How to avoid being ripped off buying bitcoins

[bigstevo]

I want to buy some bitcoins ideally face to face but potentially online.

A lot of the sellers require you to transfer money to their bank accounts and then they transfer the bitcoins to you, surely the seller could just take my money and I never hear from them again? Am I missing something?

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[empoweoqwj]

If they demanded that, I would demand 50% bitcoins first, then the bank transfer, then the remaining 50% bitcoins.

Surely most f2f transactions are done with cash though? You don't need to meet if you are doing a bank transfer, kind of defeats the point?

[bigstevo]

Yeah Ideally I would do it face to face but cant find anyone locally as of yet, but would be willing to do it online and was checking for that purpose.

I still cant see how this would work though, if I were dodgy I could just keep the coins transfered! I cant see anyone just transferring me half the coins on the promise that I will transfer money to their account - that cant be right?

[empoweoqwj]

I want to buy some bitcoins ideally face to face but potentially online.

A lot of the sellers require you to transfer money to their bank accounts and then they transfer the bitcoins to you, surely the seller could just take my money and I never hear from them again? Am I missing something?

I would only do that online if it was through some trust-based mechanism.

But if you are doing it online, why not just use an exchange? That's how I got my bitcoins. Wire cash to the exchcange, and buy bitcoins.

[bigstevo]

I wanted to buy them anonymously and mtgox takes ages to set up right?

[ralphtheninja]

I wanted to buy them anonymously and mtgox takes ages to set up right?

Yeah it takes a while for MtGox to upgrade you to trusted user. Especially if you aren't using the right papers, or something is wrong with the photo etc, you might need to iterate on it until they are happy. Personally I'm planning to become a bitcoin dealer, assuming there are people out there that want to buy from me. I plan to meet up with all my customers at least two times and have a few beers and the chats. The beers are obviously on me. You should search around online if you can find someone that is close to you and try to build a professional relationship.

[bigstevo]

Anyone want to sell some bitcoins for cash in the UK North West Liverpool, Cheshire, Lancashire?