Bitinstant question

[kenstu22]

I bought my first BTC via Bitinstant.  I wanted to get the Coins quickly and without leaving home. I am in the USA.  It ended up that I paid $500 and got $4.85 BTC in my Blockchain wallet after fees and everything.  This was at a time when BTC was valued at about $96.00 at Mt. Gox.

It went through in a day and a half 3 days ago.  But the $500 is still in my bank account.

Does it seem like I paid a fair transaction fee structure, and when should the funds leave my bank?

How do I know when enough confirmations have gone through so that I know the Coins are really mine and good?

Finally--was there a better way to do this?

If I want to buy some LTC now, where should I do that?

Thanks.

[DannyHamilton]

I bought my first BTC via Bitinstant.  I wanted to get the Coins quickly and without leaving home. I am in the USA.  It ended up that I paid $500 and got $4.85 BTC in my Blockchain wallet after fees and everything.  This was at a time when BTC was valued at about $96.00 at Mt. Gox.

It went through in a day and a half 3 days ago.  But the $500 is still in my bank account.

Does it seem like I paid a fair transaction fee structure, and when should the funds leave my bank?

How do I know when enough confirmations have gone through so that I know the Coins are really mine and good?

Finally--was there a better way to do this?

If I want to buy some LTC now, where should I do that?

Thanks.

Simple math indicates that you paid:

$500 / BTC4.85 = $103.0928 per bitcoin while the MtGox rate was $96 per bitcoin.  That means you paid a fee of $7.0928 per bitcoin or about 7.4%

Depending on where you live, you might have found cheaper bitcoins at localbitcoins.com (I'm in Chicago, and if you were nearby would probably have been willing to exchange for a 5% fee).  7.4% isn't a horrible fee though, especially considering your condition of not wanting to leave your house.

I thought that BitInstant required that you pay with Cash at a Moneygram location.  How exactly did you pay for the transaction?  Depending on the wallet you use, if you have one confirmation you can pretty much consider the bitcoins available to be spent.  If you have more than 6 confirmations then you can certainly consider them really yours.

[CurbsideProphet]

I bought my first BTC via Bitinstant.  I wanted to get the Coins quickly and without leaving home. I am in the USA.  It ended up that I paid $500 and got $4.85 BTC in my Blockchain wallet after fees and everything.  This was at a time when BTC was valued at about $96.00 at Mt. Gox.

It went through in a day and a half 3 days ago.  But the $500 is still in my bank account.

Does it seem like I paid a fair transaction fee structure, and when should the funds leave my bank?

How do I know when enough confirmations have gone through so that I know the Coins are really mine and good?

Finally--was there a better way to do this?

If I want to buy some LTC now, where should I do that?

Thanks.

If you don't mind waiting 5 business days, Coinbase offers a better exchange rate and lower fee.

[kenstu22]

For funding the transaction, bitinstant sent me to Zipmark--which allowed me to fund it through an electronic bank transfer.  But as I say, the funds have not cleared my account even today.

I don't understand where to check about confirmations.  I used blockchain and it doesn't say anything about that on the page I get when I login to my wallet.  When I click on the transaction--there are a dozen transactions associated with the purchase--but again I don't see anything about confirmations.

Thanks in advance for the help with finding the confirmations.

[kenstu22]

I checked blockchain tutorial--next to the transaction it could say "unconfirmed" or "confirmed" (with the number of confirmations.

In my case, it says nothing about that.

So the transaction went through on 28jun13--clockchain shows the right amount in my wallet--but nothing about confirmation and the funds have not cleared my bank.

So is this normal?  Do I have the coins and if not--does it seem like something is not Kosher?. 

[DannyHamilton]

I checked blockchain tutorial--next to the transaction it could say "unconfirmed" or "confirmed" (with the number of confirmations.

In my case, it says nothing about that.

So the transaction went through on 28jun13--clockchain shows the right amount in my wallet--but nothing about confirmation and the funds have not cleared my bank.

So is this normal?  Do I have the coins and if not--does it seem like something is not Kosher?. 

Hard to tell from the information you are providing.  Would you be willing to share the address (you can PM me if you don't want to post it publicly).  With that I can tell you exactly how many confirmations (if any) the transaction has.  I have no idea why Zipmark wouldn't have drawn against your bank account yet.  That seems like a huge risk for them.  If you were a scammer, you could spend the bitcoins and close the bank account right away.  I don't know what to tell you about that.  I assume they'll realize eventually and draw the funds from your account.