Why is UK so slow to jump on this?

[stereotype]

The biggest problem is that this is seen as a financial product or sorts.
If it was a virtual product, like a phone credit, it would not have to go through all these hoops in Europe.

Maybe the real answer is that as users with a drive to make bitcoin work in the UK and the EU, its up to us to define its position, rather than wait for the banks and government to do it for us?

If we are calling it a currency, its financial, and its going to be regulated to death.

If we call it an e-commerce voucher, the cat is still in the bag?

This might have legs?

Maybe you can just sell bitcoin wallets

The UK public is very, very stupid and scared.  Not sure when it happened, but nobody seems to want to take a risk anymore, unless the government tell them its ok.

It does seem to me that selling bitcoin voucher books in the form of paper wallets would actually have legs.

Its also quite easy to prove that the wallets have credits in them (see what I did there?   with a blockexplorer on your phone

Maybe that is the future for uk bitcoins - under the radar inflation proof internet vouchers that are accepted internationally - and can be sold in a boot sale?!

The return of the green shield stamps ?

Wallet option sounds acceptable to. Although when i first read your post, i visualised a high st or market with a 'Bit-Booth' selling vouchers/wallets to Joe Public. Got me thinking now. Are we about to see the sim/contract sellers add Bitcoin to their A boards?

[Ten98]

a well-backed UK exchange that could meet the regulatory burden would probably be successful. But without one, there are not enough UK users to justify setting one up.

Thankfully, you're wrong on the second part.

There are a huge number of UK Bitcoin users, we just buy and sell using MtGox, Virwox, BTC-E and various others. We'd prefer not to have to pay the extortionate transfer fees, and when Intersango still had free deposits via bank transfer, the majority of their deposits came from UK accounts for that reason.

The market is wide open for a decent UK based exchange, and I wish all the luck in the world to SBC.

[Jobe7]

Maybe there's a way to spend your bitcoins as bitcoins that you cba to change back into fiat, in the UK (and later internationally).

Not an exchange, but a way to change your bitcoins into items, that you would normally buy with your fiat..

Avoiding transfer rates, exchange rates, etc,

Turning fiat 'items' into 'bitcoin' items, staying within the bitcoin market (strengthening it), whilst at the same time encouraging retailers to adopt bitcoin.

Reckon bitcoin UK users would be interested in something like this?

[WikileaksDude]

Made this guide: www.bitcoinuk.blogspot.com

So far the cheapest way that I found to buy btc from UK..

Hope it helps.

[bitbadger]

Maybe there's not so much interest in Bitcoin because the City of London being the world's financial capital already has too many other toys to play with.

That said, City forex dealers are missing out on massive profit potential with BTC. What other currency appreciates by 100% in less than a month.

I think it's true the UK banks don't like Bitcoin. Not to mention the government, they never like things or want to support things that they can't control.

I buy from my euro account in Germany via bitcoin24 only 1.24 euro per bank transfer. Unbelievable that the UK banks charge 25 GBP for a SEPA.

What century are they living in. UK banks still issue cheques as well.

[stereotype]

Made this guide: www.bitcoinuk.blogspot.com

So far the cheapest way that I found to buy btc from UK..

Hope it helps.

Thats pretty good Wiki.
 
As a costly example, i sent £500 to Gox via UK bank account. The bank took £22, and Gox sliced another £8, only took 2 full working days, but i obviously wont be doing that again, at that total % rate.

[stereotype]

Maybe there's not so much interest in Bitcoin because the City of London being the world's financial capital already has too many other toys to play with.

That said, City forex dealers are missing out on massive profit potential with BTC. What other currency appreciates by 100% in less than a month.

I think it's true the UK banks don't like Bitcoin. Not to mention the government, they never like things or want to support things that they can't control.

I buy from my euro account in Germany via bitcoin24 only 1.24 euro per bank transfer. Unbelievable that the UK banks charge 25 GBP for a SEPA.

What century are they living in. UK banks still issue cheques as well.

I suspect the City boys n girls, are loving this unregulated, untaxable, unrestrained market. Maybe it suits the suits, as it is.

[Lethos]

We just lost a lot of faith in bitcoin central, with all their downtime to fix mistakes for a security breach.

Guess I'll just stick to local bitcoin trades.

[Gator-hex]

MtGox UK bank account was closed with Barclays

Barclays own PingIt

One would suspect they don't want a virtual currency competing with their own.

[bitbadger]

MtGox UK bank account was closed with Barclays

Barclays own PingIt

One would suspect they don't want a virtual currency competing with their own.

Absolutely. Bitcoin is a competitor for the banks on at least two fronts:

1. loss of transactions: much faster and cheaper for people to do themselves via Bitcoin.

2. loss of bank balances: since the banks don't offer Bitcoin accounts, they lose out on lending capital as well.


But Bitcoin is only a competitor and a threat until the banks embrace and endorse it themselves. Then it becomes a business opportunity.

Like it was with Napster, iTunes  vs HMV, Virgin Megastore and all the rest.

[theta]

Hello to all. I would echo all the wishes for a proper UK based exchange with fast and free GBP transfers back and forth like intersango used to be. A lot of people seem to blame regulations for that, but I would say that regulation in and of itself is not necessarily a bad thing. I would actually feel safer if an FSA regulated BTC exchange came up. Of course this is more costly, so it may be something for the future, if and when volumes (and BTC price) rise to a point where it's worth it for big players to join the game. Until then, I suppose we'll make do with whatever else is out there.

[theta]

MtGox UK bank account was closed with Barclays

Barclays own PingIt

One would suspect they don't want a virtual currency competing with their own.

Absolutely. Bitcoin is a competitor for the banks on at least two fronts:

1. loss of transactions: much faster and cheaper for people to do themselves via Bitcoin.

2. loss of bank balances: since the banks don't offer Bitcoin accounts, they lose out on lending capital as well.

Not true on either point.

1. Within the UK we have free and instant faster payments. For transfers abroad, given the cost of converting to and from BTC on either end, it's cheaper to use banks and services such as transferwise.

2. Banks do not depend on deposits in order to lend, only on capital. People removing their GBP from their accounts in order to buy BTC does not affect the bank's capital and therefore its capacity to lend at all. People borrowing and lending in BTC p2p market is equally threatening to banks as p2p lending in services such as Zopa, i.e. not much if at all.

[Jobe7]

MtGox UK bank account was closed with Barclays

Barclays own PingIt

One would suspect they don't want a virtual currency competing with their own.

Absolutely. Bitcoin is a competitor for the banks on at least two fronts:

1. loss of transactions: much faster and cheaper for people to do themselves via Bitcoin.

2. loss of bank balances: since the banks don't offer Bitcoin accounts, they lose out on lending capital as well.

Not true on either point.

1. Within the UK we have free and instant faster payments. For transfers abroad, given the cost of converting to and from BTC on either end, it's cheaper to use banks and services such as transferwise.

2. Banks do not depend on deposits in order to lend, only on capital. People removing their GBP from their accounts in order to buy BTC does not affect the bank's capital and therefore its capacity to lend at all. People borrowing and lending in BTC p2p market is equally threatening to banks as p2p lending in services such as Zopa, i.e. not much if at all.

Utter crap.

Can you please contact Lloyds Tsb and tell them to stop charging me whenever I transfer money to a bank in a different country then? And whilst you're at it, tell them to stop charging businesses (my own included) to stop charging me for using card services (so my customers can use debit/credit cards). And thats 'internal' within the UK. You'll have to get in touch with Natwest and Barclays and Lloyds, and whichever other banks that I don't use.

Because apparently these major banks (and I suspect RBS and Bank of England also) don't realise that according to you its 'free' and 'instant' to use debit/credit cards.

Can you also ask them wtf is up with a debit/credit card charge taking 3-7 days to go through since it's 'instant'.

And .. ye ... IF I'm transferring £1 million into btc, then the 0.6% transfer rate IS gonna be a bit more costly than £10, but if I was transferring £1 mil, tbh, I wouldn't care about a £10 charge ..

On point 2 .. you really think that a bank with 0 capital would not effect their capital and their ability to lend to suckers ..? What planet are you on? Seriously ... trolololol much?

If I had a billion £ in a bank (or 100,000 people took out £1,000) and took it all out to change to btc, you bet your ass they'd notice and it WOULD affect their capital.

To be fair, maybe you just have lack of understanding of economics, either that or you're a blatant troll.

[nwbitcoin]

MtGox UK bank account was closed with Barclays

Barclays own PingIt

One would suspect they don't want a virtual currency competing with their own.

Absolutely. Bitcoin is a competitor for the banks on at least two fronts:

1. loss of transactions: much faster and cheaper for people to do themselves via Bitcoin.

2. loss of bank balances: since the banks don't offer Bitcoin accounts, they lose out on lending capital as well.

Not true on either point.

1. Within the UK we have free and instant faster payments. For transfers abroad, given the cost of converting to and from BTC on either end, it's cheaper to use banks and services such as transferwise.

2. Banks do not depend on deposits in order to lend, only on capital. People removing their GBP from their accounts in order to buy BTC does not affect the bank's capital and therefore its capacity to lend at all. People borrowing and lending in BTC p2p market is equally threatening to banks as p2p lending in services such as Zopa, i.e. not much if at all.

Utter crap.

Can you please contact Lloyds Tsb and tell them to stop charging me whenever I transfer money to a bank in a different country then? And whilst you're at it, tell them to stop charging businesses (my own included) to stop charging me for using card services (so my customers can use debit/credit cards). And thats 'internal' within the UK. You'll have to get in touch with Natwest and Barclays and Lloyds, and whichever other banks that I don't use.

Because apparently these major banks (and I suspect RBS and Bank of England also) don't realise that according to you its 'free' and 'instant' to use debit/credit cards.

Can you also ask them wtf is up with a debit/credit card charge taking 3-7 days to go through since it's 'instant'.

And .. ye ... IF I'm transferring £1 million into btc, then the 0.6% transfer rate IS gonna be a bit more costly than £10, but if I was transferring £1 mil, tbh, I wouldn't care about a £10 charge ..

On point 2 .. you really think that a bank with 0 capital would not effect their capital and their ability to lend to suckers ..? What planet are you on? Seriously ... trolololol much?

If I had a billion £ in a bank (or 100,000 people took out £1,000) and took it all out to change to btc, you bet your ass they'd notice and it WOULD affect their capital.

To be fair, maybe you just have lack of understanding of economics, either that or you're a blatant troll.

Well said!

The banks in the UK have everyone by the short and curlies. They also have no moral compass in their charging methods, when they see a customer has no choice or when they see that they are losing customers, they have no incentive to 'be nice'.  They will charge for everything they can get away with - and as PPI claims have shown, they will charge for things they can't get away with too!

While I initially wanted to get into bitcoins because I could see me making some money out of it, the more dealings I have had with the financial industry, the more I just want to buy and sell exclusively in alt currencies.

The banks can see this happening too and so we are just going to see them getting even more difficult when it comes to moving from bitcoins to fiat and back again!

Come the revolution etc!

[Jobe7]

Hello to all. I would echo all the wishes for a proper UK based exchange with fast and free GBP transfers back and forth like intersango used to be. A lot of people seem to blame regulations for that, but I would say that regulation in and of itself is not necessarily a bad thing. I would actually feel safer if an FSA regulated BTC exchange came up. Of course this is more costly, so it may be something for the future, if and when volumes (and BTC price) rise to a point where it's worth it for big players to join the game. Until then, I suppose we'll make do with whatever else is out there.

Totally possible under current UK laws.

IF someone with a large amount of btc wished to sell/transfer, then they can as a 'Sole Trader', they do not have to declare anything (as UK does not recognize btc as currency) - UNTIL they transfer the money into fiat, well, which is done straight away as an exchanger.

What you have to declare (and show) is your profit (and how you came about it), when you pass xxx amount you get taxed. You are perfectly entitled to use your own personal bank account as a sole trader.

The trick is - counter balancing profit with expenditure - If you're having just a ton of fiat money show up and you declare it all as profit, then you're gonna get taxed sooner and more rather than later and less.

You counter the profit by stating 'expenditure' - Your expenditure in this case can easily be rental, equipment buying, petrol, lighting (for your own house even), electricity, etc.

Expenditure can even be linear backtraced. Meaning, maybe you borrowed a ton of money, or owe/promised back rent to setup your business (exchanger), and you've promised to pay this off for the next 12 months. Though the best form of expenditure would be in 'buying more stock'.

Seeing as the UK law does not recognise btc atm, it can be considered a commodity.

Now here's where you can 'play the game'.

You transfer enough btc into fiat to enable you to cover all your expenditures, of which the major part should be 'buying more stock', which is really buying more btc.

Most of your actual profit you keep AS btc and spend it as much as possible AS btc (as you probably know, there's many ways to spend btc nowadays). The rest you convert to fiat, buy more btc, pay your bills, and declare what little is left as 'profit' for tax purposes.

Please note: Please do not take my word for gospel because the UK legal system is totally fubard, but if ever anyone was serious in setting this up and wanted advice or pointing in the right direction then feel free to pm me. If I had a vast amount of btc I'd already have set this all up, unfortunately I came late into the btc game (late 2012) and didn't venture much into at the time. You'd need a starting capital, either in fiat or btc, or someone who has the fiat/btc and trusts you, or works with you.

You would be setup as a 'sole trader' who is a 'service provider'.

Enjoy.

[SBC]

An interesting series of videos posted by another individual in another thread: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bE8i-4HpKlM (Applies to the UK banking sector)

[theta]

MtGox UK bank account was closed with Barclays

Barclays own PingIt

One would suspect they don't want a virtual currency competing with their own.

Absolutely. Bitcoin is a competitor for the banks on at least two fronts:

1. loss of transactions: much faster and cheaper for people to do themselves via Bitcoin.

2. loss of bank balances: since the banks don't offer Bitcoin accounts, they lose out on lending capital as well.

Not true on either point.

1. Within the UK we have free and instant faster payments. For transfers abroad, given the cost of converting to and from BTC on either end, it's cheaper to use banks and services such as transferwise.

2. Banks do not depend on deposits in order to lend, only on capital. People removing their GBP from their accounts in order to buy BTC does not affect the bank's capital and therefore its capacity to lend at all. People borrowing and lending in BTC p2p market is equally threatening to banks as p2p lending in services such as Zopa, i.e. not much if at all.

Utter crap.

Can you please contact Lloyds Tsb and tell them to stop charging me whenever I transfer money to a bank in a different country then? And whilst you're at it, tell them to stop charging businesses (my own included) to stop charging me for using card services (so my customers can use debit/credit cards). And thats 'internal' within the UK. You'll have to get in touch with Natwest and Barclays and Lloyds, and whichever other banks that I don't use.

Because apparently these major banks (and I suspect RBS and Bank of England also) don't realise that according to you its 'free' and 'instant' to use debit/credit cards.

Can you also ask them wtf is up with a debit/credit card charge taking 3-7 days to go through since it's 'instant'.

And .. ye ... IF I'm transferring £1 million into btc, then the 0.6% transfer rate IS gonna be a bit more costly than £10, but if I was transferring £1 mil, tbh, I wouldn't care about a £10 charge ..

On point 2 .. you really think that a bank with 0 capital would not effect their capital and their ability to lend to suckers ..? What planet are you on? Seriously ... trolololol much?

If I had a billion £ in a bank (or 100,000 people took out £1,000) and took it all out to change to btc, you bet your ass they'd notice and it WOULD affect their capital.

To be fair, maybe you just have lack of understanding of economics, either that or you're a blatant troll.

It would be nice if you read what I wrote instead of putting words on my mouth.

On point 1, I said it's free and practically instant to use Faster Payments, not debit/credit cards. Isn't this the case?
Debit/credit card usage of course is NOT free, but this is not an apples to apples comparison, as these methods offer a certain degree of protection so it's really a different product. To compare on similar terms, you can set up a system where you accept payments via Faster Payments, then you won't have to pay a fee. As a professional, you can certainly be paid that way, I have paid people like this many times.
For transfers abroad, you can use services as transferwise or similar ones, for a total cost less than the one it currently takes to transfer back and forth between fiat1 -> BTC -> fiat2. I've transferred between GBP, EUR and USD several times paying a total of 0.5% for the FX conversion compared to interbank prices, for example, if GBP=1.5338USD right now, I would pay 10k GBP to get USD 15261 in the US without any other transaction fees. Admittedly, this transfer is not instant, so clearly BTC has an advantage there, but at a significant cost, currently >3% in total to transfer across all the exchanges/currencies (which may be even more costly than doing a wire transfer from a bank). If you use Lloyds (or any other bank) for transfering money to other countries/currencies, you should check the alternatives, and currently the cheapest one is not BTC.
Either way, the original point was about loss of transactions for banks, which doesn't really seem to be the case, as people still use them despite those fees and the abundance of cheaper alternatives (I forgot the mention an even cheaper alternative, Interactive Brokers, where it would cost you practically nothing, maybe 2bps, to transfer between your different currency accounts - of course if you don't use their trading platform it's very costly due to inactivity fees).
It would be very nice to evolve to a point where BTC exchange fees are driven close to zero from increased competition and economies of scale, and then it becomes practically free to move money across countries with BTC, and I certainly hope this will be the case soon. But within the UK for example I can't see why I would prefer it over Faster Payments (same for within the Eurozone for SEPA etc).

On point 2, read again what I wrote. Deposits are not capital, they are liabilities. Withdrawals of deposits reduce the bank's balance sheet, by removing cash from the asset side and deposits from the liability side. They do not reduce the bank's capital, nor its capacity to lend.

And maybe instead of swearing, you should try arguing a little more politely. Just saying.

[stereotype]

MtGox UK bank account was closed with Barclays

Barclays own PingIt

One would suspect they don't want a virtual currency competing with their own.

Absolutely. Bitcoin is a competitor for the banks on at least two fronts:

1. loss of transactions: much faster and cheaper for people to do themselves via Bitcoin.

2. loss of bank balances: since the banks don't offer Bitcoin accounts, they lose out on lending capital as well.

Not true on either point.

1. Within the UK we have free and instant faster payments. For transfers abroad, given the cost of converting to and from BTC on either end, it's cheaper to use banks and services such as transferwise.

2. Banks do not depend on deposits in order to lend, only on capital. People removing their GBP from their accounts in order to buy BTC does not affect the bank's capital and therefore its capacity to lend at all. People borrowing and lending in BTC p2p market is equally threatening to banks as p2p lending in services such as Zopa, i.e. not much if at all.

Utter crap.

Can you please contact Lloyds Tsb and tell them to stop charging me whenever I transfer money to a bank in a different country then? And whilst you're at it, tell them to stop charging businesses (my own included) to stop charging me for using card services (so my customers can use debit/credit cards). And thats 'internal' within the UK. You'll have to get in touch with Natwest and Barclays and Lloyds, and whichever other banks that I don't use.

Because apparently these major banks (and I suspect RBS and Bank of England also) don't realise that according to you its 'free' and 'instant' to use debit/credit cards.

Can you also ask them wtf is up with a debit/credit card charge taking 3-7 days to go through since it's 'instant'.

And .. ye ... IF I'm transferring £1 million into btc, then the 0.6% transfer rate IS gonna be a bit more costly than £10, but if I was transferring £1 mil, tbh, I wouldn't care about a £10 charge ..

On point 2 .. you really think that a bank with 0 capital would not effect their capital and their ability to lend to suckers ..? What planet are you on? Seriously ... trolololol much?

If I had a billion £ in a bank (or 100,000 people took out £1,000) and took it all out to change to btc, you bet your ass they'd notice and it WOULD affect their capital.

To be fair, maybe you just have lack of understanding of economics, either that or you're a blatant troll.

It would be nice if you read what I wrote instead of putting words on my mouth.

On point 1, I said it's free and practically instant to use Faster Payments, not debit/credit cards. Isn't this the case?
Debit/credit card usage of course is NOT free, but this is not an apples to apples comparison, as these methods offer a certain degree of protection so it's really a different product. To compare on similar terms, you can set up a system where you accept payments via Faster Payments, then you won't have to pay a fee. As a professional, you can certainly be paid that way, I have paid people like this many times.
For transfers abroad, you can use services as transferwise or similar ones, for a total cost less than the one it currently takes to transfer back and forth between fiat1 -> BTC -> fiat2. I've transferred between GBP, EUR and USD several times paying a total of 0.5% for the FX conversion compared to interbank prices, for example, if GBP=1.5338USD right now, I would pay 10k GBP to get USD 15261 in the US without any other transaction fees. Admittedly, this transfer is not instant, so clearly BTC has an advantage there, but at a significant cost, currently >3% in total to transfer across all the exchanges/currencies (which may be even more costly than doing a wire transfer from a bank). If you use Lloyds (or any other bank) for transfering money to other countries/currencies, you should check the alternatives, and currently the cheapest one is not BTC.
Either way, the original point was about loss of transactions for banks, which doesn't really seem to be the case, as people still use them despite those fees and the abundance of cheaper alternatives (I forgot the mention an even cheaper alternative, Interactive Brokers, where it would cost you practically nothing, maybe 2bps, to transfer between your different currency accounts - of course if you don't use their trading platform it's very costly due to inactivity fees).
It would be very nice to evolve to a point where BTC exchange fees are driven close to zero from increased competition and economies of scale, and then it becomes practically free to move money across countries with BTC, and I certainly hope this will be the case soon. But within the UK for example I can't see why I would prefer it over Faster Payments (same for within the Eurozone for SEPA etc).

On point 2, read again what I wrote. Deposits are not capital, they are liabilities. Withdrawals of deposits reduce the bank's balance sheet, by removing cash from the asset side and deposits from the liability side. They do not reduce the bank's capital, nor its capacity to lend.

And maybe instead of swearing, you should try arguing a little more politely. Just saying.

Observations/experiences look sound, to me.

Interactive Brokers. Forgot about them. They had a complicated fee structure and a basic platform, but they were always the cheapest.

And yes, Transferwise seems to be the route to take. Wikileaksdude's post above links to a 'first trade fee free' (usually 0.5%). 

[nwbitcoin]

For the past week or so I have been going through the OKPay process - this seems to be a good system so far to convert your bitcoins into fiat.

Obviously, its not good as a long term aim, but until I can buy stuff in bitcoins, this is the best option for me!

Next danger is being accused of tax evasion! At least this system has an audit trail so that any accusations can be dealt with quickly!

[stereotype]

Just found this...... http://venetfx.com/ + http://bit4x.com/ which are affiliated.
 
Isnt quite what we are after, as you cant trade bitcoins....you trade with, bitcoins. Progress though, i guess.