Australian Users Thread

[bitkilo]

Hello to any other Australian users on this forum.
Don't forget to get behind some of the great bitcoin companies leading the way in the Australian bitcoin community.
Just a couple i can think of that i use myself are:

CoinJar- great wallet provided and bitcoin exchange, they also no longer charge GST on BTC purchases after moving business to the UK
https://www.coinjar.com

Any bill you need to pay can be paid with bitcoin using LivingRoomOfSatoshi:
https://www.livingroomofsatoshi.com/

[BitcoinXio]

Hey Bitkilo,

Nice to always support specific locations, Australia seems to be one of the few locations with a good amount of bitcoin interaction. The UK, US, Asia of course have a lot too, but from my count there are 11 bitcoin companies in Australia that are bitcoin exchanges or wallets. You can see them all here: http://bitcoinx.io/tag/australia/

[rogerver]

CoinJar- great wallet provided and bitcoin exchange, they also no longer charge GST on BTC purchases after moving business to the UK
https://www.coinjar.com

Please spend some time to google the infamous Bitcoinica incident with Zhou Tong, the creator of Coinjar.
In the minds of most people who followed it, the evidence is overwhelming that he is the thief.

[LiteCoinGuy]

"..., they also no longer charge GST on BTC purchases after moving business to the UK"


Hopefully australia will change that soon, but iam optimistic.

[bitkilo]

CoinJar- great wallet provided and bitcoin exchange, they also no longer charge GST on BTC purchases after moving business to the UK
https://www.coinjar.com

Please spend some time to google the infamous Bitcoinica incident with Zhou Tong, the creator of Coinjar.
In the minds of most people who followed it, the evidence is overwhelming that he is the thief.

Thanks for the heads up Roger, i will do some more digging on that, i also wasn't aware that Zhou Tong and Ryan Zhou are one of the same person, sneaky as best.
I do use Coinjar for all my BTC purchases but like everybody should do, once those funds are clear i move them straight away to a offline paper wallet till needed.

On a side note i must say that Coinjar have the best customer support i have ever experienced, always very prompt and helpful to any questions i may have.
I have also met and spoken with Asher Tan in person and i find him a great person to deal with.

[rupert-h]

Hey guys,

Great to see an Australian BTC thread going!

I work for http://www.buyabitcoin.com.au. We are an Australian Bitcoin exchange that only accepts cash deposits and have been in business for over 18 months.

A bit of a different model to Coinjar. Although we are more expensive, we process orders immediately. We send bitcoins to your wallet within one hour of cash deposit, we also don't require sign-ups/ ID verification for purchases.

Anyway, shameless plug aside, we're also in the development of the http://www.bitcoin.com.au. If there's any particular features or content that you think would be beneficial to the bitcoin community as a whole please let me know and ill pass it on to our developers .

[rupert-h]

"..., they also no longer charge GST on BTC purchases after moving business to the UK"


Hopefully australia will change that soon, but iam optimistic.

Not many exchanges in Australia charges GST on the spot price of BTC, the majority received special ruling classifying them as a "Merchant Service" and not an exchange. Long story short... GST is only charged on the exchange fee not the spot price. Thank god!

That being said, I'm sure as soon as you see this "Bitcoin is a goods" ruling change Coinbase and Coinjar will come to Australian Shores shortly after

[rogerver]

For what it is worth, I've also met Asher of Coinjar and thought he was great.
When I was a Bitcoinica user, I also thought they had some of the best customer service of any bitcoin company around.
It really is a shame what happened there.

Using them to buy coins instantly should be safe enough, but never store your bitcoins with someone else.

[bitkilo]

Hey guys,

Great to see an Australian BTC thread going!

I work for http://www.buyabitcoin.com.au. We are an Australian Bitcoin exchange that only accepts cash deposits and have been in business for over 18 months.

A bit of a different model to Coinjar. Although we are more expensive, we process orders immediately. We send bitcoins to your wallet within one hour of cash deposit, we also don't require sign-ups/ ID verification for purchases.

Anyway, shameless plug aside, we're also in the development of the http://www.bitcoin.com.au. If there's any particular features or content that you think would be beneficial to the bitcoin community as a whole please let me know and ill pass it on to our developers .

Very neat website and a good to have another contributer to the Australian BTC market, I imagine your service would suit the darknet markets well and theres nothing wrong with that. Annonmous purchases is what a lot of people in this community want.
Your not wrong about being a little more expensive though, your markup is about $50 per coin above Coinjar, why the $200 minimum order requirement?

[rupert-h]

Hey guys,

Great to see an Australian BTC thread going!

I work for http://www.buyabitcoin.com.au. We are an Australian Bitcoin exchange that only accepts cash deposits and have been in business for over 18 months.

A bit of a different model to Coinjar. Although we are more expensive, we process orders immediately. We send bitcoins to your wallet within one hour of cash deposit, we also don't require sign-ups/ ID verification for purchases.

Anyway, shameless plug aside, we're also in the development of the http://www.bitcoin.com.au. If there's any particular features or content that you think would be beneficial to the bitcoin community as a whole please let me know and ill pass it on to our developers .

Very neat website and a good to have another contributer to the Australian BTC market, I imagine your service would suit the darknet markets well and theres nothing wrong with that. Annonmous purchases is what a lot of people in this community want.
Your not wrong about being a little more expensive though, your markup is about $50 per coin above Coinjar, why the $200 minimum order requirement?

Yeh it's a frustrating situation here in Australia, although we don't want to perpetuate scammers and illegal activity, the industry is unregulated and Bitcoin is recognised as a 'goods'. There isn't even anyone who you can report AML/KYC information to relating to Bitcoin purchases.

We would love more guidelines and proper regulation to legitimise the industry here in Australia but at current, any AML/KYC requirements are arbitrary, and no one's listening, we've tried reporting suspicious activity before but no one even gives us a callback. Most ID/KYC requirements only hurt the consumer experience with little to no benefit. Buying bitcoin in Australia is more like buying a TV than a foreign currency.

As you said, anonymity is a high commodity in the Bitcoin space, with the lack of fungibility inherent in Bitcoin, it's understandable why most honest people would prefer to not have their identity and subsequent entire bitcoin transaction history known by every company in the space if they dont have to.

Our price does come at a slight premium, but were not that bad! Check https://comparebitcoins.net/

We're only $2.74 on the $100 more expensive than Coinjar, which equates to about a $10 AUD premium per BTC. But hey you get your bitcoins pretty much instantly compared to the 3-day turn around offer by B-pay Coinjar deposits. A premium for a locked in rate. It's annoying when you want to buy BTC at a low price only to have to wait 3 days in processing, alot can happen to the bitcoin price in 3 days .

But I do drill this point home every time we have a meeting, my aim is to get our prices lower than credit cards but ultimately that requires much higher volumes which requires a larger Bitcoin network.

Our minimum order is something we're looking at changing in the future, it was set at $200 because of the internal verification required for a new customer (call outs and deposit verification) made the entry point only viable at $200. But were working on a few new things (like bitcoin.com.au) and hopefully this won't be the case for much longer, we aim to gravitate towards the smaller, higher frequency, Bitcoin purchases much like Bitquick but we'll see what develops in the future.

[bitkilo]

Thanks rupert-h,

Although your fees are a little higher 4.9% compered to 1% i will give you a try within the next month, i need to buy about 0.8btc so the $200 min limit won't affect me this time but i often buy small amount like $50 at a time.
I guess the premium is not that bad to stay anonymous. Do you know if the banks require any ID when depositing fund into your account?

Is buying bitcoin in Australia still considered buying goods? I thought that rule was changed and now GST only applies to the exchange fee because that is a service, last time i spoke with Asher i think i remember him saying they were looking to come back to Australia soon after this change.

Edit: Looks like GST does only apply to the exchange fee now.
http://www.interactiveaccounting.com.au ... in-ruling/

[rupert-h]

Thanks rupert-h,

Although your fees are a little higher 4.9% compered to 1% i will give you a try within the next month, i need to buy about 0.8btc so the $200 min limit won't affect me this time but i often buy small amount like $50 at a time.
I guess the premium is not that bad to stay anonymous. Do you know if the banks require any ID when depositing fund into your account?

Is buying bitcoin in Australia still considered buying goods? I thought that rule was changed and now GST only applies to the exchange fee because that is a service, last time i spoke with Asher i think i remember him saying they were looking to come back to Australia soon after this change.

Edit: Looks like GST does only apply to the exchange fee now.
http://www.interactiveaccounting.com.au ... in-ruling/

Banks generally dont require ID for any cash deposit under $10 000.

From a regulatory standpoint Bitcoin is still considered goods or at least 'not currency'. Any type of ruling which circumvents this requires special permission, that's what we received in January.

But it has a few conditions, mainly, the company must not hold customer funds and cannot be considered an 'exchange' so in the eyes of the law we are a 'merchant service' which connects a buyer with a international seller. This means we only pay GST on our rates, if we were to hold customer funds we would be required to 10% gst on the BTC spot price. You can read our T&C's if you want a more detailed explanation.

I think Coinjar is operating under the exchange model because they hold customers funds. But yes I assume they will be located back in Australia as soon as we update our definition of what money is. The main reason why BTC hasn't been recognised as a currency yet is because our Definition of a currency requires it to be issued by a government.

[bitkilo]

Thanks for the info, that has made it much clearer to me, well are clear as you can get when talking about government regulations.

Interesting how our Definition of a currency requires it to be issued by a government, that's sure to change in the near future hopefully, since it's the government issued currencies we are trying to get away from, to me they had there chance until the banks and governments stuffed it up for everyone. Time for them to step aside and let the new generation handle things.

[rupert-h]

Thanks for the info, that has made it much clearer to me, well are clear as you can get when talking about government regulations.

Interesting how our Definition of a currency requires it to be issued by a government, that's sure to change in the near future hopefully, since it's the government issued currencies we are trying to get away from, to me they had there chance until the banks and governments stuffed it up for everyone. Time for them to step aside and let the new generation handle things.

Yep, well you can't be a disruptive technology without disrupting a few exisiting notions!

ps. If you were planning to check out our services, I suggest waiting till next Wednesday, you might find our prices are better than Coinjar's on that particular day

[bitkilo]

If any of these Australian users are in Melbourne then it would be good to catch up for a drink and talk one night, put our heads together and see what ideas we come up with.
Just an ided i had, or we could just keep the aussie thread going.

Anyone here go to the bitcoin meetups?

[AlexTee]

Hi another Aussie here. Good to see there are a few around the place. Walking around Adelaide I always have a disturbing feeling that I'm the only libertarian in the place - and I know that I'm the only bitcoiner. Anyway hello, and Rupert look forward to next Wednesday.

[rupert-h]

Hi another Aussie here. Good to see there are a few around the place. Walking around Adelaide I always have a disturbing feeling that I'm the only libertarian in the place - and I know that I'm the only bitcoiner. Anyway hello, and Rupert look forward to next Wednesday.

I apologise for the mistake, it's actually Thursday that we will be running the promotion

[rupert-h]

Hi another Aussie here. Good to see there are a few around the place. Walking around Adelaide I always have a disturbing feeling that I'm the only libertarian in the place - and I know that I'm the only bitcoiner. Anyway hello, and Rupert look forward to next Wednesday.

I apologise for the mistake, it's actually Thursday that we will be running the promotion

Sadly our general manager has been quite sick this week so it won't be happening till Friday, but ill let u know what's happening, fees will be 0.99% for Friday only, but this is only available to Australians sorry rest of the world.

[AlexTee]

I used your site today for the first time and was quite happy.
Thanks

[bitkilo]

Anyone seen this yet:
http://www.wired.com/2015/12/bitcoins-c ... an-genius/

Satoshi Nakamoto is Australian, interesting.

[LiteCoinGuy]

Anyone seen this yet:
http://www.wired.com/2015/12/bitcoins-c ... an-genius/

Satoshi Nakamoto is Australian, interesting.

always these bloody australians !

[drwasho]

For a moment there I was really excited that Satoshi may have been Australian... actually I still think he/she is, but we'll see.

[bitkilo]

Has anyone here used comparebitcoins.net?
I posted here: topic3954.html after i had a look at their terms and conditions.
Interesting read.

[bitkilo]

I have a couple of bitcoin ATM's that need locations in Melbourne, if anybody knows of someone looking for one or who has a shop where they would be willing to host one PM me and we can discuss further.

[Decoded]

I've only get one bitcoin atm that I know of near me in Sydney. Recently it's been out of order, so I can't hit myself up with bitcoin. If anyone knows another place I can get bitcoin that's not LBC, chuck me a PM.

[Westernory]

Coinjar is now paying less and less fees on their transactions and they rarely confirm in the first 6 blocks that appear, let alone the first one.

The longest i've waited so far was 15+ hours for a confirmation on an outgoing withdrawal.

[bitkilo]

Coinjar is now paying less and less fees on their transactions and they rarely confirm in the first 6 blocks that appear, let alone the first one.

The longest i've waited so far was 15+ hours for a confirmation on an outgoing withdrawal.

I use Coinjar and have noticed that the fees they add can be quite low but i assume that they have a deal with one of the big pools to push their transactions through for them, i will follow up and try find out some more info, maybe see if they can come on for an AMA

[Westernory]

Coinjar is now paying less and less fees on their transactions and they rarely confirm in the first 6 blocks that appear, let alone the first one.

The longest i've waited so far was 15+ hours for a confirmation on an outgoing withdrawal.

I use Coinjar and have noticed that the fees they add can be quite low but i assume that they have a deal with one of the big pools to push their transactions through for them, i will follow up and try find out some more info, maybe see if they can come on for an AMA

This transaction has been stuck for 3 hours now, from coinjar again: https://blockchain.info/tx/e0521b0abe86 ... 4a4771619f

Have submitted a support ticket looking for at least some form a response about raising the fees/compensation. Hoping that they will respond soon.

[bitkilo]

Coinjar is now paying less and less fees on their transactions and they rarely confirm in the first 6 blocks that appear, let alone the first one.

The longest i've waited so far was 15+ hours for a confirmation on an outgoing withdrawal.

I use Coinjar and have noticed that the fees they add can be quite low but i assume that they have a deal with one of the big pools to push their transactions through for them, i will follow up and try find out some more info, maybe see if they can come on for an AMA

This transaction has been stuck for 3 hours now, from coinjar again: https://blockchain.info/tx/e0521b0abe86 ... 4a4771619f

Have submitted a support ticket looking for at least some form a response about raising the fees/compensation. Hoping that they will respond soon.

I am not too sure how much you can blame Coinjar for this.
The fee added was probably quite normal for the time of transaction, the mempool count has shot up through the roof within the last couple of hours

[Westernory]

I use Coinjar and have noticed that the fees they add can be quite low but i assume that they have a deal with one of the big pools to push their transactions through for them, i will follow up and try find out some more info, maybe see if they can come on for an AMA

This transaction has been stuck for 3 hours now, from coinjar again: https://blockchain.info/tx/e0521b0abe86 ... 4a4771619f

Have submitted a support ticket looking for at least some form a response about raising the fees/compensation. Hoping that they will respond soon.

I am not too sure how much you can blame Coinjar for this.
The fee added was probably quite normal for the time of transaction, the mempool count has shot up through the roof within the last couple of hours

They used a quite recent input that had less than 30 confirmations.
They should know as a large company that right now they have to pay extra fees to be able to get the transactions confirmed.
Obviously not entirely their fault, but definitely partially their fault.