So everyone knows by now that STEEM won the Netcoins listing contest. If you don’t know about Netcoins, this post includes some info on the company.
I came across Netcoins by accident back in May and actually had some email conversation with them at the time, when they only offered bitcoin (transcript below). I also noticed that one of their locations is a short walk from my house, so I figured I would try it out. But first my email conversation, which includes a few nuggets:
What does the customer receive by email?
What kind of wallet is set up for them? On what platform? How do they get access? It seems to me that: Netcoins must hold the private key, so this could only be a very temporary solution, until the customer moves it to another wallet; and
There is significant risk to the customer in that their BTC would only be as safe as their email is secure. Can you convince me otherwise?
When a customer purchase BTC with Netcoins the BTC are sent via a Blockchain wallet that is auto generated for them.
Once received, we encourage customers to change the password to the Blockchain wallet or move the BTC to a wallet of their choice.
Thanks for the quick response. However, I was hoping for some more detail. Could you confirm that a customer would receive an email with the following:
Transaction confirmation ($ for BTC equivalent)
Transaction hash, showing transfer to the new wallet?
Public address for their new wallet
Link to said wallet (is this Blockchain.com?)
Password with advice to change it
Once a customer complete a purchase with Netcoins, they will receive the following emails:
Email from Blockchain for email verification
Purchase summary email from Netcoins with the purchase summary, wallet info and warning advisory to change their password or transfer to their preferred wallet once log in.
Again, I would be concerned about the security when all of this information is being sent by email, which could easily be hacked.
Are there any other measures in place to increase security?
We are constantly working to improve our security and definitely appreciate your feedback!
On a completely different tack, I happen to live a two minute walk from one of your locations, so I am interested in your overall fee structure. So far, I have deposited to online exchanges by direct electronic bank transfers, and I wonder how competitive your fees are. What is your total markup, considering both the reseller’s commission and your own?
In terms of our fees, our reseller fees are generally at 7.5% above Bitstamp
Finally, if the customer provides an existing wallet address, what do they receive in their email? Transaction confirmation and hash?
We currently don't support sending the BTC to customer's wallet directly.
Customers can easily transfer it out from the Blockchain wallet to their own wallet once the purchase is complete.
Okay, so the fees are pretty high, but there are benefits in terms of ease of access. As noted above, I have concerns about security.
Having said that, I headed over to the retail location tonight. It is inside this vape shop:
It turns out STEEM is already available! Here is the full roster of available coins:
You select a coin, enter the $ amount you want to buy, and add name and email. They email you a verification code, which you enter in their system.
I started out by trying STEEM, and it turns out you can enter an existing wallet address for everything but BTC. This is a huge security improvement in my view. I wasn’t expecting STEEM to be available so I didn’t have an address handy. Instead I picked up some ETH.
I entered the wallet address and got an email confirmation.
Soon enough, I saw my transaction confirmed.
And there you have it. Piece of cake, ETH directly to my Ledger nano s. Still expensive though. Let me know your thoughts.
Yes it is expensive, but also super easy to use. Many other services are also very expensive in their fees.
I think this is great for more visibility and easy access. Thanks for your report.
I agree with what you say, but here’s what I wonder. Wouldn’t someone who has the experience and/or sophistication to already have wallets for STEEM and other altcoins likely have a cheaper way of using fiat to buy cryptos?
Alternatively, it seems to me that people who are new to cryptos and use this as their means to enter the market will likely face security risks that they may not fully understand.
We all started as crypto newbz by just buying a small amount. This is perfect for onboarding in my opinion because it is so easy.
Yes, more experienced users probably have a cheaper way of buying cryptos. But that is not the point. The crypto crowd is still quite small and we have tons of work to do. But seeing theese ATMs everywhere, it will trigger interest in people who are inexperienced with new technologies.
I understand your security concerns though, because there is no 2FA for email accounts. It could be stolen via hacking or keylogging. But they don't supports transaction bigger than 500$ anyway. Maybe they will find a way in the future to make it as secure as 2FA on exchanges.
Just saw the resteem - thanks ;)
You got a vote by hendrikdegrote! What an honor!
It was very interesting to read the experience of someone who tried out the Netcoins exchange in real life. It's looking like it is nice and easy to use, so that's good!
Your username is your wallet address here on Steem ;)
Yes, I just didn’t have complete confidence because I don’t know exactly how their back end works. Haven’t tried a fiat to steemit wallet at all, and since it was also my first time using Netcoins, I didn’t want to introduce any uncertainty (my own).
There are two other Netcoins locations where I live. Maybe I will try another location and give STEEM a go. I asked the shop’s employee about how things were going and he said people use it regularly. Would be interesting to get the perspective at another location.
I see why you would not want to "gamble" with bringing in an uncertain wallet address. It's great to hear that these are doing good, and I hope you will be able to ask the same question at one of the other two locations. It would certainly be cool to see if you could try to get a few dollars worth of Steem from it as well ;)
thank you for this review! I hope netcoin will come to germany!
This post was shared in the Curation Collective Discord community for curators, and upvoted and resteemed by the @c-squared community account after manual review.
This is excellent... going to give it a try
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Very cool! Amazing to see how fast it was implemented. Thank you.
I have to try it too! I didn't know that the implementation has been finished already. Thank you for the information!
That is pretty incredible that it all happened so quickly! I'm impressed!