Quote from: Yoddler on July 24, 2012, 05:30:22 PM

I'm a complete newb in the Bitcoin world and seem to be having a horrible time trying to acquire a few Bitcoins. I've been searching for hours for a simple way to receive them, but haven't had any success so far.

Being the gullible newb that I am, I ended up opening a Payza account and depositing funds so that I can exchange from Payza to Liberty Reserve and finally to MTGox for a couple of Bitcoins... Why is this so hard? After all of the transaction fees, all of my cash will be gobbled up.

Any-who, I think I've finally found a good place to get Bitcoins (Bitcoin-24.com) but still have money in the damned Payza account. So... on alertexchanger, it says:

From Alert Pay Account:

From Alert Pay Account Name:

To Liberty Reserve Account:

To Liberty Reserve Account Name:

I'll be damned if I could figure this out. Alert Pay (now Payza) only seems to use your email as the account name/ID er-whatever. And my Liberty Reserve information keeps coming back negative when I try to continue. Any help would be appreciated. I'm only after a few Bitcoins Sad

Why is this so hard?

Your problem stems from your trying to trade soft money for hard.

People are used to buying goods and services with soft money and it's surprising to them that they can't buy digital currency with the same.

Paypal, credit cards and online bank transfers can be reversed later, in some cases six months later. All it takes is the account holder to complain to the account issuer. Scammers take advantage of this to steal from those they trade with. They either use phished accounts to spend from, or they just use their own accounts and later lie to the issuer.

Those scammers look for the most liquid items to gain in this ill way. Also attractive are items that can't be traced or be proven in delivery, such as when signing for a package through the post. Nothing is more liquid than digital currency, and providers of soft money transfer services refuse any available proof that a digital currency has been delivered. Can you imagine a Paypal dispute resolved by a Liberty Reserve screenshot? It will never happen. In practice, it's much easier for those providing reversible payment systems to simply declare currency trades against their ToS. Too bad, so sad for anyone who accepts such soft money that later is reversed.

Soft money can work for goods that can be tracked in shipment, or for subscription services that can be cancelled for non-payment. Soft money can not work for currency trades or trade into any other very liquid goods. Soft money works best when the receiver knows and trusts the spender, hardly the anonymity we want and need.

Alert Pay and others like it are a money hardening service. They offer to accept soft money, check out, identify and verify the spender is the real account owner and has good character (credit check), and to accept the risk that they will occasionally get burned despite their efforts. All that checking and risk mitigation is expensive and time consuming.

You should look for an exchange service that offers a payment method that is cheap and easy for you to make. In person cash is perhaps the cheapest and most reliable, but not practical for long distance. Cash by mail can work well, but is sensitive to big mouth assholes, of which there are many in this particular forum. Depositing cash to a branch of the exchanger's bank is also fast, safe and cheap. Cash transmission service, such as Western Union Money Transfer or MoneyGram, is reliable and fast, but more expensive. Look for an exchanger that's easy for you to pay. The fee the exchanger charges is likely to be less than the fee to transmit to him the cash national currency.

I have explained this 43823849 times over the years. People are so conditioned to expect online payments and consumer protection that they most often fail to consider the other side of the trade. You getting burned by a bogus exchange service is a lot less likely than it is for an exchange service to be burned by carders and phishers.

Still, there is a never an end to the people who think they can offer hard money for soft. They pop up all the time and disappear just as fast. I've seen hundreds of them get frauded out of business. It simply can't work. Even you noobs who think bitcoin is the first digital currency (it is not) already have seen the Paypal, Dwolla, Paxum and Alert Pay failures. I warn them, they fail to heed and are invariably screwed right out of the scene by the hordes of stealer munkees infesting the internet.

Most of the oldest and best established digital currency exchanges are in Canada. This type of business has been repeatedly shut down in the USA and it's almost impossible to keep open a service if your meatspace is in the land of the free. Bitcoin has always been a very Canada-centric thing. The first year or so it was almost entirely Russian and Canadian. You have more choices in Canada than any other country in the world, Russia being second and UK third. Those trying to operate in usaland now have an unpleasant future ahead. I don't expect they will heed this warning, even though my track record in predicting such things has been 100% over the years. People believe what they want to believe and avoid facts counter to their wishes.

If you ever do get your AP traded for LR (a hard currency), you might find this useful. It's a no minimum fully automatic trade between bitcoin and LR, both hard currencies.

https://www.nanaimogold.com/bitcoin.php

Also a handy currency calculator, gold, sliver, EUR, GBP, BTC and others, and some auction prices for comparison.

I'm currently offering a Western Union to bitcoin service at NO CHARGE. Select the options you need on this page;

https://www.nanaimogold.com/buy.php

Because bitcoin is designed to be anonymous, and because private money should remain private, I do not entertain discussion in public. If you need to ask me a question, you can contact me in private through this form;

https://www.nanaimogold.com/contact.php