Why is buying/selling Bitcoin so difficult?

[alj92]

Hi everyone,

A little bit of a dissappointed (attempted) Bitcoin user here.

I live in Colombia and have a business that has software provided for by a tech in Canada. We have had nothing but trouble with wire transfers due to exchange rates flying all over the place with the Peso and the Dollar. Recently he suggested to give Bitcoin a try. The idea of being able to transfer money instantly to him at a relatively low cost seemed like a very good idea.

Setting up a wallet was very easy, and I did not have to provide any info aside from my email. However, when it came to buying the coins, I had to practically give away every piece of information I had. CAVIRTEX, the Canadian Exchange wanted my Passport, ID, Utility Bill and a photo of me holding my ID. I have a Canadian Passport, but obviously living in Colombia, my ID and Utility Bills are from Medellín which put my Canadian bank out of the question. When trying to do a transfer through local bitcoins, users on there wanted the same information as well for a email transfer. Trying to buy local proved useless as the few options in Medellín, Colombia wanted at mínimum 25% fee on the transaction, which is way higher than what the banks are taking from me each month during the transfers.  Many of the trusted US based firms wont allow me to open an account due to my location, and of course ask for much of the same information.

In my head I always thought this process was simple. I watched a Joe Rogan podcast with a Bitcoin wallet or Exchange owner (or something along those lines) talk about being in Argentina and Venezuela and how everyone was using Bitcoin because it was so easy and internationally accepted. Peer to peer transfers might make it easy to buy and sell a few dollars here and there as a hobby, but when it comes to moving decent amounts of money on a consistent basis, this becomes extremely difficult. Has it always been this way, or am I late to the party and things have tightened up since the beginning?

Would be curious to get some thoughts from people on here who know far more about BTC than I ever will regarding my experiences.

Appreciate the time.

[Meuh6879]

Bitcoin is not a bank.
It's free and trust.

valuable shit ... so, it's not cheap.
deal with it.

by the way, the problem is only the financial KYC ... applied to all merchand (of bitcoin).
so ... the problem is not bitcoin, it's the STATE.

[franky1]

problem 1

I live in Colombia, using peso' ...-...  CAVIRTEX, the Canadian Exchange

if you live in columbia, use a columbian exchange that accepts peso's, leave the bitcoin<->canadian dollars for the recipient to deal with, you should never need to be having a canadian bank account involved.. otherwise your not really doing anything different then a canadian to canadian wire transfer..

whomever told you to use cavirtex obviously missed the point

problem 2
it seems you didnt do much of a search on peso exchanges..
try googling:
bitcoin peso
bitcoin mexico
bitcoin columbia

i seen many results on google that seemed to favour your native currency..


all you need to do is link your columbian/mexican bank to a columbian/mexican exchange. and buy bitcoin..
there is no need to care about canadian banks or rates.. stick with what you initially wanted.. to get peso's and turn them into bitcoin fast to give to recipient. then the recipient deals with the  canadian side.. not you

[iram66680]

There are different regulations at different places. At places with more developed infrastructure, there would be more people selling for Bitcoin. With higher demands, local exchanges could be opened and it doesn't required too much verification. You could just seek help at the local section or currency exchanges sections and use an escrow.

[gentlemand]

Legacy financial regulations are what makes it so difficult. If you look into its earlier days when it was tiny, Bitcoin was probably easier to buy than it is today simply because the authorities didn't care about it. Now there are proper amounts flowing into it it has landed on their radar and no exchange or selling service can ignore all the ID stuff.

[SFR10]

I had the same thought as you couple of months back as every exchange I tried to use, had these verification purposes that made me think twice before provided the needed stuff like an I.D of mine, a passport together with my bank card pictured.... so I tried to look for another one each time until I found out all are the same and these verifications are a necessity for your own safety so don't get frustrated...once you all verified with those, the whole process of exchange would be smooth as you imagined the first time

[alj92]

problem 1

I live in Colombia, using peso' ...-...  CAVIRTEX, the Canadian Exchange

if you live in columbia, use a columbian exchange that accepts peso's, leave the bitcoin<->canadian dollars for the recipient to deal with, you should never need to be having a canadian bank account involved.. otherwise your not really doing anything different then a canadian to canadian wire transfer..

whomever told you to use cavirtex obviously missed the point

problem 2
it seems you didnt do much of a search on peso exchanges..
try googling:
bitcoin peso
bitcoin mexico
bitcoin columbia

i seen many results on google that seemed to favour your native currency..


all you need to do is link your columbian/mexican bank to a columbian/mexican exchange. and buy bitcoin..
there is no need to care about canadian banks or rates.. stick with what you initially wanted.. to get peso's and turn them into bitcoin fast to give to recipient. then the recipient deals with the  canadian side.. not you

There is no Bitcoin exchange for Colombia. There is one said to be in the works but one does not exist at the moment. The Mexican peso and Colombian peso are different currencies as well as different countries...

[dothebeats]

Not familiar in Colombia. Have you tried localbitcoins? Russia too, don't have exchanges but localbitcoins seemed to fulfill the job of buying/selling bitcoins there.

[JeWay]

Because not everyone believe in Bitcoin yet, they have a fear of new technology.

[OROBTC]

...

alj92 is having similar problems to what Peru would be having if anyone there were interested (which last time I looked into this via our company there).  NO ONE in Peru seems to care about Bitcoin, other than a few tekkies, and even then there is next to NO BTC traffic.

BTC would not work well for our small company there because of the tight restrictions their taxation authorities place on businesses -- for example EVERY transaction we make has to go to them via email on a spreadsheet...  Not even the USA does that!

[crazyivan]

Hi everyone,

A little bit of a dissappointed (attempted) Bitcoin user here.

I live in Colombia and have a business that has software provided for by a tech in Canada. We have had nothing but trouble with wire transfers due to exchange rates flying all over the place with the Peso and the Dollar. Recently he suggested to give Bitcoin a try. The idea of being able to transfer money instantly to him at a relatively low cost seemed like a very good idea.

Setting up a wallet was very easy, and I did not have to provide any info aside from my email. However, when it came to buying the coins, I had to practically give away every piece of information I had. CAVIRTEX, the Canadian Exchange wanted my Passport, ID, Utility Bill and a photo of me holding my ID. I have a Canadian Passport, but obviously living in Colombia, my ID and Utility Bills are from Medellín which put my Canadian bank out of the question. When trying to do a transfer through local bitcoins, users on there wanted the same information as well for a email transfer. Trying to buy local proved useless as the few options in Medellín, Colombia wanted at mínimum 25% fee on the transaction, which is way higher than what the banks are taking from me each month during the transfers.  Many of the trusted US based firms wont allow me to open an account due to my location, and of course ask for much of the same information.

In my head I always thought this process was simple. I watched a Joe Rogan podcast with a Bitcoin wallet or Exchange owner (or something along those lines) talk about being in Argentina and Venezuela and how everyone was using Bitcoin because it was so easy and internationally accepted. Peer to peer transfers might make it easy to buy and sell a few dollars here and there as a hobby, but when it comes to moving decent amounts of money on a consistent basis, this becomes extremely difficult. Has it always been this way, or am I late to the party and things have tightened up since the beginning?

Would be curious to get some thoughts from people on here who know far more about BTC than I ever will regarding my experiences.

Appreciate the time.

There are bunch of services which let you use your credit card to buy BTC. Still, some of them also ask for information. This is a standard practice, KYC polices, to make sure your money does come from legit sources, not from terrorism, drugs or something like that.

[Laosai]

Well it differs and varies on countries , too bad it's kinda hard to buy and sell bitcoins on your country.

While on my country, I can easily buy bitcoins with my mobile load and through money remittance; and I can sell bitcoins instantly through cardless ATM withdrawal

[ajareselde]

You shouldn't give up on bitcoin just because your first attempts at using it were no easy. Try using an exchange that doesn't have such strict rules for depositing/trading.
For example btc-e, or just simply buy btc from our users here at https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=53.0 which is currency exchange.
I for one never had a problem in both selling and buying btc, even with using my own bank account, no ID verification or anything.

[Watoshi]

You shouldn't use that shitty exchange. Try localbitcoins or here in the forum in the currency exchange section.

[lumeire]

That was my also my problem earlier in the scene, I'm happy my local exchange here doesn't ask too much info like in there - only Facebook and Phone verifications - I have trade limits though.

There are other exchanges aside from Virwox, try South American exchanges like SurBTC or BitEx.la

If you still can't, try meetups, maybe there's enough local traders there or even here in the forums.

[makcik]

Bitcoin have grown now as a famous cashless currency. But, still people hesitate in buying and selling For the following problems. 
(1) Bitcointalkers and traders are not available in every country or every region, so buying isn't possible easily for people.
(2) People still think that earning btc using online methods is better as they don't want to do investment.
(3) Rate not being uniform, btc rate keeps changing always, so people think that buying may give them a loss, but this can get reversed too and they may get more money For same btc, but still people have different choices.

[Mickeyb]

OP, I completely understand how you feel. My best friend lives in the US and about six months ago, he has gave up on buying bitcoins since he didn't want to send every piece of personal info that they required him to send. At the end, he wired me the money and I bought them in Europe for him. Now we are talking about US here, you can only imagine how much harder is for countries like Colombia.

Buying coins and securing coins are two biggest hurdles that people get stumbled upon at the moment in Bitcoin. And this needs to be improved largely if we want mass adoption, we all know this. But slowly we are getting there. Coinbase for example, even though I don't like them much, gives me a right to buy 500 euros worth of bitcoins with my credit card daily at the moment by sending only a copy of my passport. I am based in France and this was unthinkable to do just a month ago.

[Kprawn]

I share your pain... They say Bitcoins is Pseudo-anonymous until you use these 3rd parties. The thing is they need this information to adhere to all their local laws {KYC/AML}

and to help The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) to combat domestic and international money laundering, terrorist financing, and other financial crimes.

The problem is, none of these 3rd parties can be trusted 100% and your information is stored on a central location for any good hacker to access. Once they get hold of your

digital information, they could link you to other fraudulent activities, without you even knowing it.  

[Q7]

I think it's pretty standard that you have to go through all the verification process and sending in the information but you can always opt for another method by having a one-to-one meetup and doing a live instant transfer. Not sure if you have it there, but where I live we have something like a local bitcoin club where you can actually meetup with people sharing the same interest. I met few of fellow enthusiast through that channel myself and they are more than happy to help out newbies looking to buy small amount of coins. 

[NorrisK]

I think you are just unlucky with the country you are in at the moment.

Here in The Netherlands it is extremely easy to buy and sell bitcoins. We have a service (bitonic), which allows you to buy and sell directly through your bank account using a local payment system (iDeal). No extra information is required, extremely nice to use. Fees depend on the amount you want, for bigger amounts it is less.