Trading in GBP - My observations after 3-4 months (good!)

Trading
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I thought I’d update everyone on using Bisq in the UK.

Over the last 3-4 months I’ve done about 30 different trades (all buying BTC).

Payment used was FasterPayments (in the UK), these are bank2bank and normally clear within a few mins).

Trades have been in the 0.05 - 0.125 (BTC) range although I have done 0.25 a few times.

All have been a 100% success. However, 4 have ended up in arbitration.

  1. I did a trade over the weekend via my UK bank. The other trader used a continental European bank where the bank had a UK presence. I paid within 1 hour of initiating the trade (On either Sat or Sun) but 24 hours later the seller of Bitcoin reported he had not received any money. He therefore called in arbitration.

What happened was this - it seems that Faster Payments between UK banks works 24/7 UK bank to UK bank but if one side is not a UK bank (as was the case here), Faster Payments doesn’t work so well over the weekend. But come Monday morning the money cleared and the BTC seller released my BTC. No doubt if this trade had been done on a weekday there wouldn’t have been a problem.

  1. The 3 other arbitrations were solely down to the BTC sellers not playing the game properly.

90% of the time I pay within the first hour and I QUADRUPLE check everything (bank account numbers etc) so there’s NEVER a problem my side. But it seems that some traders like to keep people waiting so long (play stupid games) they fail to clear the trade within the 24hour period. I went to arbitration on all 3 trades and within a few hours everything was sorted out, ie got my BTC.

In such cases I strongly advise everyone to immediately block that onion address. That’s what I did and hopefully that will make these sorts of people think again before playing games. Let’s not forget that 24hours is more than enough time for a trade to go through. If you cannot clear a trade within that time-period, DO NOT TRADE WITH OTHERS, wait until you can.

Apart from the minor problems above, everything has gone great using Bisq.

One thing that foxed me right at the beginning with faster Payments was when I received the bank details (from Bisq) there was no name (good!), only Sort Code and Account number. Yet my bank always asked for an account name on its website. The name it appears is not checked (although for my bank you still need to enter one) so I’ve been using something made up like John Smith or Alan Black. I HAVE HAD ZERO PROBLEMS FROM MY BANK FOR DOING THIS. Perhaps someone from Bisq can add this information if there’s a ‘How to buy BTC with GBP’ article/video.

Finally, one way of determining if your brand is strong is when the users of said brand ADVERTISE it to others.

Take Apple (very strong brand) as a good example against Microsoft (very well known brand, but at the same time not a strong brand). For example, how many people who bought an iPhone or other Apple product have sold it to their friends - hey check this out. Versus how many people have raved about a Microsoft product and sold it to their friends? Never confuse a strong brand with a very well known one…

So on this point, Bisq has a pretty good brand because I’ve told many people about it and advised them to use it.

Thanks Manfred and others, slick product and only going to get bigger IMHO.

4 Likes
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Thank you for sharing your experience :slight_smile:

Sometimes people experience issues, sometimes bugs or personal issues and can’t manage trades in time, but blocking their address might still help out in some cases to avoid trading with users that might experience bugs on their computers often.

Today there was another user on Slack that uses Faster payments and he experienced a chargeback with his bank (Monese was the name of the bank). So if by some chance you are using the same bank, please be careful about that.

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Alex, yep, understand re bugs/personal issues but I still believe 24hours is enough time to sort any problems out. It’s also respectful to the Bisq network to abide by their rules/laws. Anyway, those 3 onion address are still banned!

One thing I forgot to mention in the above, if I hit an offer to buy I normally only wait for just one confirmation, never had a problem with that. The quickest trade I’ve done is probably less than 15mins. Nice and slick. Average time for trading though (assuming 9-5) is probably about 2 hours.

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Great thanks for your feedback!!!

If there is a clear reason for a trade rule violation the arbitrator should give the security deposit (or part of it) to the correctly behaving trader. But of course it is often difficult to find out if a trader made a honest mistake of was careless. To punish a honest trader who made a mistake of had some problems can lead to quite a bit of frustration, so we prefer to be rather tolerant in the arbitration rules and only punish if it is rather clear.

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Manfred, in the (positive) spirit of Bisq, I’ll unban the peers, give them a second chance as you and Alex have highlighted, there might be geniune problems about their late paying. (But I’m keeping an eye on their onion addresses).

PS. I hope everyone is ready for the 20th September? https://github.com/bisq-network/growth/issues/67

I usually have at least 1 bid working but I’m going to increase that :grinning:

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Manfred/Devs

As an idea to helping improve usability (for GBP Faster Payment users) and cut down on a bit of initial confusion (especially for first time traders).

As I said above, when I did my first trade (and the next few) I was confused about what to enter as the name of the trader on my banks website when setting up the payment to them. All Bisq supplies is the Sort Code and Account number.

As I also said above, UK banks don’t check the name, only the sort code/account so it’s no problem to put in a made up name as I’ve done on 30+ trades (and never had a problem).

So when the Bisq trader gets the box listing details behind the trade including the Sort code/Acc, why not put in a new line that says something like

'Note: Your Bank’s website will normally ask for a name of who to pay, but this is not checked, only the Sort Code and Account number are used for payments."

I don’t think it’s a good idea for Bisq to say ‘so use a made up one’. I think the above will be enough for people to work out what to use. Most Crypto currency users are not dummies.

I hope this helps.

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I will try to add a popup to the next release.
Do you know if that requirement for a name is only at few banks or if most banks have that field?

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Manfred, It’s ALL UK banks.

All will have the box for ‘Name’ but it’s just cosmetic.

All they NEED is the sort code + account number. (Cheques are a different matter but that’s not our bag).

Names if you think about it can cause a lot of problems for computers, ie different spellings such as Michel/Michelle or Vivien/Vivian and so on.

Also people use different forms for their name on the account, on one account for example I have Mr John Smith (assume that’s my name) but on another have J.F Smith and on another J Smith. It can all get very confusing so the simplicity of the numbers (sort code + account number) works perfectly for the banks.

PS. I have tightened up the line -

'Note: Your Bank’s website will normally ask for Payee name but this is not checked by your bank or the bank you’re sending money to. Only the Sort Code and Account number are checked for payments."

PPS. But having thought about the above, will that still lead to some confusion (especially for 1st time traders) because now they might be thinking - do I have to put a name in? But if they don’t the bank’s systems will probably ask for one. I like the line - “so make one up” (which is what I’ve been doing), but I don’t think Bisq can do that, it just looks unprofessional so perhaps somebody reading this thread can come up with an idea of how to let the client know he can input anything. I’ll think about this over the next 24 hours and report back.

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If I remind correctly, this sort of issue is not the first we encounter in the appli.
If we don’t want to be have to write about delicate questions in too small space,
we could maybe simply refer to a reserved chapter in the documentation:
eg https://docs.bisq.network/dealing-with-your-bank.html

So:
If you have trouble concerning some fields/info your bank claims willing to know,
you may read: https://docs.bisq.network/dealing-with-your-bank.html
or consult our forum https://bisq.community
for fresh advices.

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Or keep is really simple, one line -

Name: This is not checked by your bank or the receiving bank.

Or

Account Name: Not checked by either bank

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And as Homard says also put it in the docs.

Is there one for GBP, happy to write one if need be.

Make it step by step -

How to Buy/Sell Bitcoin with a UK bank Account Using Faster Payments.

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I implemented it here:

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Manfred, that looks great, thanks, makes people think just a little bit less.