Silk Road forums

Discussion => Off topic => Topic started by: Rook on November 12, 2011, 12:33 am

Title: Bitcoin-OTC
Post by: Rook on November 12, 2011, 12:33 am
I wanted to start a thread to help people learn to use Bitcoin-OTC.  It's a bit cumbersome and takes a while to figure out how it works, but once you're set-up, I think this is definitely the best way for most of us to both buy and sell our bitcoins.

To start off, here is a decent video to get people started using windows:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYJ-GdErX1c

I'm not a pro by any means, just recently endeavored to figure it out for myself and decided that I should try and get more people into the web of trust.

I will update this as questions are asked/answered.
Title: Re: Bitcoin-OTC
Post by: HugoReyes on November 12, 2011, 06:33 pm
try hitting freenode irc as well. the two channels there are #bitcoin-otc and #bitcoin-otc-foyer. i've been hanging there and have done many transactions with a few people over the last 6 months or so. it's pretty painless and mostly easy
Title: Re: Bitcoin-OTC
Post by: Richie on November 12, 2011, 09:15 pm
Damn this is confusing. So this is needed in order to get into that Web of Trust thing, thus making it easier to trade successfully on the Bitcoin-OTC chat? Sorry I know this is a newb question but I'm going to ask a LOT of them. Might as well take advantage of fellow SR member trying to help us all out. :D

Also I use a mac, is this is going to be extremely more difficult for me to do?

Thanks in advance and for offering to help
Title: Re: Bitcoin-OTC
Post by: freddieisdead on November 12, 2011, 09:56 pm
Once you get your own gpg key and figure out how to encrypt and decrypt messages, interacting and trading on bitcoin-otc is super easy with a mac. On Bitcoin-otc's front page, just open the irc and sign on to #bitcoin-otc and then from there start a query with gribble. Also on the front page of bitcoin-otc they have a "guide to using #bitcoin-otc." In that you should be able to find everything you need to get registered and verified on the website by entering certain commands through gribble. After that just start talking to people, make sure they're trustworthy, exchange, and build trust yourself. You'll get the hang of it quickly 8)
Title: Re: Bitcoin-OTC
Post by: Richie on November 12, 2011, 10:01 pm
Sweet, thanks! Looks like my lazy Sunday is going to be a bit more productive tomorrow haha love when people help people.

Can't wait to dive into this tomorrow
Title: Re: Bitcoin-OTC
Post by: oppyate on November 15, 2011, 01:51 am
I highly recommend campbx. You can Short BC's, you can use Margin and you can go Long on Margin. Once you make yourself the free profit equivalent of a fat 1 oz bag of Kush, you Tumble your BC's through a few holding tanks until it gets to your SR Account. Know I made it simplified, but if you do your homework you can use this Volitillity to cash in instead of hiding in a closet overdoing it on your SR drugs waiting for the BC to go all over map and back.
Title: Re: Bitcoin-OTC
Post by: Rook on November 16, 2011, 01:40 am
Campbx is a fine exchange for traders.

 However, it is still an exchange that requires that you give over control of your funds to another party.  Mt. Gox and Tradehill have both frozen my funds and prompted requests for Identifying information.  I am certain that CampBX will follow suit eventually as it is a pre-requisit for any institution that handles money to follow AML policy.

Once you've become established within the Web of Trust on Bitcoin-OTC, you can quite easily obtain funds via Paypal or Moneypak or Dwolla with a far smaller risk of getting ripped off like what has been happening here on SR way too often recently.  Probably also will get a better rate.  Plus it's much much safer since it's not directly connected to SR so you don't have to worry as much about the guy on the other end of the arrangement being LE.

If you already figured out PGP, Bitcoin-OTC isn't that much more in depth.  It was months before I gathered enough energy to figure it out, it only took a couple hours, and now I'm supremely satisfied with the results.  The more people who become a part of the WoT, the better the experience will be.
Title: Re: Bitcoin-OTC
Post by: Rook on December 17, 2011, 10:24 pm
hey usp6615gawd,

I'm sorry I didn't reply to your question sooner.  I have a Swedish proxy client that automatically configures all my internet applications so I haven't tried to configure the my IRC client through tor. 

However, as a buyer I see no reason to go to such lengths for #bitcoin-OTC.  the likelihood that one of the people selling bitcoins on the otc channel is LE is incredibly tiny, IMHO.

If you really want help with this though, I'd be willing to look into it for you.
Title: Re: Bitcoin-OTC
Post by: Knives on December 17, 2011, 11:45 pm
The thing about bitcoin-otc is even if the guy on the other end is LE, which i doubt, your not doing anything illegal. Your just buying BTC in ways that other sites dont offer. The only thing you would have to be worried about is a btc adyy which you u could just  tumble. Bitcoins are used for alot of other things besides drugs and LE prob wouldnt waste their time exchanging btc when theirs nothing criminal about it and once you have your coins you have many options in which to make them once again anonymous.
Title: Re: Bitcoin-OTC
Post by: Rook on December 17, 2011, 11:49 pm
The thing about bitcoin-otc is even if the guy on the other end is LE, which i doubt, your not doing anything illegal. Your just buying BTC in ways that other sites dont offer. The only thing you would have to be worried about is a btc adyy which you u could just  tumble. Bitcoins are used for alot of other things besides drugs and LE prob wouldnt waste their time exchanging btc when theirs nothing criminal about it and once you have your coins you have many options in which to make them once again anonymous.

Exactly.  Thank you for making that explicit.  I have a bad habit of taking some of this stuff for granted.
Title: Re: Bitcoin-OTC
Post by: czxtvr on December 19, 2011, 08:42 am
I have read everything you guys have been talking about and it all went over my head.  What is a gpg key? What is PGP? How do you encrypt and decrypt?  Man I just want to buy some good grade a smoke. Can someone please make sense of this for me so I can buy some smoke ????
Title: Re: Bitcoin-OTC
Post by: twon on December 19, 2011, 07:03 pm
I have read everything you guys have been talking about and it all went over my head.  What is a gpg key? What is PGP? How do you encrypt and decrypt?  Man I just want to buy some good grade a smoke. Can someone please make sense of this for me so I can buy some smoke ????

I felt the same way a few months ago.  LexiSadie has a link to a PGP tutorial on her profile.  Check it out ; it's how I learned it.  I'd link to it but I'm having difficulty getting on SR at the moment.   Each person has  a public key, which most vendors have in their profiles.  It's used to encrypt messages you send to them so that only they can read them, but it's really only used for sending your address to the vendor.   You will create your own
Title: Re: Bitcoin-OTC
Post by: Freeman on December 20, 2011, 12:07 am
I'm excited to learn this method.  I feel pretty comfortable with gpg now and I've used IRC in the past.  I'll try this out when I have some downtime.
Title: Re: Bitcoin-OTC
Post by: czxtvr on December 22, 2011, 08:30 pm
Still confused......
Title: Re: Bitcoin-OTC
Post by: racidacid on December 22, 2011, 08:54 pm
thank you for enlightening me  :)
Title: Re: Bitcoin-OTC
Post by: blueangel on December 23, 2011, 02:09 am
bitcoin-otc is a bit confusing at first but I've had some of my fastest, smoothest transactions there.  no doubt it was daunting to figure out though, good idea creating this thread to help.  maybe you'll want to gather more information in the first post OP?
Title: Re: Bitcoin-OTC
Post by: Freeman on December 24, 2011, 08:55 pm
bitcoin-otc is a bit confusing at first but I've had some of my fastest, smoothest transactions there.  no doubt it was daunting to figure out though, good idea creating this thread to help.  maybe you'll want to gather more information in the first post OP?

Rook's on holiday, but I'm sure he'll post back here when he returns.