Topic: Bitcoins Direct Support Thread - page 3. (Read 77896 times)

Just wanted to chime in here that I've been doing business through you guys well before I even had a Bitcointalk forum account. I watched as exchanges closed down or messed things up, and as people waited in massive queues on MTGOX. Thanks for the professional and quick service, you are the best!

Thanks. Normally that's just what I'd do; google it. I figured KYC was another one of those slang acronyms and wouldn't register in a search. Thank you for pointing that out, sometimes the obvious isn't.


Now my question is, what if I were to voluntarily supply the needed information. The other question was about international bank wires denominated in US dollars, or maybe it's part of the same question.

Did you drop PNC or did they close your account?

PNC recently sent out a notice to their customers that they will be changing their terms to require a PayPal-style arbitration agreement.  Customers that opt out receive a notice that their account will be closed in 30 days.  Some of PNC's (former) customers are not happy with this.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=kyc

What's KYC?

How about international bank wires in USD?

Update 04/29

Fee has been reduced to just 0.89%.
Full funding amounts, VWAP pricing, and multi-day contracts are again available.
For wires sent on 05/01 or later our wire account has changed to Wells Fargo.  Send a request for updated funding instructions.
At this time we are no longer able to accept international bank wires (originated from non-US bank) due to heightened KYC requirements for foreign funds.

Our supply of coins comes from FC4B and there is a bias in the price we pay.  Normally our price will be slightly higher than the VWAP for the same period.  Now we collect a premium on those purchases so this bias is usually within the margin of our fees.  However when the prices moves 50%+ per day this causes the sales to become highly random and hard to predict.  We could get a lot of panic sellers providing us coins at the lowest point of the day but it is more likely the upside bias increases as smart sellers look to sell into spikes and peaks.

We hedge this somewhat by buying/selling on exchanges throughout the day but in laggy fast moving markets there is risk in even attempting to do this.

TL/DR:
as intra-day volatility increases our average acquiring price is biased more to the upside and our ability to mitigate that risk (hedging via exchanges) is reduced.


It is very much so in more normal markets however 50% moves, DDOS, and unsure order execution are not exactly normal markets.

That being said we should be able to restore larger orders, VWAP pricing, and multi-day contracts in the near future.

Correct.  In normal markets VWAP is preferable for both us and large clients.  The largest transactions we have done are in excess of 1,000 BTC.  Obviously there is significant "timing risk" if a single spot price is used.

However lately markets haven't been "normal" not even by Bitcoin standardards.  As intra-day volatility increases our purchases tend not to be randomly distributed.  Sellers will wait (as they should) for peaks and spikes to sell us coins.  This means we generally are buying (before our fee) at higher than VWAP.  The problem is compounded by the fact that the daily swing is larger than normal AND when the swing is high the average buying price is pushed to the upper end of the range.

We partially mitigate this by using exchange accounts and selling into rallies and buying into dips to "normalize" our average buying price.

The markets are settling down and we should be able to resume larger sales, VWAP sales, and multi-day contracts again.


For spot orders (up to $10,000) we will lock in the rate in effect at the timestamp you SEND the wire (and notify us by email).  If price rises over the next two days it won't affect your buying price.  We can do this because we essentially are selling you the coins at the time you send funds.  Delivery of said coins simply needs to wait until funds post.

i.e. you wire $10,000 and the exchange rate is $200.  Ignoring our fee to make the math simple at this point you are long 50 BTC and we are long the incoming wire USD balance.  Delivery will occur once certified funds post (normally within hours for domestic wires, and within 2-3 days for international ones). 

Let me guess. During the time the coins were going from $150 to $200, as it is going up, the VWAP is in the middle, or maybe $170. During the time it is going down, from $266 to $50, the VWAP is also in the middle, or maybe $100.

That's too large a gap, and too unstable and volatile. No one wants to do business that way. The buyers would like a cheap price, but the business will lose. The sellers want a high price, but the buyer will lose.

That's what I think. I would like to order VWAP too, because since I am from another country, the bank wires can take up to 2 days before it gets to TangibleCryptography, and if the value of the bitcoin has gone up in those 2 days, naturally, I don't want that.

I'm curious.  Can you explain?  (Apart from the large order bit) this is very counter-intuitive.

The reason VWAP is generally chosen as a price-determination mechanism is precisely because in thin, volatile markets it's easy to fudge the price at any given time by placing strategic bids or offers or hitting a few bids or lifting a few offers, in order to manipulate the price that is observed by your counterparty.  Believe me I worked in the financial biz and there are all kinds of games played to deceive the naive.

Doing a 24-hr VWAP means that, from TC's point of view, because you buy coins randomly through the day, your average buy price can be expected to match the VWAP, less your bid-mid fee of course, to a reasonable extent, and perhaps more importantly, in an unbiased fashion (sometimes higher, sometimes lower, no real bias).

Therefore, I would have thought that a VWAP would be far more in your interest than an immediate fixing at some random intraday exchange price.

What gives?

Thanks.  I've added this thread to my watchlist, guess I just missed the opening about 20 days ago.  
It's difficult to tell when/if the first post in thread was ever updated since this forum software doesn't indicate an "Edited" date.
Maybe an email list for notifications of reopening for new accounts?

They keep the first post updated with this status.

Are you still accepting new buyers?

Thanks!

Update 04/22/2013:
Transaction fee reduced and maximum transaction size raised in light of reduced volatility and improved exchange performance.

Update 04/18/2013:

We can now accept future dated PO requests as normal.  Max transaction is $10,000 per client per day.

Update 04/15/2013:

Temporary changes in policy due to market conditions.
1) PO requests must be for current day only.  After 5PM EST you can submit PO requests for the following day.  Please don't submit PO request for days further out as we don't have that kind of visibility at this time.
2) No VWAP or multi-day trades.  Max transaction is $10,000 per client per day (first time clients limited to $5,000).
3) Our fee has temporarily been increased to 2.99% to hedge against intra-hour volatility.
4) MtGox has been trading significantly under bitfloor throughout the day.  The "spot price" be the greater of bitfloor & MtGox at the timestamp of wire notification.

We don't like this anymore than you do and will remove restrictions as soon as market conditions allow.  The temporary policies & market volatility increase your exchange rate risk on any transaction at this time.  You should weigh the risk of engaging in a purchase before submitting a PO request.

Staff
Tangible Cryptography, LLC

Thanks Snow.  This is correct.  The first step is to send a request to purchase coins.  It will be approved or denied and all terms specified.  Once you have an approved PO you can fund the order per funding instructions. 

PO = purchase order

What is PO?  Thanks in advance...

Probably our inbox is packed.  We are not accepting new PO "yet".  Hopefully sometime today.  If the markets can delivery timely quotes and volatility is less than 30% an hour we will start accepting POs.  I will get funding instruction to all new clients (like yourself) in the next couple hours.