1. Brokers such as eToro trade in more than crypto e.g. stocks, currencies. So if I transferred money directly from my bank to a company such as eToro which isn't exclusively crypto, is this likely to be flagged as a banned company from my banks perspective,
The reason why you are not banned from using this service is that they do not own Bitcoin or rather they do not sell you bitcoin, you get something that has the same value of bitcoin and when you want to withdraw, you are withdrawing your profits in USD and not the bitcoin.
in short, Not your keys, not your coins. Avoid it if you want to keep BTC for long time.
2. To avoid this, am I better to use something like PayPal for my crypto transactions?
PayPal does the same, you cannot withdraw Bitcoin
If you give us more information such as your country, or the payment methods that you can obtain, we can give you the best method for you.
Some people buy gift cards for cash and sell them for Bitcoin which are anonymous and good for small amounts.
I'm in the UK, where I understand it's not illegal to buy and own crypto, however it's illegal to trade? That doesn't bother me as my intention would be to buy and sit on my investment, trading in that sense doesn't interest me. What I'd ideally like to do is:
1. Create account with a reputable broker that allows you to retain your own keys (I'd want to go the offline wallet route.)
2. Transfer money from my bank account to the broker, perhaps on a monthly basis to cover my dollar cost averaging buying strategy.
3. When I then want to buy, I'd already have funds with the broker, so I'd be free to buy and sell within that environment.
I do still have some concerns, not sure to what extent these are founded, because you see stories online of people (within the UK and other countries where it's legal to buy crypto) having their bank accounts frozen when it's discovered they're transferring money to a crypto broker. The account holder often has to go through a protracted process to get their account unlocked. So I'm not sure if my above process could still present challenges for me?
I want to invest in crypto, however I don't want to rock the boat with my traditional bank account as it runs all my financial activities!
And I seem to be struggling to find many brokers that allow you to hold your own keys? I don't want to use a broker that holds the keys, surely that increases your risk of losing your investment?
So cryptos are legal in your country so it is not stopping you from buying or using it as currency, so your bank doesn't know the source of income so they may put on hold until you submit the source of money and you are paying taxes on your capital gains if there is any.
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Thanks for the reply. Not sure if I'm misreadng/misunderstanding you. Say for example I pay £200 into a broker account. Forgetting fees, let's say I buy £100 of crypto. So I then have £100 remaining in my broker fiat account and £100 in my crypto broker wallet. Do the brokers not allow you to hold the public and private keys for the crypto investments you've made via them? Apologies if I'm not understanding, however my preference is to hold my keys in my own offline wallet and for the broker not to have the private key. Is this not possible?