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Comment by BenjaminN | Hacker News Reader

When it will be as easy to buy a bitcoin as it is to buy, say, an ebook, it will go up significantly.

For example, I tried to buy some last monday and realized that I had to justify my address, my bank account, my identity and so on. I still can't figure out why it's so complicated to buy a bitcoin. I've been waiting for my bitcoin-central account since then, and received confirmation for my account on bitstamp last saturday. I still have to transfer some money there.

My question is: why is it so complicated to buy bitcoins?

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Because it doesn't have chargebacks.

A lot of services that allowed its users to purchase bitcoins without having to verify their identity and buy bitcoin using PP or CCs were abused by people using stolen PP and CC info. So they lost money if the real owner issued chargeback and bitcoins were already transferred.

I actually never realized the banking system was not trustful. Obviously, I thought that when I entered my credit card number, you can easily check I have enough money, switch the money from one account to another, and let the store knows the money is now in his account. But it's obviously much more complicated.

Any Bitcoin exchange in the U.S. has been deemed by FINCEN as a "money transmitter", which invokes masses of onerous rules and regulations that they must abide by (including all the IDs required).

This despite the fact that FINCEN considers exchanges dealing with any other type of currency "foreign currency exchanges", which require much less regulation (such as no ID required for purchases under $1000).

In short, it's hard to buy Bitcoins because government.

> When it will be as easy to buy a bitcoin as it is to buy, say, an ebook, it will go up significantly.

In the UK many banks refuse to process transfers to known Bitcoin-related accounts. PayPal and Transferwise likewise.

Once they stop trying to protect their vested interests then purchasing Bitcoins will become significantly easier.

Halifax and Nationwide are two that do not impose this block, but there's still the 25 UKP transfer fee

Someone pointed out chargebacks, which is one issue. The other is financial regulation aimed at money laundering. Anyone who deals in this much money has lots of questions asked by governments. That's why your best bet for bitcoins is either to buy them locally from someone you meet up with or to use an exchange like Coinbase where you use bank transfer and it's all above board. Everything else is a lot of work.

> why is it so complicated to buy bitcoins?

The legacy banking system, rules and regulation in particular.

> My question is: why is it so complicated to buy bitcoins?

Because bitcoin transfers are irreversible, unlike most methods of transferring currency to pay for them other than direct p2p cash transfer (which is, itself, somewhat inconvenient.)

Try local bitcoins. You can buy in person with cash.

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