Silk Road forums
Discussion => Newbie discussion => Topic started by: redDot333 on July 22, 2013, 04:19 pm
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So im trying to buy bitcoins for the first time and its looking like localbitcins is going to be the easiest option for me. Anyone have and advice on meeting someone in person rather than doing a direct bank transfer? It seems to be pretty safe from what i have read on the forums and researched. also, after the bitcoins are transferred do they go directly into your SR wallet? Im still kind of confused on how that whole process works.
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It's pretty safe to meet the bitcoin seller. Don't forget, it's not illegal to buy Bitcoins. But it is illegal to use them to buy drugs on here, so sending the bitcoins you've bought straight to your silkroad wallet address would be pretty silly. Use a site like bitcoinfog which basically washes your coins and sends them to your SR wallet address without anyone knowing.
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Also, localbitcoins uses escrow. I've never had to do a face to face because if you do a bank deposit / transfer, then as soon as they receive funds, they can release the escrowed bitcoins. If they choose not to, then take it to LBC's resolution center with proof of deposit or whatnot and they'll release the funds to you.
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I'm a little paranoid about face to face meetups. Think about it. Yes it's legal to buy BTC but if you're 100% legit, why not go through Mt Gox and buy via your bank account? Why? Because you have other plans.
Paranoid theory #1092:
I'm a cop. I'm concerned about drug dealers in my area (who may be getting their packages through SR). So I set up seller account on LBC. Nothing wrong with that right? You show up to meet me, we do the transaction, all is good. After you leave, I tell my partner what you look like and he jots down your license plate number. We track you down and watch your residence for a while. Maybe keep tabs on you for a long while. Maybe nothing else happens. Maybe you are a drug dealer and the traffic patterns at your home give us enough probable cause to bust you.
Anyway... Yeah that makes me nervous.
On the other hand, I just got burned buying BTC on SR. There is no buyer protection for BTC so buyer beware. Not many options left I know. Buying online through LBC is one -- but many of the options involve snail mail or walking into a bank. See paranoid theory above and consider how easy (easier actually) it would be to apply to a bank situation. Banks have cameras, right?
Sorry about being Captain Bringdown today...
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someone in ireland got raided after selling btc to the police in a f2f transaction. there was a thread on bitcointalk. it's not 100% safe but then again nothing really is
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True dat.
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just did my first btc purchase last week thru localbitcoins - i only purch'd one coin at first meeting - met at a mcdonalds that i knew had wifi - guy selling was a young kid, maybe 21, nice enough kid - he knew this was my first purchase that i was trying to wrap my brain around how this worked by buying one
gave me a few tips - i showed him the cash, he showed me his iPhone opened to his eWallet (i suppose a software literate person could have set it up to show a fake wallet) but i gave him the cash, he hit "send" and 30 seconds later the blockchain wallet on my laptop was showing 1 coin had been received and within 10 minutes there were 2 confirmations - seller had agreed to stay until 2 confirmations had come (after your coin is deposited, your wallet will start seeking confirmations that it is a real coin or hasn't already been spent somewhere else).
After six confirmations (45 minutes or so later) a green check mark appeared next to the deposit which meant it was good to spend. Last time i checked, that coin had 508 confirmations showing. Each coin has some sort of code identifying it individually, so the system is going back thru every transaction it's been thru to make sure at some point it didn't get duplicated - this is what i've gathered. Someone more knowledgable might fill in more detail or correct me if i'm wrong.
The BOA cash deposit isn't a bad way to do it - i only met the guy f2f cause it was a 15 minute drive to meet with the guy. But if you do do BOA, keep in mind, you have 90 minutes to make the deposit from the time you clik the "buy" it now button, to hold the price it was bought at. I'm not sure what happens if you don't make the deposit inside of 90 minutes, so you might get the app downloaded onto your phone and wait till you're outside BOA to hit the "buy" button. Just a suggestion
Don't talk SR or anything illegal with the seller - your paranoia that it may be a cop may be right, who knows. It could be you're setting up a website and are thinking about offering bitcoin as means of payment, and best way to understand this stuff is to actually buy a few and see how the system works
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well localbitcoins still seems like the best option since they dont ask for that much info from you. I think im going to go with the cash deposit over face to face. also have been looking into bitcoinfog and that seems like a good option to send my coins after i get them in my localbitcoins wallet before theyre in my SR wallet though. does anyone else have experience with bitcoinfog and is this one of the best services like this you think?
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I feel like because I'd pick up f2f in a major city I should give this a shot but surprisingly it's less populated than I would think.
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I think the best option is some kind of reloadit card. You just pick one up in one of many retail locations (seems safer than a bank to me) and provide the pin to the seller on LBC. Problem is only a few sellers do this and their prices are pretty high.
If you're going to be doing this a lot with many $$$, of course you would want to use a variety of locations to get your cards. Same is true of a bank transfer.
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It's pretty safe to meet the bitcoin seller. Don't forget, it's not illegal to buy Bitcoins. But it is illegal to use them to buy drugs on here, so sending the bitcoins you've bought straight to your silkroad wallet address would be pretty silly. Use a site like bitcoinfog which basically washes your coins and sends them to your SR wallet address without anyone knowing.
Dude you are freaking me out. I've never used bitcoin fog :x
But I am wondering how can they track me since localbitcoins doesn't require you to enter your real name / address ?
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Yes it's legal to buy BTC but if you're 100% legit, why not go through Mt Gox and buy via your bank account? Why? Because you have other plans.
This is a perfectly understandable concern, but you can limit the risks by dyeing your hair, shaving and cutting your hair differently than usual, using cheap prepaid android phones you dispose of on a regular basis (Kroger, a grocer in parts of the USA, offers a decent android phone for 60 bucks, all the bells and whistles, with a reasonable prepaid plan, and asks for a surprisingly small amount of personal information. Just remember to discard each phone no later than every three months, and make absolutely sure to root, sideload and install cyanogenmod with all the usual bitcoin and tor apps from the hacked android marketplaces.
This is called a burnphone, btw. It's standard practice on the street.
Just use pseudonyms, minimal disguising and take a circuitous route to and from your rendezvous points, and you'll minimize risks associated with doing business face-to-face.
There are perfectly legitimate reasons to avoid the likes of mtgox, but as you mentioned, it's doubtful the LE will see it that way.
OTC peer-2-peer trades are supposed to be the norm, but somehow gigantic financial gateways like mtgox managed to dominate the bitcoin market.
Of course, everyone knows that mtgox spies on their users, collaborates closely with LE to bust people who are too careless, etc. But that should be really obvious to anyone.
Localbitcoins can be a major asset in terms of defense against traitors like mtgox and the like, but SR regulars have every reason to be wary.
Also, please keep in mind that bitcoins bought and sold face-to-face STILL need to be laundered same as mtgox and bitinstant, etc, because you must assume there's a significant chance LE will attempt sting operations.
Do not be careless. Just because trading bitcoins are perfectly legal doesn't mean the State likes the fact that paying taxes with bitcoin is 100% voluntary and optional, and auditing is damn near impossible.
That is what makes bitcoin so valuable. People really loathe the State, more than ever before.
Many senators have demanded and called for crackdowns and heavier regulation against bitcoin, or even bitcoin-specific taxes and regulatory bodies far more draconian than homeland security and drug enforcement agency combined, so we may be facing a NATO or even G12 ban on bitcoin.
This means bitcoin traffic needs to be tunned over Tor, or even I2P, since Tor was and is still a USA Navy research project, and their directory authorities and many Tor relay servers are fully under LE control.
There are some altcoins (alternative cryptocurrencies similar to bitcoin, but with minor improvements or changes to various parameters, such as litecoin, namecoin, ppcoin, etc) that are intended to be run entirely 100% within anonymity networks or even darknets tunneled over anonymity networks such as Tor and I2P.
These have not yet taken off, but they may grow in popularity once national governments begin using international treaties, especially NATO and G12, to begin cracking down on bitcoin all over the world.
It will happen, it's inevitable. The only question is how long it'll take before the hammer falls.
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i buy from localbitcoins by depositing cash into the sellers bank account. he tells me who he banks with, i go to my nearest branch of that bank with his acc no, sort code and message and pay the money over the counter. there is no trail of my identity involved. the bank doesn't ask. they do have cctv but that is an extreme length for le to go to, just don't look up at the cam anyway, keep looking down until you get up to the bank teller.
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I did a localbitcoin.com transaction today. Very easy. Didn't realize there were so many people who want to sell their BTCs. I had the BTCs sent from my LBCT wallet straight to SR wallet. I no longer trust Blockchain or Bitfloor to hold any of my coins. I still have 2 bitcoins stuck in my bitfloor wallet that I'll never probably get back. This was from months ago when their accounts got frozen. My purchases on the road are very small and in frequent. I don't think it would be worth it for them to track me for a few marijuana laced lollipops. :o
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Always going to bitinstant I recently used localbitcoin and it was much easier than you think. You literally put in how many coins you want and set up a place to meet. Dude i met up with was 20-22yo and it all went down really fast. By the time I got home everything was cleared and I was moving my coins around .. great experience.
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We track you down and watch your residence for a while. Maybe keep tabs on you for a long while. Maybe nothing else happens. Maybe you are a drug dealer and the traffic patterns at your home give us enough probable cause to bust you.
There isn't enough taxpayer money on the planet to go after smalltime drug dealers like that.
Watching a house like that requires more money than God.
Even the DEA only has so much money, and ignore small fry.
Why waste a limited budget on small fry when you can pull in the big kahuna?
It makes your precinct or agency look slightly less like a bunch of incompetent bums.
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because the small fry are easy to catch and makes the piggies stats look good. busting a big smart drug dealer who knows his shit, which he wouldn't be a big fish if he didn't, costs shit loads of money. and there is still no guarantee his expensive lawyers won't get him a not guilty in court and make the piggies look amateurish.