We haven’t updated the seller application page for a long time. It was more than overdue.
The bitcoin seller application page used to be full of warnings and disclaimers, neglecting to mention some of the advantages of becoming a BitBargain seller.
What BitBargain offers
A platform that adapts to new challenges and listens to users’ suggestions
Quick support without middle-men, a focus on resolving issues
An ID verification and rating system you can rely on
Low competition by other sellers (high barrier to entry)
Education of buyers to make trading efficient and save you time
Strong visibility to many reliable, trusted buyers
Counter-fraud procedures that really work
Text message notification of admins in case of any issues
Information sharing with other sellers
As a seller, you are able to:
Trade a good volume without much risk or having to deal with verification procedures yourself
Buy coins instantly through Cloud Sell offers at market price or below
Set fine grained controls to filter who you trade with
Dispute any trades, restrict any buyer’s account when necessary
Send a reminder text message to unresponsive buyers with a click
Receive tips to increase your volume or trade more efficiently
Learn more about safe trading which you can also apply elsewhere
Sell coins with 0% commission to buyers referred by you
Get support via chat in real-time
If you just want to sell your coins quickly at or near market price without having to take the test or study safety procedures, try our Cloud Sell feature.
There is a Bitcoin Cash hard fork expected on the 15th of November 2018.
There is much uncertainty about replay protection, which implementation miners will support, and similar critical points.
We do not plan on having one more BCH supported on the platform should there turn out to be multiple working blockchains. That outcome is unlikely, though.
All users are advised to withdraw BCH until the 13th of November. For our full policy regarding the BCH fork, please visit https://bitbargain.co.uk/bch-fork-201811
One surprise that new sellers on BitBargain face early on in their peer to peer trading experience is the hidden force of collective will originating from other active sellers. The will to try to be at the top of the list at /buy, even if it means asking the bottom unit price for the same coin.
As soon as the unsuspecting seller would create an offer and beat everyone else by a pound thus making it to the top of the list, within seconds the other offers match or even undercut theirs. This is done using bots. Little scripts running all day, updating the unit price on the other seller’s offers.
This article will explain the issue with undercutting, the problems with regulating it and the proposed solution.
Copy/paste the invoice from the box at the webshop into your BitBargain Lightning Wallet and click “Open Invoice”. The details will come up.
The feature is highly experimental as LN software is still heavily under development. Lightning deposits will be made possible once the software has matured.
A guide to setting up a Lightning node. The second half of the article
displays instantly when you make a payment of $0.01 through the
Lightning Network.
A minimalistic and easy to use web wallet that can only send and receive via LN. Unfortunately for now it is testnet-only. It also has a section where websites and services can be listed (if they accept LN).
We are proud to present a new feature on BitBargain which has been requested numerous times especially in the last few months.
Becoming a regular seller on BitBargain takes time and effort.
It requires studying the seller howto and passing the seller test. It requires understanding of the price formula. It requires great communication skills. It requires devoting time and effort to stay online and wait for buyers to show up. Sellers are expected to keep checking their bank statement and mark the payment as soon as possible. Being a seller is not for everyone.
Still, many buyers are interested in easy ways to convert back some of their crypto-currency into fiat money.
This is where Cloud Sell comes into play. With Cloud Sell you can sell your bitcoins for GBP via bank transfer easily. Just enter the amount, choose your markup (from -10% to 0% currently) and we will make sure that sellers are aware of your offer. The quickest seller gets to pick up your coins. Just create an offer, lay back and the money will come to you. By limiting the maximum unit price to 0% above market, we encourage shorter waiting times.
The hosting provider (ATW) made a mistake while configuring their network and we made the mistake of forgetting to set up the server monitoring via SMS after the move to new servers just a few weeks ago. The combination of these two mistakes has caused BitBargain to be down for hours until a phonecall from a seller (thank you again).
The server is able to reach the internet once again and all services are back online.
BCH / Bitcash: BCH wallet balances credited to sellers active at the time of fork who had at least 0.01 BTC.
BTG / Bitgold: BTG is sent to sellers who request it who had at least 0.01 BTC balance at the time of fork. Limit to apply 1/Jan/2018 00:00 UTC.
Other / future coins: no longer credited or sent.
If you need coins from any future forks, please make sure to
withdraw your BTC (or other coin) in time. Remember, you are not supposed to store coins on BitBargain in the first place
unless you are planning to sell them within 24 hours.
We reserve the right to use any coins created from the fork as we
see fit (not touching it, selling it and crediting BTC, distributing to
users in part or in full or not at all, charity or anything else).
If only it was our fee! We could simply get rid of it. We would love nothing more than to make withdrawals completely free every time, as they used to be for many years since 2012. And it’s still the case: most of the time, withdrawing for free is possible.
We felt it was important to explain that the fee is not a withdrawal fee: it is a mining fee required by the Bitcoin network (specifically the bitcoin miners) to confirm transactions.
We never profited from withdrawals and do not intend to profit from them in the future, either.
What is this mining fee? What are confirmations? Why do I need them?
The mining/transaction fees have started to get out of hand. Currently the cheapest price to withdraw is over £5 worth of bitcoins.
A notification was added on the trade request screen to warn users if this value is high.
We have gotten some angry emails about the high fees, using the word ‘greed’. Again we would like to remind everyone that the mining fees go to the bitcoin miners and it’s not something we make up or keep for ourselves. The fees are calculated automatically every few minutes and we rely on statistics taken from https://bitcoinfees.21.co/ to estimate how much BTC is needed for a fast confirmation. We also provide different options targetting different confirmation times.
In the past we have seen fees get high and return to low levels and hope this will happen again soon.
We have invested in new servers to handle the potential of adding new coins. It will also make it possible to abandon Cloudflare and ensure better privacy. We will let you know when the migration has completed.
An entity with modest mental capabilities to understand the chances of finding a working account with bitcoins in it has been trying a list of username/password combinations on our server all day, to try to log into thousands of accounts from thousands of proxies. Without success.
To help any security people, sysadmins, law enforcement or just others looking for a list of proxies, here’s a list of what we have banned so far:
There is an upcoming hard fork of bitcoin on the 1st of August 12:30pm UTC. Though anyone can create a fork of bitcoin and launch their own version, the Bitcoin Cash fork has gained traction from supporters of larger blocks and the opposition of Segwit alike. Some exchanges signalled support for trading the new coin and some wallets promised support for it also. The fork may have a ripple effect producing unexpected results, therefore we need to take some action and clarify our position on this.
BitBargain’s policy has always been to support the bitcoin with the best devs, the most hashing power, the longest chain and the largest support by exchanges and wallets. Therefore so far we have always stuck to the reference client (Bitcoin Core).
We believe that bitcoin’s value doesn’t come from the devs, the miners or the userbase alone, but the consensus between these parties. It is unfortunate that the current state of affairs is threatening to split the consensus bringing on confusion and uncertainty about which implementation to support. In these uncertain times we will continue to use the reference client until there is clear and strong indication that userbase, hasing power and devs have moved towards a different implementation.
For the moment, we will not be adding BCC, for the following reasons:
- Having multiple cryptos with the name ‘bitcoin’ will no doubt have a negative effect on the economy as a whole.
- It would take extra time and costs to set up a new coin server.
- It would need to be done in a hurry because with only 5 days left, the Bitcoin Cash client has still not been released.
- BCC’s late release suggests that the codebase may be buggy, not much testing has been done and it would be extra risky to base coin exchange on it.
- There is a chance that the lack of hashing power, the new and untested code or other circumstances will make BCC vulnerable against attacks.
Just to be safe, we will be halting bitcoin withdrawals and deposits on the 1st of August. Since we will not be setting up a BCC server, the BCC split from bitcoins will not be passed on to any users. Buyers have always been advised to withdraw bitcoins immediately after the purchase, sellers are advised to withdraw BTC during the fork while bitcoin trading is down. In all of August, deposits will require 6 confirmations. On BitBargain, typically only sellers deposit coins, so buyers will not be affected by this.
We will keep an eye on BCC and if there is large demand for it, we may support it in the future.
