Hi everybody. We are working on something innovative with Bitcoins and most popular cryptos. First step is to find and open account with:

> Exchange located in safe country, where Government will not shut down exchange, freeze accounts, steal Bitcoins
> Exchange that is in politically stable country
> Exchange that is not in police controlled country
> Exchange that is safe and solid and they will not freeze accounts, steal Bitcoins or disappear without trace
> Exchange where it is not overly hard to start account
> We are in Canada, so exchange that is somewhere where we can actually wire money to
> Exchange that has multiple cryptos available for trade, obviously best ones, not some obscure ones
> Exchange where you can actually get fiat money out to buy stuff for profits made

We think US exchanges do not fit criteria above. Maybe some kind of neutral kind of country like Iceland, Lithuania, Estonia, even Caribbean place like Caymans. We really don't have good idea about this, please help!

Senin I like your explanation. That is kind of in line what I was thinking. I see that gold is flat for long time but watching Youtube videos it looks like it will move up soon. Saudi Arabia and other OPEC countries don't want petrodollar and will sell oil for Yuan or Euro, 20+ Trillion US debt. There is now petro yuan backed up by gold. Also Russia and China hoarding gold. As countries dump USD it will cause drop in value. Besides that Fed prints money day and night for last 9 years. Everybody and his dog knows that leads to hyperinflation. Gold will rule in inter countries trade.

I am also wondering what will happen to BTC when USD goes down the pooper? Exchanging 20% - 30% of BTC for gold sounds like good insurance policy.

Hi everybody,
Love Bitcoin but recent events got me very worried about present and future. I read all posts on this forum about gold and concluded that for having things safe I must get backup in gold and silver. So I searched all gold dealer sites and they are pretty much the same thing across the board. Then I found something that may be a winner. Different than others it looks like those guys merged best of digital currency and physical gold, http://www.buy-gold-bar.com

First of all they are Canadian company and I live in Canada so it gives me a good vibe. Secondly they are brick and mortar establishment and they do answer phones and e-mails. They have smart card system called SmartGold Club. Basically you join the club, buy card and get gold and silver loaded into the card. That digital gold is backed up by physical one. No paper shit certificates. Whatever you send they buy fine gold/silver. Here is something what I really like. That physical gold is stored in Cayman islands in some Strategic Wealth Preservation secure storage. It's like a vault. I mean it is the vault.

So my first question is what would you buy gold or silver? I am thinking both. Gold is like no brainer but many videos on Internet say that silver is badly undervalued and has huge upside. What do you think? I am thinking 60% in gold and 40% in silver.

In regards to club card it reminds a lot of Bitcoin. It's all digital, encrypted, biometrics and what not. I should be able to buy, sell, trade with other members, send to distance, get gold bar if I want to.

I mean, thanks to BTC I got now nice chunk of value. It came in really easy, no complaints  . I am thinking about converting maybe like 30%-40% into gold. It's safe. They take Bitcoin payments over Bitpay. Account is anonymous, that's good as well. I'll start with 0.5 - 1 BTC 

What do you guys think about all that?

How many BTCs you got stolen?

What would be a healthy ratio of investing into BTC : gold?

I am investigating this for longer time now. Clearly answer is: you must store it in offeshore account far from reach of uncle Sam. Companies that deal with gold have storages like that all over the world. Canada, Caribbean, Hong Kong, Germany, Geneva, Australia, Germany ... so you want your gold to be in politically stable country, I mean strong place that means business. Some people say Abu Dhabi as centre for gold trading but I wouldn't use it. 

I like gold and silver as well as Bitcoin. I decided to find best physical gold buying scheme and opportunity. Maybe there is something out there that merges the both. With profits I taken in holding Bitcoin I guess I can spend some of it on acquiring real gold.

It looks like it's not easy or secure to exchange BTC for common money. US and Canadian exchanges wants tons of personal data to setup account

If we sold something for 1 BTC yesterday and managed to exchange BTC into USD today we would lose at least 100 dollars. From about $2345 value it dropped in 8 - 10 hours to $2231. There is your answer. No business should be based on hopes and speculations that currency will jump up in day or two. Nobody can predict such movements with certainty.

Even more than few posters here said that BTC is not suitable to be form of payment but rather investment. That maybe correct so we are guilty of being enthusiastic enough not to believe that and think that BTC is perfect currency.

To answer to everyone:

We pay equipment with hard dollars so yes we need to exchange BTC into USD, often. Many suggested to speculate and wait until BTC goes up and exchange with great profit. One person even broke it down into "idiotproof" transaction, get at $1000 value, and next day it is $1500 and voila, 500 dollars profit without moving a finger. Amazing, how we never came up with such idea?! Or even guy who paid 10000 BTC for pizza as someone suggested.

How about selling something at $2750 value (like just 2 days go) and getting $2320 value (as of right now)?? How that sounds for great opportunity to get what's money worth?

We post to exchange BTC about 1/2 - 1 hour after confirming transaction and in dropping market whatever value one puts to trade out gets unfulfilled. So for all practical reasons there is no stability in BTC transactions at all. Everybody here assumes that BTC is going up all the time and that is simply not true. Just week or 10 days ago it was almost 3000 dollars. Now it's 25% less.

By the way all prices in the stores are USD, people send 100 USD in BTC as their wallet is telling them at that moment. Sometimes buyers speculate and pay tomorrow or in 2 days. After we noticed that trend we warned everyone that quote is good for 1 hour, but even that is not good enough. Anyway, we'll take it out. Yeah it's great but really not worth it.

Our experiment with BTC is over. We accepted BTC in 2 of our on-line stores and after losing hundreds and possibly thousands of dollars we are removing BTC acceptance. Stores were selling card access products and chip cards.
Simply by the time somebody buys something and gets confirmed and we manage to exchange BTC at Canadian Kraken we are at loss. So goodbye Bitcoin, going back to PayPal and credit cards only.

Our WEB server is having this:

"All your important files were encrypted on this computer.
You can verify this by click on see files an try open them.

Encrtyption was produced using unique KEY generated for this computer.

To decrypted files, you need to otbtain private key.
The single copy of the private key, with will allow you to decrypt the files, is locate on a secret server on the internet;
The server will destroy the key within 24 hours after encryption completed.
Payment have to be made in maxim 24 hours
To retrieve the private key, you need to pay 3 BITCOINS

Bitcoins have to be sent to this address: 1NJNG57hFPPcmSmFYbxKmL33uc5nLwYLCK

After you've sent the payment send us an email to : fast_decrypt_and_protect@tutanota.com with subject : ERROR-ID-63100778(3BITCOINS)
If you are  not familiar with bitcoin you can buy it from here :

SITE : www.localbitcoin.com

After we confirm the payment , we send the private key so you can decrypt your system."

Can anybody locate that wallet, or at least country. Supposedly this ransomware is coming from india but that is a guess based on e-mail address.

We are merchants and buyers as well and use both BTC and Paypal. Here are few views:

+ Paypal can process almost any credit card around, even those ones we never heard of
+ Paypal is a system, accounting, reporting, live agents, outright supported by shopping cart
- Paypal is susceptible to chargeback even that 95% of them are just plain fraud by buyers where the suddenly don't recognize purchase of merchandise they received and are using as we speak
+ using Paypal one can buy almost anything on-line
+ Paypal has reasonable merchant's processing rates
- Paypal recently became quite pain in the ass with restrictions refusing many transactions

+ BTC brings most money in, more than almost any other kind of payment
+ It's fast like hell
+ easy to receive, check incoming payments
- shopping cart we have does not support BTC pricing and processing
- it is hard to get cash money out of it
- it is easier to get liver transplant than open account at exchange
- lately it is more steady but before it was too volatile for merchants to rely on
- still only small number of buyers want and can pay by BTC, maybe 5% of our buyers. For the rest 95% Bitcoin is still too complicated, out of reach, impossible to get account at exchange ...
- hard to buy BTC

We hope that in future 5% - 95% ratio will swing more towards BTC buyers. So far we received about 50 thousand CAD in BTC and with Paypal that net amount would be more like 48.5k. Looking from pure net perspective BTC is clear winner.
However, if would be accepting BTC only we would close the doors long time ago. Buyers with Bitcoin are still in scarce supply.  

1. Opening account at exchange
2. Buy BTC
3. Sell BTC for other currency

This is pretty useless thread! Everybody who knows about Bitcoin knows that it's better than Western Union. But where Western Union shines is that it is EVERYWHERE. Everybody can use it and getting money is very secure for sender and receiver. Everything else about it sucks.

We would know because we sell and take: Western Union, Moneygram, credit cards, bank wires, Paypal and BTC. WU became a huge pain in the ass by blocking recipients, basically refusing good transfers and screwing up our business for no reason.

Yes, we try to talk people into BTC but it is a tall order. BTC is hard to handle. Where it shines is in it's essence, send it receive it in minutes or less. Before and after it sucks. To buy it it is hard. To sell it is also hard. The most painful thing is to register yourself at exchange in order to buy BTC, sell it and get fiat money. At that point applicant must endure probing into personal data, copy passport, driver's license, bank statement, proof of this and that and I am sure they will start asking for blood and piss sent by courier in vials for testing. You tell me where is anonymity there?

We have one account at former CAVirtex and tried to get account at Bitstamp. Gave up after week or two. Couldn't stand it any more. Anyway, we are in Burlington, Ontario, Canada and have that experience. I would like that someone explain how will person from Africa get all this done? I'll tell you how ... he can't, no freaking way. Instead, he walks into nearest Western Union that is at about every tree there (and everywhere else for that matter) and send us 100 dollars + 20-30 bucks for WU fees!