I have been meaning to blog about BTCJam for some weeks now, but i've been to interested in funding loans and watching payments come in to bother to share my experience with you all.

I do somewhat regret my decision not to blog earlier as since I've started to use BTCJam I've also found out and started to invest in Bitlending club.  It does mean that I will be giving a slightly less glowing reference to BTCjam in light of using it's far superior rival BitLending Club.



Anyway let my critique begin........

BTCJam is a crowdfunding platform for people and organisations to take out loans. These loans are funded by the crowd, made up by investors (like me) who are willing to invest and wait for the repayments (with interest of course). The beauty of this concept is that it means that the banks and payday loan companies can keep their noses out of our financial affairs, and hopefully people can borrow at lower than loan shark rates and people can invest with a better return than the nonsense 5% you will get on an isa this year. Of course holding an isa is a lot easier than searching through the bogus loans on BTCJam to find the gems, but in the last 2 months (which was also my first two months) I've made over 30% ROI, unheard of in banking terms and possibly a little far fetched in stocks and equities. also take into account i'm not an experienced lender and i've fallen foul to plenty of fraudulent loans.

Fraudulent Loans......
I don't want to harp on about the level of fraud found on this site, because it really isn't a deal breaker for me, there a few really annoying things about the site which I will get onto in a bit, but generally, the fraud loans are quite easy to spot and haven't proven enough of a problem to take my impressive earnings down too badly. Let me clarify a fraudulent loan is a loan made by a fraudster impersonating another person, not a loan where the person loses interest and leaves the site or doesn't bother to return, or where they run into trouble and then simply run away. Often investors on BTCJam label people as fraudsters just because the loans gone bad, I call that being a sore loser. :)

The main problem with BTCJam is that the site itself takes payment from the moment the loan is activated, so even if the loan is fraudulent then BTCJam get paid, this is obviously bad as it means they have less incentive to weed out the bad loans before they are offered and financed. Not to suggest that BTCJam don't care if it's users get defrauded or not, but it's clear that they still get paid.

Censorship.......
The biggest bug I have to bear with Btcjam is the level of censorship on the site, they won't allow the sharing of websites or the use of certain words in your comments and loan applications, while they will cite that this is to 'protect you', it's clearly just a way of them trying to have a little more control over users communication than they should be attempting to gain, this for me is the single reason for me to ever leave the site (won't happen anytime soon though, the profit is too good). I get the feeling that if BTCJam become successful they will go the way of Apple, Paypal and HP and but users a distant second to profits. But that's all speculation.

Verification.................
BTCJam does the usual KYC stuff, I've already uploaded enough information to them to make stealing my 'identity' a piece of cake, I'm not to clingy with my 'identity' so it's ok, but it may prove a problem for others who want to borrow on the site. however I cannot see a way around this style of verification and the BTCjam system is quick and painless, I had my documents verified within 48 hours.

All in all BTCJam has become one of my most used sites, and a great place to meet new people and learn about what's happening in the crypto world, and while I don't feel it's the best in it's genre, I feel you should all definitely sign up and make a bit of interest on there. So from me it gets a solid 3/5

I have been meaning to blog about BTCJam for some weeks now, but i've been to interested in funding loans and watching payments come in ...

So you've decided to buy Bitcoin, and you have no idea how to get your hands on the stuff?



I was thinking about this today and decided to write a quick blog post to explain to people (beginners in particular) what they should expect from the journey into Bitcoin.

This is only for people in the UK, if you are based outside of the UK then I suggest you google 'BUY BITCOIN in xxx' obviously replace xxx with your country :) Also this has been written for OCT 2014, things change, and they change quickly so I will try to blog about this once every few months.

Buying Anonymously......


1)LocalBitcoins.com

If you don't want to give anyone your name, address, date of birth, bank details, D.N.A or shoe size, then simply open an account with these guys. you can chose to verify what you want and you can use TOR with this website. Look for adverts selling via cash deposit or cash in person. Once you've opened a trade you can talk to the seller and arrange to meetup or get their bank details to make the deposit. Crypto S.I sell on this platform and haven't had any problems buying and selling via this method. If you don't want to meet anyone then cash deposit is perfect.


2) BitBargain


The main issue I have with BitBargain is that there are not enough sellers and so prices are not quite as competitive as LocalBitcoins, however I've not personally used this service so I can't really comment, but as far as I know it's good and worth checking out.


Forfeiting your privacy...

If you are prepared to part with your privacy then there are some very good services available, usually these are not instant like the anonymous options but prices are usually slightly better 5%-10% discount roughly. There are some very professionally run exchanges available to use, I have picked out 3 which I am signed up to. Be ready to sign up and upload your personal identification documents. Also at the moment there are no UK banks taking payments on behalf of exchanges so you will have to pay SEPA or international transfer fees to upload your money.

1) Coinfloor

My last blog post was all about these guys, this is my usual exchange of choice, almost 1 year old and a really good service. The 2 best features are the simple clean interface, and the decent order book size.

2)Bitstamp

The Standard by which ALL exchanges are set. As far as I'm concerned Bitstamp was the first serious Bitcoin exchange, does that mean it's still the best? It definitely has the biggest order book of the 3 exchanges I use, and has all the security features that you would expect from a Bitcoin exchange. The only thing I'm not comfortable with is that the exchange is not UK based which does make me wonder what would happen if you had a problem with the service, but saying that I'm not aware of anyone who has had any problems with them, and considering how well used they are this is a great achievement. Sign up, upload your docs and buy or sell bitcoin.

3)Netagio


Netagio, the new kids on the block, but the first to have recognised standards implemented and audited, a very professional service, based in the UK. A decent sized order book considering how new they are, and they sell both Bitcoin(XBT) and Gold(Xau) on the same platform which is a nice twist considering most Bitcoin believers are also fans of gold. I rang these guys to ask a question, Local rate number and somebody answered, and to top it all off she answered my question, no holding or transferring or answer machines. I will do a full review on these guys soon.

4)Bittylicious


Bittylicious is not an exchange, but it is a way to buy Bitcoin quickly and easily. Unfortunately you do need to part with privacy for many of their options, but they provide so many different ways to pay, and most of them will have you receiving your coins very quickly. If you only want a small amount then you can buy anonymously. The prices are not as good as the exchanges, but for beginners Bittylicious is a good place to start. They also allow you to buy quite a few altcoins.


Best of the REST...

Basically, there is no 'rest'! Apart from mining (which is pretty much for hobbyists only), the only other ways of buying Bitcoin are usually too expensive for what they are worth or are provided by smaller lesser known companies. Other companies like Circle, don't accept deposits from UK. There are new companies cropping up all the time, so if I've missed anyone you feel is worth a mention then feel free to message me, or comment below.

Buying from Crypto SI

I Have an advert on Localbitcoin, you can buy from me directly here: Or click the advert on the right 

For latest news, follow my twitter here: https://twitter.com/Crypto_SI

Thanks for reading and welcome to the wonderful world of Bitcoin!

So you've decided to buy Bitcoin, and you have no idea how to get your hands on the stuff? I was thinking about this today and dec...

So we've been using coinfloor for the past week and so far so good!

Coinfloor website


While we were hesitant with bit121, Coinfloor has got a slightly more polished look, and it seems that they have learned from bit121's mistakes and also have joined the market at a more stable time.

Opening our account was easy, and we immediately added 2 factor authentication, which is now a must have for any site we use. After opening, we needed to upload our I.D documents.......this is always a bit of a sore point when dealing in Bitcoin, but for the time being the masters must be placated, so we uploaded the relevant passport and utility bill and within 48hrs our account had been verified. We recieved an email saying that we were accepted to the party and off we went.

One of the bad points about coinfloor is that you need to fund your account with over £500 to use the domestic faster payments service, this was no problem for us, but for smaller buyers it may be an issue. To avoid this you can use the SEPA option but this does take longer, we haven't tried the SEPA method so cannot comment on the length of time it takes to load. We used the domestic capital account details and our deposit was showing by the close of the next day. We were pleased with this and immediately got stuck into the trading.

Each trade comes with a small fee something like half a percent possibly less, either way the fees are negligible and Coinfloor do not charge for deposits or BTC withdrawls.

Withdrawing was a piece of cake too, all you have to do is add your BTC wallet address and withdraw, and although your bitcoins are held in cold storage the withdrawl process only takes a few hours during office hours, we were very impressed with this also.

Overall Coinfloor are doing a great job, with a simple easy to use site that works perfectly, trades are instant if you want them to be, withdrawl is fast and deposits are secure. of course they have not been around for long enough to really be called reliable, but they are off to a great start and we would like to recommend them to anyone looking for a UK based BTC exchange.

So all in all Coinfloor gets a massive THUMBS UP from us!

oh on another note, Coinfloor use the new Bitcoin abbreviation XBT which is set by the international standards organisation ISO, From now on we may start using it too as all sensible argument points to it becoming the new standard, so  adios BTC, and welcome XBT.

So we've been using coinfloor for the past week and so far so good! While we were hesitant with bit121, Coinfloor has got a slight...

Hi guys, It's been a while since my last blog, well over a month, an loads has happened in the crypto-currency space. I've been looking into SWARM, and it's well worth investigating when you've finished reading about me and LBC of course.  I will actually blog about it next week infact, because it shouldn't go unreported,it's kinda a big deal :)

So, on with my tale of woe and joy. For this story In will not use the name of the seller on LBC because I don't want to ruin his business, despite the fact that me and this person had a dispute over a sale which lasted the best part of a week, It's important to note that I had conducted loads of trades with this person in the past.



What is LocalBitcoins.com? Basically it's a marketplace for Bitcoin only, think of it as an ebay where all you sell is Bitcoin(Btc) and you have various ways to buy or sell the scarce currency. I sell via Bank deposit and cash in my CryptoS.I HQ and I usually buy via the bank transfer option. I realise that some people want anonymity and this is not possible with bank transfer for obvious reasons. I don't want such anonymity. Different strokes.

On a wednesday evening I sent money to buy Bitcoin, I transferred online using my bank account and faster payments (UK ONLY), so the seller would of got the money within moments (2hrs maximum), Usually at this point the seller would release the bitcoins from 'ESCROW', and I would have them in my btc account on lbc. However on this occasion the seller did not reply. The following morning I chased the seller asking when he would release the Bitcoin and he replied that he had not recieved the payment. I messaged him a few mor time during the day asking him to re-check his account to be sure he hadn't overlooked the payment. I also verified the sort code and account number just in case I had sent it to the wrong place or he had given me incorrect details. Finally that night he replied to say he hadn't recieved the money.

At this point, the money had definately left my account so I was wondering where it had gone, however I was not worried at all about losing it because I have quite a lot of faith in LBC and more importantly in the people who use it and swear by it. The next day the seller opened a dispute, I had tried to open one incorrectly through the support page on the website. I attached screenshots from my online banking and he done the same. It's important to note that screenshots from your account contain a decent amount of information which could be used for identity theft, for this reason it's always good to use a seperate account for all your btc activity.......However I don't bother doing this :)

After looking through his screenshots I saw the payment showing clearly my payment being recieved into his account, by this point 3 days had passed since my initial payment, pretty standard for cheques I guess. We both had the chance to give dialogue and reasons that we felt we should win the dispute. and so the situation remained for a further 2 days, when LBC weighed in saying that the seller had 24hrs to respond else the dispute will be resolved in my favour. There was no reply from the seller and I was credited with the bitcoin the next day, 6 days after the opening of the dispute.

Now there are 2 ways to look at this, 1 way is that it shouldn't take 6 days to recieve Bitcoin, The other is that if this was a dispute using fiat currency and going through the courts it would likely take 6 months and cost a lot of money, this dispute process is free, and out of the hundreds of trades i've done on LBC this is the first one ever to go to dispute so I'm very pleased.

I thought I would blog so people have an idea of the dispute process and how it's actually worked out for me. Personally I've got plenty of faith in LBC, of course I don't leave loads of Btc on there as that's not advisable with any website regardless of how good they are!

Thanks for reading.

Hi guys, It's been a while since my last blog, well over a month, an loads has happened in the crypto-currency space. I've been look...

So this morning like most mornings I fired up the raspberry pi, and jumped into youtube through xbmc.
I often do this before getting out of bed, while my mind is still happy and not yet bogged down with the strains of daily life.

Paul_R_moore was a guest on the keiser report episode 601, I will link to it a little bit later on, and he was simply great. I can't remember the last time I saw max lost for words, It's definately not happened often.

(Image taken from twitter)


So todays blog post is really just a big THANKYOU to Paul for all of his work exposing big fraud.

It has however spurrned me to push a little harder on the cold storage portion of Crypto.SI and make services more readily available.

Also Paul has a book forthcoming called 'Crash Bank Wallop', I will make sure I get a copy.

Here's a link to the video. Enjoy


follow paul on twitter: https://twitter.com/Paul_R_Moore

So this morning like most mornings I fired up the raspberry pi, and jumped into youtube through xbmc. I often do this before getting out of...

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