A Quantum Immortal

I know I’m posting almost exclusively about BitCoin for the last couple of weeks, but since in the last few days several of my friends asked me “Where do I buy bitcoins from”, I thought I’d save myself the trouble and summarize it in a post.

There are a few different bitcoin merchants out there, but the only one that I had direct dealing with is Mt. Gox.

This is the largest bitcoin dealer (according to the bitcoin forums), and thus has more trust. Some smaller merchant might offer better deals, but might also disappear after you send them money, without sending you any coins. As the market is very small and unestablished at this point, I prefer to minimize my chances and go with Mt. Gox.

Another advantage for me is the Mt. Gox is willing to sell up to $500 a day per person, while smaller merchant have much lower limits.

So, if you’d like to purchase from Mt. Gox via PayPal, these are the instructions (you can find this link from Mt. Gox’s main page, but it takes a bit of searching). Be sure to note that:

• There is a 7% commission for the trade. Every merchant takes some form of commission, this one is relatively large to what you’re used to from other markets because there is relatively little competition a.t.m. The commission will get lower as the market size increases and Mt. Gox has better, high profile competitors.
• The bitcoins will only arrive five days after your payment. The reason Mt. Gox does this is to eliminate chances of you cheating him. If they released the bitcoins sooner, you could reverse the deal via PayPal and he’ll be screwed.