Uphold and BTC - Some questions from a newbie

[Aki14]

Hi everyone, I first posted this on reddit but I wanted to hear what people may say here also. Bear in mind that english is not my first language, so if I am doing something wrong please be patient

Here's the situation:

I bought a bitcoin when the price was 230usd and have kept it in a safe paper wallet. Given the recent surge in price I was wondering what would be the most efficient way to secure the value of that bitcoin in the case the price drops abruptly.

I understand what people usually do is they just trade on an exchange (e.g. coinbase) when they speculate about price, but since I live in a country with capital controls and not supported by major exchanges that is not an option for me. Also, if I trade for fiat it must be USD, because my national currency does not deserve any trust.

I figured I could open an account on Uphold, send my bitcoin there and convert it to USD. Eventually I would be able to convert it back to bitcoin if I wished and send it back to my paper wallet. The conversion would cost me 0.45% in fees for each conversion.

Is this a good idea? are you in a similar position and do this or something else?

I could as well go to a local bitcoin broker, but the spread is 4% and the fee to buy back bitcoins would be an additional 2%, so it's not really an option. I could sell my bitcoin to an individual for cash usd but that's not really practical and potentially risky. Bitex.la is the only local exchange supported but their volume is way too low for my comfort.

Thanks

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[birr]

I opened an uphold account.  I am in the US.
Uphold works as advertised... mostly.
I can add funds and convert between currencies, including bitcoin. But when sending btc, there's something wrong with the miner fee calculation.  
When I open my bitcoin balance page, getting ready to send bitcoin from my uphold account to an external address, uphold adds a miner's fee that's much too high -- by orders of magnitude.  The fee is as much as .0775 btc.  And it depends on the amount of bitcoin I want to send.  Higher btc amounts result in higher miner's fees.
According to uphold, they don't charge for bitcoin transactions.  If that's true, then Uphold is just throwing away wads of money on the miner fee for absolutely no reason.

[Kanati]

I opened an uphold account.  I am in the US.
Uphold works as advertised... mostly.
I can add funds and convert between currencies, including bitcoin. But when sending btc, there's something wrong with the miner fee calculation.  
When I open my bitcoin balance page, getting ready to send bitcoin from my uphold account to an external address, uphold adds a miner's fee that's much too high -- by orders of magnitude.  The fee is as much as .0775 btc.  And it depends on the amount of bitcoin I want to send.  Higher btc amounts result in higher miner's fees.
According to uphold, they don't charge for bitcoin transactions.  If that's true, then Uphold is just throwing away wads of money on the miner fee for absolutely no reason.

Don't they have a support department you could raise the problem with 

[birr]

Turns out that you can withdraw 5 btc per month free, after that they charge 0.5%.  The fees I saw were not miner fees.  They were the fees Uphold was going to charge.
Similarly the dollar limit is $1000 per month, then they start charging 0.5% per withdrawal by ACH.
When you first go on the Uphold website, all you see is "FREE! FREE! FREE!"
The fees are buried under links.
I was seduced by the marketing, opened an account and deposited a bunch of btc and dollars.  Now I will have to pay to get it back, or withdraw it little by little over many months.

In regard to converting between btc and dollars within your Uphold account, that's supposed to be free.  I don't know where OP got 0.45%.

[maokoto]

I got interested in Uphold after reading this thread. So it is like an exchange between the different currencies and without fees? that sounds good.

As for the question by OP, I have used bitfinex and traded my BTC for dollars without being in a dollar country. Perhaps you could check that too.

[birr]

Here is the conversion fee information.
https://support.uphold.com/hc/en-us/articles/201868239-Do-you-charge-a-commission-on-currency-conversions-

[Kanati]

Here is the conversion fee information.
https://support.uphold.com/hc/en-us/articles/201868239-Do-you-charge-a-commission-on-currency-conversions-

Are you still using Uphold? I would be interested to hear an update 

[birr]

Here is the conversion fee information.
https://support.uphold.com/hc/en-us/articles/201868239-Do-you-charge-a-commission-on-currency-conversions-

Are you still using Uphold? I would be interested to hear an update 

No, I stopped using them. 
If you are thinking about using Uphold, I suggest researching what kind of asset they use to back deposits.

[Kanati]

Here is the conversion fee information.
https://support.uphold.com/hc/en-us/articles/201868239-Do-you-charge-a-commission-on-currency-conversions-

Are you still using Uphold? I would be interested to hear an update 

No, I stopped using them. 
If you are thinking about using Uphold, I suggest researching what kind of asset they use to back deposits.

Ok- thx! 

[luciann]

You can just go with the factor of picking a ad for western union under USD right?

Or know someone in the US that can do this for  family, friends, relative?

If you dont have those options, youre going to have to pay for a premium regardless.

[Dank14]

There is really no website that allows to exchange bitcoins to another currency without billing you. The fees differs but you still have to pay something for the service rendered.

[birr]

There is really no website that allows to exchange bitcoins to another currency without billing you. The fees differs but you still have to pay something for the service rendered.

That's true, every broker charges for the service it provides, when the broker is the counterparty to the trade.
However, there are some exchanges where you  can make certain kinds of trades without paying a fee.
For example, the Coinbase exchange has a maker/taker fee schedule with zero fees for the "maker," or liquidity provider.  That means in effect that you don't have to pay a fee on a limit order.
Limit order:  you are providing or "making" liquidity in the market
Market order:  you are removing or "taking" liquidity from the market
Markets need liquidity, so exchanges encourage it by charging lower fees for limit orders.  In some cases, the fee is zero.  The fee for taker orders is higher.
I take advantage of the zero maker fees on Coinbase by placing limit orders when I want to buy XBT.  I've heard that there is another U.S. exchange called Gemini that also has zero maker fees.

[gentlemand]

Coinapult or whatever it's called via Mycelium allows you to lock value. Can't remember how it works. I'd refuse to use uphold on principal as the guy running it thinks BTC is a pile of shit.

[birr]

About Uphold's reserves
Go to the home page and click on "transparency"
https://uphold.com/en/transparency
Have a look at the list of assets and liabilities.
I haven't added it all up to see if they're in the black.  Maybe somebody here wants to do that.
But here's what makes me wonder
At the very bottom of the page, they have an entry for a hundred six million "voxels" that they claim are worth about sixty-nine cents apiece.  I didn't find VOX listed on Poloniex.  It's not a cryptocoin as we understand it.  It's a gaming asset of some sort, maybe some kind of scrip.  But if it's to be worth $.693, then either it must have legitimate assets to back it, or its value must be established in a liquid public market.  The latter is unlikely.  So where is the seventy-three million dollars?
https://uphold.com/en/blog/posts/uphold/announcing-the-voxel-vox-cryptocurrency-powered-by-uphold
https://www.voxelus.com/marketplace

Does somebody want to dig into this?  I'm lazy.

Maybe the OP can open an account on Poloniex and trade usdt/xbt (tether) as a proxy for the dollar.

[Kanati]

Here is the conversion fee information.
https://support.uphold.com/hc/en-us/articles/201868239-Do-you-charge-a-commission-on-currency-conversions-

Banks in my Country are threatening to start charging depositors negative interest rates, so I decided to re-visit this thread. In case anyone is interested the above link does not work anymore, the new one is here:

https://support.uphold.com/hc/en-us/articles/206118653-Costs-and-Limits

Looks like 2017 is going to be "interesting" :-/