Silk Road forums
Discussion => Off topic => Topic started by: ReallyNiceGuy on April 22, 2012, 03:42 am
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I'm pretty lost here. I want to order some things, and I loaded a debit card with 120 dollars for anonymity, but where can I exchange the money for bitcoins?
EDIT: It is not a MoneyPak.
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There are many paths you can take that all lead to the same bitcoins, but at different costs, durations, and difficulties. For a first time buyer, I personally would recommend going to a store that sells the little cardboard-esque MoneyPak reload cards. Note that you do NOT want to buy one of the prepaid Greendot debit cards, but one of the reload cards instead. They cost $4.95 to load money onto and many MoneyPak to bitcoin exchange vendors operate here on SR.
I personally trust and recommend BTCpal for MoneyPak transactions. There are many other exchange service vendors, but I do not feel comfortable recommending a vendor I haven't personally used. I've had many transactions of over a hundred dollars with BTCpal without any issues, and they offer one of the lowest rates on SR and a very fast turnaround time. Unless their profile lists that they have a backlog or are not taking orders at the current moment, you can be assured that you will have bitcoins in under 24 hours in most cases.
As a real World example, I just recently placed an order with BTCpal during one of the busiest times in recent history here on SR, the 420 sale. Not only did BTCpal deliver my coins quicker than expected and in time for the sale, they did so while dealing with a terrible personal issue of having a close relative's funeral to attend. In my history with BTCpal, they have always delivered even when faced with personal hardships and insanely large backlogs. In fact, when the favorite vendors feature was unveiled, BTCpal was the very first vendor I added to my very short list of favorites.
Good luck, I won't say it's easy to complete your first order here on SR but once you complete the first one it is fairly easy from there. Hang in there, don't hesitate to come back in here and ask for more help, and most importantly good luck and stay safe! I feel confident saying that you will likely find SR a good home base with a vibrant community of intelligent people with very diverse areas of expertise. Oh, and we have some pretty cool drugs here for sale too ;).
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I already bought a greendot prepaid card :|
Is there anyone I can trade it to?
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BTCpal, Sugar mama, etc. Even some vendors do it from time to time.
Check the money section on Silk road's marketplace for vendors doing moneypak to BTC.
Just be careful and read up about each in the Rumor mill section.
And if you're not in such a hurry, you can try get-bitcoin.com. They only charge 5%. And you can deposit cash into their back accounts at Chase and Bank of America. Turn around time, in my experience with them has been anywhere from 2 hours to 18 hours. Sometimes it can take ore than 24 hours. But if it does, they will refund you the 5% fee.
Check them out on the clearnet.
Another is Bitinstant.com. They can also do cash depoits for BTC. But you have to send the BTC to an intermediary like MT Gox account before forwarding it to your SR account. But if you go this route, you can get you BTC in under 3 hours I'm told.
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I already bought a greendot prepaid card :|
Is there anyone I can trade it to?
So you mean you've already bought one of the debit cards, not the MoneyPak cards? If so, I would advise withdrawing the money off of the debit card via ATM or some similar method and buying a MoneyPak with the cash. I don't know of any place that will sell a MoneyPak unless it is paid for in cash.
To answer if there is anyone you can trade with that will accept debit cards, not really. The reason is that credit cards (and debit cards by association, sadly) are able to perform chargebacks which is a problem with anonymous currency like bitcoins because once the seller gives you the bitcoins they have no way of retrieving them if you decide to perform a chargeback. Bitcoins are for this reason usually traded for currency methods that are irrevocable like a MoneyPak (once the money is taken from the MoneyPak it can't ever be retrieved by a scammer).
While you may find a way to get bitcoins with the money currently on your debit card, to be honest I would not recommend those methods for a complete beginner due to the usually increased risk of scams inherent in such methods. If you don't use MoneyPaks, I would recommend going the route of using one of the major trading exchange sites. The main drawback to the exchange sites is that of a paper trail, followed closely by the lengthy amount of time it sometimes takes to get your bitcoins.
You should be aware however that the increased speed and relative anonymity of MoneyPak exchanges comes at the cost of increased risk of scam compared to the major trading sites. This can mostly be mitigated by researching which vendors are trusted before using them, though the case of SumYunGai (do a forum search if you are curious of their misdeeds) goes to show that even once trusted vendors can be swayed by the temptation to take the money and run. Luckily, SumYunGai is the exception rather than the rule for trusted and established vendors here on SR.
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Can I have the money withdrawn from the card at the store?
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Excellent points and advice, Sonic. +1 Karma.
@ reallyniceguy, possibly. But you might need to buy something small and then get the remaining cash value out of it at the register.
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Can I have the money withdrawn from the card at the store?
Can put the card in an ATM and withdraw, or add it to a Paypal account and withdraw to your bank. Or find some sucker stupid enough to take Paypal for BTC somewhere on the bitcoin forums
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Can I have the money withdrawn from the card at the store?
While I can hardly speak for every store, most stores offer the option to get cash back when you buy something with a debit card. Cashiers can also technically get you cash back without buying anything (I've done this in the past when I had been a cashier), but this is against the rules at some stores. The usual method is to buy something like a pack of gum and then get as much cash back as you are able to take from the card. The only issue there is that you may have trouble getting all of the money off since you usually need to withdraw multiples of 10 or 20. If the debit card is reloadable and you plan to use it in the future, a few dollars leftover is no big deal but it can be frustrating to have leftover funds wasting away on a throwaway debit card.
EDIT: Thanks, Ben. Both posters before me were right on the money.
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Jesus, you guys are extremely nice. I almost can't take this.
Thanks for clearing things up. I'll figure something out.