Lol, I bought bitcoin with coinbase when this HN article was first posted 3 hours ago, and the price has gone up almost 5% since then. Is bitcoin magic or something?
Instant Bitcoin Purchases at Coinbase
71–80 of 88 posts
Re: Instant Bitcoin Purchases at Coinbase
#72Think about it -- this is news because Bitcoin is a less approachable currency than....stamps, or baseball cards.
Those are simple because they are physical artifacts, but let us consider the process of using those for trade. A thirteen year old wants to send $4 to his friend. He wants to put money in a pool to buy a 4-pack of Terraria on a Steam sale for $10. He will receive one of the copies for his $4. His friend lives in another state. He buys an envelope for 20 cents. He buys a stamp for 46 cents. He tries to look up his fr…
Agreed.
Now consider Bitcoin:
Somebody wants to pay somebody else for something using Bitcoin, but can't because You Can't Buy Bitcoins.
Re: Instant Bitcoin Purchases at Coinbase
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
> instant deposit methods such as Western Union and Moneygram Have you actually tried to send a Western Union lately? Ugh. It is a nightmare compared to just linking your bank account. I use Coinbase because they don't support payment systems that cater to criminals.
> I use Coinbase because they don't support payment systems that cater to criminals. Banks are little more than fronts for criminal activity. http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/01/04/big-banks-and-drug-mo...
Comparatively maybe less than .01% of all banking transactions involve illicit funds.
I had lunch with a DEA agent who claimed that 5-10% of all dollars transmitted by Western Union were the result of drug trafficking.
Re: Instant Bitcoin Purchases at Coinbase
#74Someone credible is finally trying to compensate for the abysmal failure that is Bitinstant (see http://bitinstantscam.com and basically any Bitcoin forum). That is fantastic. However, let's not get carried away. This is not instant for first-time users. You still have to go through verification and wait at least 4 business days for your first purchase to go through before reaching the qualifications for instant purc…
Is this really 'instant'? I tried using Coinbase to buy Bitcoins a little over a month ago. Spent a week or so logging in repeatedly, including right at 6 AM EST, which is supposedly when the site 'resets' and the day's limit goes back to 0. I was never able to buy; kept getting "Sorry, we're over the day's limit" error messages again and again. Tried a solid 10 or 12 times over the course of a week. I guess that means things are good for Bitcoin if it's turning away that much business (I assume there are legions more and I'm not the only one), but it certainly sent me, for one, looking for alternatives.
Re: Instant Bitcoin Purchases at Coinbase
#75[deleted]
Re: Instant Bitcoin Purchases at Coinbase
#76Someone credible is finally trying to compensate for the abysmal failure that is Bitinstant (see http://bitinstantscam.com and basically any Bitcoin forum). That is fantastic. However, let's not get carried away. This is not instant for first-time users. You still have to go through verification and wait at least 4 business days for your first purchase to go through before reaching the qualifications for instant purc…
Bitinstant isn't any more a scam than Mt. Gox is. They're just both services that are run by folks who weren't expecting to hit the scale they are now, have no experience building financial systems, and are waaaay in over their heads.
Bitinstant regularly provides a worse price to customers than they could possibly have obtained on any public exchange at any time between receiving payment and sending the coins. Users can apparently recover funds stolen by BitInstant by making noise in public places.
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1ccjgh/psa_bitinsta...
Re: Instant Bitcoin Purchases at Coinbase
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bitinstant isn't any more a scam than Mt. Gox is. They're just both services that are run by folks who weren't expecting to hit the scale they are now, have no experience building financial systems, and are waaaay in over their heads.
Bitinstant recently laid off all of their support staff and has gone quiet for nearly two weeks on support related matters. Their CEO, Charlie Shrem, used to constantly tweet several times per day. He hasn't tweeted in 9 days now and seems to have vanished ( https://twitter.com/charlieshrem ). Over the holiday weekend, their $8/mo SquareSpace account used for hosting their blog was suspended for billing issues (thoug…
Their bitcoin service to top up phones disappeared pretty quickly too and never came back, also their debit card service never happened. They used 'VouchX' which was run by a shady guy who disappeared after LR went pop so maybe that's why they can't afford staff.
Re: Instant Bitcoin Purchases at Coinbase
#78Someone credible is finally trying to compensate for the abysmal failure that is Bitinstant (see http://bitinstantscam.com and basically any Bitcoin forum). That is fantastic. However, let's not get carried away. This is not instant for first-time users. You still have to go through verification and wait at least 4 business days for your first purchase to go through before reaching the qualifications for instant purc…
Western Union would never allow their service to be used for instant buying of bitcoins, if they find out you're using it to trade any kind of digital currency they seize your next transactions and block anything going to your service. This is to prevent scammer MITM auction fraud, credit card fraud on their online transfer sending service, to comply with anti money laundering nonsense and to crush competitors.
MG is the same. To reach critical mass, you'll need to sign up existing stores or prepaid card distributors to sell vouchers for you much like how Ukash works. Then you can walk into a corner store and buy with cash a voucher to plug into the site and get coins immediately. For this not to fail like bitinstant you need a huge amount of VC finance to float between collecting cash revenues and fronting coins to buyers.
Ukash still isn't allowed into the US market, Paysafecard was only allowed in because they sold crippled vouchers that can't be used for online gambling. Bitcoin can be used for anything, so unlikely the feds would greenlight this either and not end up seizing your company and jailing everybody whenever Nevada government complains about your service enabling gambling that doesn't benefit them, or copyright lawyers cry it is being used to pay for one of those automatic torrent download services so you don't reveal your US home IP.
Re: Instant Bitcoin Purchases at Coinbase
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't that like most credit cards, bank accounts with online banks and creating a 'link' between bank accounts you own already at this point?
The problem is that most people who find themselves in need of Bitcoins for the first time need them immediately. Having to wait several days is a deal killer for many people in this position. That puts a huge damper on new adoption.
Lucky for coinbase is now prepaid credit cards you buy in stores have an activation delay for unknown reasons, here it is a 3hr delay and they don't bother telling you except for tiny fine print, and everytime you try to use it before delay is up, it resets all over so seems like your card never works.
So if people are still buying PPD cornerstore visas then they'll wait for bitcoins, especially since bitcoins are used for niche items like drugs (lol), VPNs/hosting, speculation or cheap remittance
Re: Instant Bitcoin Purchases at Coinbase
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
Probably your credit report. The information you mention is what would be on your credit report, assuming that car was purchased with financing.
I have never financed a car yet my auto ownership history is in these databases. I think they buy them in bulk from state DMVs.
I think the GP is correct. One such question is something similar to:
"You may have opened an auto loan in January 2010. If so, how much is/was the monthly payment?
A. $0-99 B. $100-299 C. $300-499 D. $500+ E. I did not open an automobile loan in January 2010."
Information like that could certainly be obtained from your credit report but I doubt the DMV knows how much my car payment was.