Bitcoin Vendors

T3B3

Good morning!

I would like to know where you purchase your bitcoins from. I have seen many vendors floating around. But due to the unregulated environment of such a "currency" I'm not that confident it handing over my money on a whim. I've been lurking on this website for years and have enough trust in the MSE's to ask for your recommendations. My investment will be ~£1000 with a plan to leave it alone for 10+ years.

Just to be clear, I know this is an extremely volatile investment and it's pretty much a blind gamble. This is part of my plan to diversify my savings, also looking to put similar money in Funding Circle.

musehead

It's highly likely that Bitcoin won't exist in 10 years, if you want to diversify into Bitcoin then maybe it would be sensible to set aside something like 1% of your total savings for it to account for the massive risk.


You can either send money to random UK based people by bank transfer on sites like localbitcoins and bitbargain (i've never heard of someone having a problem doing this) or open an exchange account such as bitstamp or kraken - but this will require sending copies of your ID to an unknown entity and sending an international bank transfer which comes with charges, the whole process will take several days.


I'd just find a good price on the local exchanges, the transaction is typically complete within a few minutes. If you're paranoid just make several smaller transactions.

Annisele

Is £1,000 a significant amount of money to you, or is it just a flutter?

If it's a significant amount of money, don't go near Bitcoins with a bargepole.

If it's a flutter, then IMO bitcoins are so risky to start with that the "handing over my money on a whim" bit isn't all that much of a problem.

If you're wanting to diversify, then (depending on what assets you hold at the moment) there are probably a *lot* of other assets you might want to look at first.

DJBenson

I bought 3 BTC last weekend after the price "crashed" - I made £150 in the space of a weekend when I sold them back. I used Localbitcoins.com. The only problem is, as a new trader, you might struggle in trading with people and have to look further down the list for less reputable (and I don't mean that in a derogatory manner - just they haven't been on LBC as long as the major sellers).

I had 3-4 trades refused by the big sellers but got along fine with people who were, like myself, trying to build their reputation.