Bitcoin and general Crypto Currency RANT and my bright idea (maybe)

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I currently own zero crypto currency.

Previously I have owned Bitcoin, Doge, Quark, Litecoin etc…

Im currently attempting to buy some BTC so that I can trade for Maidsafecoin.

What really aggrivates me about the crypto currency world is that BTC was designed for peer to peer trade and yet you cant buy, trade, sell or swap BTC or almost almost any other crypto unless you go through a third party. This really pisses me off for the obvious reasons…

Sure I know I can go to a site like localbitcoins.com but why would I want to pay an inflated price?

And I know I can sign up for USD/BTC market places like cex.io but seriously those places are such a pain in the ass. You have to send them all sorts of documentation and they make you jump through all these hoops, by the time you do that a week or two has gone by and the price has completely changed.

Then you have the issue with the USD/BTC marketplaces that you have no idea if they will even be around in a months time and if your money is secure or not. I signed up for Vault of Satoshi and made some trades with them about 6 months before they shut shop and they made me jump through multiple hoops just to confirm my details and deposit some money eventually it took about a month for it all to happen.

I am now signed up to cex.io but cannot even be bothered going through all of their crap to be able to deposit USD and then eventually buy BTC.

RANT over.

So, where am I going with this?

Secure, safe, peer to peer. The technology is here, so why can we not have a system where I can log into my online banking, transfer my fiat dollar funds to some sort of hands free, safe and secure network where I can easily trade, buy and sale crypto currency of any kind?

I envision a bittorrent style of desktop application where I can easily deposit, withdraw, buy, sell and trade all of my currencies with my crypto comrades.

Thoughts?

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The best I have found is coin base. They allow ACH transfers now in all 50 states for purchase of btc and the process is painless. No identity verification either if you transact less than $3,000/day.

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You can provide a good/service to receive the crypto-currency (just like you do fiat). There are also a number of p2p exchanges that are hoping to fill this gap. At least one is attempting to do exchanges into the traditional banking system, which seems like it could be a difficult task.

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There are apps like that already. But because the liquidity is low, you will see non-inflated prices that are much worse than the “inflated” price you get on centralized exchanges and brokers.
In other words centralized marketplaces aren’t a problem and decentralized aren’t a solution either. Each has its advantages and disadvantages and the both should have their place in the market.

The main problem is rules & regulations imposed by the government. You can’t go through the BS not because centralized exchanges want to make it hard on you to become their customer (why would they?) but because that’s what the government told them to do, or else.
The current system needs to be taken down.

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The “inflated price” of localbitcoins etc is precisely to pay for someone else dealing with all the hassle you’ve catalogued and want to avoid.

The problem is with the interface to banks and the consequent AML regulations (HSBC pah!) as @janitor points out.

There’s no way way to avoid this without inviting other costs, because you have your money in the banking system. All you have to do is get it out and you will be free of this… :slight_smile:

Roll on Safecoin!

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Excellent question. VoS was a very small Canadian (Ontario) exchange run by a small handful of young entrepreneurs. They had taken necessary precautions (registered as a Money Service Business) to ensure they were doing everything on the right side of the law. Meeting the AML / KYC (Anti Money Laundering / Know Your Client) laws adds a great deal of friction to the on-ramp process. This friction comes with great cost and many believed that the value and adoption rate of BTC would continue its ascent resulting in exchange commission fees that would outpace any overheads associated with compliance. As you know that didnt happen and exchange volumes petered taking cashflow and profits with it. VoS reinvented themselves outside the crypto space and conducted an orderly shutdown, Since then a second (controversial) Canadian exchange CaVirtex shut down in an orderly fashion and was recently purchased by US based exchange Coinsetter and revived. Another Canadian exchange QuadrigaCX is to start trading publicly early April.

As others have pointed out here, blame govt regulation for the hurdles and you can expect the on/off ramping of any crypto is not going to get any easier. Personally I get why and the current world events help temper my frustration with regulators.

I will assume you are from Australia and I suggest you have a look at the Senate Hearings on Bitcoin https://www.bitcoin.asn.au/australian-senate-economics-references-committee-hearings-digital-currency/ . I met and chatted with your Senator Sam Dastyari in Miami this past January and he is a champion of Bitcoin and a great guy!

The easiest way to acquire bitcoin is to earn it. Tipping has
exploded in many forums Reddit and ZapChain with Changetip.com leading the way and a few others like ProTip fast behind. Selling items and offering services in exchange for BTC is another way.

A popular site localbitcoins.com is expensive to buy but for small amounts and if your careful can work fine.

Let me know if you are on Twitter or Reddit.

GL

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Bitshares will do the decentralized exchange. Additionally there is Counterparty which can also do it. The problem is people don’t want to use the decentralized exchanges that do exist because people don’t think it’s currently easy enough to use yet.

http://www.bitshares.org

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I am on Reddit and I am on twitter (did I mention how much I hate twitter).

I am aware of tipping, I had website with a tipping application where people could tip my content. I had little widget in the footer of each post and I actually did receive a few tips.

It was more of an experimental content site for the fun Doge community and the tips were all in Doge coin.

My presence online has mainly been in content forms. I am not a programmer and have mainly written content for myself and others (paid and unpaid) in the way of blogs, web page content, product descriptions and usually humor content.

Because of this I am very interested in the tipping revolution and personally I would love to see a future where we no longer have to be bombarded with ads and have to directly pay for content but instead were all of us can choose what content we like and get value out of by tipping a small amount of money (BTC) for the content we love and if enough people do this then in reality the people who can create the best content online will prosper. Win/Win.

The current model that is influenced by money and politics and vice versa is garbage. Just today one of my buddies on Facebook posted something about how one of our tabloid newspapers was publishing racist things on its front page, almost everybody agreed with him. It’s all over the news here. But the reason that news paper can get away with it is because they have a team of people who sit on phones selling ads, all day every day. So in reality the content doesn’t matter all that much because people will habitually purchase the paper and the machine that the news paper is will continually roll out the content they have for decades whether people agree with it or not. The “journalists” who write the content have to play this political game where they are allowed to write what they want so long as it fits in with the editors guidelines and he or she bases that primarily on what will allow them to continue to sell ads and make money and not what will really matter and provide value to the people reading it.

It really is a terrible system.

I am not sure how I feel about regulation and taxation of Bitcoin yet. I can see both sides.

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