[ANN] LocalBitcoins.com - a location-based bitcoin to cash marketplace

[2weiX]

how can i even finish a deal, let alone leave feedback?

[1714036259]

1714036259

[kangasbros]

how can i even finish a deal, let alone leave feedback?

Hi, what kind of deal are you doing? If it is contact-only, there should be "cancel deal" button, which will soon be renamed to "close contact". There is no option for feedback in this kind of contacts - it is just messaging method between users.

We are currently doing some changes to the system, sorry for the slow updates.

[2weiX]

how can i even finish a deal, let alone leave feedback?

Hi, what kind of deal are you doing? If it is contact-only, there should be "cancel deal" button, which will soon be renamed to "close contact". There is no option for feedback in this kind of contacts - it is just messaging method between users.

We are currently doing some changes to the system, sorry for the slow updates.

ah, i thought there was a way to leave publicly visible feedback.

[kangasbros]

ah, i thought there was a way to leave publicly visible feedback.

Currently that is available only if the transaction feature is used. However we are doing some re-designing.

[chrisrico]

I know I've bugged you a bit with feature requests, but I thought of another that would be nice.

When creating a custom dynamic price, it would be nice to have min() and max() functions. For instance, if I'm selling I might want to sell at USD_24h or mtgoxUSD_ask, whichever is higher.

Is 14B8Zb94ypK7R11UV1RAojJkeSmpCHZfKJ still your donation address? I don't see it on the site anymore.

[kangasbros]

I know I've bugged you a bit with feature requests, but I thought of another that would be nice.

When creating a custom dynamic price, it would be nice to have min() and max() functions. For instance, if I'm selling I might want to sell at USD_24h or mtgoxUSD_ask, whichever is higher.

Is 14B8Zb94ypK7R11UV1RAojJkeSmpCHZfKJ still your donation address? I don't see it on the site anymore.

There is already min/max functions, the only limit is that they work only with two parameters. So you have to nest them if you want to use multiple parameters. For example:

min(min(mtgoxUSD, bitfloorUSD), bitstampUSD)

[chrisrico]

There is already min/max functions, the only limit is that they work only with two parameters. So you have to nest them if you want to use multiple parameters. For example:

min(min(mtgoxUSD, bitfloorUSD), bitstampUSD)

That's awesome, I didn't see that documented anywhere.

Is 14B8Zb94ypK7R11UV1RAojJkeSmpCHZfKJ still your donation address? I'd like to show my appreciation for your service.

[kangasbros]

There is already min/max functions, the only limit is that they work only with two parameters. So you have to nest them if you want to use multiple parameters. For example:

min(min(mtgoxUSD, bitfloorUSD), bitstampUSD)

That's awesome, I didn't see that documented anywhere.

Is 14B8Zb94ypK7R11UV1RAojJkeSmpCHZfKJ still your donation address? I'd like to show my appreciation for your service.

Thanks, that address still works. However we have decided not to actively collect donations, we try to be a business, not a charity Donate to your favourite charity, bitcoin foundation, or use the money to promote bitcoin some other way

[chrisrico]

Donate to your favourite charity, bitcoin foundation, or use the money to promote bitcoin some other way

Ok, will do! Thanks for being awesome!

[Stephen Gornick]

Now more SMS numbers added, and all the numbers are listed in the contact page. In case the main number doesn't work, you can try others.

Our new gateway is nexmo, which focuses solely on SMS messages, therefore it should be more reliable than twilio.

When there is an offer sent to me in response to an ad I had placed, I don't learn of it until some time has passed as I don't check e-mail as frequently as is needed for this.

I was thinking I should change my e-mail address for LocalBitcoins to the e-mail gateway for my mobile service, but then I would not have the link for the offer in my e-mail as well.  

Preferably, what I would like is both a text message alert whenever a new offer is received (or for additional messages from the person making the offer) as well as the existing e-mail.  

Because I use GMail, I can add a "filter" and have the messages from "communication@localbitcoins.com" forwarded to my mobile SMS/text messaging number, but I think this secondary notification via text messaging would be a a nice feature if built into localbitcoins itself.

Would you consider either adding a checkbox to have notifications sent to my SMS number for my LocalBitcoins.com account?   (And then format the SMS alert respectful of the 140 char limit).

Or if not, how about providing the ability for me to add multiple e-mail addresses for notifications and I'll simply add my SMS / text messaging gateway number:
 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_SMS_gateways

[kangasbros]

When there is an offer sent to me to an ad I had placed, I don't learn of it until some time has passed as I don't check e-mail as frequently as is needed for this.

I was thinking I should change my e-mail address for LocalBitcoins the e-mail gateway for my mobile service, but then I would not have the link for the offer in my e-mail as well.  

Preferably, what I would like is both a text message alert whenever a new offer is received (or for additional messages from the person making the offer) as well as the existing e-mail.  

Because I use GMail, I can add a "filter" and have the messages from "communication@localbitcoins.com" forwarded to my mobile SMS/text messaging number, but it think this secondary notification via text messaging would be a a nice feature if built into localbitcoins itself.

Would you consider either adding a checkbox to have notifications sent to my SMS number for my LocalBitcoins.com account?   (And then format the SMS alert respectful of the 140 char limit).

Or if not, how about providing the ability for me to add multiple e-mail addresses for notifications and I'll simply add my SMS / text messaging gateway number:
 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_SMS_gateways

Thanks for the idea, we'll do this.

Edit: I've been promising lots of features recently, and they are coming, just slowly We are currently little under-resourced, and we are trying to solve that problem as well.

[jtibble]

I'm in the middle of a transaction right now, and I have feedback on the process:

• How many confirmations are needed to put bitcoins in the user's wallet if they decide to put bitcoins in there? Is there any point to doing this if you are trying to sell bitcoins for fiat, given that in the process you have to send the coins to a unique address, and not the one associated with your user account? Is there any documentation that says this, or could there be, perhaps on the "Your Wallet" page?

• The transaction flow is very, very hard to follow, and "next steps" are virtually non-existent. I'm the buyer of bitcoins, and my friend the seller. When he contacted me to begin the exchange, it was not clear to him that he needed to fund the transaction from within the flow, and it wasn't clear to me that that's what was necessary either. My first thought was that if he put bitcoins in the wallet associated with his account, he could use those to begin the transaction process, but instead he had to send coins to a new, random address. What would have been infinitely better is if my "Transaction not funded" status message had instead said "Transaction not funded: Seller must send payment to temporary address to continue the transaction" so I would have been able to help him along, instead of fumbling for information. Additionally,
• I didn't receive any emails until he had already funded that address with the amount of bitcoins he wanted to sell me. How am I to know that there are potential sales to be made if I don't compulsively check my dashboard for updates? Why didn't I receive an email when he first sent me a message, asking about the transaction?
• If he had funded that address with more or less bitcoin than he was supposed to, what would have happened? That info is not available on my side of the transaction, so I really have no idea.
• The text on that transaction page says "Both parties can cancel the trade at any time before release, no fees in case of cancelation", but I don't see a cancel button anywhere! I don't know how I would even go about cancelling the transaction in the "waiting for confirmations" step.
• How many confirmations are needed until their funding of the transaction is "good enough", and why aren't they displayed in the "Spotted, waiting for confirmations..." blurb, like "Spotted, waiting for confirmations... 2/6 received"?
• Why was I given a verification code, as a seller, before the transaction was even funded? Is that code not delivered to the seller until the transaction is fully confirmed? Can we have text below the "waiting for confirmations..." blurb that says something to that effect?
• Once the seller's bitcoins are confirmed and my Transaction Status changes again, I assume that he will get an email with the confirmation code (because he told me that's what the page said), but I don't know this for sure. It would be nice to know, for every Transaction Status, what the next steps are in the process.
  

Thanks for your hard work on this project! I hope it continues to grow, and I also hope that my feedback was valuable.

Cheers,
Jtibble

EDIT: Just found a small bug, too: When looking at my wallet's transaction history, the generated hyperlinks to the blockexplorer page are missing a /address/ in them. Thanks!

[kangasbros]

EDIT: Just found a small bug, too: When looking at my wallet's transaction history, the generated hyperlinks to the blockexplorer page are missing a /address/ in them. Thanks!

Thanks for the feedback. We will address these problems. We are doing a bigger update currently, which is not optimal situation for doing smaller enchancements, but we hope that it will be production-ready soon and we are able to do updates in smaller iterations.

Localbitcoins requires 3 confirmations for the incoming transfers currently.

[jtibble]

Hey Kangasbros,

I've got another suggestion. This is a bit more ambitious, but if you could consider it, I think it would add a lot of value to the local-bitcoin ecosystem.

I would like the ability, when creating an advertisement, to be able to specify what sorts of bitcoins I am willing to sell, to differentiate myself from other folks nearby who may only be selling digital bitcoins, and infrequently at that. For example, I'm willing to sell purely digital coins, but I can also provide physical bitcoins (from Casascius), or paper wallets to those who are interested. If, perhaps, sellers were able to tag their ads by type (digital/physical/paper), and buyers were able to filter the advertisements by type (digital/physical/paper), it would help promote physical bitcoin sales, in all its varied forms, by better-matching what people are looking for.

Cheers,
Jtibble

[pazor]

Hey Kangasbros,

I've got another suggestion. This is a bit more ambitious, but if you could consider it, I think it would add a lot of value to the local-bitcoin ecosystem.

I would like the ability, when creating an advertisement, to be able to specify what sorts of bitcoins I am willing to sell, to differentiate myself from other folks nearby who may only be selling digital bitcoins, and infrequently at that. For example, I'm willing to sell purely digital coins, but I can also provide physical bitcoins (from Casascius), or paper wallets to those who are interested. If, perhaps, sellers were able to tag their ads by type (digital/physical/paper), and buyers were able to filter the advertisements by type (digital/physical/paper), it would help promote physical bitcoin sales, in all its varied forms, by better-matching what people are looking for.

Cheers,
Jtibble

nice idea!

[Ricochet]

Heyo, just wanted to pop in and say thanks for this service.  I've come into some unexpected car trouble and needed to liquidate some of my Bitcoins, and LocalBitcoins has helped me a lot in that regard. 

Out of curiosity, have you changed the fees for cancelling an ongoing trade in the past week or two?  When I did my first trade last month I noticed a cancellation option but didn't need it since the trade went through successfully.  A few days ago, another person I was selling to needed to change the withdraw address on-the-spot and I saw that it didn't charge me a fee to cancel the existing trade even though it had already been funded from my LocalBitcoins wallet.

[mrvision]

Suggestion: It would be cool to  renderize a map with the average prices.

[TheButterZone]

Not sure if this has been mentioned already, but how do you leave a rating for someone who hasn't used the LocalBitcoins escrow? I just sent directly to a cash-in-hand buyer's address, but see no option for feedback, just a cancel deal button and send message box.

[chrisrico]

Not sure if this has been mentioned already, but how do you leave a rating for someone who hasn't used the LocalBitcoins escrow? I just sent directly to a cash-in-hand buyer's address, but see no option for feedback, just a cancel deal button and send message box.

There is not currently a way to leave feedback without using escrow.

[2weiX]

Not sure if this has been mentioned already, but how do you leave a rating for someone who hasn't used the LocalBitcoins escrow? I just sent directly to a cash-in-hand buyer's address, but see no option for feedback, just a cancel deal button and send message box.

There is not currently a way to leave feedback without using escrow.

that really sucks.
really, really.