Why we won't be using bit121......YET.

12/19/2013 05:07:00 pm Unknown 0 Comments


So we were as excited as anyone else at the news of UK's newest exchange actually going live, with UK banking in the form of Barclays being touted as being involved according to early reports.

However before taking the plunge into dealing with the new bit121 exchange we decided to first do our due diligence and make sure everything was above board and that we wouldn't be simply plying money into a useless exchange. Despite what the title of this article says it's not all bad news from bit121 but they definitely do need to address a few issues.

Contact details

First and foremost any company you deal with needs to be contacted, if they are based abroad (outside UK) then of course a phone number isn't very practical, however bit121 are UK based apparently, however they don't have any address details or telephone numbers to be contacted on, the only point of contact is an email address which is simply not enough to inspire confidence. Having said that, we did email our concerns to bit121 and were very impressed to have a reply within hours albeit just a reply saying our message had been  "passed to our CEO", It's still a good start. We will wait until they have at least a contact number or office address so they cannot vanish into the night.
We did a little digging on the CEO and found he is quite an experienced businessman according to his linkedin profile, which was also good sign.


Verification

In filling bit121's verification requirements you are actually giving them enough information to access your bank account which we are quite uncomfortable with and falling victim to identity fraud is then decided by how secure they
keep people's personal information. They could easily remedy this by simply
having their customers scan and send 2 pieces of i.d. No need for
mothers maiden names or length of time at current address or even home
telephone number. We do however really applaud their thorough attempts at adhering to UK's draconian anti money-laundering regulations, as we all know t
hat if there is a falling point for UK exchanges it will be red tape that shuts them down.


PacNet services 

Though we had yet to hear of PacNet services, they seem to be the link to Barclays Bank and quite a tenuous link at that, They don't seem to be based in the UK either although payment to them is done through Barclays Bank, How much Barclays actually know about a crypto exchange is unclear at the moment. Our worry is that when the exchange gathers momentum as it quickly will, can PacNet keep up? PacNet does appear to be a very professional outfit. More to the point will Barclays Bank be the first to harbour the currency which some say will make banks obsolete (we do not share that view), Barclays are not exactly a bank of the people, (Libor scandal anyone?) It's highly unlikely they will endorse the Bitcoin unless they really had to. We would perhaps feel better if Barclays endorsed the exchange, evidence of this should be on the bit121 website.






All in all, as far as bit121 is concerned we are advising to approach with caution, much like all exchanges only leave in fiat what you are prepared to loose, and transfer Bitcoins out to your local/offline wallet after every session. If you are going to use an exchange bitstamp may have a rival in the UK, Although the £10 deposit and withdrawl fee are a bit steep, the minimum deposit has recently dropped from £500 to £50. Scouring the forums we are yet to find any reports on the exchange from users, which screams that it may not be very liquid as yet.


We really hope bit121 addresses these issues and grows to become a useful exchange. only time will tell, but we will keep an eye on them and when we feel safe enough we will use them and let you all know how it goes.


Good luck bit121 :)


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find bit121 exchange here: https://bit121.co.uk/

So we were as excited as anyone else at the news of UK's newest exchange actually going live, with UK banking in the form of Barclays...

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A new Bitcoin exchange for the UK

12/17/2013 10:24:00 am Unknown 0 Comments


If your not glued to coindesk 24 hours a day like we are you may have missed the news that Barclays bank (Well known high street bogey men) are working with a newly formed exchange called Bit121 https://bit121.co.uk/


The first thing we noticed about the site is that it's in Barclays colours, trivial as it sounds it was not a good first impression, with the Libor scandal still fresh in my memory. However you never know if they may have decided to lead the way into the brave new world of digital currency, One thing's for sure Barclay's backing will add legitimacy to the people on main st, and this is only a good thing. Time will tell as to what happens next and to how close the relationship is between bit121 and Barclays. We assume that the company (bit121) have just been a bit clever with their marketing and they are not terribly close to Barclays at all, we will know when barclays blocks their accounts and you have to withdraw your Bitcoin to another wallet.


As always the moral of the story here is not to store too much Bitcoin or any crypto in a website wallet, only store what you are prepared to gamble, it's definately NOT a safe place to leave currency, regardless of who's backing the site (alledgedly).

And so onto China and the news that 3rd party payment providers are also not allowed to use Bitcoin. In a country which makes it's daily bread on denying human rights why are we not surprised, does it matter? Yes, because it will keep the Chinese people in economic slavery just a little while longer. We will keep away from political topics though and just focus on the currency. We are still to go critical in UK or USA so there is much more room for growth against FIAT and in general usage terms, which is what is being forgotten by new Bitcoin fans, It's value against the Dollar or Pound are not the most important factor. It's usability is much more important.


This brings us to Litecoin, We will definately analyse this in greater detail in our next post. We see it as the Mini-disc to Bitcoins Cassette tape. It's not going to dominate for long but if it succeeds Bitcoin even briefly then buying it now at $30 a coin would be a very shrewd investment. It's much more difficult to own Litecoin and use it, but that will be easily remedied in the future when developers start 'forking' (nerd speak for converting) Bitcoin software to work with Litecoin.


We will be opening our account with Bit121 and sending them the documents they need (assuming it will be driving licence and utility bill) today. We will let you all know how we find their service.

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Thanks for reading

If your not glued to coindesk 24 hours a day like we are you may have missed the news that Barclays bank (Well known high street bogey men)...

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Morning interaction on the CNBC website forum

12/13/2013 10:41:00 am Unknown 0 Comments

This morning Crypto SI took to the forums to try to get a feel for the general mood about Bitcoin, We realised that interest in other crypto currencies is hotting up which is great news and for the new year we will list our top 5 buy and hold plays for 2014.

We did encounter the beginnings of what will be the banking sector financed scare campaign against Bitcoin, luckily in this age of free information only the people who do not investigate for themselves will miss out on Crypto currency. It's not something which we have to sell to people, we simply say, do your own research, learn for yourself and you will definately want to be involved.

Anyway here's our interaction with a person who clearly has never heard of coinbase, bitstamp or any of the technologies which will move bitcoin past being a speculative tool.

Sorry Luke, but your looking at a 3d world through 2d glasses. I will answer each of your points Vs Fiat dollars or pounds.
1) It cannot be diluted, there are a certain amount of bitcoins, once they are all mined thats it - Fiat is constantly being pumped into the economy from thin air resulting mostly in inflated housing costs.
2) If you are holding 700,000.00 then not many inividuals will be able to buy it, but with markets like bitstamp and mtgox and the inevitable peer to peer market (yet to be invented) you can sell your bitcoin easily to millions of people with price being dictated by nothing other than the market - Fiat is the same in this respect except markets are heavily regulated sometimes for good and sometimes for monopoly
3)Last weekend was excellent because all the scared investors jumped out when they thought china could control bitcoin economy which lead to bitcoin experts and experienced chinese traders taking to blogs and explaining how exactly they are going to work around chinese law (not break it), people now know that chinese legislation will have to be much stronger and human rights invading to slow down the freedoms which bitcoin imposes. The price is right back where it should be and on the rise again, most people bought the dip, WE DID. It was similar to when the news broke in october that silk road had gone and some people thought bitcoin was only good for buying drugs, it dropped to under $100 that evening, WE bought that dip too! If anything like this happens again luke, WE have 3 words for you.............BUY THE DAMN DIP.......yes 3 words! :)

This morning Crypto SI took to the forums to try to get a feel for the general mood about Bitcoin, We realised that interest in other crypto...

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50% down in 3 days

12/07/2013 11:32:00 am Unknown 0 Comments

China tries to protect itself from big scary BITCOIN!!!




So, China have decided to ban all banks from using Bitcoin and from displaying prices in Bitcoin. This is the driving force behind the current dip in the price of Bitcoin and we have yet another thing to be thankful to the Chinese for.

The news broke 2 days ago to very little fanfare and really reached the mainstream yesterday evening. The important things to look at are, what does it do to the fundamentals of Bitcoin, and also we've got to try to predict why Chinese government are banning banks from using this exciting new cutting edge technology.

Control

This is all about control of the economy, China has seen amazing growth over the past decade and this needs to be tapered. It's generally internationally accepted that Keynes was right and Hayek was wrong, and that economies need to be stabalised by government, China are only following suit. However with a not so secretly bankrupt U.S.A and a Eurozone which is also in quiet crisis perhaps were we too quick to hail a winner?


Fiat VS Crypto

We've always held the view that this was not an all in type question, and that Crypto would only serve to stabilise Fiat by giving it a new standard to adhere too, unfortunately it's taking too long to become a widely accepted form of currency and in the mean time it's trying to hard to be a tool for speculation alone. What we mean by this is that people are using a truly scarce currency to try to exchange for a pseudo-scarce currency (there's an oxymoron for you!) whereas if more places just accepted the use of Bitcoin (or rather WHEN) then fiat would become a tool for credit mostly.

What happens next?

Well with china imposing sanctions on itself they have only done half a job and in doing so have played perfectly into Bitcoin's hands. So now instead of being able to trade Bitcoin for Yuan, Chinese people will have to use their Bitcoin for goods and services directly. It does beg the question, who gets left holding the baby, meaning that sooner or later someone in the currency cycle will want to buy fiat......That's only a problem if you live in china, other countries have yet to implement sanctions so Yuan will start leaking out of china on a mass scale as foreign companies collect export money in Bitcoin that Chinese citizens have paid for with Yuan. we can see the American and E.U banking giants rubbing their grubby little mitts together.

That's one scenario, another is that the sanctions keep the Yuan stable while the dollar inevitably hits a real hard patch along with the Euro and the Chinese find themselves with strongest economy in the world by far. Of course for this to happen, Europe and America would have to sit by patiently without hiking up import taxes on Chinese goods.....is there much chance of that, and also as China save themselves and everyone else becomes broke, who will they sell their solar panels to?

So, wait till Bitcoin gets down to around the $400 mark and then Buy, the next rise will be just a bit slower than the last one, but we're still heading for $2000 by the summer, of course that's barring anymore negatives, a similar move in the U.S would really slow down the rise, but we don't think America can get away with such a move. Banks worry that Bitcoin may make them obsolete, but we all know there will always be a place in this world for imaginary money.

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China tries to protect itself from big scary BITCOIN!!! So, China have decided to ban all banks from using Bitcoin and from displayi...

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Dawning of a new ERA

12/06/2013 09:15:00 pm Unknown 0 Comments


Welcome to the blog for Crypto S.I.

We are a new start-up venture based in London U.K and we aim to specialise in crypto currency consultancy, security and investment. Our main mantra is to offer a service to individuals and organisations which helps to make the most of cryptographic opportunities that we find in todays world.

This blog will mainly be a posting ground for our ideas and commentary on economic, financial and political news and how they may relate to our clients Bitcoin investments or any other crypto currency for that matter.

Firtsly we would like to explain a little bit about ourselves. We are a small firm of experts who have been working with various crypto currencies for years and have a vast understanding of both internet technologies and financial instruments. We have many years of experience in the internet security field also and feel this allows us to expertly help our clients with finding the safest solution for their invesments and crypto solutions.

Currently we work mostly with bitcoin as this is the most liquid of all the cryptos and the most likely to be used in the future, although we believe that other additional tools such as zerocoin will be used in conjuction with bitcoin to further increase the security of transactions.

We plan to stay a small and mobile firm and will like to know our small client base very well so we can best find their needs and provide solutions. We aim to give a transparent service which protects as much of your privacy as possible.

We look forward to being a part of a brighter future with Crypto currency leading the way

Welcome to the blog for Crypto S.I. We are a new start-up venture based in London U.K and we aim to specialise in crypto currency consult...

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