I and my friend darkminded153 who joined recently need bitcoins to buy STEEM POWER. I know more people are still selling STEEM (as they are bailing out of STEEMIT) than are buying it, but we believe STEEMIT is a good long term investment.
As i presumed STEEM value is still falling but i think this will end very soon, thus if we want to buy STEEM POWER we need either bitcoin or some other cryptocurrency which can be dirrectly exchanged for STEEM.
This post nicely described how to buy STEEM with bitcoin, but it did not explain how to buy bitcoin.
Since i hardly go to a physical store anymore (i order everything online) i figured it can’t possibly be difficult to buy bitcoin either… WRONG!
I can order 20 kg worth of drinks from across the country and i’m never asked to confirm my identity even if i chose ‘pay upon delivery’. I can create a business paypal account and i don’t need to verify my identity until i reach a certain limit. But bitcoin… every bitcoin seller needs a picture of my ID card + a picture of my face before i can buy even $10 worth of bitcoin?!
The internet has never yet seen a picture of my face (What? I’m a private person…) and now i have to give it to someone who WANTS to sell me something?
They should be saying ‘Please Mr Customer honor us with your time and money!’
I understand why i can’t ‘’OFFICIALLY’’ buy bitcoins with PayPal, but this paranoia around PayPal transaction is just ridiculous… It’s not like i’m buying illicit drugs.., Is it?!
Am i being unreasonable in not wanting to send my ‘’selfie’’ to a random seller?
I mean ‘Hey mr. seller, you’re really not my type… i mean, it’s nothing personal, but i’m really not like that… you know what i mean?’.
It’s not like i’m inviting them for a dinner in a shady restaurant…
If someone thinks i’m being too ‘’demanding’’, pictures are not all that’s on my list of things i don’t want to send:
- I’m not paying directly with my credit card… They treat me like a criminal and i’m supposed to trust them my card right?...
- My phone number… Hey! For late night calls or something?!
- My home address… Really?...
- I’m not waiting 3 days for money to ‘’clear’’. What, you need to launder it or something? Shuffle those digits already and send me the money…
What else do they need - the chemical composition of my excretions? (FYI: it can show the mood a person is in - far from 100% accurate, but cold war era spies used the method)
I guess things are a bit simpler if you live in the USA, but elsewhere there seem to be no really simple options.
After a lot of digging and reading i found a seemingly straightforward option with wire-transfer on localbitcoins.com, but after pressing ‘buy’ i was given incomplete data and was thus unable to complete the payment.
I could hunt for the missing data myself but since there is a ‘’time out’’ period i did not have enough time, especially as the sellers data was in Czech (i don’t speak Czech…).
Still, i have not yet given up, and when i do find a nice and simple way to buy bitcoin i will put it here for all who are as lost as i am.