that the exchange rate was set, so that I can compare them.

Instawire offers no such feature, there are no plans to implement it. That's how we roll.

I wasn't looking for a feature, I just thought that you could tell me roughly what exchange fee you charge your customers. I can figure it out myself by observing your price changes and what the price is on markets such as Mt.Gox. at that time, I just thought that maybe you could save me the trouble.

[davout]

That's the other part that confuses me...  I can see someone being able to attach a name/address to a bitcoin address if they had access to the wire transfer data, but how would a random person on the internet be able to make that connection?

I was just going by the following:

We will probably never support firstbits addresses, think about it for a minute, by inputting someone's address I can instantly find out whether this person transacted with Instawire, what this person's IBAN and name are. Probably not the best idea when firstbits are often part of forum signatures.

I understood this to mean "If anyone inputs any bitcoin address into our system, they will be able to see the person's name and IBAN, so it's a good thing we don't allow firstbits, because some people's firstbits are available to the public and bitcoin addresses are not, and people might start seeing other people's personal information if we allow people to input firstbits".

Fair enough, now you only see obfuscated e-mails and IBANs, no names anymore. Also since day one we limit the number of address inputs per hour and per IP to 3 making it quite hard to bruteforce.

I wasn't looking for a feature, I just thought that you could tell me roughly what exchange fee you charge your customers. I can figure it out myself by observing your price changes and what the price is on markets such as Mt.Gox. at that time, I just thought that maybe you could save me the trouble.

Well, the truth is that humans set the price. There really is no algorithm. Sometimes we'll be a little more expensive than others, and sometimes we'll be a comparatively cheap.

[casascius]

Fair enough, now you only see obfuscated e-mails and IBANs, no names anymore. Also since day one we limit the number of address inputs per hour and per IP to 3 making it quite hard to bruteforce.

Good call!