It seems unreasonably hard to actually *get* bitcoin, especially so if you're from the US. All the exchanges appear to be outside the US and do not accept any normal form of payment (i.e. credit card or paypal). Now, I understand about paypal, given their propensity to allow chargebacks for basically no reason. However, credit card chargebacks are pretty uncommon. Compound that with the fact that most of these places are asking for scanned forms of ID, which is a little skeevy to be giving out to random websites, and then if you're lucky, you can also give them your bank account account number so they can withdraw funds in 4 business days. If you're unlucky, you have to do an international wire transfer, and most Americans have no clue how to do that (even people who are relatively technically savvy)... and again, sloooooow.
This has got to be a huge barrier to adoption of bitcoin and altcoins. If the bitcoin market spikes, it's not like Average Joe can just go to Amazon (or whatever) and buy him some bitcoin.
I am in this position right now. I have an account on Mt.Gox and working on making one on bitstamp.... but I can't actually buy anything until some human actually looks at the images I scanned and.... I guess determines I'm OK to give them money. This seems old, slow, and barbaric for something as progressive as bitcoin.
It seems like the single best thing that could be done to both drive adoption of bitcoin and drive the price up (due to increased demand) is to make it EASY to get bitcoins.
If some site came up with a credit card form and gave me a way to buy bitcoin RIGHT NOW... I'd happily pay a reasonable fee. Why hasn't this happened? Traffic would be through the roof. Slap a 10% fee over market price for bitcoins to cover credit card fees and rake in the dough.
This has got to be a huge barrier to adoption of bitcoin and altcoins. If the bitcoin market spikes, it's not like Average Joe can just go to Amazon (or whatever) and buy him some bitcoin.
I am in this position right now. I have an account on Mt.Gox and working on making one on bitstamp.... but I can't actually buy anything until some human actually looks at the images I scanned and.... I guess determines I'm OK to give them money. This seems old, slow, and barbaric for something as progressive as bitcoin.
It seems like the single best thing that could be done to both drive adoption of bitcoin and drive the price up (due to increased demand) is to make it EASY to get bitcoins.
If some site came up with a credit card form and gave me a way to buy bitcoin RIGHT NOW... I'd happily pay a reasonable fee. Why hasn't this happened? Traffic would be through the roof. Slap a 10% fee over market price for bitcoins to cover credit card fees and rake in the dough.
Do you go to Amazon and buy Pesos or Yen?
There are plenty of phone apps for wallet use. All you need to do is sell something locally like you would on craigslist and just accept BTC instead of cash. It might take a while waiting for a few confirms to go through.
Sell your trade/services and you'll get BTC for them.
