I'm a bit late to the Bitcoin party and want to get involved. There's a few things I need to clear up and ask before I dive in:<p>Are exchanges any use? Things like Coinbase seem very agressive in knowing personal information about me, asking for a scanned passport, and that's a big no-no for me.<p>Are there other alternatives to Coinbase where I can just buy a bit of BTC with my credit card, and preferably without the intrusiveness of Coinbase?
im sorry to tell you that the majority of bitcoin exchanges will require quite a lot of personal information, usually a photo of your passport/drivers licence at minimum and in many cases a picture of you holding the card. this is simply their only way of trying to protect against people using it for money laundering or card theft, think about it, if you find/steal/clone a credit card and can open an anonymous account you could clear out the card into untraceable BTC and be gone like a ghost. (well OK youd probably have to anonymize it a little more but the idea s there)<p>alternatives exists and i believe there is even one built into the android wallet app mycellium but most will require a lot of verification, your only other option really is to use local bitcoins or a similar service to buy from someone near you, but this usually comes at an increased cost.<p>i actually cant think of any way off the top of my head to buy coins without full registration or personally knowing someone with them already, there used to be ways to get them using uKash or paysafecard and even second life linden dollars but i think theyve closed off all those various holes now