looking at wallet services? want a bit of bitcoin?

[bearbones]

Hello,

My name is Ira Miller, and I own a few bitcoin businesses. You can find information on them in my signature, and elsewhere on this forum. I have a wallet service called BTCinch. I am looking for input from new users, to improve our interface. If you are interested in wallet services, post here or PM me. I'll email you an invite and some free bitcoin.

In return, all I ask is that you use the service a little and let me know if anything is amiss.

[edd]

I signed up a while ago and got the bitcent you sent me (thanks!), but what is there to try? Do I not have access to some parts of the site/services? The only options I see are to update my profile info, give you my bank account details, or send you BTC. I'll be happy to change my password a few times, if that's what you're asking, but that's about all I'm willing to do at this stage.

[bearbones]

For basic users, it is a wallet service. So send and receive transactions from bitcoin and email addresses. If you'd like to investigate the merchant services, edd, you only have to ask.

[edd]

Personally, I trust you, Ira and I'll gladly give this service a shot if it might help me streamline the sales process at BitBrew, I was just trying to bring the magnitude of what you're asking to the forefront. It's worth risking a few BTC to experiment with a new SCI, but not really with a new personal online wallet.

[bearbones]

So don't. I'm not asking anybody to put their life savings on our system, though, I've got a portion of mine on it. I'm asking the newbies if they'd like to help us make the system more user friendly, and get free bitcoin. If you'd like to see the merchant services arm of BTCinch in action, try checking out on bitmunchies.com or discretehydro.com.

[edd]

You know, I'm so used to just checking out the newest topics without really paying much attention to the category they're in, I didn't realize I wasn't part of your intended audience. Now I see that you meant for curious folks to bounce some bitpennies around at your expense.

I am keeping my fingers crossed, however, that this will fill the vacuum left by "the online wallet service which shall remain nameless."

[bearbones]

We're determined to build a system secure and stable enough to scale properly. You'll note that both BTCinch LLC and Bit Munchies LLC are registered in Nevada, and that I am a real person. Anyone on this forum could easily track me down. We've been beta testing for over a month because we want to make sure everything is ready before asking for a larger portion of people's trust.

[annelions]

Looks interesting, I'd love to play around with it.

On a side note, the Nutella on BitMunchies has no size info. If that's the giant jar for .676BTC, I want it. 

[bearbones]

Good catch, annelions! The Nutella is 13oz, and I've updated it on the site. I just sent invites out to anyone who left their email on our home page. If you haven't, leave your email there or PM it to me. I'll send you an invite.

[annelions]

Just entered my email on your homepage. Incidentally, the success page for doing so has a title of "Page not found", even though the page itself says "Notification request successful We'll send you an email invite, when registration opens."

[bearbones]

So, I pulled up your website, and the first thing I noticed is the text starts at the absolute edge of the page. You need to put some padding in there to make it easier on the eyes!

Just out of curiosity, How are you determining the exchange rate for btc to USD? Are there any fees for withdrawing to a bank account? If I understand this correctly, you are saying I can send btc to my account on your service, and withdraw dollars to my bank account, thereby completely removing (send btc to mt gox, exchange to USD, send USD to Dwolla, send from Dwoll to bank account) out of the money chain?

How do you pronounce the name of the site? "B-T-C-inch", "B-T-cinch", "bitcoin-inch", "bit-cinch"?

On the design: believe me, it is our first priority. The rest of the service is pretty damn solid. If it looked good, we'd go public today. We'll be unveiling a new look and a lot of helpful text in the upcoming weeks.

The exchange rate is set by a script that monitors multiple exchanges. The exact algorithm is not something we're ready to share, but it is designed to be a safe retail price for merchants to accept bitcoin at.

It is correct that you can deposit bitcoin in BTCinch, convert to USD and withdraw to any bank accepting ACH. This is all done through our service. We're working on even more options to make this easier.

The name is pronounced: B-T-Cinch.

Thanks so much for your questions! I'm adding a few of them to our FAQ page, since they're quite good.

[annelions]

On the send money page, you have to actually try sending money before you find out that the minimum send is $0.01. Might I suggest adding that to your FAQ or to the initial send page itself?

[bearbones]

On the send money page, you have to actually try sending money before you find out that the minimum send is $0.01. Might I suggest adding that to your FAQ or to the initial send page itself?

Another solid FAQ question. Thanks!

For the record, we put this limitation in place because of bitcoin network fees. Currently, we pay 0.002btc in network fees on <0.01btc transactions. That is getting into the realm of real significant loss, on our part.

[Sock Puppet]

Why should we trust you with our BTC?  I'm not saying I don't.  I just want to hear the pitch.

[bitconformist]

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/MyBitcoin

[steak-knife]

Could you tell us how you plan to make money from the wallet service. If I knew you had a sound business plan in place I'd be less worried about you running off with my Bitcoins.

[AndyR]

Could you tell us how you plan to make money from the wallet service. If I knew you had a sound business plan in place I'd be less worried about you running off with my Bitcoins.

Hear hear. Nobody runs their business for free - nor should anyone be expected to. Accept my kudos to you, however, for being forthright about who you are and what you do - there are far too many "businessmen" about here who hide themselves and their business practices from the very people with whom they do business. That is not how a proper enterprise is run! It shows no character, and a lack of integrity. It's good to see somebody come forward and say who they are, and for God's sake, have some pride about what they've accomplished. Best of luck to you, Ira.

[bearbones]

You should trust me and BTCinch for the following reasons:

• You know (or can easily determine) who and where I am.
• I didn't spend months and all of my savings building BTCinch to shut it down.
• You're not the only one: http://bitcoin-otc.com/viewratingdetail.php?nick=bearbones&sign=ANY&type=RECV
• I use BTCinch for my personal bitcoin holdings.
• Bitmunchies.com and Discretehydro.com, along with others already use us.
• Last but not least: we have a business model that profits from stability.

We make money purely off of conversions. Bitcoin transactions are free, because we want to mirror the bitcoin infrastructure. This means that we don't monetize as much off of individual users, but that is also why we built merchant services. Our goal is to get existing bitcoin users onto our system by offering cool, free services, and bring them to new stores, who will probably convert most of their bitcoin revenue.

[edd]

I think the fact that you are running two other businesses makes you much more trustable than just some guy off the street. If you run away with everybody's money, those other business's reputations will be trashed too.

About the site: On the homescreen,

Bitcoin Exchange Rates
Symbol   Retail           Your Rate
USD/BTC   5.2874894   5.18173961

What is the difference between "retail" and "your rate"?

Also, is there a way that I could give somebody a bitcoin address, and when they send to that address it shows up in my account? (That is usually what people mean by an "online wallet", but I don't see that function on this site?)

I believe that is what he meant in the post right above yours - that is how BTCinch plans on turning a profit. The conversion rate through the site ("Your Rate") is not as good as what you might get at an exchange ("Retail"). Please correct me if I'm wrong, Bearbones.

Also, if you choose "Deposit" from your "Account" button in the left bar, a bitcoin address is generated once you've entered in the amount of BTC to be transferred into your account. Hopefully, this process will become more user friendly as time goes on.

[bearbones]

I think the fact that you are running two other businesses makes you much more trustable than just some guy off the street. If you run away with everybody's money, those other business's reputations will be trashed too.

About the site: On the homescreen,

Bitcoin Exchange Rates
Symbol   Retail           Your Rate
USD/BTC   5.2874894   5.18173961

What is the difference between "retail" and "your rate"?

Also, is there a way that I could give somebody a bitcoin address, and when they send to that address it shows up in my account? (That is usually what people mean by an "online wallet", but I don't see that function on this site?)

I believe that is what he meant in the post right above yours - that is how BTCinch plans on turning a profit. The conversion rate through the site ("Your Rate") is not as good as what you might get at an exchange ("Retail"). Please correct me if I'm wrong, Bearbones.

Also, if you choose "Deposit" from your "Account" button in the left bar, a bitcoin address is generated once you've entered in the amount of BTC to be transferred into your account. Hopefully, this process will become more user friendly as time goes on.

Correct on both counts, Edd. On the deposit system; we should have a much easier to use system in place some time this weekend. Will post here when testing is complete, and it goes live.