Instant Bitcoin Purchases at Coinbase

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?

I've used Bitinstant, and it worked well enough (was a small transaction, however). My impression is that it isn't a scam, but more of a bunch of nerds in over their head.

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

You might try Authy. It's been working well for me.

If you have a discount phone service plan, e.g. Straight Talk, you may not be able to receive short-SMS/premium-SMS/texts-from-5-digit-numbers. I, like the other reply, recommend Authy. Also, barmstrong will probably chime in eventually.

Sorry to hear that happened.

Please send us a note on http://support.coinbase.com/

SMS is unfortunately unreliable in some instances. You should be able to receive a call with the verification code also as a backup.

Welcome to the new economy.

Probably your credit report. The information you mention is what would be on your credit report, assuming that car was purchased with financing.

I don't remember what other sites they were, but I've done this a few times for identity verification, seems like there's a central provider somewhere that does the same thing for different businesses

That's actually pretty simple. Equifax is the biggest provider of these types Q&A's. I'm not even sure that the company itself is exposed to the actual answers - I believe the credit bureau just responds with a pass/fail. Admittedly, it would be less creepy and more welcoming if they sent you to the Equifax website to do the verification. That way you would know that no one else actually has or will receive your personal info.

Same as everyone else - credit report companies. Experian, Equifax and others. Those already know all your previous billing addresses, credit lines, card numbers, etc.

Our team at Startup Weekend actually worked on "Identity Verification for Developers." So I'm pretty familiar with this. These kind of questions are called "wallet questions." You can get a lot of them from county records, which are public.

It's a standard service aggregated from public records, credit reports, etc. Sign up for any sort of ... anything, and you'll be asked these. UPS accounts, brokerages, Google Wallet, etc.

In many cases (I haven't tried this one in particular), the site you're visiting does not see the questions and answers, so only organizations that already know every detail of your life get to see them.

They seem creepy, but you have to ask yourself: why wouldn't some company know my address and who else lived there at the same time? The companies that send me catalogs and pre-approved credit offerings certainly know. (I forget the entire list of questions, but all the ones I've seen lately are address-based.)

Does anyone a Stripe-like startup providing a service like this?

It only defeats some of the purposes of the currency.

What, did you expect bitcoin to suddenly create an anonymous economy out of thin air? Unless you can create value, and then charge bitcoin anonymously for that value you have to convert previous holdings into bitcoin. You can do so anonymously via cash P2P. But if you would like to convert funds from the current system, you have to 1) use the current system 2) play by their rules.

This really doesn't even hurt the anonymity of bitcoin anyway, simply buy your bitcoins, run them through a tumbler, and voila, out comes anonymity.

The purpose of bitcoin is that the user controls it. It's about trust. Do you trust a bank with your money? Cypriots sure found out the hard way when their bank accounts were suddenly frozen. Do you trust a government with your currency? Argentinians sure don't as they're experiencing 10-20% inflation rates. Bitcoin allows you to store your wealth without being fleeced by currency controls of parasitic central banks. It's refreshing and quite profitable.

Buy BTC from tocomment Inc with credit card. If in 5 1/2 months the price of Bitcoin is lower, issue a chargeback and take no loss. If the price is higher, do not issue a chargeback and take the profit.

Sounds like a bad deal for tocomment Inc.

Credit card companies and Paypal will shut you down for being "high risk" or whatever. I wouldn't bother trying.

Virwox.com does this. They hold for a few days and charge high fees, but they certainly don't ask for lots of information like Coinbase is now doing.

Also, if you happen to live in the land of the free you can expect to pay a few hundred grand procuring the proper money transmitter licences.

Ah: https://coinbase.com/verifications

I was told "Insufficient Data for Questions". I guess my public record is not juicy enough.

Yes.

https://localbitcoins.com/

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 friend address on Facebook. It's not there. He sends his friend a text message, asking his address.

He addresses the envelope with his friend's address and his own return address. He licks and places the stamp in the top-right corner. He folds the dollar bills in a piece of scrap paper from the printer. He seals the envelope and drops it in a mailbox.

Several days later, his friend receives the $4. The friend deposits this with his own $6 to get a Visa prepaid debit card. Friend uses the prepaid card to buy Terraria on Steam, a gaming service which requires an account and email address.

Now, consider a transaction of $50 for a baseball card. Sending cash in the mail requires two stamps and two envelopes.

Who sends the letter first? What happens if one letter doesn't arrive?

Even stamps and baseball cards can present challenges for real-world transactions where physical co-presence between two parties is not possible.

We're a little backed up on sign up emails at the moment! Should be arriving shortly (scaling up workers). Apologies for the delay.

There's a big rally going on. It found support around 68 a week ago and it's been steadily climbing since.

For some people the point of Bitcoin is to get rich via speculation.

I'd say it depends on the person.

A feature bitcoin provides is it can be "anonymous", however most bitcoin purchases and purchasers don't need anonymity.

see here: http://zerocoin.org/

No. Bitcoin itself is simply a technology -- there isn't a "point" to it. Bitcoins can be anonymous if there's no information linking the transaction or public address back to you.

Pseudo-anonymity is one point of Bitcoin, but the only feasible way to quickly acquire Bitcoins pseudo-anonymously is to buy them in person, which defeats another point of Bitcoin (it being an online currency).

"the point"? no. More of a side effect, but something that alot of folks have clung to. In reality it's pseudo-anonymous, and depending on your interpretation, it's the opposite on anonymity: all transactions are conducted in the open. (the exchange of currency that is; not the underlying identity of item of value on the other side of the transaction)