I did a P2P transaction with "Coingraam" due to difficulty getting GBP off Binance. With a goodish rating, over 1400 trades and several years of activity I assumed it would be ok. A few days later I received a text message from Lloyds saying my account had been used to receive fraudulent transactions and they'd be closing my account.

I reported this to Binance a few days ago and Coingraam is still happily trading on there, so Binance doesn't seem too fussed.

So I'd say yes, there is a high rate of fraud with Binance P2P. Don't use it.

As I understand it, Lightning can't be as frictionless for the end user as current payment systems. That's the problem.

The difference is the www had no idea where it was going or needed to get to. A cryptocurrency needs to, at the very least, be able to match that performance of what's already out there.

The problem is, this should have been the starting point and technology should have been developed to deliver this rather than trying to deliver this after the technology has been developed.

Most people will mind.

I have a vague understanding of how lightning works with opening channels etc...

The only way I can see a crypto payment system receiving mass adoption is if it can be used exactly as current payment systems are used with the end user not seeing a difference. It doesn't sound to me like this is possible with lightning.

There are 3 things that need to happen IMO:

1. An end user will need to be able to transfer BTC to a wallet on a phone and then just use that money across multiple retailers without having to think about it? Paying using NFC or QR codes.
2. Retailers will need to be the ones paying the fees, as they currently do with payment systems. End users don't like paying fees and they are more likely to use fiat as they see a feeless option.
3. It needs to be possible for the user to pay while their device is offline.

Are these 3 things going to be possible with lightning? My understanding is that they won't be and therefore IMO lightning is not the answer.

Question about the HitBTC affiliate scheme. It some places it says there's a 50% revenue share, in other places, it's described as a 50% fee rebate. Which is it? If it's a 50% fee rebate then it depends heavily on whether the trader is mainly a maker or taker, if it's a 50% revenue share, then I'd assume they pay 50% of the transaction revenue, which would be 0.045%.

When looking at exchanges dealing with BTC ETH trading, all exchanges I've seen give the rate as Bitcoins per Ether, so ~0.07 today.

I was wondering if there's some kind of standard that's adopted as there's no reason why the exchange rate shouldn't be the other way around, so ~14.3.

Is there a standard or is it all a bit of a mix between different exchanges and different currencies?

Unfortunately, even though they're UK based, Coinfloor still bounce all their payments through Poland.

Are there no other services like Transferwise that I can use to avoid being raped by my bank?

They've got a list of fees here. They're not cheap and only offer Skrill as a GBP option.

https://spectrocoin.com/en/fees-and-limits.html

I used Kraken to buy bitcoins many years ago, but I'm looking for a way to buy a few hundred £ worth each month that doesn't have a massive cost overhead. Since Transferwise shut off cryptocurrency exchanges, if I do a transfer to a foreign bank account direct from my bank then I have to pay £25. Is there a better way? Also, if I transfer to Kraken as GBP, then it's difficult to buy as the GBP/XBT is almost dead, so I need to convert to USD for which my bank give me a poor rate costing me another 2% or so.

So if I want to buy £100 worth of bitcoins, it's going to cost me £127, which is pretty crap.

I know I can make card payments with Coinbase, but that still incurs a 4% charge, which is an improvement, but still, a 4% I'd rather not pay.

What's the best way to buy bitcoins with GBP?