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Comment by slipt | Hacker News Reader

People keep asking me "What is the best way to convert my bitcoins to cash?"... anyone know a good answer that you know works (first hand)?

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If they're in the UK or USA they can contact me and I'm pretty happy to convert. (Shanee753@gmail.com). We can trade face-to-face if you're near the south of the UK. I have a number of good reviews on independent which I can provide. Generally I use the bitcoin-otc chat on freenode which seems pretty good.

Buy amazon.com giftcards and buy stuff on amazon, gyft.com and gc4btc.com sell them

It depends heavily on where you are, which bank you're with, with whom you're a citizen of, and a myriad of other factors.

Canadians may have an easier time than Americans, but Britons will be SOL.

> Britons will be SOL

Is it that hard to set up on BitBargain?

It is not smooth at all: https://bitbargain.co.uk/trade-bitcoins-app

Not to mention the 0.4XBT non refundable seller application fee.

For a one-off "I want to cash out" use case this is completely unworkable.

VAT applies to BTC<->GBP, so that really dampens adoption in the UK.

One relatively easy route is to setup a coinbase account, link it to your bank account, and have your coins converted and deposited from there.

Coinbase handled the recent surge in traffic pretty poorly. When prices tanked / fluctuated heavily, they turned off the ability to buy citing "a lack of bitcoin" and told users they could put in buy orders now for the market price on Friday or Monday. Two days later when the price is back up to ~$700 you can mysteriously buy again.

I'm not one for conspiracy theories, but USD liquidity has been extraordinarily frustrating over the past several days since most exchanges are foreign (and US bank wires take days to weeks).

I thought we were talking about converting to cash, not buying. I agree that the hard stop on buying is extremely annoying, and that makes coinbase a bad choice for playing the market. If you want to do fast transactional orders, CampBx is probably a better choice.

I have successfully used localbitcoins.com, using National Bank Transfer. Use their escrow service. Note that you probably do not want to sell to people through paypal (they can easily reverse the transaction), nor to people though other easily reversible payment services.

Sell them to people for cash. I used to use MtGox to get a couple grand out here or there, but now it's too much of a pain. It depends where you are though. There are some decent Canadian options, and Coinbase is supposed to be good for Americans.

localbitcoins.com or bitcoin-otc.com (irc). Buy peer to peer and then sell to your non-technical friends or friends of friends with a 5-10% markup. It is best to not look at it as a "problem" but rather as a entrepreneurial opportunity.

I use an exchange, it's been the best way for me so far.

If in Europe - Bitstamp.net? Just remind them of tax issues if they earned money on speculation.

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