BitPiggy.com - new Australian Dollar <-> BitCoin exchange

[Oldminer]

Great to have an Aussie trading site..I'll check back regularly on its progress and am very interested in trading.

[1714600851]

1714600851

[1714600851]

1714600851

[Strik3r]

My bank transfer arrived today. Very fast service all in all. Quite happy ! Will be using it again.

Cheers !

[dbit2011]

I've put in a small 0.5BTC transaction to test things out, I will report on progress within 24-48 hours.

Received payment into my australian bank account yesterday.

Fast turn around. I received money into my bank account within 48 hours of selling bitcoins.

I created the order on Thursday morning, by Saturday morning the money was in my account.

You receive transaction status updates by email, you get an email confirming your order and another one when they send the money to your bank account.

Overall I had a good experience during this transaction so based on this I can recommend them.

I hope the site will be setup for 24/7 trading in near future. It will definitely be one of my favourite sites to trade with.

[Oldminer]

BitPiggy is currently down for maintenance.

[Lightspeed]

i've bookmarked the site, but it's down so I can't investigate fees

how much do I lose per transaction or per BTC ?

Looking forward to using this service heh

[timmmay]

Very interested and I know at least another 5 Aussies who are too (and that number is growing).  Hope you get the site back up asap.  I'm happy to help out with anything you need!!

Cheers

[Cluster2k]

Waiting for BitPiggy to come back online.

In my experience the service was pretty fast and the rates not too bad.  About 15% below the current MtGox price.  While BitPiggy is down I've been selling BTCs on MtGox and have money in Liberty Reserve, but I haven't found a way of getting that money into my Australian bank account.  The LR service requires engaging a third party money transfer company to move the cash, but upon inspection of some of these companies I'm quite hesitant to do it.  Some of them have web sites that look like they haven't changed since 1997.

[timmmay]

Waiting for BitPiggy to come back online.

In my experience the service was pretty fast and the rates not too bad.  About 15% below the current MtGox price.  While BitPiggy is down I've been selling BTCs on MtGox and have money in Liberty Reserve, but I haven't found a way of getting that money into my Australian bank account.  The LR service requires engaging a third party money transfer company to move the cash, but upon inspection of some of these companies I'm quite hesitant to do it.  Some of them have web sites that look like they haven't changed since 1997.

You might be interested in watching this thread http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=15913.0

MtGox will be supporting payments into Aussie bank accounts soon

[Oldminer]

Bitpiggy is back up 

https://bitpiggy.com/

[Cluster2k]

Bitpiggy is back up 

https://bitpiggy.com/

Great news.  Good to see it (and Mt Gox, on which Piggy is reliant for pricing) back again.  Mt Gox still doesn't offer withdrawing into Australian bank accounts, so Bit Piggy is the easiest way to sell BTC.

[Anonymous]

The aus directory is up if you want to add bitpiggy.

http://bitcoin.com.au/directory/

[commlinx]

The aus directory is up if you want to add bitpiggy.

http://bitcoin.com.au/directory/

I just went to check it out and got a "This account has been suspended" message.

[Oldminer]

The aus directory is up if you want to add bitpiggy.

http://bitcoin.com.au/directory/

I just went to check it out and got a "This account has been suspended" message.

Bugger

[BitPiggy]

Hi,

Just a quick update + exciting news. 

BitPiggy has been running nicely since MtGox began trading again. That said, we keep underestimating the demand for selling BtiCoins in exchange for Australian dollars.  In any case, buying BitCoins has been constant.

As for the exciting news, we are getting ready to launch some basic banking features + a mobile payment system.  This means you will be able to buy/sell goods with BitCoins, while walking around the streets with just your mobile, in pretty much any country in the world.  The payments are also essentially instantaneous.  At this stage the details are still being ironed out, but as an outline:

Setup/limitations are as follows:

- Buyers and sellers both need a Twitter account.
- Buyers and sellers must be following @bitpiggy on Twitter.
- Buyers will need an account with BitPiggy (currently it is not possible to create an account- this is coming), with some BitCoins in their account.
- Buyers need to register their mobile phone number with BitPiggy.
- Sellers do not need an account with BitPiggy, but will need to notify BitPiggy (via a secure method) their BitCoin receiving address.

The process:
Again this is still being ironed out, but the current workflow is:

1) Buyer uses any twitter client (e.g. on their phone) to initiate a payment.  They do this by writing a specific direct message to @bitpiggy. The format is:

"D bitpiggy pay <sellers_twitter_handle> <amount>"

For example, to pay @matholroyd, you would write:

"D bitpiggy pay matholroyd 1.5 BTC"

2) Seller is notified of pending payment via twitter.  This helps ensure the buyer typed in the correct twitter handle name. 

3) A random PIN number is sent to the buyer's mobile phone number, which the Buyer types into Twitter to ensure they do want to make the transaction. The format of this is:

"D bitpiggy <pin>", e.g. "D bitpiggy 1234"

4) BitPiggy debits the buyers account, sending the BitCoins instantly to the seller.

5) Both seller and buyer are notified of the successful transaction.

Summary

The setup is somewhat restrictive, in that Twitter is required by both buyer and seller.  That said, it would work from any smart phone, whether iPhone, Android, Windows mobile, etc, and does not need any extra software installed.  In theory, the same interface can be used by 3rd party developers to build nicer interfaces on top of BitPiggy's underlying service.

Note the specifics are still up in the air, but that is the rough cut at the moment. The time frame at the moment is to have this up and running within the next 3~4 weeks.

We also have a bunch of improvements up our sleeve, but that's the essentials for the moment.  Let us know what you think.
 
Cheers,
Mat

[timmmay]

That sounds very exciting indeed Mat.  I'm looking forward to it!!

[Oldminer]

Great, going to keep my eye on this one

[Cluster2k]

BitPiggy is out of funds whenever I load the site.  I've used it several times in the past and it has been reliable, but recently its been unavailable.  I guess far more Australians are selling BTCs than buying them.

[simonk83]

I'm glad there's an Aussie portal for this, but the sell rates are a bit harsh

As of right now, to sell 1 BTC:

Bitpiggy:  $11.75
Bitmarket:  $13.50

That's no choice at all really      Granted it's slightly more convenient (depending on the receiving options you choose on Bitmarket), but it's worth it at these rates.

[BitPiggy]

To simonk83,

BitPiggy's exchange services are modelled after a traditional exchange service, where customers go for quick place to exchange one currency for another, while BitPiggy charges a commission for this service.  

Currently the spread between buy and sell is 6~7% (~3.5% each way).  This is roughly the same spread you would get for exchanging AUD for USD at a major bank, so in that sense we are competitive.

While we would like to reduce the spread further, we still want to maintain some profit or we simply will not be able to operate at all.

Note for instance to buy BitCoins directly from MtGox, you need to first pay Technocash, which charges 5%.  Hence BitPiggy is currently better value for buying then MtGox when using AUD.

One final note: Who is BitMarket? There is BitMarket.eu, but they do not trade in AUD as far as I can tell.

To Cluster2k,

You are right that BitPiggy has experience frequent periods of no money in the past. We have increased our reserves and made other adjustments to stave off that problem.

Customers have been able to continuously sell for the past week or so.


Hope that helps answer both your concerns.
~Mat

[simonk83]

Yep, I understand profit is required at your end in order to keep running.   The thing is though, it's also required at my end

I was referring to Bitmarket.eu, but they do deal in AUD.