
Ask HN: I'm late to the Bitcoin party - spaceboy
I&#x27;m a bit late to the Bitcoin party and want to get involved. There&#x27;s a few things I need to clear up and ask before I dive in:<p>Are exchanges any use? Things like Coinbase seem very agressive in knowing personal information about me, asking for a scanned passport, and that&#x27;s a big no-no for me.<p>Are there other alternatives to Coinbase where I can just buy a bit of BTC with my credit card, and preferably without the intrusiveness of Coinbase?
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gaspoweredcat
im sorry to tell you that the majority of bitcoin exchanges will require quite
a lot of personal information, usually a photo of your passport/drivers
licence at minimum and in many cases a picture of you holding the card. this
is simply their only way of trying to protect against people using it for
money laundering or card theft, think about it, if you find/steal/clone a
credit card and can open an anonymous account you could clear out the card
into untraceable BTC and be gone like a ghost. (well OK youd probably have to
anonymize it a little more but the idea s there)

alternatives exists and i believe there is even one built into the android
wallet app mycellium but most will require a lot of verification, your only
other option really is to use local bitcoins or a similar service to buy from
someone near you, but this usually comes at an increased cost.

i actually cant think of any way off the top of my head to buy coins without
full registration or personally knowing someone with them already, there used
to be ways to get them using uKash or paysafecard and even second life linden
dollars but i think theyve closed off all those various holes now

~~~
kylebenzle
There are hundredes of Bitcoin ATMs, quick and easy with variying levels of
scrutiny but usually charge a necessarily high price
([https://coinatmradar.com/](https://coinatmradar.com/)).

Local Bitcoins should have been your first (and only) answer. Sure it is kind
of cyberpunky "dangerous" and you need to talk to strangers, but that's what
Bitcoin is, its a feature.

------
wmf
It's really not safe to buy/sell BTC with a credit card. If you want to avoid
KYC you could try LocalBitcoins.

~~~
spaceboy
I need something similar to Coinbase where I can attach a card and just buy
some BTC without all the KYC BS you see in Coinbase. There has to be something
like that which is heavily vetted by the BTC community? I've seen local
bitcoins, but I want to keep everything as virtual as possible.

~~~
deftnerd
The problem isn't the risk of the service being a scam (which vetting by the
BTC community takes care of) but the risk that the users are scamming the
service.

Without all the 'KYC BS', it would be too easy for someone to use stolen
credit card numbers to buy Bitcoin which would quickly bankrupt the service or
at least cause them to have to pay high processing fees or have their
processing terminated.

