BTCSense - UK Bitcoin & Litecoin Exchange

[uMMcQxCWELNzkt]

http://www.btcsense.co.uk/

BTCSense is a new UK service for exchanging GBP to Bitcoin (& possibly Litecoin). The UK is notoriously difficult to exchange FIAT for Bitcoins and the few services that do distribute Bitcoin tend to sell them at +5% leaving the UK market at a unnecessary competitive disadvantage. As a result BTCSense.co.uk has now launched. The project from idea to live site is only a couple of days old however I feel the project has already come a long way over that period. I would like to share BTCSense now as community feedback is undoubtedly very valuable and could perhaps push the project in new directions.

Exchange
Buying BTC: To buy the user simply purchases one of the available in-stock Bitcoin packages via bank transfer. Once the payment is received through the system Bitcoin(s) will be sent to the users BTC address. This is a manual process so it might take some time to process the payment and send out the BTC. The exchange will clearly indicate the best time to exchange and I will likely add a schedule too . If the service grows then it is certainly possible to have additional administrators operating the payment process on a 24/7 basis.

Selling BTC: Exchanging Bitcoins to GBP is similar to the buying process, simple purchase a package using one of our Bitcoin gateways including you bank transfer information to send to and we will send your payment once the Bitcoin transaction has confirmed.

What makes BTCSense different?
The service is based upon a model designed specifically to make buying Bitcoins easier and at a fair price competitive at the international level. To achieve this the plan is to pull together revenues from multiple income streams to cover the extra costs we face in the UK. Basically BTCSense is paying off the extra 5% - 15% taking the weight of the UK consumer. My hope is that eventually with enough popularity and interest we could even be able to sell -5% the weighted average which is indeed a significant advantage to UK BTCSense users.

Advertising
Advertising on BTCSense will serve as a great way to promote your product, service, brand and so on (especially within the niche). Advertisers can bid on a selection of ad spaces on the site, some of which more valuable than others. The income from ads listed will directly contribute to covering the extra costs as mentioned earlier so I hope BTCSense users will appreciate the support. (Ads will not be restricted to UK)

Merchants
The core mechanics of BTCSense is a store front, this means that the platform aside from exchanges, is particularly suited for selling items and products. For a small fee you can list an item on the store for visitors to purchase. Note that as BTCSense is an exchange, users will have just exchanged some currency and might be in a mood to buy something too . (Merchants will not be restricted to UK)

Summary
I hope you guys are interested in BTCSense, I am not sure if this service will take off but I am happy just to serve a couple of users every now and then regardless. I still have upgrades and pages to complete so please do not judge at the current state, early feedback will help later on into development. At the moment orders/transactions/trades are disabled, prices are not reflective of the actual costs and I am in the process of testing.

[uMMcQxCWELNzkt]

[Nancarrow]

Best of luck with this. We really need it.

Coupla things. Typos on your intro paragraph: 'founder the' -> 'founder of', 'with' -> 'within', 'kicked stated' -> 'kickstarted' (speech recog?), 'qulaity' -> 'quality'.
Also, hovering the mouse over most of the buttons makes them do a weird scrolly thing, I think this could get annoying very quickly, suggest you turn that off.

[uMMcQxCWELNzkt]

Best of luck with this. We really need it.

Coupla things. Typos on your intro paragraph: 'founder the' -> 'founder of', 'with' -> 'within', 'kicked stated' -> 'kickstarted' (speech recog?), 'qulaity' -> 'quality'.
Also, hovering the mouse over most of the buttons makes them do a weird scrolly thing, I think this could get annoying very quickly, suggest you turn that off.

Thanks, what I have written up at the moment is temporary so I have not spent to much time copyrighting. I also suck at English which doesn't help, I will fix up the text though as typos won't make a good first impression. I also need to describe the site more efficiently too, I will likely create some videos and infographics to further illustrate instructions and so on.

Perhaps I could also make the buttons a little more subtle. Your input is very appreciated. 

[Teka]

Do you have the "server power" to host this? If you do this right the site will probably have a lot of traffic.

[uMMcQxCWELNzkt]

Do you have the "server power" to host this?

Currently yes, BTCSense is not intended to compete with larger exchanges though. If BTCSense grows in popularity servers will be upgraded, we are currently manually processing payments so I expect the exchange to scale up with demand. I intend to preemptively upgrade before servers start to take strain. Lag should not be as much of an issue anyway, unlike other exchanges you could simply send over an email and complete the process "offline".

[uMMcQxCWELNzkt]

Another quick question: Do you have the necessary licenses to do this? There were a lot of services including MtGox that had their UK bank accounts shut down due to the strict law here.

There is a risk involved, however everything Bitcoin is a risk at the moment unless you are trading 100% anonymously. Unfortunately we live in a hypocritical society that allows fraud and money laundering on a mass scale while stamping on the little guys trying to take control of their own finance. BTCSense is a small service, there are larger alternatives in the UK who operate in the same fashion already, and at higher prices. The main different with BTCSense is that we will provide better (fair) value to the UK, I doubt we will reach the kind of scale of the alternatives regardless so we are likely off the radar.

The risk is not because Bitcoin is bad, it is because the system is corrupt. I do not affiliate myself with corruption and I am willing to risk any penalties put before me in order to maintain my principles. Humanity can only evolve with change and innovation and finance is no different. Unlike MTGox and those larger (shut down) services, BTCSense works on a one-on-one basis, we don't even store Bitcoins so their is no risk to the user from that perspective. Scale is the critical factor, the more you grow the more eyes will pay attention.

[E.Sam]

Nice move, Uk needs a bit of diversity & competition when it comes to cryptocurrencies.

Usually I purchase BTCs from BitBargain, but the price varies quite much in relation to MTGox (proportionally speaking).
For example, yesterday night:

MtGox 1BTC/£86 - Bitbargain 1BTC/£87.2≅

This morning:
MtGox 1BTC/£87.2 - Bitbargain 1BTC/£92

An alternative when sellers on BitBargain get a bit too greedy would be healthy.

Good luck to you, will follow this thread with great interest.

[uMMcQxCWELNzkt]

Nice move, Uk needs a bit of diversity & competition when it comes to cryptocurrencies.

Usually I purchase BTCs from BitBargain, but the price varies quite much in relation to MTGox (proportionally speaking).
For example, yesterday night:

MtGox 1BTC/£86 - Bitbargain 1BTC/£87.2≅

This morning:
MtGox 1BTC/£87.2 - Bitbargain 1BTC/£92

An alternative when sellers on BitBargain get a bit too greedy would be healthy.

Good luck to you, will follow this thread with great interest.

Thanks, if you have friends who might also be interested I would appreciate some social sharing. The biggest obstacle at the moment has been getting the advertisers on-board which is strange.