Quote from: PartTimeFiend on September 28, 2012, 10:38 amQuote from: Anonymou5 on September 27, 2012, 11:02 pmWhy you guys from UK dont use localbitcoins?Bitcoins for cash:https://localbitcoins.com/country/GBthanks for the tip - I'll look into it. Would be good to hear other more long term SR users also recommending this site. I like what Pine is saying about diversifying. Have 2 or 3 ways to obtain BTC. Don't become reliant on one method. That's what I'm currently doing...Exactly, think like a global investor. In fact everybody here should think like investors on a bunch of levels. Diversifying means of obtaining B$, if you're a vendor it's obtaining the highest ROI (return on investment) for the lowest risk, arbitraging regulations, geography to obtain the cheapest bitcoins for the most anonymity and the least expensive product.Quote from: PartTimeFiend on September 28, 2012, 10:41 amQuote from: elmergantry on September 27, 2012, 03:53 pmHey parttimefiend, without divulging any personal info can you tell me the name of your bank/building society please? 10 is a lot more reasonable than what my current building society charges - 20. If you don't want to say it publicly, please pm me, thank you!Lloyds TSB online banking is 10 (20 over the phone), and I understand that HSBC charge a flat rate of 10 for either phone or internet banking.Scandal! Throw the moneychangers out of the temple! *whips*Quote from: baddieboy on September 28, 2012, 10:46 amPine you are starting to border* on being pine*.:)Quote from: baddieboy on September 28, 2012, 10:46 amHuman beings like routine, as such MtGox has provided them with a safe means of buying virtually unlimited bitcoin as their convenience.If I was dealing in large volumes of bitcoin the last thing I would want to do is meet a stranger in exchange for cash.At least with the bigger exchanges you know the rules of the game and you can endeavor to create your own good, bad or indifferent system for laundering you money.I agree that SR users should not rely purely on the monolith corporate institutions for their bitcoin but in the mean time give us a break in discussing the MtGox issue.MtGox stops working and somewhere between 5/10 and 8/10 of yourselves have surely lost your main route to obtaining bitcoins. That's a bit of an emergency. I'm saying this stuff now so that I don't have to tell you "I told you so" in a couple of days/weeks/months. Because then you'll definitely be feeling super patronized and annoyed!Quote from: Rowsdower on September 28, 2012, 01:05 pmAs much as I like the anonymity aspect of using local exchangers, the option just isn't feasible for me as currently my nearest exchanger is over 50 miles away, and they're charging pretty steep prices. More importantly they have ZERO feedback which is hardly reassuring. Also in general I wouldn't be comfortable trusting some complete stranger with large sums of cash, how would I know they're not just going to go spend it as soon as we part ways after I drive a hundred miles to hand them the cash? If there was a local exchanger with a lot of positive feedback indicating a good history, I might consider it. I don't like to pay up front for people who I don't trust.EDIT: At the moment I've switched over to using the Pingit method for obtaining bitcoins, while not entirely anonymous it's not that different from when I used to transfer money to MtGox. It also works a lot faster, and only costs a little bit more. This will tide me over until hopefully MtGox and Intersango have a UK bank account deposit option again.I agree! It sucks! So more people, not less, need to get involved in selling OTC.It is possible to have a situation in which it would be very difficult to rob you. More importantly, if OTC grows, then the vast majority of people won't be physically meeting face to face, there will be probably be 'exchangers' who achieve that market function instead, and I think that would just happen initially, not as things went on. So you'll be using WOT systems where you pay somebody over the internet using paypal, online banking, sending people prepaid cards, whatever. All mediums of exchange can suit. Then that value will go into an independent Escrow system (one of many, with its own WOT) where there is a delay to prevent long cons. Then when the Escrow system has validated that bitcoins arrived in the appointed account/B$ address, then funds become released. It is possible to give an OTCE merchant bitcoins, that they cannot actually spend, one of the relatively as yet unknown features of bitcoin that will play a prominent role in securing our network, there is an entire flotilla of hidden features that make current thinking about the limits of bitcoins redundant.The point is that anybody can become an OTC vendor or an OTC buyer or an OTC Escrow merchant, but that we use WOT to prevent scams. None of this is intended to be legal, none of this will be regulated save by the market itself, it'll be on the darknet alongside the other black markets. Don't imagine that we're saying that you are an OTC buyer and you go to an OTC Escrow and an OTC vendor. No! I'm saying we'll use the fund principal instead. So you are an OTC buyer than wants B$100.00 In this situation, we can have a system in which that is split into B$1 amounts (for example, it'll probably be really a mirrored random or something) and put into different OTC Escrow services and dozens of OTC vendors will compete to fill the orders. This way, OTCV and OTCE don't even know how many buyers there are. They just know that the entire marketplace is requesting X bitcoins and some other non useful information to LE. There are literally millions of impoverished young people in developed countries, betrayed by State into funding a tax burden that is genuinely criminal, completely non-voluntary, it is the act of State Theft. We can offer those people a powerful means of obtaining decent consistent, stable income, to take back their dignity and independence with little risk while dealing a blow to the existing system. I think a lot of people are going to be up for that, don't you. We're using similar principals to insurance contracts here, and will be algorithmically trading to issue and distribute blocks of currency, blind mixing and other tricks as yet unknown but to a select few which will make traffic analysis a complete waste of time.I don't have all the answers or solutions here, a lot more research has to be done, but I know that the exchanges as a one stop shop are an evolutionary dead end.Unlike the past, constrained by the physical world, there is now no real limit on the sophistication to which our black market financial system can attain. This will be an area of ongoing innovation, for just about forever. It won't even be just bitcoins I'd imagine, but that's another day's work, let's continue with the tools that are available for now (I know Guru likes Chaumian cash, but we're not all there yet), it's too far ahead in the future to think about right now IMHO.I am adamant about this, because the route of cooperating with the authorities is the wrong way to go, that will not end well for the bitcoin community, they will be hung for doing so, merely because they are freely available for attack. I wouldn't put it past the federal government to arrest every member of every exchange they can get their hands on and throw them in prison on trumped up charges. If you've been reading about digital cash's sordid history, you'll know this has already happened to several purveyors of digital currencies outside the government's remit.My main concern right now isn't the exchanges actually, that's a problem that resolves itself, but the miners, because pooled mining is going to be the only viable production method and when the State makes Bitcoins illegal it will become tough to be a miner. Corporations like Butterfly Labs would be either closed or subverted by the enemy; so thoughts on making life difficult for those who would target miners would be appreciated. They are at, haha, the coal face of the entire discussion. Clearly decentralized production, but can the mining pool communicate over Tor or other darknets? I don't think most mining pools are currently working under the assumption they could be all arrested tomorrow morning.You have to believe that when LE go into operation, they will try to organize in such a way that they take down an entire network at once. So Boy/Girl Scout advocacy "Be Prepared" is well founded in fact from the case studies of previous takedown attempts. Australia, US, UK and other European countries are tied up together with their actions, so if you choose to mine bitcoin or buy from exchanges, you really want to be thinking about doing that with providers in developing markets, which are dramatically less likely to cooperate with developed ones, less likely to have the resources to police a 'developed problem' and quite happy to accept capital/industry, and have a 'English' problem when it comes to believing a bunch of computers hashing is an illegal activity.It starts with the OTC, primitive as it is today, so support your OTC merchants if it is an acceptable level of price/risk for you. At least investigate the option, even if it is not acceptable a proposal for you today, you may find the terms more compelling tomorrow. The main thing right now is that people aren't thinking about OTC, and we've got to change that.