Goose Chase BitcoinWhat is the vanilla place to buy a Bitcoin?
Where would you expect it to be the easiest?
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That is why I just tried Coinbase.
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I opened an account.
It was an interplay between e-mails and flip phone messages.
Surprisingly, they wanted an unusual amount of personal information.
No PO boxes, a street address only. Your occupation and employer.
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They wanted to know where to get the purchase money from.
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I tried the corporate checking account, but they had a problem.
Corporate debit card, they had a problem.
Reluctantly, my personal checking account, and that went through.
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I only recently realized that one could purchase a fractional Bitcoin.
I’ll purchase $100 worth.
Actually they take out $2, and you get $98 worth, so that is how that works.
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So I created an account and logged back in.
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I pressed ‘Purchase Bitcoin’.
Shockingly they said that they wanted to see my driver’s license.
I held it up to the web-cam.
Then they wanted to see the back of my driver’s license.
Then they wanted to see my smiling face in the web-cam.
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After all that trouble, they said that the images were not good enough.
I tried many times, and I even used my scanner.
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I thought that the virtue of Bitcoin was that it was supposed to be private.
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This was, by far, the most invasive interaction I have had in my lifetime.
At least they didn’t require a cavity search.
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I guess it's back to square one.
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RJ