USA Guide to Using Bitcoin effectively:
Purpose: To give a brief overview of Bitcoin and how to use it successfully. My definition of successfully using bitcoin is to minimize fees and to be able to have the freedom to use your money as your please. You worked for it! This guide is geared towards people living in the United States, since we have different banking than in Europe.
Advantages
Disadvantages
What is Bitcoin? https://www.weusecoins.com/
Simply, Bitcoin is a digital currency. The advantages of using Bitcoin is there is some privacy with your transactions, relatively low transaction fees, and it is fairly fast.
How to Buy?
So this is the meat-and-potatoes of using Bitcoin effectively.
There are different ways that fees are assessed and there are several ways to buy bitcoins.
I will personally talk about my methods I've used in the United States and what I find to be most cost effective.
Fees: Generally are charged for wire transfers & purchasing/selling coins.
PURCHASING COINS:
1.) Most recommended: Gemini & itBit
Trading fees: They are generally from 0% to .25%. I generally don't pay a fee at itBit because I'm usually a "maker" (https://www.itbit.com/h/fees-maker-taker-model)
The disadvantge of my favorite sites are that you can't INSTANTLY buy coins. *************** will take a few days, but a wire transfer to these exchanges has been showing up the next day.
IN A CLOSE SECOND: BitStamp, Bitfinex -->These are excellent exchanges with good liquidity. The difference is that their banks are located in Slovenia and Hong Kong, so you will pay more for your transfers and there is no *************** option. For example, when I wired to Bitfinex, I'm charged $40 from my bank + $20 for accepting + I was charged by an intermediate bank.
Sending to BitStamp = $40 from my bank + $8.50 for accepting the wire.
2.) Circle
-Pros
-CONS
3.) Coinbase
-Pros
CONS
Coinbase offers an exchange as well as their normal brokerage services of buying coins. The exchange is not available in my state, so I can not comment on it.
What to do with your coins?
How to process winnings?
1.) Make sure you are sending your winnings from your gambling site to your intermediate wallet--not to Circle, Coinbase, or your exchange. This will prevent any privacy issues where you get questioned for gambling.
2.) If you can use Circle, cashout there. You'll generally get the best rate.
otherwise,
Recommended Books:
1.) Nitrogen Sports
Pros-
Cons-
2.) Heritage Sports
Pros-
Cons-
Cloudbet can be considered for smaller wagers or obscure matches. They sometimes feature stale lines and I think they have pretty good live betting. The payouts are instant, which is why I'm listing it. However, support is very slow and I can personally never find out what the true limits are on a wager. Many times, I will look up a line and hover over it to see the limit that is allowed; I will then make a deposit and attempt to place a bet, only to find out the wagering limit is much lower. It can create some frustration.
That said, Nitrogen and Heritage should be all you need to get your money down on whatever you want to wager on.
Purpose: To give a brief overview of Bitcoin and how to use it successfully. My definition of successfully using bitcoin is to minimize fees and to be able to have the freedom to use your money as your please. You worked for it! This guide is geared towards people living in the United States, since we have different banking than in Europe.
Advantages
- When you understand it all, it makes it very easy to make bets instantly or to place large bets cost effectively. You can bet pennies or you can bet literally hundreds of thousands of dollars very conveniently.
- When you need USD, you can get your money much faster than waiting for a check or other methods of payout. Plus, you can get much larger sums faster.
- You can actually use your Bitcoin directly to pay for things, without converting to USD, so using a book like Nitrogen will allow you to literally spend your winnings right after the match ends.
Disadvantages
- Bitcoin suffers from some high-volatility at times.
- If you spend or send your bitcoin to a book that converts to USD right when you buy your BTC, you are not likely to suffer any loss in value.
- If you keep BTC or wager solely in Bitcoin you are subject to the market fluctuations. This can be a good or bad thing, which leads too....
- You can't really predict the market.
What is Bitcoin? https://www.weusecoins.com/
Simply, Bitcoin is a digital currency. The advantages of using Bitcoin is there is some privacy with your transactions, relatively low transaction fees, and it is fairly fast.
How to Buy?
So this is the meat-and-potatoes of using Bitcoin effectively.
There are different ways that fees are assessed and there are several ways to buy bitcoins.
I will personally talk about my methods I've used in the United States and what I find to be most cost effective.
Fees: Generally are charged for wire transfers & purchasing/selling coins.
PURCHASING COINS:
1.) Most recommended: Gemini & itBit
- Both of these sites are trading platforms, which means that you are buying coins from another user. I like these exchanges for United States citizens because of the fact that their banks are located on US-Soil. What does this mean? It means lower fees on wire transfer fees.
- Gemini: Allows *************** deposits up to $500 and wire transfers are accepted free of charge! Withdrawal is free! (https://gemini24.zendesk.com/hc/en-u...transfer-fees-)
- itBit: Accept wire transfers for $10. Withdrawl: FREE *************** up to and including $3000, $20 for a wire transfer over $3000(https://support.itbit.com/customer/p...awal-bank-fees)
- If you want to wire money to these exchanges, they both are domestic wire transfers, so your fees are generally lower. For example, if I use my FNBO Direct Account, it costs me $15+$10 to send a wire to itBit (arrives next day) or $15 to Gemini. That's pretty cost effective. Remember, Gemini allows *************** deposits up to $500 for free.
- Generally speaking, if you use any of the free deposit methods to an exchange, you'll get more Bitcoin than if you were to use Circle/Coinbase. A wire transfer makes sense around the $3000 mark.
Trading fees: They are generally from 0% to .25%. I generally don't pay a fee at itBit because I'm usually a "maker" (https://www.itbit.com/h/fees-maker-taker-model)
The disadvantge of my favorite sites are that you can't INSTANTLY buy coins. *************** will take a few days, but a wire transfer to these exchanges has been showing up the next day.
IN A CLOSE SECOND: BitStamp, Bitfinex -->These are excellent exchanges with good liquidity. The difference is that their banks are located in Slovenia and Hong Kong, so you will pay more for your transfers and there is no *************** option. For example, when I wired to Bitfinex, I'm charged $40 from my bank + $20 for accepting + I was charged by an intermediate bank.
Sending to BitStamp = $40 from my bank + $8.50 for accepting the wire.
2.) Circle
-Pros
- You can use your debit card to instantly purchase Bitcoins. This is a money-transfer service so you are subjected to more regulations (it's in USA). You start at $300 limits and can go to $3000. You'll have send, buy, and cashout limits. This makes it vital to use an intermediate wallet because you can't send back and forth from Circle without maxing your limits pretty quickly.
- That's really the big advantage of Circle: Debit card purchases up to $3000 once you're verified.
- The market is about 1% higher than many exchanges, so it's advantageous to sell your coins here if you can.
- *************** up to $3000
- -Circle allows you to operate in USD/BTC. You can actually have 2 seperate accounts, one in each currency. This allows you to avoid volatilty when some books take a while to process a payout.
-CONS
- -VERY EASY TO BE BANNED. They will look into your transactions and ask you questions. Very important to use an intermediate wallet.
- -Support is hit or miss.
- -As said above...The market is about 1% higher than many exchanges, ---so even though there are no "fees" if you do the math on most large bitcoin purchases, you are better off purchasing from an exchange and getting more coins for your money.
3.) Coinbase
-Pros
- You can work your way into Instant Buys.
- 1% fee is pretty reasonable since the market price is usually a bit lower on Coinbase
- *************** , high limits
- DEBIT CARDS coming : https://blog.coinbase.com/2016/03/01/debit-card/
CONS
- -Support is slow
- The limits on INSTANT purchases are not that high.
- -It can be difficult to get your limits up
- Takes some time to get your coins if you use *************** & you will get the coins at the price you purchased them... So you will either gain or lose some value in the time it takes those coins to be credited to your account.
Coinbase offers an exchange as well as their normal brokerage services of buying coins. The exchange is not available in my state, so I can not comment on it.
What to do with your coins?
- -Once you purchase your coins, the first thing that you should do it transfer them to a secure wallet.I prefer Electrum, but you can start with the basic Blockchain wallet until you get more comfortable with understanding private keys and how it all works. https://bitcoin.org/en/choose-your-wallet
- Just make sure that whatever wallet you choose, that you go through the steps of properly backing it up.
How to process winnings?
1.) Make sure you are sending your winnings from your gambling site to your intermediate wallet--not to Circle, Coinbase, or your exchange. This will prevent any privacy issues where you get questioned for gambling.
2.) If you can use Circle, cashout there. You'll generally get the best rate.
otherwise,
- Up to $3000, use free *************** through itBit.
- Over $3000, use wiretransfer @Gemini (free)
- If you only want to spend some of your winnings, look into https://www.gyft.com/ where you can buy giftcards.
Recommended Books:
1.) Nitrogen Sports
Pros-
- Pretty good odds,
- free deposits and cashouts
- cashouts are usually processed within 10 minutes even when they are large. Win a bet, get your money right away. I haven't seen a limit on deposits or payouts, I've done some over 10k processed within a few minutes.
- The book has a cool self-excluding feature
- PRO or CON--Wagering is all in BTC ---> you might gain some value or lose some as the price of BTC changes
Cons-
- Live betting is not the best
- Support is just through chat and e-mail
2.) Heritage Sports
Pros-
- Okay lines,
- great customer service.
- free deposits and cashouts.
- PRO or CON? -- Your btc deposits are converted to USD, so you can avoid some market volatility.
Cons-
- Cashouts require you taking a phone call and verbally giving a payout password. There is no two-factor authentication or anything automated.
- Only processed once a day M-F. Limit is said to be $3000 ... but I've done more, I think if you make larger deposits you can cashout more at once.
Cloudbet can be considered for smaller wagers or obscure matches. They sometimes feature stale lines and I think they have pretty good live betting. The payouts are instant, which is why I'm listing it. However, support is very slow and I can personally never find out what the true limits are on a wager. Many times, I will look up a line and hover over it to see the limit that is allowed; I will then make a deposit and attempt to place a bet, only to find out the wagering limit is much lower. It can create some frustration.
That said, Nitrogen and Heritage should be all you need to get your money down on whatever you want to wager on.
