Introduction
First off, this will only be helpful to other Planktons. Pretty sure Minnows and higher already know everything I'm about to say. Also everything is at your own risk, do your own research. I'm merely sharing my experience.
My account was made a month after this site launched. But I barely have done anything on the site until recently... Why?
Well, I wanted to invest in the site at the time because this idea is amazing, but back then I had looked at many different exchanges and every one of them wanted me to upload personal documents. Something I wasn't comfortable with and still not comfortable with. Seeing as I knew most other people I know would feel this way and as long as that was a requirement to participate in Crypto it would never be adopted by a large amount of the general public. I just decided to give up trying. Until now.
The Steemit community has grown so much and so many awesome apps have grown up around it (d.tube, dlive, dsound, dmania, utopian, zappl, busy, steepshot, ect) and it only shows signs of improving - I don't see how this won't be the future! Now that there are many different types of content and the crypto talk that is there is a lot less niche and more approachable than it was before – the rules have also evolved to be more clear. This whole community has been thriving recently. There is still that problem with uploading personal documents that just won't be accepted by many.
So I finally decided that I would actually research this - there is definitely a market for what I'm looking for and there are so many sites to look through, I was determined to see if it existed. Because of the rarity I figured there would probably be high fees.
Info any newbie buying crypto should be aware of
• Banks and Paypal will shut down accounts that buy crypto (or at least bitcoin) directly.
• You should find a different site to send money to that directly supports then buy crypto from that site.
• If you do decide to buy bitcoin directly from paypal, sellers will be wary because of the possibility of “Chargeback” – you would have to be a pretty crappy person to pull this.
• When it comes to Crypto currency the EU isn’t really regulated. The US is. Heavily.
• It’s very hard to buy Altcoins directly. Waiting for https://www.litecoinlocal.net/ to stop being in maintenance.
• If you give your info out to anyone on the blockchain it’s there forever.
• The new Tax law makes every trade a taxable event. So turning bitcoin in litecoin = taxable.
• Mining Crypto will reduce the lifespan of your hardware.
• Many coins have similar names. (don’t try to send dashcoins to a dash wallet)
Workaround Ideas
~Here are a few different things I thought might work~
• Buy an online prepaid card that doesn't require ID verification.
• Open a bank account on trusted online only bank.
• Make a EU banking account and just buy crypto from that. (This requires extra tax docs to be filled out at tax time, namely TD F 90-22.1 FBAR – I’ll leave this alone for now, may come back to this in the future)
Requirements
~Requirements for the type of site I'm looking for~
• Must allow US Citizen to make a usable account (So no epayments)
• Must allow a non-corporate account to trade in USD (So no bittrex)
• Must accept USD from a US citizen without ID Verification. (So no Kraken – good for EU though)
• Must allow withdraws of USD without ID Verification. (Kraken actually has a limit that you can withdraw based on income)
• Cannot be a site I directly buy bitcoin from off the internet. (I want to keep my accounts, so no localbitcoins.com, you can meet people in person and by with cash though, that works)
• Must be a https secure site.
• Must be able to buy them without going anywhere.
• Has to have a low minimum limit so I just play around with a small amount of money to just see it move around (so no changelly)
A requirement I should have said was not to have to wait 48 hours, since a lot of these numbers as far as bitcoin is concerned are probably not going to be accurate when I post this, but ah well… At least you only have to wait the first time. After that it will be instant.
**The site I finally found: **
Though, be wary, some people were saying they got locked out of their account, I wouldn’t keep any money on the site.
Can pay Virwox with paypal (So you won'd be directly buying crypto with paypal.)
It Requires no ID.
Basically it uses SLL, the currency from the game “Second life” to buy BTC with. So you send money from your bank account to virwox, then use that money in virwox to buy sll, then use the sll to buy btc. Each one of these transactions carries a fee. I decided to place a very small amount to see what would happen with the money. I send $30 to virwox from paypal.
Fees broken down
For a $30 transfer using this site…
1 USD = L$249
• Fee #1: $1.32 (4.4%) – 0.44¢ = 0.88¢ (2.9%)
Explanation: The amount of USD I got was 28.68. The Paypal charge for $30 was S1.32, so 4.4% fee there. Although according to Virwox’s fee page they get charged a dollar amount and a percentage amount based on the size and location for the transfer. So hard to tell how much the dollar amount and percentage actually is. I’ll use the 0.35 euro example. 0.35 euro = 0.44 usd.
• Hidden Fee #1: 0.68¢
Explanation: I couldn’t use the full amount to buy SLL, it had to be full dollars, so 0.68¢ is still there. (Hidden fee because of Inactivity fee if I don’t continue to use the site)
USD translation -> $28.00 = L$6972
• Fee #2: L$214.28 (86¢) = 3.07% (which is less than the L$50 they said they’re take out, but more than 3%)
Explanation: The amount of SLL I got for $28 was L$6757.72 (So I’m down to $27.139)
• Hidden Fee #2: L$109.03 ($0.4378¢)
I could only transfer L$6,648.69 ($26.70), so L$109.03 ($0.4378¢) is still there. (Hidden fee because of Inactivity fee if I don’t continue to use the site)
• Fee # 3: 0.0005 BTC, or $4.18
Explanation:The amount of Bitcoin I got for L$6,648.69 ($26.70) was 0.0029 ($24.29)
Transferring to my wallet is a fee of 0.0005 ($4.18) + (which leaves me with 0.0024 [$20.06] in my wallet.)
So transfer fee is basically $10.00
Which means the total fees for using Virwox are…
Total percentage: 5.97% ($5.025)
USD: 0.44¢
BTC: 0.0005 ($4.18 USD)
Hidden Fees: Round these up to $2 USD (there is probably no way to get those odd amounts out.)
SLL: 0.40¢ (If they take out the full $L50 (SLL) every time, that would be L$100 [0.40¢])
Delayed: First Transaction is delayed 48 hours so the site can avoid chargeback.
Fees to move $30: $10 (fee from paypal, fee from virwox to change usd to sll, fee from virwox to change sll to btc, fee from virwox to sent btc to wallet)
Fees from their Help Page:
https://www.virwox.com/help.php#_Fees
In the end, not quite 48 hours later, I finally got the bitcoin…
USD Spent: $30.00
Total Fees taken: $9.94
Total amount: 0.0024 BTC ($20.06)
I also found physical locations in the real world “Bitcoin ATMs”:
https://www.athenabitcoin.com/
This way you can just trade with fiat, no debit card, credit card or bank account required. You just need to go there.
Honorable Mentions:
https://changelly.com/
https://www.leupay.eu/
https://www.lakebtc.com/
https://www.payza.com/
https://www.epay.com/
Thanks for reading! This was a fun experiment....
Until the next Plankton Report!
If you think I gave a good run down of my experience as the smallest life form in the sea, and you think the post is undervalued; any extra sunlight I can eat photosynthate to become a strong minnow would be awesome! Thank you! And thus...
Just testing to see if its worth adding wallets to posts or if it looks bad:
Bitcoin - 18XyQW5ZZrSHQAyybkZ1hTZkm81ghChVRN
Bitcoin Cash - 18txbMn2sgu6L5cTFWpUgU9Rn6Rf2HBaDM
Bitcoin Gold - GbassFFiban3MfH9aFy36Z8odaMFMyu4Ng
Ethereum - 0x8F65d9e99700Ea6E2aBC2a6bB2B4C74e4B073aEB
Theereum Classic - 0xFa1c7D765Cd25c3B8B5b452322B7D8578f9ABca9
Litecoin - LbFpFrqcxWAxkxRYgUWJJRFpyT6iyCGNTQ
Dash - XqCrRSFcsEeMWFKUZuK2HWotSFyvi6fMzj
Sources:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3gic98/localbitcoins_freezes_my_account_with_2_btc_for/
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=264679.0;all
https://www.virwox.com/faq.php
https://secondlife.com/my/lindex/market.php?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steemit
https://np.reddit.com/r/ethtrader/comments/6fu1vs/fyi_your_funds_are_at_risk_if_you_are_in_the_us/
https://np.reddit.com/r/ethtrader/comments/6fu1vs/fyi_your_funds_are_at_risk_if_you_are_in_the_us/
https://dowbit.com/bittrex-usd-trading/
https://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/77e8wg/bittrex_verification_is_not_working_i_cant/
http://www.bestbitcoinexchange.net/anonymous/
https://www.dash.org/forum/threads/how-do-you-recieve-dash-coins-from-a-cryptonote-dashcoin-wallet-f21c4c6.8924/
https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/20555/is-there-a-service-like-localbitcoins-com-for-litecoin
https://community.secondlife.com/forums/topic/103307-quotcashing-outquot-earned-lindens-to-paypal-how-do-i-do-that/
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=180401.0
https://www.epayments.com/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/2017/12/28/loophole-allows-tax-free-bitcoin-exchanges-into-2018/#375c8ba912fa
https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@crytolite/irs-after-bitcoin
https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-drop/n-14-21.pdf
https://steemit.com/steemit/@barrydutton/steemit101-what-s-a-minnow-dolphin-whale-etc-in-terms-of-the-numbers-anyways-resources-for-steemit-noobs
Youtube Cryptocurrency Taxes: 2018 & 2017 Rules Explained by a Tax Guy and What The Law & IRS Say
Youtube 4 (secret) ways to buy BTC Bitcoin with debit / credit card your bank won't notice