Topic: Getting around a government ban on BTC (Read 3604 times)

I suspect 'no' in the scheme of things.  It's not a big trade to me as a relative 'old timer', and is pretty small-time relative to trades on semi-functional exchanges.  It is, however, an amount that I would feel comfortable putting at risk in one transaction albeit with certain realistic safeguards.  But my risk tolerance is low.  As is my tolerance for being screwed which pisses me off more than hurts me (or would if it were to happen.)

Localbitcoins is distinctly unappealing to me due to the hassle factor and relatively low value potentials.  Or was last I looked.  This is in part due to my physical location however.  People willing to do this USD value purchase via cash in the mail did exist when I was looking around some months ago, but wanted a significant premium and wanted me to take the risk.  I ended up going with Coinbase which has been working out for me so far.  I also had good luck with Bitcoin-Brokers.org when I used them.

Do you have a source for this? What do you consider a "large trrader"? I see one guy near me who is offering to exchange $10000 cash for bitcoins or bitcoins for cash, does that count as a large trader?

Are there any volume estimates available for Localbitcoins? I really suspect whether their volumes are as large as Mt Gox and BTC-E. Most of the large traders stay away from Localbitcoins. It is mostly used for low volume trades.

Yup Bitcoin co. of Thailand is some sort of exchange or something that fell afoul of the Thai authorities... very likely in a mistaken assumption of what Bitcoin actually was...

Bitcoins are not banned in Thailand.

Yea bitcoinrocks it is really unfortunate to hear that Thailand has banned biticon while other countries are giving it a tough time. Your mentioned details really seem worth trying but you know many fraudsters have got active to loot innocent users so please tell me how can I trust your source?. (make answer brief in bullet form preferred)

There just has to be a way for btc to enter into the economy from outside the country. There are some services which people can do over the internet, those could be paid for in bitcoins (programming, translation, sexchat), the people who earn bitcoins in such a way can then trade face to face with the other people.

I've read somewhere that even the average people in china is trying to accumulate btc against yuans steady inflation of its value.

If exchanges are banned officially how average people would continue to buy btc or better use it as a currency? Regarding this volatility and government's oppression i cant see a future for a coin not anonymous at all.

However btc/yuan pair is still correlated with other exhanges (mtgox, bitstamp and such) and this is confusing, how on earth a currency is prohibited from exchanging to fiat still correlates in value with other markets? And volume is not getting any lower even though there is no new/fresh yuan getting deposited to the exchanges.

I forgot about that ... sure, if cash deposit in China works, then Bitcoin-Brokers.org or similar service there would work pretty well.    That is .., until they start confiscating funds of people caught selling coins that way.

I wonder if cash deposit (by a third party, without providing identity) is an accepted method in China.

The only way bitcoin (and the ALT coins) will be successful long term is if we exercise our rights through the public policy process.  Avoiding regulation is certainly an option, but I think that the value, practicality, and usability of bitcoin would be much better if the US government WAS more open to its adoption.  The USA could be the hub for the bitcoin economy if it wanted to.  Bitcoin should be treated fairly - just like every other asset in the United States.

Media pundits are acting like no money laundering goes on in flee markets, laundry mats, dry cleaners, or car washes.  Bitcoin is an idea worth defending!  We're getting closer with the introduction (and possible revising and reintroduction) of HR 77 Free Competition in Currency Act.

Also LocalBitcoin's only reports volume for online trades, not in-person trades - even the in-person trades which are processed through the LocalBitcoins transaction system.

That volume number is misleading.  A lot of trades are arranged by localbitcoins.com, but do not use their wallet, but simply go P2P.  Those don't get counted towards volume.

I think getting around bans is silk road. The operator seems pretty... hmmm, Idealistic? Get under Tor, trade some stuff with trusted escrow services, deposit cash account to account, it's not illegal to buy Bitcoin yet is it? Not a good way to do illegal trades, if it ever gets that bad, but I'm sure someone will figure something out.

Hey I got a great one, setup a Bitmessage exchange site, you can send as many messages as you like using a GPU, get a good automated service started and start trading, hell no one will even know where the hell you are, and it will take them figuring out SHA512, even with pre-image that's a monster to break.

probably just setup a Open Transaction Federation of servers over a territory, hell make them decentralized, anyone who wants to start one up can and join a Federation. Setup the OT server to act as a Escrow service under a contract to setup two transactions account to account with the legacy banking system,

I wrote this some time ago, could work if implemented properly.


I found this in one of Satoshi's threads.


Edit: Hell you can go crazy on it and build it on top of a Namecoin domain, serving through Tor or I2P for maximum annonymity. Those obsessed with finding out who you are can't even check the volume of transmissions to find you, because the thousands of exchanges are exiting Tor from everywhere.

You can even take it to a whole new level if implemnting SHA-3 with only 1-4 iterations of the non-linear component, those configurations are reversible; They act like compression algorithms rather than hashes, just follow the keccak community to find out how. Anything after 4 iterations gets exponentially harder to reverse. Basically you can turn a 1000 page book, turn it into a 1024bit Hash string to be reversed later.

http://keccak.noekeon.org/

China has not banned Bitcoin. It has banned exchanges from fiat to Bitcoin. The Bitcoin economy in China is in good health.

If people would take the trouble to find things out, then the recent downturn need not have happened. When the truth finally dawns then the price may go up again.

I'm not interested in those people. Of course you can make some short term money with BTC (for believers, gaining FIAT on the back of BTC feels
a bit dirty), but if you understand cryptocurrency you can see a completely re-structured global society.

(PS. I think the porn-industry could really boost actual usage for cryptocoins in a way SR did, hence the SXC reference.  )

That's what 'bitcoin-brokers.org' does.  I used their service for a while with very good results, but now I just use Coinbase (in part because I've given up all hope of financial privacy using Bitcoin.)  I've followed them since, and so far I've not seen anyone with bad results.

The escrow agent could always decide to pack it in with all current money or get hit by a bus or whatever of course so, as always, it's best to never play with more than a guy can afford to lose.

A while ago the operator stopped taking on sellers when he had to many (and started again as conditions change.)  That was a good sign in terms of gauging his motives, but of course it could also have been a confidence trick.  One way or another if I were running a legitimate escrow, I would not want to be holding more value than necessary.  To actually do it right in terms of security and fail-safe systems and such could take a lot of focus and be a fair amount of work.

I'm guessing that the fun will come to an end if/when it becomes unlawful to deposit cash into a random person's account without some modicum of 'know-your-whatever-ness'.  I'm surprised it's even allowed now to be honest.  Probably it would be implemented by some combination of claw-backs and/or banks just shutting out customers who do this.  My guess.

I think bans do scare the weak hearted bitcoin investors, and as soon as the dust cloud settles down everything returns to normal.

Indeed. Bans don't scare anybody.

Focus should be more and how can we use it differently other than
trading it for FIAT to get rich quick or holding it 'till the apocalypse is over.
We need actual uses for BTC. Maybe the Altcoins could play a role in this too.

Shame to see cryptosextoys temporarily not accepting Sexcoins anymore. Stuff like
this is what's going to get it going. Actual uses for all the decentralized, anonymous,
instant, worldwide characteristics of our precious coins.

How could anybody not love weed? It's the bitcoin of plants!

anonymity with bitcoin is not the issue here. it's getting the currency into bank accounts anonymously that is the problem. with any other crypto, you'd need an exchange that would require registration, a bank account and an ID.

That makes a lot of sense. I hope it happens soon.