Bitcoins Direct Support Thread

[peepee]

We don't.  If we did we would be out of biz.   Say FC4B produces 5K BTC per day but demand for BD is 9K BTC per day.  Where do you get the other 4K BTC?  Buy them from a loss on the market?  Double spends?  Getting a little meta here but if a store (any store) continually runs out of product (any product) then the price is too low. 

Currently (and at current price) demand for BD exceeds FC4B (and our other ventures).  Supply and demand.  
The demand for BD exceeds our ability to supply it at the current price point.  By making the price less attractive it will reduce demand and avoid scenarios where we have to post [OUT OF COINS].

TL/DR: Will 0.5% fee be less popular than 0.5% discount?  Of course.  That is whole point!

I was under the impression that when you closed availability, it meant you sold all your coins available (from FC4B). I didn't know you sold some/any at a loss. That's just... silly.

I get what you're saying about s/d. All I really meant was damn.. I liked it when it was a discount. 

[TangibleCryptography]

Update 11/8/2012 - more coins available.

[chrisrico]

Never said it wasn't helpful.

Just.. damn. A discount is better than a mark up. That's all.

When low prices leads to the demand for a good or service being far greater than its supply, the only rational thing for a supplier to do is to raise the price. This allows them to make a greater profit, which in turn allows them to more quickly increase supply to meet demand.

[jwzguy]

Never said it wasn't helpful.

Just.. damn. A discount is better than a mark up. That's all.

When low prices leads to the demand for a good or service being far greater than its supply, the only rational thing for a supplier to do is to raise the price. This allows them to make a greater profit, which in turn allows them to more quickly increase supply to meet demand.

Absolutely correct. What happens otherwise is what's happening right now on Long Island and other areas affected in NYC. It's illegal to raise gas prices, so no one goes to any additional expense to bring in gas through extraordinary means, you have to wait on line for 3-4 hours at the handful of stations that occasionally get fuel, and most people just don't get any gas at all.

[TangibleCryptography]

[CLOSED - OUT OF COINS]
Even with the new pricing demand continues to be strong.  Not taking any new purchase orders at this time.  Should have a better idea of acquiring volume by tomorrow morning.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Update 11/12 - Still out of coins today (and possibly tomorrow).   

We had a large buyer pre-purchase our entire inventory (five figures BTC) for this week.  FC4B is doing volume ahead of projections so we may fulfill this order soon and re-open for general sales.

Yes we can do custom sales more than $5,000.   The use of a bank wire is required and it often requires funding over multiple days.  If interested just send an email to info@tangiblecryptography.com.   Generally speaking we don't allow very large custom sales to new buyers without extensive trading history.

[zebedee]

Update 11/12 - Still out of coins today (and possibly tomorrow).   

We had a large buyer pre-purchase our entire inventory (five figures BTC) for this week.  FC4B is doing volume ahead of projections so we may fulfill this order soon and re-open for general sales.

Wow.  I imagine your use of exchanges is well down on say 2 months ago?

[TangibleCryptography]

Update 11/12 - Still out of coins today (and possibly tomorrow).   

We had a large buyer pre-purchase our entire inventory (five figures BTC) for this week.  FC4B is doing volume ahead of projections so we may fulfill this order soon and re-open for general sales.

Wow.  I imagine your use of exchanges is well down on say 2 months ago?

Yes good observation.  Our exchange volume is down about ~90% despite total volume being close to double what it was 60 days ago.  We may look to expand our LoC which would allow us to hold enough coins to ride out the intra-day imbalances between FC4B and BD; this would allow us to become completely exchange independent.

[TangibleCryptography]

Update 11/13:
Coins available for purchase on 11/14/2012.  We will accept PO for deposits made on 11/14/2012 or later.

[TangibleCryptography]

[CLOSED - OUT OF COINS]

We responded to PO in the order they were received.  We have exhausted our likely supply (based on projections on coins purchased through FC4B and other properties) for the day.  I am not sure where all this demand is coming from, word of mouth?, some third party site/blog/article?, pent up demand?  Anyways it is unusual in that demand continue to exceed our supply.

[TangibleCryptography]

Oh a friendly reminder since for ~1% of clients this seems to be complicated*:

DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES DEPOSIT FUNDS INTO ANY ACCOUNT OWNED BY TANGIBLE CRYPTOGRAPHY LLC UNLESS YOUR PURCHASE ORDER HAS BEEN APPROVED AND HAVE BEEN GIVEN A UNIQUE SINGLE USE DEPOSIT CODE (i.e. D1234567).

Unauthorized deposits will be subject to a security hold of 72 hours and then refunded by company check.  You will not receive bitcoins in the event you make an unauthorized deposit.    No exceptions.


* one would think the giant bold red disclaimer on the OP, and in funding instructions would be sufficient, but then one would be wrong.

[BCB]

TC.

This response is coming as a result of the ECB paper.  The ECB paper has marked the beginning of the mainstream's realization of the inevitability of BTC widespread adoption.   These are probably major players getting in off-market to avoid price spikes on the exchange.


Just my 2C.

[TangibleCryptography]

TC.

This response is coming as a result of the ECB paper.  The ECB paper has marked the beginning of the mainstream's realization of the inevitability of BTC widespread adoption.   These are probably major players getting in off-market to avoid price spikes on the exchange.


Just my 2C.

We have noticed some larger sized orders from new clients and the average order size has increased.  Hadn't thought about the timing of the ECB report but it would fit with the timeline. 

I guess I just need to come up with more innovative ways to acquire larger and larger quantities of coins.

[TangibleCryptography]

Update for 11/15:
We will NOT have coins available for sale tomorrow (11/15) and are not accepting POs.   We dipped into our reserves some to cover PO today and to avoid being caught in a net short scenario it is prudent for us to rebuild our reserves.

[Bitcoin Oz]

TC.

This response is coming as a result of the ECB paper.  The ECB paper has marked the beginning of the mainstream's realization of the inevitability of BTC widespread adoption.   These are probably major players getting in off-market to avoid price spikes on the exchange.


Just my 2C.

We have noticed some larger sized orders from new clients and the average order size has increased.  Hadn't thought about the timing of the ECB report but it would fit with the timeline. 

I guess I just need to come up with more innovative ways to acquire larger and larger quantities of coins.

BTC-GLOBAL launches soon 

[jwzguy]

Update for 11/15:
We will NOT have coins available for sale tomorrow (11/15) and are not accepting POs.   We dipped into our reserves some to cover PO today and to avoid being caught in a net short scenario it is prudent for us to rebuild our reserves.

Just out of curiosity, did raising your buy price significantly affect your incoming volume?

I can't be disappointed about btc buying volume being so high, even though you getting wiped out makes it harder to buy. We are living in exciting times!

[DeathAndTaxes]

Update for 11/15:
We will NOT have coins available for sale tomorrow (11/15) and are not accepting POs.   We dipped into our reserves some to cover PO today and to avoid being caught in a net short scenario it is prudent for us to rebuild our reserves.

Just out of curiosity, did raising your buy price significantly affect your incoming volume?

I can't be disappointed about btc buying volume being so high, even though you getting wiped out makes it harder to buy. We are living in exciting times!

It did.  We saw a healthy bump in our incoming volume but the demand for BD is kinda hard to believe.  It grew from roughly 5K BTC per week to ~10K BTC per week over the course of ~3 months.  Growth was pretty steady and consistent.  Then roughly two weeks ago we saw demand nearly double ... and then it increased about 50% after we relaunched and then this week is up (if you could fill all orders) about double that.  So more like 50K demand. 

Any growth in FC4B looks like pissing on a forrest fire.  Honestly it is hard for me to explain where the demand is coming from but we simply can't handle it.  Not even close.  I hate to turn sales away but even if FC4B doubled we should still be "short".

[jwzguy]

It did.  We saw a healthy bump in our incoming volume but the demand for BD is kinda hard to believe.  It grew from roughly 5K BTC per week to ~10K BTC per week over the course of ~3 months.  Growth was pretty steady and consistent.  Then roughly two weeks ago we saw demand nearly double ... and then it increased about 50% after we relaunched and then this week is up (if you could fill all orders) about double that.  So more like 50K demand. 

Any growth in FC4B looks like pissing on a forrest fire.  Honestly it is hard for me to explain where the demand is coming from but we simply can't handle it.  Not even close.  I hate to turn sales away but even if FC4B doubled we should still be "short".

That's awesome. So you guys have blown past all other exchange mediums except for MtGox. That's incredible...convenience and customer service goes a long way.

[TangibleCryptography]

It did.  We saw a healthy bump in our incoming volume but the demand for BD is kinda hard to believe.  It grew from roughly 5K BTC per week to ~10K BTC per week over the course of ~3 months.  Growth was pretty steady and consistent.  Then roughly two weeks ago we saw demand nearly double ... and then it increased about 50% after we relaunched and then this week is up (if you could fill all orders) about double that.  So more like 50K demand.  

Any growth in FC4B looks like pissing on a forrest fire.  Honestly it is hard for me to explain where the demand is coming from but we simply can't handle it.  Not even close.  I hate to turn sales away but even if FC4B doubled we should still be "short".

That's awesome. So you guys have blown past all other exchange mediums except for MtGox. That's incredible...convenience and customer service goes a long way.

Thanks, however in full disclosure the past two week may be an aberration and too short to draw any conclusions.  On a longer timeline (say 30 day moving average) we are just behind btc-e.   Given we aren't even an exchange it is still pretty impressive.  Remember there is no day-trading, all of these are transactions are coin inflows or outflows.  Exchanges report their trading activity but if they reported total inflows and outflows (i.e. total BTC deposited and withdrawn) they would be much lower numbers.  

The growth shows there is demand for a non-exchange structure.  I think part of the success is the the simplicity of the design.  When most people are looking to buy or sell gold they go to a gold dealer.  The dealer gives them a price and they take it or leave it.  They know the dealer is making a spread but they are just looking to buy or sell not daytrade.  Maybe they shop around a little bit but they don't try to take out some future's contracts just to buy a couple coins.  We are a Bitcoin dealer much like APMEX is a gold dealer.   There is no need for a client have us hold more of their coins/dollars then what is involved in a single trade.   So we aren't sitting on giant piles of coins and cash that clients need to worry about disappearing in a hack or scam.  In the light of various high profile hacks and scams I think that makes us attractive.

[ChipGeek]

There is no need for a client have us hold more of their coins/dollars then what is involved in a single trade.   So we aren't sitting on giant piles of coins and cash that clients need to worry about disappearing in a hack or scam.  In the light of various high profile hacks and scams I think that makes us attractive.

Yes indeed.  When I need to buy some coins again, I will certainly look to Bitcoins Direct first for the reasons listed here. 

I am surprised that the price isn't going up more with all the demand though.  That part seems strange to me.  Perhaps part of the reason is that FC4B / BD is not a free market.  Instead, they are (wisely!) controlling their portion of the market by not allowing themselves to be caught short (or long) with bitcoin.  But given that MtGox is a free market exchange, I would think their price should be going up more.  Oh well - if I was a trading expert, I would be too rich to be thinking about it here.