HOWTO: purchasing Bitcoins

[privangle]

{we've pulled together information on purchasing bitcoins, from several disparate threads, into this one resource which as been moved to the HOWTO section for ease of reference ~admin}

Hi,

I'm not shure if I should open a new thread, I'd like to tell you my experience about buying bitcoins.

I tried bitstamp.net, they are a bitcoin market: buy and sell XBTC.

The company is in the UK, domain/webserver in Toronto (got it from whois).

Opening an account is very strict. They ask a lot of personal data, asking scans from your official papers.
Some of the papers are difficult (complicated/impossible) to deliver. The customer service answers quickly by email.
I don't like their Privacy conditions, which I find not clear in all points.

A question of mine concerning their privacy conditions was answered by a laconic "read our privacy terms",
but I asked precisely questions because I didn't understand some things in their privacy terms.

I gave up to go through the verification process. It's only my experience, others may perhaps like...

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Then I tried belgacoin.com.

They are new, you won't find customer reviews yet about them on the internet.

Advantages

1. No need to open an account, therefore no data retention of your personal informations.
2. no verification process (no passport scan etc.)
3. acceptable promptness in sending you the XBTC.

Disadvantages

1. They accept only SEPA credit transfert (I think SEPA does not work in all countries in the world?).
2. You can't sell your XBTC to transform them to dollars, euros, etc.

The bitcoin buying process is very simple: you fill in a formula with

1. your email adress
2. the amount of $, € ... to buy bitcoins
3. your receveing bitcoin adress of your wallet

They sent you a email with their bank account informations; you transfer money to them.

They don't even ask your name, neither your adress, passport number etc.
I like it, it's very simple and you don't inundate them with your personal data.
I think even a friend of yours could buy bitcoins for you.

You'll get your bitcoins within 3 working days.

Just my 2¢

[privangle]

You find their current prices on their website: http://www.belgacoin.com

In general, I inform myself on http://www.xe.com/currencyconverter/full/

[RandomPerson]

I've read through the myriad threads here about crypto currency, and I cant seem to get confident enough that I know the route to get from installing Dogecoin for the first time, getting Dogecoin's, then spending them. The broken link for me seems to be the steps of acquiring the first coins, then tumbling them before use.

Main questions
All the sites I've looked at buying coins from want a lot of information, including a copy of my drivers license. Is that just how it is?

How do I go about tumbling my coins to anonymize them?

[Pattern_Juggled]

Quick link to a reddit thread on coin tumbling, pros and cons:



And a few other potentially useful links...

http://coinatmradar.com/
http://www.reddit.com/r/p2pbtc

Cheers,

~ pj